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There's a post going around tumblr from ![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
prokopetz about the three types of protagonists, as follows:
and every time it goes by I want to do it as "Tag your OT3". So, here (feel free to fight me on these):
Eliot is 1. Hardison is 2. Parker is 3.
Luke is 1. Han is 2. Leia is 3.
Rey is 1. Finn is 2. Poe is 3.
McCoy is 1. Kirk is 2. Spock is 3.
Joe is 1. Methos is 2. MacLeod is 3.
Sybil is 1. Vimes is 2. Vetinari is 3.
Cable is 1. Vanessa is 2. Deadpool is 3.
Mercy of Kalr is 1. Seivarden is 2. Breq is 3.
Ray is 1. Ray is 2. Ben is 3.
Thomas is 1. Peter is 2. Bev is 3.
Harrow is 1. Gideon is 2. Ianthe is 3.
1. Pursues reasonable goals with unreasonable methods
2. Has sensible plans, but tremendously fucks up the execution
3. Relentlessly competent in pursuit of goals that are objectively deranged
and every time it goes by I want to do it as "Tag your OT3". So, here (feel free to fight me on these):
Eliot is 1. Hardison is 2. Parker is 3.
Luke is 1. Han is 2. Leia is 3.
Rey is 1. Finn is 2. Poe is 3.
McCoy is 1. Kirk is 2. Spock is 3.
Joe is 1. Methos is 2. MacLeod is 3.
Sybil is 1. Vimes is 2. Vetinari is 3.
Cable is 1. Vanessa is 2. Deadpool is 3.
Mercy of Kalr is 1. Seivarden is 2. Breq is 3.
Ray is 1. Ray is 2. Ben is 3.
Thomas is 1. Peter is 2. Bev is 3.
Harrow is 1. Gideon is 2. Ianthe is 3.
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"What you need," said her friend Dot, sagely, over lunch at the Corner House, "Is to put yourself back out there."
"I don't suppose there would be a lot of demand for the favors of a woman who was tried for the murder of her last gentleman friend," Harriet said dismally. "And Lord Peter--"
"Oh, tosh and pish to all your Lords and murders," Dot said. "What you need is somebody ordinary and boring for a change. Lighten things up." Dot was one of her friends from the margins of her artistic circles - she had gone to school as a painter, but wound up drawing pictures for advertisements, and had a tendency sometimes to overcompensate for this by extolling the dubious virtues of a steady job at an office. "There's a nice, ordinary man just started at my office. Mr. Bredon. He seems a bit lonely and in need of a cheering-up. Possibly recently crossed in love, though he won't talk about it. Let me set you up on a dinner-date or something. I think you'd be good for each other, even if nothing else comes of it in the end."
Harriet, much against her better wisdom, let herself be convinced to one dinner-date, if the man could be induced in his turn, with the creeping suspicion that this had been the entire goal of Dot's inviting her to lunch in the first place. But the idea of a nice, normal dinner with an ordinary stranger who worked an office-job and had nothing to do with Lords or murders, did, in that moment, seem wildly appealing.
***
Mr. Bredon, perhaps inevitably, was in fact Lord Peter Wimsey in disguise.
Harriet watched him cross the restaurant toward her table with a sinking feeling like a tanker meeting an iceberg, as she remembered a note she'd received a few weeks back to the effect that the man was going to be under cover for a case, and would be out of contact for some time. Undercover - that was clear; all of the things that made up the performance of Lord Peter Wimsey were missing in the man approaching her table, and she didn't think that any of Sal's friends would be able to tell, to make hay of it the way they would Harriet and Peter dining out - but all the same it was unmistakeable.
"Did Dot not tell you who I was?" Harriet said, with resignation.
"No, no, you're Miss Vane! At least, I hope you are, or I've got quite the wrong restaurant." He sat down a bit fussily in the chair across from her. "But I suppose I have to admit that I've followed your career - I'm a fan, you might say, so I don't think I'm mistaken in who I've sat down with."
"Lord Peter--" Harriet started.
"Oh, well, I know what's been in the papers about you and him," he said, with a deprecating laugh, "and I suppose I don't much measure up to a Lord, do I? Or perhaps you think I might be intimidated by the comparison? But I know better than to trust the papers, and besides, I can't imagine you've succumbed to his charms too thoroughly, or you would never have agreed to a dinner out with someone like me." He glanced across the table at her. "And I imagine it has to be deuced awkward, doesn't it, being courted by the son of a Duke, and one you owe your life to, at that. Gratitude and insecurity being both largely incompatible with romance. When Dot brought up the idea I thought you might be willing to give a fair shake to someone who shares many of his good qualities but lacks the obvious disadvantages, doncha know."
"That's how you're going to play this?" Harriet asked him, amused, offended and disbelieving in equal parts.
"Not," said Peter, "If you tell me no," and that was definitely Peter, not the office worker or the dilettante detective, but the Peter she'd met a few times at odd moments, the man who was always so unreasonably reasonable that she found it impossible to be reasonable to him in return.
"And you're not going to ask me to marry you?" she said, just in case.
"Before we've even had a first date? What kind of unbearable, arrogant cad would do that? Let me know who it is, and I will punch him directly on the nose for you, if you wish. Not," he added sharply, "that I would be entirely averse if someone else raised the topic."
"By all means let's avoid that, then," Harriet said. "But I suppose it can't hurt to finish out our dinner. After all, I wouldn't want to make things awkward for you with Dot in the office, come Monday."
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However, I think -- I can't be bothered to actually get up and find my copy and find the reference -- I think it's at least strongly implied that Peter goes to the dinner as Peter, specifically because it's fairly late in the book and he wants to be himself for a bit.
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