Psych - Fanlore

Psych

Name: Psych
Abbreviation(s): N/A
Creator: Steve Franks
Date(s): 2006-present
Medium: television
Country of Origin: United States
External Links: Official USA Site
IMDB
Subpages for Psych:

Psych has no subpages to list.


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Psych is a comedy mystery series with a reasonably sized and growing fandom.

Contents

Canon Overview

Shawn Spencer is immature, obnoxious, and hyper-observant, and puts all these (questionable) skills to use solving crimes. He and his long-suffering best friend Burton "Gus" Guster run a psychic detective agency and consult with the Santa Barbara PD on homicides and various other nefarious deeds. The catch is that Shawn isn't actually psychic, but his ex-cop father, Henry, trained him to observe and remember far more than the average person, and with his flamboyant showmanship and Gus's support, he pulls off the ruse successfully (most of the time). Police detectives Carlton Lassiter and Juliet O'Hara, along with Police Chief Karen Vicks, go along with the game, mostly because Shawn's too useful to ignore.

While Psych is an hour-long show, not a sitcom, and has occasional dramatic moments, the series is primarily humor, often veering into black comedy since the majority of the cases are murders. Many episodes play as parodies of/homages to cop show and procedural drama clichés. Airing on the USA cable network, it is not quite as well-known as main network shows, but has a respectable audience, and was renewed for a fourth season in 2008.

The premise of the 2008 CBS show The Mentalist has strong parallels to Psych that have been noticed by, well, pretty much everyone,[1] though The Mentalist takes itself more seriously.

Fandom Overview

While the Psych TV show is often only one or two steps from outright parody, the fandom tends to take the characters and relationships a little more seriously. While a fair amount of the fic is comedy in the spirit of the show, much of it is dramatic. There is something of a divide between slash and gen/het in the fandom, with the two groups maintaining separate fic archives, though the main livejournal comm has fans of all types.

The USA Network & Fans

The USA Network appears to actively court fans and fandom. The official Psych site, in addition to having interviews, outtakes, producer blogs, and complete episodes, also includes a "mash-up" feature, where fans can edit clips of episodes together (akin to music vidding); a fairly active message board, fan art, and links to fan sites, including a link to the main gen/het fanfic archive.[2]

Fanfiction Trends

The most popular slash pairing is Shawn/Lassiter (sometimes called Shassie), which plays as a very mild sort of enemyslash; followed by Shawn/Gus, which is more a classic buddy dynamic - they've been BFF since they were five. Both of these pairings are joked about in canon on occasion, sometimes pretty overtly. The primary het pairing is Shawn/Juliet (Shules), which the canon has been playing up increasingly, to the delight of some fans and the despair of others. Lassiter/Juliet and Gus/Juliet are both found in the fandom as well, though less in the canon.

In addition to ship-fic, the fanfic includes a fair bit of gen, usually case-fics (many of which are more dramatic than the show ever gets) and/or hurt/comfort. Shawn is the most commonly targeted for the "hurt", and some fans will identify themselves as Shawn-whumpers.[3] While some of the h/c does focus on the Shawn-Gus, Shawn-Lassiter, or Shawn-Juliet relationships, a lot of the gen fic particularly emphasizes the Henry-Shawn father-son dynamic[4]

Pre-canon stories, especially concerning Shawn's childhood, are often explored in fics (as well as in flashbacks in the show itself), and before Shawn's mother appeared in the show in third season, several fics portrayed her as either emotionally or physically abusive to Shawn.[5]

A common trope in both slash and gen is for Shawn (or other characters) to gain real psychic powers.[6]

Resources

It's a small fandom, but a modern LJ-centric one with good infrastructure.

Livejournal comms

For a more complete list of communities, see the Psych Newbieguide

Pairing comms

Fanfiction

References

  1. ↑ "From the moment this show was announced back during the upfront presentations in May, there have been snarky questions speculating that CBS has somehow bought into a Psych rip-off." --Matt Roush on tvguide.com, Oct 13, 2008 (accessed 1/29/2009)
  2. ↑ Official site links page (accessed 1/29/2009)
  3. ↑ "We all love a good whump. But let's try and think of a new way to torture our favorite psychic." Jenn1984 on the Vary the Violence challenge (accessed 1/29/2009)
  4. ↑ Four Floors Down, Use the Stairs in Case of Emergency by centipede, the highest-rated fic on Psychfic (accessed 1/29/2009), features all relationships, but especially Shawn-Henry.
  5. ↑ Fractures by VampKira may be the most extreme example of this trope. (accessed 1/29/2009)
  6. ↑ Saguna-brahman by shotaphile is a slashy example; the A Different Character challenge is for other characters to get the gift. (accessed 1/29/2009)
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