''Creatures that Defy Logic''
is an ongoing series by Anarchiteuthis for the 1999 Disney Channel Original Movie The Thirteenth Year. It takes place immediately after the movie ends and continues through the main characters' high school careers. It began on June 24th, 2021 and as of December 21st, 2023, it has 106 parts and over 700,000 words. Minor spoilers are unmarked.
Creatures that Defy Logic contains examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: Frequently subverted. While Jess, Sam, and Cody frequently take matters into their own hands, various parents, teachers, and other adults are regularly shown as genuine sources of support and expertise, especially for more high-stakes situations such as the legal battles in the Save the Reefs storyline.
- Affectionate Nickname: When Cody joins the track team in high school, it is a team tradition that most members have these. Jess and Nathan also are inducted into this tradition as close friends of several members.
- Alpha Bitch: Played with. Amanda has shades of this, but has several moments suggesting more nuanced or sympathetic sides, though she definitely embraces this image.
- Alien Catnip: Cody cannot drink alcohol because it messes with his biology and makes him drunk faster. He is also extremely sensitive to caffeine, becoming jittery and light-sensitive on even small amounts.
- Alternate History: Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election in this universe. Both 9/11 and the Iraq War do not happen.
- Ambiguously Absent Parent: Cody's birth father is not a part of the story; as of 102 entries, the author has left it ambiguous whether he even exists.
- Apparently Human Merfolk: Cody can transform into human form. Although water helps trigger this transformation, he can maintain human form even while swimming (though he comments that it's rather uncomfortable and precarious to do so, like walking on your hands).
- Ascended Extra: multiple characters from the movie, especially Heather, have greater roles in Creatures that Defy Logic.
- Badass Bookworm: Jess's knowledge about marine biology and blood transfusions save himself and Cody from dangerous situations.
- Big Damn Reunion: After Cody was assumed to be dead at the end of season 4, he gets this from basically everyone, but especially Jess.
- Birthday Episode: A few. The movie was essentially a long birthday episode for Cody, and in the series both Sam and Jess get one each.
- Bizarre Taste in Food: Cody has a typical diet for the most part, however has eaten barnacles, and various other raw seafood when in his merman form.
- Blood Transfusion Plot: Jess gives Cody blood to dilute the chemicals in his blood stream.
- But Now I Must Go: Cody leaves with his birth mom every summer and comes home before the school year starts.
- Chekhov's Gun: Jess and Cody learn their blood types which become important to the story when Jess needs to give Cody a blood transfusion.
- Closet Key: Sam for Lilly and Cody for Jess. Also Ewan McGregor for Nathan, specifically in The Phantom Menace.
- Coming-Out Story: For Sam's mother Lindsey, Jess's friend Nathan, and eventually Jess himself.
- Cooldown Hug: The solution Nathan (and soon after, Jess and Sam) provides for helping Cody through his accidental caffeine poisoning, inspired by the thunder-shirt for Nathan's Pomeranian. Since caffeine makes him incredibly jittery and sensitive, it helps a lot.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The whole board of Atherstone Enterprises, the resort and hotel company introduced in the fourth season, are textbook examples of this.
- Crusading Lawyer: Sam's mother Lindsey Brathwaite is a textbook example of this as an environmental activist defense attorney, most prominently when she spearheads the fight against Atherstone Enterprises, a company that has plans to destroy the local reefs to build a resort.
- Cuddle Bug: As his merpeople touch-telepathy gets stronger as he grows up, Cody becomes this, especially with Jess.
- Experimented in College: Sam's sister tells her this in no uncertain terms, though ultimately concluded that she's straight, if happily gender nonconforming.
- Flashback: There are a LOT of flashbacks to the characters when they were younger (before the movie is set), usually to contrast with or contextualize relationships in the main timeline.
- Glamour Failure: Dogs immediately hate Cody on sight; it is implied that they can tell he's not human, but Jess jokes that they may just hate him specifically, what with no other merpeople to compare to.
- Good Parents: Most parents in the series fall into this category, with Sam's dad being the only major exception.
- Grade Skipper: Both Cody Griffin and Jess Wheatley skipped grades before the story began: Cody went straight to first grade thanks to his parents' enthusiastic homeschooling, Jess skipped 3rd grade for being ahead in academics.
- Granola Girl: Sharon's tendencies toward this get continued and elaborated on in the series, practicing eclectic spiritual religions, home medicine, yoga, weird homemade organic recipes. Lindsey's friends Cleo and Liza also have shades of this, as elder former-hippie lesbians who run greenhouses and open art and yoga classes at the community college.
- Happily Adopted: Cody has known he was adopted well before the story begins, and has loving relationships with all three of his parents, adopted and biological.
- High School: Much of the story takes place in high school and addresses high school issues, such as dating, bullying, and preparing for college.
- High-School Dance: Several large episodes revolve these, including homecoming and Sadie Hawkins.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Mats Neslund dies caught in his own net, after trying to use it to trap and kill John Wheatley
- Implacable Man: Former oceanographer Mats Neslund is revealed to be this for hunting merpeople.
- Interspecies Adoption: Cody is a merman adopted by humans.
- Interspecies Romance: Sam and Cody attempt having a relationship.
- It's A Small Net After All: Averted. When Jess tries to research relevant merpeople information, even with specific language from print sources, he's mired in websites and forums of unrelated and fictional content, as expected for the subject matter. It's months of regular searching and reading before he finds anything relevant to what he was looking for, and even then it is only a fragment of a lead. His username is also a realistically-vague set of initials and numbers.
- Jerk Jock: Sean bullies both Jess and Cody throughout the series.
- Karma Houdini: Sean experiences no lasting consequences for his bullying, even when caught by teachers. Played for realism, especially considering his victims being acceptable targets by high-school standards.
- Last-Name Basis: Sean meaningfully switches to referring to Cody by his last name when he stops seeing him as a friend and more as a rival, explicitly so in a flashback to Cody beating him at the state finals during the movie. Amanda usually calls Cody 'Griff' as a generally-mocking nickname based on how Sean addresses him.
- Like Brother and Sister: Sam affectionately tells Jess he's like her little brother in junior year. From starting the series as basically strangers, it's a heartwarming moment in their character development.
- Magic Pants: Cody somehow is never naked before or after transforming back to human form. Whether he just carries shorts with him or if it's some form of magic is left ambiguous, and he is never actually shown transforming, just going underwater and coming back up with either legs or tail. When asked about this on their tie-in tumblr, the author has explained that it just would get in the way of the story, so doesn't see the need to worry about this detail.
- The Masquerade: Both lampshaded and then humorously averted: when she finds out about merpeople, Sam's sister excitedly asks what else is real, since she's now behind the masquerade. However, as far as anyone knows, merpeople are the only unusual thing about this universe, and mostly follow real-world marine biology rules, so there are no further grand secrets to be revealed (this doesn't stop her from then getting into researching various other cryptids in her free time).
- The Matchmaker: Cody and Sam try to set Jess and Heather up together. This doesn't work for several reasons, mostly lack of common interests plus Jess realizing he's gay.
- Meta Fic: Heather makes a reference to their fictional existence by saying, "I d'know, I wasn't a main character yet?" in part 102, "The Adventures of the Mahone Bay Marlins Athletics Department."
- Missing Mom: Jess's mother's absence is explained as she died at sea pre-canon.
- Muggle Foster Parents: Cody Griffin was adopted by humans and began to display his superhuman abilities following his 13th birthday. Although this was addressed in the source material, it continues to be a theme in Creatures that Defy Logic as Cody comes home at the end of every summer to live with his adoptive parents.
- Mundane Utility: Cody can produce electricity, which he uses to jump start his parent's tour boat and bake cookies.
- No Full Name Given: Many minor characters from the movie's credits appear and are fleshed out more, but not all are given last names. Ironically, almost every original character does get a full name.
- Ordinary High-School Student: After disappearing at the end of middle school, Cody is socially demoted from his former popularity to this in high school, though he doesn't mind it at all after his character development in the movie.
- Period Piece: Of the late 90s and early 2000s. From the start of the story in 1999, there are frequent references to media, technology, and current events of the era, sometimes down to specific dates (movie releases, celebrity gossip, news stories).
- Petty Childhood Grudge: While they don't openly say it, by the time senior year rolls around, several swim team members see Sean's hatred of Cody as this. Depending on one's point of view, they're not entirely wrong.
- Popular Is Evil: Subverted. Sam is just as popular as the teen villains at the high school, if not more so, but is one of the main and genuinely likeable protagonists.
- Posthumous Character: Jess's mom, Evelyn Wheatley, is referred to frequently and has a palpable absence in more home-life scenes, but never appears, even in flashbacks. The movie left it ambiguous where she might be, but in this series we learn early on that she died when he was too young to remember her. Eventually, it is revealed that she was lost at sea, and was the only person who believed her husband's mermaid sighting story.
- The Quarterback: Despite not having much characterization in the movie, Sam becomes a female version of this in high school, as simultaneously a popular member of the swim team, head of the Environmentalism Club in student government, and eventually a student organizer in local politics, all while staying down-to-earth and likeable to pretty much everyone in school.
- Running Gag: Everyone getting Jess's name wrong (usually calling him Josh) is carried over from the movie. Multiple characters joke that Sam's mom might be a vampire.
- Sleep Cute: Cody and Jess, a couple times. The first happened after Jess gets badly beaten up by Sean and two other swim team bullies, and Cody came over to make sure he was OK and ended up staying the night, combining this with hurt/comfort
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Despite indications that Sean's showdown with Cody in senior year would be of status-quo-shaking proportions, it's a rather anticlimactic argument. Not a whole lot more than a pair of awkward teens who just continue to dislike each other, with no real resolution to what Sean expected to be a grand conspiracy against him, when he finds out that Cody just doesn't care.
- Touch Telepathy: merpeople in both this series and the original movie use touch telepathy to communicate with one another.
- Vacation Crossover: Characters from The Princess Diaries and Brink! make quick cameos at a few points in the story while visiting the beach town, since all three movies take place roughly around the same time, in the same part of the world, and are all Disney movies aimed at teens. As of February 2024, the same author has a mini-series for the Brink! characters set in the same universe
- We Used to Be Friends: Sean and Cody; Amanda and Sam (though as the story goes on, it is more like these two have been more or less co-orbiting teammates, which Amanda sometimes has interpreted as friendship).
- Wild Teen Party: The afterparty of the junior year Sadie Hawkins dance at Amanda's house
- Would Hurt a Child: Mats Neslund and his assistant, to a terrifying degree
