Ship Archetypes: Beyond blond/brunette and smol/tol

[merelydovely]

Writing up my shipping preferences for my recent sticky post inspired me to write up a ship manifesto of sorts, not for a particular ship, but for a ship archetype.

I noticed after a while that the vast majority of the slash ships I like fall into an obvious pattern: the knight and the wizard.

The Wizard

The wizard character doesn't need to have actual magic powers. Rather, they excel somehow in the domain of the mind. They may demonstrate physical prowess, but it's overshadowed by their other, more characteristic mind-based talents. Invariably, they also have some kind of personality flaw, psychological quirk, or other social impediment – sometimes a closely guarded secret – that singles them out and causes friction between them and their community.

The Knight

The knight character is typically more in the public eye. They somehow excel are somehow grounded in the physical realm. They are noticeably charismatic, or charming, or at the very least skilled at diplomacy. They have an uncanny ability to inspire people around them to follow their lead and also, as a rule, seem to have a bit of a death wish. Not sure why this is a recurring trait, but it is.

The Ships

I obviously got the idea for the name from BBC Merlin, wherein Merlin is literally a wizard and Arthur is literally a knight, but it didn't really click in my mind until I applied it to Sherlock Holmes (wizard!) and John Watson (knight!)

Here's the list I have so far of ships I've followed at one point or another that outright fit the wizard/knight format:

• BBC Merlin: Merlin/Arthur


• BBC Sherlock: Sherlock/John


• Star Trek TOS AOS: Spock/Kirk


• Star Trek DS9: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak


• X-Men: Charles Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr


• Marvel Cinematic Universe: Tony Stark/Steve Rogers


• Stargate Atlantis: McKay/Sheppard


• James Bond: Q/James Bond


• Teen Wolf: Stiles/Derek


• DC Comics: Batman/Superman

Batman/Superman is an interesting example because on his own, Bruce is "the Dark Knight" with a death wish, but when he's paired with Superman, it's immediately obvious Bruce is the wizard and Clark is the knight who's constantly dying.

Bashir/Garak is probably the most questionable inclusion, as Garak doesn't seem to meet the "physical realm" qualification of the knight, and I almost left them off the list until I remembered just how often Garak deals with problems by blowing them up.

Here's a further list where fitting the "wizard" criteria relies more than a little on fanon, but you can still clearly see the archetype at work in my love of the ship:

• Harry Potter: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter


• Les Misérables: Grantaire/Enjolras


• Netflix MCU: Foggy Nelson/Matt Murdock

I think the fact that I seem to have imprinted on this archetype like a baby duckling goes a long way to explain why I've never really gotten into Steve/Bucky, despite the mountains of fabulous content available. They're both knights.

It also seems to predict I should really like Lana Luthor/Kara Zor-El, doesn't it? Because I may not know much about Supergirl past the first few episodes, but she definitely strikes me as a knight, and there's no way a Luthor character isn't somehow a wizard.

Any questions about why I classified these ships the way I did? Can you think of any "wizard/knight" ships I didn't list? Do you notice any recognizable ship archetypes in your own fandom tastes?

Comments

[captainlordauditor]

For a while I thought my thing was "mirrors", ie, characters with mirrored or paralleled arcs and/or backstories. And while that's definitely true, I think the most common theme among my ships seems to be, deep sigh, the red/blue phenomenon.

Zuko/Katara from Avatar - red/blue, and aspects of the mirror.
Kyouko/Sayaka from Madoka Magica- goodness, could they get any more paralleled? And yup, red/blue.
Korra/Asami - red/blue. In some ways they could be a Knight/Wizard ship, but I'm not sure Korra has enough diplomacy for that.
Steve/Bucky - okay, this one is a bit of a stretch. But in fanon, at least, Bucky is typically associated with red and Steve with blue.

The biggest exceptions seem to be Spot/Race and Jack/Dave from Newsies. In some canons Spot/Race is red/blue, just not the one I favor. Jack/Dave falls squarely under the Wizard/Knight category though.

I will say I think your categorization of Kirk as a Knight is interesting. I always associate him more with philosophy and charm than physical prowess. Would you say having both is a must for a knight, or is one enough (see also my note about Korra)?

[merelydovely]

I think for the knight, it's not that they necessarily have to be, like, physically strong, it's just that they are somehow the focal point for physical force as opposed to psychic force. Kirk has been deputized by a higher-ranking central power to achieve victory by force of arms or force of personality. So Kirk is the knight because he's in command of the Enterprise's phaser banks, not because he's better in a fistfight than Spock, you know? And when you think of Kirk you're more likely to picture him getting into a really stupid fight and ripping his shirt open because he can't just Vulcan nerve pinch his opponent to sleep. He's grounded in the physical. Various other versions of this writeup have used that wording instead of "excels"; maybe I should change it.

I also probably should've put AOS instead of TOS, though. I'm familiar with TOS only through other people's metacommentary and gifsets.

Korra I think counts as a knight because while she's not especially good at diplomacy compared to Asami, she's got that whole "deputized to keep the peace" thing. I don't think the knight actually has to be good at diplomacy, they just have to have some sort of raw charisma that induces people to follow them or look to them for leadership in some way. Like, Derek Hale was a terrible alpha who made nothing but terrible decisions, but he still convinced a bunch of kids to follow him into battle despite that.

I'd actually be more skeptical of putting Asami in as the wizard, because she's not socially disadvantaged enough!

[captainlordauditor]

Oh, for AOS, Kirk is definitely a knight, I agree! I'm more familiar with TOS, where at least half his victories are diplomatic ones.

I think the use of the word "grounded" does make a bit more sense to me; "excels", to me, implies that they're noticeably better at it than their counterpart, rather than it being their default. It also helps make a distinction between the mind-matters of the knight (diplomacy, and perhaps strategy or tactics) and the mind-matters of the wizard (magic, book learning, long term planning).

...Which makes me think that Spot/Race might actually be the straightest example of the Wizard/Knight ship on my list, if we separate it out that way. Huh.

That's a fair point about Asami as a wizard - I was mostly thinking of how heavily mind-oriented she is. I will add though, that I'm not sure "socially disadvantaged" was the impression I got from your initial description of a wizard? Tony Stark is at the top of the pile socially, and all of the people who look down on him are peers rather than positioned above him. He just has some very large personality flaws.

[merelydovely]

I lump anything that prevents the "wizard" from connecting with the people around them under that "defining wizard characteristic" umbrella. For Tony it's being an emotionally crippled manchild; for Sherlock, it's his allergy to being normal. For McKay it's being a self-aggrandizing hypochondriac lab tyrant who got himself exiled to Siberia. For Stiles it's merely being a dorky, loud-mouthed teenager. For Bashir it's being so full of himself he doesn't even notice how annoying everyone finds him. For Spock, it's being, well, Spock; he can't have normal emotions. They're not disadvantaged in a class sense, they've just got some kind of social barrier that prevents them from fully integrating with their peers in a normal way.

Because of the way the "wizard" tends to work, their social barrier is often directly caused by their mind-based powers. Merlin would have hardly any problem integrating if he wasn't hiding an execution-worthy secret; same goes for Charles Xavier, who would probably be fine if only he could stop being an overbearing weirdo always finishing people's sentences before they've spoken them.

[isabellerecs]

I was nodding and agreeing right up until I saw Bashir/Garak, but wait that can't be right I thought, only to be brought back around by your defense. I'm not sure Foggy/Matt would need to rely on fanon though, Matt is clearing a knight (death wish and all) and Foggy's go to offense and defense is his words which counts for a power of the mind. Although I suppose his secret is really Matt's secret, so maybe I'm stretching things. ;)

Anyway, marvelous breakdown!

[merelydovely]

I hesitated to put Foggy as the wizard because he's really more of just a normal person. He's good at being a lawyer, but not in a way that makes him stand out from Matt, except of course that he's better at showing up for court. He also doesn't have much of a social handicap beyond being a bit schlubbier than Matt, and maybe a slight tendency to put his foot inhis mouth. So it kind of depends on what dynamic the author chooses to emphasize. But, as you note, Matt is such a quintessential knight that it almost doesn't matter.

Bashir/Garak is definitely an edge case. I think really I was won over by the way in which Garak is actually a soldier working on behalf of a country, someone who's gotten his hands dirty in war, someone who attracts allies to his cause to achieve his victories, with genetic supergenius Julian representing the lofty idealism of the Federation, the domain of the mind, not the grounded pragmatism of Cardassia. It doesn't fit quite like the others because Garak's so intellectual and underhanded, but I think some of the themes are there if you let it get a bit meta.

Glad you enjoyed the post!

[bramblepatch]

My immediate thought is that the death wish element may not be necessary for the knight archetype, but it's necessary for the wizard/knight dynamic. The wizard needs something about then knight to draw them out and get them invested; their own inherent separation/aloofness from the community means both that they don't get pulled into the the knight's leadership aura as easily as the rest of the group might and that they're less likely to go out on a limb to gain the knight's approval. The wizard's going to chafe at a dynamic where they can be seen as the knight's sidekick (or maybe "squire" would be more appropriate, to stick with the theme). And the knight tends to have people around them that support them in the ways that the wizard's social issues would make difficult.

It's the knight's self-destructive tendencies that either draw the wizard's interest, or give the wizard an angle from which they feel needed, or both. It makes the knight more relatable to the wizard, who often (although not always) has similar self-destructive impulses, or it poses a puzzle that the wizard can get intellectually invested in, leading them to become emotionally invested as well.

Stable knights don't get nosy, fussy wizards hanging around - they're more likely to end up in a different ship dynamic. A courtly love kind of thing, or liege/vassal, or something like that.

[merelydovely]

Stable knights don't get nosy, fussy wizards hanging around - they're more likely to end up in a different ship dynamic.

Excellent point!

It's also interesting to look at the small number of pairings where the wizard has a more dominant role in the pairing, like Sherlock/John, or where they're mostly equal, as with Tony/Steve. In most of the examples the knight has a clear edge in terms of centrality and importance in the world of the canon. So the point about the wizard not wanting to be a sidekick is well taken!

[hlagol]

Welp, you've got me pegged.

driveby ships that might qualify:
- Jack/Daniel in Stargate SG-1
- Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus from Star Wars: Rogue One
- Colbert/Fick in Generation Kill.
- Also maybe Hardison/Eliot in Leverage, though I also see Parker thrown in to make an ot3 (she also functions as a knight/wizard hybrid, kinda)

[merelydovely]

Ooh, Jack/Daniel seems an obvious contender! I've only seen a few episodes of SG-1 but I'm peripherally aware of them.

Chirrut/Baze makes a certain amount of sense, I just don't have as much of a grasp of them in social situations to know if they fit that aspect, since they only appear in a story that has them on the run in crisis 100% of the time. I assume that if one follows the fanfic, the archetypes get more clearly drawn out.

Hardison/Eliot definitely seems like it works! But yeah, they need their Parker in there – representing a Changeling of the Fair Folk, perhaps.

Haven't seen Generation Kill but I'll take your word for it ;)

Thanks for contributing!

[argentnoelle]

Your archetypes idea is really interesting! And I think it can apply both to things shipped and things not shipped. For some reason the Wizard/Knight archetype is one that I almost exclusively like to be gen, and love genfics for but shipping fic with those kinds of characters tends to annoy me over time, though at first I can enjoy it pretty well.
Possibly it's not dark enough?

The archetype that I've noticed across most of the ships I feel strongly about are Hero/Villain, I really like the angst and antagonism and the way heroes and villains are symbolically dichotomous with one another. Because then you can get into problems about morality and what is the line between good and evil, and obsession, and games of wit with life and death :) ...

So Batman/Joker is, like, my biggest example, but I'll ship literally anything with a really intense hero/villain dynamic, sometimes even if I haven't seen the original material (like Clark/Lex in Smallville). Sarah/Jareth, from Labyrinth, is a less dark example but it still applies, and particularly special to me because it's got a girl in the same kind of dynamic, which I feel is kind of rare? (I was super interested in Merlin/Morgana in the show itself before being disappointed by lack of fic that actually kept their canon dynamic.)

Right now I'm also very into Sebastian/Ciel from Black Butler, which breaks slightly from this trend because you can't place one of them as the hero and one as the villain, instead they're villainous protagonists who can sometimes be more like antiheroes, and they're kind of on the same side, but it still has all the stuff that hero/villain dynamics tend to have.