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There's a post going around tumblr from

prokopetz about the three types of protagonists, as follows:

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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These are all accurate

Joe is 1. Methos is 2. MacLeod is 3.

This is so accurate, it hurts.

I will Fight You (tm) about Luke being 1. I don't feel like his goals are reasonable. Perhaps the twins share this characteristic. I'd suggest substiting with Lando, except I feel like his methods are reasonable. Hmm.

~~Miles Vorkosigan is unfortunately all three of them.~~

Edited 2021-03-24 16:51 (UTC)

Obi-Wan, maybe? Goal: Defeat the Empire! Method: Become ghost!

I mean, both the Star Wars ones should really be OT4s, but this game doesn't work as well for OT4s.

I think if you swap out for the most canon-doable/least incesty version as an OT3, it becomes Lando is 1, Han is 2, Leia is 3.

It depends on how you define unreasonable, but I feel like "Make a deal with Darth Vader, and then welch on it", "Fly a rickety old freighter literally into the Death Star", and "Cheat at Sabaac" are all objectively not very reasonable, but his goals tend to be things like "maintain continuity of city administration" and "make a living", which only become unreasonable in context.

I mean, in general all of these depend on whether you consider 'defeat the all-powerful Evil Empire' a reasonable or unreasonable goal. But especially if you count sequel-trilogy as canon, Leia tends to have goals like "create an alliance out of squabbling rebel groups and use it to bring down the all-powerful empire, while a teenager" or "resign from a high political position in order to start another underground rebel group in order to fight an enemy most people don't think exists", and she someone manages to succeed at those.

Whereas Luke has goals like "Get off this boring planet", "rescue my friends", "prevent the bad guy from finding my friends", "start a school", and "stop getting other people killed". It's just that the strategies he chooses to accomplish these things are so batshit they obscure the modesty of the original goals.

I support this.

It depends on how you define unreasonable, but I feel like "Make a deal with Darth Vader, and then welch on it", "Fly a rickety old freighter literally into the Death Star", and "Cheat at Sabaac" are all objectively not very reasonable, but his goals tend to be things like "maintain continuity of city administration" and "make a living", which only become unreasonable in context.

Lando looks so much better by contrast compared to everyone he's standing next to XD

I consider Luke's most unreasonable goal and unreasonable method to both converge on Operation Save Darth Vader's Soul.

It was suprisingly easy.

I think maybe in order to have an OT3 work with three protagonist types, you *have* to have a 2 (to get them into that situation in the first place), a 1 (to be willing to propose that they make it work) and a 3 (to actually be able to make it work.)

Edited 2021-03-24 17:32 (UTC)

I honestly think it is debatable whether Operation Save Darth Vader's Soul rises to the level of a "goal" as opposed to a dream. Like, it's easy to read what he did in RotJ as making mad choices in order to achieve that, but actually what he did was a) volunteer to help his friends destroy the shield bunker; b) realize he shouldn't have done that, because Darth Vader will be able to sense him there, and that will blow the operation; c) use the most expedient method possible to prevent Vader from realizing there is a Rebel commando team on Endor and acting on that knowledge.

Like, if you don't believe Vader can sense him in the Force (like everybody else on Endor) it looks like he's just throwing himself at Vader for no reason, and it was all irrelevant anyway because the whole thing was a trap, and his *method* for distracting Vader was in fact "attempt to turn him to the light" (which was objectively unreasonable) but at no point did he wake up in the morning and say "Today is the day I attempt to turn Vader back to the light," and I think if the mission had gone as planned, he had never left Endor and Lando had blown the Death Star with both Vader and Palpatine on in, Luke would have been a bit said but still considered all goals accomplished.

It has been a while but I feel like Yoda and Obi-Wan were really priming him to go fight Darth Vader, talking about he won't be a Jedi until he confronts him. It seemed like they were pointing him at the target in hopes that he'd kill him, and Luke was like "naw."

But I always come back to "I have no idea what the light side of the Force is", so that complicates matters.

Oh, that is obviously true. And I would say 'Don't let Yoda and Obi-Wan manipulate you into doing stuff you don't want to do' is definitely a goal of his by at least the start of ROTJ. But I would argue that is an eminently reasonable goal. :P

And I think he was definitely ready to go for pushing Vader toward the light every chance he got. But I just don't know that I'd consider a major goal of his, in the sense of something he was shaping all his choices around. He ever really seeks out Vader, or does anything in that direction, unless it's specifically toward an immediate goal of protecting Han and Leia. I kind of feel like he *knows* it's an objectively deranged goal, so he's still just sort of dancing around it and waiting for the universe to push him in its direction if it wants to.

But yeah. The Force complicates the question of Luke's choices a lot.

Also, MacLeod would say he is 2 and Methos is 3, but he would be wrong.

Methos would loudly proclaim he is 2 but leave out the fact that it's only because half the time he fucks up his own plans, on purpose.

...I was actually considering including my Vorkosigan OT3 of Lord Miles Vorkosigan/Ekaterin Vorsoisson/Admiral Miles Naismith (who fit the pattern in that order) but unfortunately nobody has yet written me the fic where Ekaterin gets to have a wild fling with Naismith.

Edited 2021-03-24 18:06 (UTC)

I feel like Obi-Wan is a 3 if you team him up with Qui-Gon, a 2 if you team him up with Anakin, and a 1 if you team him up with Luke, because he has something of the mirror to him.

Methos talks himself into fucking up the execution into unreasonable goals while steadfastly denying that that's what he's doing. He also denies he's in denial. He hasn't felt guilt since a previous millennia, and these boots are made for walking, so long and thanks for all the fish. Please ignore the man behind the curtain.

but unfortunately nobody has yet written me the fic where Ekaterin gets to have a wild fling with Naismith.

I would never be the one to write it, but if I weren't writing it, Ekaterin is doing work for her PhD on some space station somewhere (because it's a lot easier to keep plants from infecting other plants with their wily pollen if you can just open an airlock if you need to), and the Dendarii come through, and Miles is wandering the halls and has a mild allergic reaction to alert him that there's Barrayaran botany nearby. And there's a woman there, dressesd like someone from home, but she's berating him like she's one of his officers because he's messing up her project.

I don't know how Lord Vorkosigan gets into this, maybe Ekaterin goes home and looks up Cordelia at Admiral Naismith's suggestion.

That's really fun!

I mean, in my version it is post-wedding and Miles attempts to explain the whole Naismith thing to Ekaterin via demonstration and things get a bit out of hand and then becomes an ongoing thing that also includes attempting to convince the Barrayaran tabloids Ekaterin is having an extramarital affair with her husband's clone.

But your version is excellent and brilliant and I also support it a lot. I suspect Miles comes in when it goes AU mid-Komarr as they both suddenly recognize each other. :D (Would Miles then decide the most expedient way to separate her from Tien/court her is to show back up as Naismith? Difficult to say.)

All of Miles's romantic success has been as Naismith and, by god, he's not gonna change that now.

It wouldn't be *that* much more screwy than how he actually did court her in canon...

Also I have embarked on a Sayers re-read recently, so am of course thinking of the parallels between Miles/Ekaterin and Peter/Harriet, and now I am wishing there was a post-Have His Carcase story where one of Harriet's school friends is like 'What you want right now is someone normal and boring to take your mind off of Lords and murders and all that, there's a nice man about your age named Bredon who just started at my office and he seems a bit lonely, let me set you up on a dinner-date with him'.

I guess with Harry Potter, Harry is 1, Ron 2 and Hermione 3? It doesn't quite fit though. Maybe all three fall under 1.

OH OH OH oh dear now I very want this

You think Anakin Skywalker is "2. Has sensible plans, but tremendously fucks up the execution"?!

Oh, yes to the Vorkosigan one, and Ivan in the background pointing out "Miles, you're BOTH those people!" rather unhappily and desperate for someone to stop his cousin who isn't HIMSELF.

Edited 2021-03-24 20:15 (UTC)

Having returned from her walking tour, and submitted her manuscript shortly thereafter, Harriet Vane found herself back in London and feeling rather dreary.

"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."

Edited 2021-03-24 20:45 (UTC)

"Miles," Ivan said, "The news from home is reporting that your wife is having an affair with your clone."

"I'd heard," said Miles.

"Not Mark, mind you. That might almost make a tiny bit of sense. The other clone. The one who is, actually, you. Not a clone of you, just the real you without any of the safeguards that normally keep you from going entirely of the rails."

"They do say it's important to keep variety in one's marriage," Miles told him.

"Yes, SPEAKING of that," said Ivan, "The next batch of news had the interview where you said you knew your wife was stepping out on you, and you didn't mind."

"Well, I could hardly object, could I?" Miles asked. "After all, I've been using my old ImpSec cover idea to go about with a married woman, myself."

"Miles," Ivan said.

"Yes?"

"Miles. Miles. What is going on back home that you needed to create a distraction this badly?"

"I have no idea what you are talking about," Miles said.

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