Usually, when I try to apply the color pie to non-Magic characters, I end up going either monocolor or two-colored. I think that's because I've been looking more at the themes presented by such characters than trying to look at their underlying motivations.

I'll try to use your method for a few of my characters and aim for three colors, but I'm not sure I'll be as analytical as you.

Doc
I think I can get Doc pretty well, since he's still largely me. Primary color is absolutely white, and for a different reason than I've seen any other character in this thread be pegged as white. The saying goes "you're either a leader or a follower," and Doc and I are followers, hands-down. Referring to myself as a sidekick is a running gag at work, and I often go in early/stay late to do extra work, because to my mind, my time is spent better on the animals at the zoo than on myself; I am their servant. Translating this to Doc, I feel that he sees himself as servant to all the worlds under his protection, and doesn't have as much motivation to go out into HQ and spend time on anything other researching new canons.

But of course, Doc's love of books also has an element of greed and obsession to it. While cards themed with greed tend to be black cards in Magic, I feel that Doc's tendency to fly into a rage when books are threatened, coupled with the servanthood attitude from his white slice of the pie, which makes the books themselves his focus, make this attribute more red for him than black.

The tertiary color is where Doc and I diverge. I think Doc's tertiary is green. This mostly comes from the manner in which the both of us prefer to read: very slowly, savoring each sentence, and allowing the story to unfold itself at its own pace, rather than hurrying through and skimming. My full time+ job sometimes forces me to forego reading the way I like, during lunch breaks and such, but Doc is able to read my original, green way. (I think my "tertiary" has split into a tie between green and blue, since my job requires me to be proactive in planning and problem solving.)

So Doc is WRG.

Vania
Vania is probably going to be the hardest for me, if only because of the spoilers. Looking at her as I picture her base state, before she was recruited to the PPC, she was very friendly and outgoing, participating in campus activities and trying to get along with everyone. This mostly sounds white, but there's also an element of recklessness and jumping to snap decisions in her character. I think I'm going to cheat and say her primary is a relatively even split between red and white.

Tertiary is a bit hard. Her narrative has had a small element of showing people the ropes in a new situation. I think that would be blue rather than green, though I'm not entirely certain. Although I just noticed she's very near to becoming the same colors as Doc, so let's go with blue, but a very small blue.

Vania is WRu.

Paul
aka, the flashback character no one remembers or cares about. He does exist, though, in some of PoorCynic's writing exercises, here and here, if you scroll down to "2. Responding to criticism . . ." in the first link.

Since he's flashback-only, and was basically just a past antagonist to Vania, I very intentionally designed Paul to be Not Nice. That second prompt seems to show him caring for his Pokémon, but he's ultimately just acting that way because he thinks it will make them grow stronger, faster. (Didn't reallt write it that well, in retrospect.) It's the same rote, empty act as giving your Pokémon a haircut in the games to increase their Friendship stat by 1: it represents care and attention, but is really nothing more than a game mechanic. Paul wants to make his Pokémon powerful, he single-minded about that goal, and he doesn't want others controlling his life. Paul's primary color is easily black.

Even in the PPC, where he has actual, living Pokémon instead of game data, and can physically go to the Pokémon universe, Paul still looks at those things in terms of stats and numbers and strategy guides, because those are things he can know in his head, without being distracted by the open-ended randomness of the organic world. There's no subjectivity in his charge lists, either; there's only right and wrong. Paul is confident he knows which is which, and dictates it to the badfic accordingly. Paul's secondary color is blue.

For tertiary, weirdly, I think it's actually green. Even though Paul's care for his Pokémon is largely arbitrary, the fact that he's putting that time in, rather than pumping them full of Rare Candies to get them fully evolved as soon as possible, is an aspect of green. He's letting the Pokémon grow on their own time, getting them experience points and effort values bit by bit as he battles Sue trainers. (Which I just remembered is outlawed . . . in the modern setting . . . maybe Paul's screwing around back in the day is the reason for that rule existing now?)

Paul is BUG. Though he has no Bug-types.

—doctorlit realizes it will be hard for anyone else to debate his characters when he has published so little material

Richard Legard: White/Blue/Red. Richard like the idea of peace, moral and just good, however... While we're not on the scale of Notary's 'White is pure Order' there is the downside he's also a rather passive streak there, letting himself follow the order and, more often than not, the logic, the facts and his head rather than guts.

Yet, deep down he's emotionally invested behind the passivity and the intellect, and would like to express this more. To steal from oter systems, his behaviour can lead him to Lawful Neutral, but deep down he craves the idea of being Chaotic Good... Provided his worldviews and ideals aren't shattered first.

Marina Nicodelli: White/Black/Red. Marina is less about 'good' as order, but she would very much like to see a world of peace and ione of rules followed... Except of course reality doesn't work that way. The world is unfair, and sometimes enforcing some form of order requires to break some rules... So be it, be she's very much not letting the means take the lead on the ends, some rules aren't escapable.

However, for all the cynism and the order, she will react strongly to any topic sensitive to her. And while she harbors some curiosity about other magics, deep down her response to it is rather emotional, with the discovery of the unknown... provided the unknown don't break the rules she holds dear or gives answers she dislikes. Moreover, there's the fact she awaits for the day she can leave the PPC behind, in no small part because of the loved ones she left behind.

Dafydd is a person of deep contrasts. His primary is obviously red - he's an impulsive individualist, and also a pyro. Secondary has to be his arrogance - as a Feanorion, he's very sure he's better than everyone. I think that's black. But underneath, he's very much a traditionalist - he gets twitchy when he's not able to do elven things. So that makes him green.

Agent Kaitlyn is also primarily red, but in a different way - she's so bouncy that she sees all of life as an adventure. Secondarily, I think she's white - partly because she Just Wants Everyone To Get Along, but also because she is at heart a rule-follower - she actually requisitioned a chair for herself, rather than stealing one! Tertiary... I'm not sure she has one; blue, if anything, because she is pretty smart.

Morgan is primarily white. She sees herself as a creature of order, and tries to get people to rally to the cause. (This has on at least one occasion led her to conquer all of reality, but, y'know, it happens.) Backing that up is her blue character, as someone who will plan herself into the ground if given the chance. But... buried under all that is a fiery strain of red, which tends to lead her to wild improvising and occasional explosions.

I'm having trouble with Selene. I think her primary might be green, odd though that sounds - she's devoting a lot of energy to not rocking the boat, which is a sort of twisted version of green. Under that she's definitely red, being a vampire who is driven by her instincts if not careful. And third? ... I don't think she has one; it would be red again, because under all the above she's a fragile person who basically just wants a friend. That red is doing double service in two very different aspects.

hS

Wobbles the Clown: WHITE/RED/GREEN
Primary: White. Wobbles is someone who wants people to be happy. It's the core of her being. Helping people be happy, putting things in place so that people who aren't happy can become happy, these are things she views as the highest good. 'S'why she tried out for the Department of Angst before being shoved into Floaters.
Secondary: Red. Wobbles is very much an emotionally driven person - and it's here that we see the slightly darker side of that. See, Wobbles abhors negative emotions (classic Whovians may recall the Happiness Patrol) and does everything in her power to defy and diminish them, regardless of how healthy that may be in the long run. It's emotional freedom, but only the freedom to feel certain emotions, which is why she's only a secondary Red and not a primary.
Tertiary: Green. It was a struggle as to which of these went first, but I decided to put Red as having precedence over Green despite her enforced connection to the natural world (or rather, her enforced disavowal of modern technology). Indeed, it might be because it's so forced; it's not so much a part of her psyche as it is a part of her physiology. Hroa rather than fear, as the elves say.

The Fifth Notary: WHITE/BLACK/BLUE
Primary: White: This is an entirely different kind of White to Wobbles. The Notary craves structure more than anything else, a system of rules and regulations that govern everything from Brownian motion in a teacup to the dance of galactic clusters. This basic, intrinsic need for order above all else makes her White alignment somewhat darker than others, but ho hum. Remember, to a non-believer, even the holiest angel is just another monster.
Secondary: Black: Of course, as far as the Notary's concerned, the whole point of a system is to learn how to rig it in your favour. This is the central conflict in her psyche; she craves order and rules, but chafes against their restrictions when they get in the way of what she actually wants.
Tertiary: Blue: In order to get ahead in a system governed by rules, you have to understand them; in order to understand them, you have to be smart in a lot of different ways. The Notary embodies this to an extent; a very detail-oriented person with an axe to grind against improperly-completed forms. Again, it was a struggle as to which of these was the stronger attribute.

Lola McCandless: BLUE/WHITE/RED
Primary: Blue: When it comes to field command, you need command intelligence. You need to have a precise and in-depth knowledge of tactics and logistics, of what you can get and when it will get there, of what you have to hand and who you have by your side. She didn't have it to begin with, but having horrible alien space thingies hurl plasma at your face tends to teach you that fairly fast.
Secondary: White: Of course, being at the top of the heap means you have to have a heap to be on top of, and that means at least a little bit of White being involved in your psychological makeup. Lola's view of the chain of command is that it works because the higher-ups make it work, and that it has to be there in order for anything to function on a logistical level. From chaos comes death, in her view and her experience. XCOM is not a nice place, especially when crossed over with everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Captain Scarlet.
Tertiary: Red: Part of being a good commander in the field, however, is being flexible. If you overplan, you can construct something overcomplicated and that leads to failure and the deaths of good men and women under your command. This kind of lateral thinking is what allows for her to keep fighting and get people out alive even when the plan's gone to hell and the Sectopods are stomping towards you like a drunken stepdad taking off his belt. It needs a level of emotional intelligence and knowledge of morale, and that's a pretty Red characteristic if ever there was one. =]

Lessee here...

Thoth: U/R/B. I mean, blue is the primary, that doesn't take any explanation a all. His dubious moral compass and fundamental self-interest make black another obvious choice. However, beneath that most readily observable surface, Thoth has a deep desire for freedom — it's part of what drove him to the PPC to begin with. And while his history has made it rare for him to form bonds (and his relative lack of emoting makes it hard for many to even attempt it) when he does, they go fairly deep. He's willing to go pretty far for something or someone he values.

Tom: R/U/W. Tom tends to run on emotions. He'll do things because he thinks it's right, or funny, or wasn't actually thinking at all but rationalized it later. However, as a person who worked with long chains of abstract logic all day, he's got a lot of blue to his outlook as well: valuing knowledge and self-improvement, and perfection in his work (because the alternative is demons everywhere). Despite all of this, Tom believes in the group over the individual (hard not to, given what the Laundryverse is like), and has a very solid sense of right and wrong beneath everything.

Now, let's see how much I remember. {= D Starting with who I've been thinking about the most recently:

Derik: Red/White/Black. You, and he himself, would probably think the White would come first, what with how much he cares about order, protection, justice, and all that good stuff. However, it's his emotions that make him go, and sometimes go too far, which is what Red is all about. And occasionally, the influence of Black makes him pretty dang scary.

Gall: Red again, but this time Red/Green. Green thinks what it has is pretty great, and it can always get bigger and better. If you mess with it, it will unleash the wrath of nature on you. Gall knows she's pretty great, and if you mess with her, she will unleash the wrath of a Monstrous Nightmare on you. Or she'll do whatever because she feels like it, because Red. Life's an adventure, yo! (I understand Red/Green is the color pair of dragons in MTG, so yeah, go figure.)

Nume: Primary Blue, because Blue is all about the mind, knowledge, and memory. Secondary White, because rules, order, and protection. Nume does what he does because he knows he's the smartest man in the room, and he knows he's right, and he doesn't need anybody else's approval, dammit.

Ilraen: Yes, he's Blue. But it's not his primary. Ilraen is actually doing the White/Red thing properly: doing the Right Thing because it is Right, and it Feels Good to Do Good, and you Don't Mess With Family. He's all heart—but with a side of wicked smart that will come up and catch you by surprise if you're not paying attention, which is where the tertiary Blue comes in. Plus he likes tinkering with technology. So, White/Red/Blue.

Jenni: ... I don't even know, to be honest. Like, I'd think White/Green, maybe White/Green/Red, but it's not right. She's not really about the group (Green/White is ALL about the group), she's about individuals and feelings and relationships and family (Red), and being incredibly psychic (Blue) but keeping it in check because morals and rules (White), and basically just making things better (also Blue?). Maybe she's our actual Red/White/Blue character? Phobos, help me out!

~Neshomeh

Brightbeard - Brightbeard likes everything to be neat, orderly, and structured. This puts him solidly in White, as does his strong moral compass. He also values tradition, community, and growth, which makes his second color Green. I can't really get a read on a third color, so White-Green will have to work.

Barid - Barid is kind of ruled by his emotions and he's a bit of a force of Chaos. That makes him a good foil to his partner and it also puts him in Red. His methods (poisoning and shadow magic), as well as the fact that he is only in business for himself, makes him Black. If he has a third color, it is probably Blue. He's smarter than he looks and does have a love of maps and exploration. So, I'll go with Red-Black-Blue for Barid.

Decima - So, we've got a Slytherin. That means ambition, and ambition means Black, right? Well, that's definite in there, it is tertiary for her. Her strongest color is White, because she wants systems and order (she once apologized for the state of her room when there was a single sock out of place). Her second color is Green because she is inflexible in her world-view, as seen by her inability to accept how exorcisms work because the process doesn't conform to her views of magic. She has such a hard time with things in the couple of missions she has, because the PPC has given a major blow to her view of the world, and she is slow to adjust to that. White-Green-Black

-Phobos

Thank you so much for making the Red, White, and Blue joke for Cap. That made my day.

So... looking at my characters, I'm starting to realize how many of them are pretty identical when it comes to colors. Most of them fall pretty squarely in the Red-White-Green triad.

The Aviator:
Primary: Red. Ave's made it pretty clear she values her freedom and will be leaving the PPC once there aren't any people left to tie her down. She's hot-headed and emotional, and doesn't always think things through.
Secondary: White. She's loyal to her partner and family and will do whatever it takes to keep them safe.
Tertiary? Eh. If anyone can think of a good reason for one, I'm all ears, but Blue, Black, and Green don't really fit her.

Zeb:
Primary: White. Zeb's a lion, it makes sense he values community. He's self-sacrificing and hates to see others in pain. And he just wants everyone to get along.
Secondary: Green. He knows his place in the universe and he's pretty content to accept it.
Tertiary: Red. Zeb thinks with his heart, not his head, and it shows.

Ix
Primary: Black. Funnily enough, I didn't see this one coming until I got to thinking about it. Ix has long since come to accept that nobody's looking out for her (...well, except Charlotte) and it's up to her to make the most of it with what she's got. She's driven—she put in a lot of hard work to get to where she is—and knows the instant she stumbles, she'll fall right back to the bottom. The world isn't going to be kind to you, so you'd better seize whatever opportunities you can to keep yourself from becoming a target.
Secondary: White. Ix just wants everything to be okay. So although she doesn't believe that will ever be the case, she still tries to make things better where she can.
Tertiary: Red. Despite what she says, she's still in Gryffindor for a reason.

Charlotte:
Primary: Green. Everything happens for a reason, whether you like it or not, so you'd better figure out what to do with what you have. Sure, it doesn't mean she can't complain about it the whole way through, but she's not generally one to fight for change. With one major exception, which leads me to her second color...
Secondary: Red. She (like so many of my characters) once again thinks with her heart instead of her head. She wants something, she wants it now. When she decided she was going to become human for Ix, she went and did it at the first opportunity. When she gets determined about something, she does see it through.
Tertiary: And once again, I fail to think of a third.

Dax:
Primary: Red. He and the Aviator share the same taste for adventure and going out into the world to experience everything it has to offer. He's also, ahem, passionate. He's here to have a good time.
Secondary/Tertiary: White and Green. Dax has a strong sense of justice (He is Chaotic Good) and after being a guard on a skyship for a while, he's got a pretty strong sense of loyalty to whoever he considers his extended family.

Lorson:
Ah, Lorson, thank god you're here to provide a break from the monotony. Well, sort of.
Primary: Red. Lorson values freedom over anything else. He is his own man now, and he takes advantage of that by living life to the fullest and not concerning himself too deeply with the consequences.
Secondary/Tertiary: Black and Blue. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and no matter what happens, he plans on surviving no matter the cost. The best way to do this is through knowledge. His mind, more than anything else, is what he considers his best weapon. Lorson strives to be the best he can possibly be. He has an insatiable thirst for knowledge and he's big on the whole technological aspect that usually gets overlooked in Blue's personality.

Hoo boy, that turned out a lot longer than I thought it would.