#THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE ASK CLUELESS-RARITO

[cody-paranatural]

I am afraid that Coby is setting himself up to be severely and devastatingly disappointed with his conclusions about his mom.

THAT BOY IS SETTING HIMSELF UP FOR SOOOOOO MUCH DISAPPOINTMENT <3 

I love Cody’s in-universe theory crafting So Much. I love how much he was able to piece together (he’s a clever little guy :] and a schemer. i say that with all the love in my heart btw) and also in the spirit of actual real life theory making how he completely missed the mark on some of his guesses. And it’s understandable!!!! It’s not like he knows his mom is a weird special werewolf that never changes back into a human. Because that’s straight up not how being a werewolf normally works and why would he assume his mom is an exception he doesn’t even know is possible. 

Something going wrong with Cody’s plan was pretty much inevitable the moment we found out about it, and I for one can’t wait to see how things turn out thanks to Cody’s several incorrect assumptions. And I LOVE how extremely confident he sounds about all of it. “The uncertainty was theater; he’d decided he was right.”; “Cody had no doubt in his deductions.”

Cody my boy, some doubt and uncertainty would do you good in the long run I think. It’s not very surprising though, since we see him make the exact same mistake before! Cody is a pretty capable 12 year old and he knows it, and that’s good! It’s good that he knows what his strengths are. The problem is that he gets so sure of himself that he ends up being overconfident and underestimating those around him. Like with hitball for example! 

Cody knows he’s good at this, he’s quite literally supernaturally good at sports. He’s so sure of his abilities that he told Hijeff that he has to go carry the team. And that overconfidence is how Dimitri, Max, RJ and Ollie got him in the end. Because if you look at Dimitri’s plan, how complicated that whole thing is, it becomes clear that Dimitri used Cody’s confidence against him. Like Dimitri was So Sure that Cody would easily dodge all the other throws (and he was right) and that Cody would get so caught up in the fact that he didn’t have much trouble with dodging them, including the one they made to look like their final one, that he would stop paying as much attention to his surroundings (and again. he was right). Which goes to show that this is a quite noticeable quality about Cody (though to be fair, Dimitri is very clever and seems to be quite good at picking up on these things (at least when he’s able to look at things somewhat objectively, Dimitri tends to let his feelings cloud his judgment.)). 

And that’s not even counting his thoughts “I’ll just slip through the cracks” and his little mind monologue from when he was about to get hit with the golden switch. It also ties into something else I really like about Cody, which is how similar he is to his dad and his absolute lack of self-reflection about any of it <3 Cody is obviously nowhere near as bad as Davy, but the similarities are there! And it makes sense since that’s just how kids work, they get influenced by the people around them. Like, Davy’s absolute trust in himself, his extreme confidence, those are things I’ve just discussed about Cody taken to their extremes. And the list goes on! Just look at Cody’s extreme protectiveness over his friends and his tendency to keep them in the dark. Or the fact that both Cody and Davy do the thing where they carefully control conversation in a way that lets them learn as much information as they can (we can see Davy do this on page 1 with Peter Puckett, and Cody mentions doing the same with LB and RB on page 47, Zack even used similar wording to describe what they did). Or their shared love for theatrics. I just find that so interesting and fun to think about! It’s great :] 

Also I am going to change the topic and talk about how EXCITED this update made me about future interactions between Jean and Cody. I had a mighty need to see these two interact ever since I subscribed to the “Shrike is Cody’s mom theory” and seeing that theory confirmed already made that excitement grow tenfold. But now? Now that we know that Shrike was faking her death for like 3-ish years (Zack confirmed on twitter that they were around the same age as in the first chapter 7 flashback, and based on Cody’s age I’m assuming that Jean, Rick and Mina were 13-ish when Shrike faked her death), and was watching him from the shadows. Now that we know that Jean was wrong in chapter 7 when he said “She would have come back for me, she would have!” (I love Paranatural mentor-mentee/parental figure-child relationships I love how adults never fail to let down the kids they’re supposed to be looking after I love how it all either stems from them prioritizing their own problems or pushing everyone away, thinking that keeping them in the dark is the best way to protect them I love how that secrecy just keeps causing problems for everybody. It's so good.), because she left, thinking she was doing the right thing. Like Jean thinks that the only reason she wasn’t with him is because she was stuck as a werewolf ever since whatever accident he was talking about in chapter 7. And we know that’s not true! And talking to Cody would make that Very Clear, since Cody more or less knows the date Shrike actually disappeared for good. Do you all see the vision. It’s gonna be GREAT.

#paranatural #pnat #THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE ASK CLUELESS-RARITO #i enjoyed writing all of this so so much! i love talking about cody :] #once again sorry for getting insanely off topic and rambling way too much but once i start talking it's very hard for me to stop

[swearyshera]

Three bunches of asks tonight? My gosh, do I spoil you....

@clueless-rarito Only the unending ability of people to consistently disappoint

@bike-gremlin Entrapta?!

@commanderlioness Any time! But seriously, this is one of the key messages from the show and this blog - you can always try and be better. No matter how badly you think you've failed, or how much you've hurt people, everyone has the capacity to make that choice to be a better person than you were yesterday. And it's hard, but it's doable.

Clickable link And this one shows the other big message I like to shout about a lot: reason and excuse are not the same thing. Catra's abuse and the battle of an upbringing are the reason she lashes out at people and goes to extremes to get back at them. But that's very different from an excuse for doing them. That's something I want to try to show as we progress through season 5 and I'm hoping I'll be able to

When I did DBT (shout out to the DBT crew!), one of the first things we covered was a list of assumptions, things that we cannot prove but have to assume to be true to get anywhere. And one of the ones that sticks in my mind is this: We may not have caused all of our problems, but we have to solve them anyway. And I think that's something Catra desperately needs to learn at this point in the story - but I think by the end of the show, she is starting to realise that.

Anyway, you gave me a reason and an excuse to yell about DBT so thanks!