Reason to my Madness, and Madness to my Reason: The Explanation of the XANAfication series- or the author speaks on behalf of all the stories that were written through time.
Hello, dear reader. I thank you for taking the time in clicking on this link, or clicking on the arrow button that would have lead to the next uploaded chapter the writer has put into the story's file to find out why I had written the series, and the developments in my writing along the way. It may seem that I am ignoring your comments and reviews, but I assure you that I am not ignoring you at all- I have put in links to the places where I have accounts in, and links to my email accounts. As of now, while I am writing this, I am looking over the stats I had gotten over the almost-complete year and 115-plus thousand words I have been writing since the first story I have uploaded to this website. In general, I would like to thank all of my readers for submitting their reviews (totaling 66 altogether), the amount of views for all the stories (5,221 total views at the moment I'm calculating this), and the people that have favorited my stories (a little over 52). In my gratitude towards all of you readers, I will now take the time to write about the series, and answer some questions that I have not been able to answer before.
In Eighth grade, I wrote my first hard copy of a Code Lyoko fanfiction recorded in the files I have in storage. There is a possibility that I have written some sort of Code Lyoko fanfiction before the initial first Code Lyoko fanfiction I have completed. It is true that I had written a story on the Code Lyoko gang as wolves somewhere in April 2009, as well as another story that involved my first OCs (story and OCs were later thrown into the trash bin of stories that never made the cut). The plot was first written during a minute of boredom on my main YouTube page ("One day it was a normal day at Kadic academy. Sissi was being everything but nice and helpful, Herve was being emperor zit-face, and Nicholas was being the back-bone of the gang. IT seemed like a day when XANA wouldn't attack, and it would be a Sunday when the Lyoko gang could rest from constantly fighting XANA.
The peacefulness was ruined when they heard Milly running around the building whil Aelita, Jeremie, Odd, and Ulrich were having Science. "Fire! Fire!" she yelled. Mrs Hertz came out to yell at her from making noise, but then she smelled smoke. "Everybody out!" she yelled, "Everybody out!'").
The first completed Code Lyoko fanfiction I had done was when the gang was detectives in a murder mystery, partly inspired by SonNeko's artwork on the Code Lyoko gang as detectives. I had William Dunbar murder Jean Pierre, as well as Sissi Delmas, kidnap Aelita, and almost kill another gang. His partners were Mr. X (obviously XANA) and Peter Duncan. Though the digital copy has been destroyed during a regular re-imaging on the main PC from a virus, I am happy to have a hard copy of it (though I am sure that some pages are missing).
In late August of last year, several days after receiving my laptop for my school, I wrote the first draft of what came to be "The XANAfication"- the first fanfiction I have published in the famous . The story was posted in the Code: WIKI forums, and because I was persuaded by Lyokofanforever, the story was posted to several months later, in December of 2009. I was quite pleased with the reviews I had received, and so I started a writing career. As my writing has increased over time, so has the quality of it, leading me to believe that I should revisit the story that started it all and make a revised version of it. It could be a rewrite, though I suspect that I should leave the original text on by itself, so that my readers could compare the works. However, I am not certain whether I should go through this or not.
Art has pretty much inspired me to write also, and was a great motivator in writing some of my fanfictions. For instance, sometimes I would see great works of art by people, and it would inspire me to write on it. It's like science- scientists build upon other scientists' works to make something that would reflect the works of his/her works, along with the other scientists' works for which he/she has built upon. For Example, I saw Aslan1's artwork titled as "Code Fantasy" quite a long time ago in Freshman year, and it inspired me to write the Code Lyoko characters in the medieval times, around the 16th century, since the subject (on the CL characters in medieval times) was hardly touched on at all by the fanfiction writers on this site. Re-incarnating the Lyoko Warriors as actual warriors in a time period that isn't really known about was a quite interesting topic, and so I explored it a bit more, actually doing some research into that time, though I somewhat altered the events to fit in with the Alternate Universe theme. I chose "Ensemble", which means "together" in French, to be the fitting title, since it takes place in France, and shows the group as one body, working together in times both hard and easy.
As Flyboy961 had pointed out one day while chatting with him, I can agree that the first book in the XANAfication series is quite dull in a way. It was intended to be that way. I had initially planned to write more, but I thought it would be better if I had left it vague and leave the readers with a sort of curiousness for them to continue to read on in the series, and gradually understand what I was writing about. As my writing and word posting has increased, I am proud to see how many people are viewing the stories. I do take ever review into consideration, and try to reply back to them, if there are comments that particularly stand out.
At this point, I will take a moment to thank those who had reviewed my stories, particularly those who had pointed out what I needed to fix, and what I should improve on in later chapters, as I do not usually note whoever had done so in my chapters (I prefer to get right to the story instead of boring everyone). A special thank you will go to Flyboy961 for reviewing my stories, and for reviewing them, pointing out spelling and errors- particularly the ones in the commas. A special thank you will also go to the readers, who I would not have any motivation to write stories with. Your help will always be greatly appreciated, and though I usually do not mind that people don't review, I thank those that took their time and did so.
Code: Apocalypse was designed to mainly be a bridge between A.S.O.U.A. and the last book in the series, Endgame. I do guarantee that the language in the last book will be much coarser, with a lot of swearing involved, along with mass killings and some bloody/gory scenes, so as to make the experience more realistic. To this end, it will be rated as Mature, though it will not have any adult scenes. There has been a suggestion that I should make a T-rated version, with less gore, violence, and swearing (most of it being replaced with dashes or asterisks), though I wonder if it's worth writing it.
The last two books in the series has a more serious tone to them (Endgame will have a more prominent air of seriousness to it, as soon as I get to writing the first chapter), as with the first of the chapters in this book (the third one), having XANA actually try to kill Jeremie in a more extreme way by murdering him with a dagger to the heart, in comparison to the lighter tone I used in the first two books. Why a darker tone? As my writing developed and the ideas and story progressed, I figured that XANA would need to have a more cynical side to him, and actually try to kill the gang without much of an elaborate scheme (as elaborate schemes often get too complicated to the point of it ultimately resulting in failure).
Making the XANAfication story into a four book story wasn't because I wanted to have more books/fanfictions listed under my profile to impress people, nor did I want more publicity- updating the same book multiple times with new chapters has the same effect on the latter action I mentioned. It was made to act like roadblocks, stopping me from writing too much in a story or in a chapter and continuing to spew ideas with little thought to the plot. It also served its purpose of acting as a graduating and developing story as my writing began to get more into detail.
The concept of XANA-Aelita was a very intriguing prospect to me, particularly after I saw the second half of "Wrong Exposure". Seeing XANA easily use Aelita as his pawn in the episode, and have her duel Ulrich in a battle of wits and strength made me wonder how well XANA can manipulate the people or objects he possesses. It's basically a large game of chess between XANA and the Lyoko Warriors (which I hinted in Me, Myself, and I- one of the weirder stories I wrote due to boredom). XANA's repeated possession of Aelita did not help wane my interest in the topic (She was possessed approximately 6 times throughout the Television series).
For those who know me well, it is common for me to bend reality and manipulate it into something I find to be a little more comfortable. I have painted a red tablecloth a nice reddish pink instead of the velvety red of the tablecloth in the still life this year. To say the least, the art teacher was not amused. I just want to see how far I can bend reality before it snaps right in half down the middle. It's probably not the best of ideas, but I'm not a good listener- my mind wanders away from the subject. …It's like sleeping mentally while being awake physically at the same time.
For those questioning what happened to Aelita in the last chapter, I cannot answer that for you, otherwise writing the last book would be pointless. I can answer some questions that readers may have, however. In the injection (as Flyboy961 had asked me for months before I finally answered him and stopped being very cryptic towards his question), however, it was a fluid that contained a strength-enhancing ingredient that vastly improved her in the areas XANA wanted her to be improved in, but it destroyed her higher brain functions to the point of her only speaking basic words in short sentences and mainly thinking about ripping the enemy's guts out. Think of the basic Hulk model- muscles, but little brain. XANA has some control over her actions, though her actions are mostly based on primitive reactions and feelings, to which XANA guides as hatred to her friends (which he re-labeled as her enemies). In keeping with the traditional Hulk characteristics, Aelita has almost forgotten the use of the language people use, often saying short, basic sentences, though I wouldn't script her to say "Aelita smash!"
For those asking what Aelita had become in this book, Aelita had essentially become the thing that she had feared. Her caring nature was tossed aside by XANA, and her fear of wolves had lead XANA to use this as leverage for her hatred [of herself]. Seeing as she cannot stand herself, XANA redirects her anger towards those he sees as targets and those who he sees as 'in his way of his progresses.' Half wolf and half human, Aelita's confusion can be likened to the hybrid's sense of confusion on who they really are, and where their places are in the world. XANA takes advantage of their confusion on who or what they are, and bends their perspective to his favor.
Towards the end, I had Aelita recover some of her lost self, and had her use the common self-sacrifice theme that is used in many fanfictions I have viewed within the year. However, I had made this self-sacrifice slightly different. The trope of redemption equaling death is used, though I have slightly bent it in another way to suit the last book- the ultimate redemption and finding the inner self amid the chaos in the world.
I also have quite the affection towards playing Left 4 Dead, which came accidentally when my little brother purchased it during a vacation. Seeing the game in action spurred me to play it and eventually install it on my laptop after multiple tries. As you can see, I have embedded the game's quotes into Code: Apocalypse with Francis's hate quotes ("I hate vans"), and have mentioned his hatred of boats, boat people, and boat lawyers in Chapter 7.
My writing style varies quite a lot with every chapter or story. Sometimes I feel in the mood to write one thing, and sometimes I feel in the mood to write another thing, or at least clarify something. I have apparently developed a fond liking for commas, and often put it in places where I'm not supposed to. Being that he was my story editor and reviewer before the publication of the chapter/story, I have to stop putting commas everywhere, which has now developed into "CWDF961", which means Comma Withdrawal Due to Flyboy961. Being a little comma crazy, I suppose the symptoms while in Comma Withdrawal is the obsession to put commas everywhere- and annoying people that dislike commas by using commas. To be fair, I recommend Flyboy961 for reviewing stories, but be cautious that sometimes that he can get carried away with being a bit punctuacidal (or commacidal…). For this reason, I called him the Comma Nazi.
At this point, I suppose I have a lot of apologizing and explaining to do. I apologize to the members of XANA's Lair for my abrupt exit. It was pretty much one of the most active forums for Code Lyoko. I have enjoyed being the ruler (aka Sector Leader) of the Mountain Sector for quite some time now, and proud of being the only female sector leader (I think. I might be wrong. I'm stull guessing the sector leaders for the Forest and Desert are guys, I don't remember who the SLs actually are) during that time. I wanted a clean break. I cut off connections. Their questions went unanswered, swallowed by the sound of silence that now greets them. As regretful am I to say this, this is how friends are... you meet them, get to know them, and then they get up and leave you behind. I treasured their friendship. I left them behind with hardly a trace. It is with hope that they forget about me. It is up to them to do the same- befriend the lonely people who build a fortress around themselves. You just might be able to save a life in a way you wouldn't have expected.
"I'm not running away from my responsibilities, I'm running to them." ~Yossarian, Catch-22, by Joseph Heller (Page 451)
"Suddenly, before Kar there stood that army of humans, their heads bowed in shame and fear and confusion. But among them now, side by side, man next to woman, some stood taller, calmly, like guardians. Though their eyes were closed, they turned their heads to one another and the animals, too, from where they had come. For they had looked into the darknes of their own natures, their own past, and have been able to bring light out of that darkness. As Kar watched, he noticed that the bees and little butterflies were settling on their shoulders and backs and suddenly, the strange humans opened their eyes and looked back at Kar. When he saw them, they were so beautiful that he was transfixed. Their eyes. The humans had the eyes of wolves." ~The Sight, by David Clement-Davies (Page 460)
Since I have not properly taken the time to write an explanation to my readers (making it seem like I am ignoring them), this is the reason why I am writing this and posting it as a 'chapter'. It is an afterword of some sort, and you may call it that. I have thought of some questions my readers might ask (or have asked) and will now answer them.
Q: Where do your ideas come from?
A: Sometimes they come from dreams I had recently dreamt or remembered. Other times, it comes from pure inspiration, from chatting and or Role Playing with my friends on the internet. In fact, I can attribute someone to the idea of Ensemble, and for creating it. Though I cannot give you guys his name, I suppose I can give you his penname. If I remember correctly, his penname is LyokoWarrior17, and though he has not put any stories up, he is quite an amiable Role Player.
I never kept a journal or a diary to record my dreams, thoughts, and feelings. They were too impersonal- someone could easily break the lock or seal open and read it. For this reason, I kept everything in my head, where nobody could pry in there and read thoughts. I aspire to be a pilot captain, and dreaming about that position certainly does give a person ideas after a while (to the point of obsession for that job, I must admit, which lead to a friend writing a story on Aelita flying a Cessna (I keep forgetting to mention that he spelled my penname wrong)).
Q: Why is your penname Commando Wolf and why did you choose a tomboyish name?
A: I have named myself as Commando Wolf, purely on a joke between a friend long gone, and a short conversation one July 4th. I originally was named AelitaSchaefferTheFirst, though I thought it was too long, and changed it to my current penname. As for the name itself, I like being a tomboy. It's fun. Plus, I think it's funny when people think I'm a guy due to the penname- it's probably due to my weird sense of humor.
Q: How long have you liked Code Lyoko?
A: It was a few years ago, actually. It was around when Cartoon Network started showing it on a programming block called "Miguzi". Though I really did not care about it at first, I remember being slightly disappointed when I missed an episode. At this point, it was in Season 1, and so I thought the graphics were a little bit on the poor side. I soon lost interest in the show itself, and did not come to like Code Lyoko until I saw an episode (Season 4) on Cartoon Network Video (the tab for Code Lyoko on CNV is long gone). I remember one of the first episodes I liked for Season 4 was "Kadic Bombshell". It started from there, and I soon became addicted to it. I actually did not like Aelita at first (having a completely different view of her, actually), but warmed up to her after seeing a few episodes of Season 4.
Q: If you like Aelita so much, why do you keep on killing her? *question asked by several readers*
A: Her personality in the show is that she is willing to sacrifice herself for others, in part of her caring nature and her concern for the wellbeing of others. Take for example when she despairs that she should have given herself up to the Scyphozoa in "Ultimatum". So, her willingness for self-sacrifice and her self-righteous suicide in the last chapters in this book were justified in part of her nature. As to why I like to keep killing or harassing her in XANA's plots- well, I'm just being realistic here. XANA pretty much hates her guts, so I can't make it anymore sugar coated than it already is. People are pretty much molded in to having a happy ending. I'm just a person that puts a sour note to the end of some stories to balance it out- not all stories have happy endings.
While answering the question on why I keep on killing her, instead of waffling the question and avoiding it, I suppose it's habit. Character death always seems to be the cincher for people, and so I suppose I somewhat use *cough* exploit it *cough* to grab people's attention. Since character death is widely used in many shows, I suppose I try to put some variation to it, or a bit of the self-righteous suicide thing. The reason I keep on killing Aelita is because I suppose Aelita is one of the central characters in the group, and somewhat acts as a mediator along with Yumi to stop the group from completely falling apart in the series. Killing Aelita is shown to have a wide effect on the group, and I suppose I keep on killing her because she's the character that has died the most in the show (The Key, three times in Common Interest, and in Distant Memory when she technically died when William threw her into the Digital Sea). It wasn't pick-on-Aelita year- I like picking on Odd better.
Q: How do you really view Aelita?
A: Aelita is a character that can be molded into almost any sort of person. An example would be a fanfiction that portrays her as a devious person with a sweet personality to cover it up. You can make her into a person that can come off as depressed, as I explored in "S'envoler". Since Aelita's past is vague, and her past is not explored as much, I suppose the show is basically giving writers a chance to mold her childhood. I view Aelita as a character that's modest in contrast to being showy, and I often use her gentle behavior to highlight the contrast of her more ruthless side (the latter of which XANA exploits).
Q: Why do you hate Odd so much? *asked by multiple people*
A: Personally, I perceive Odd Della Robbia to be a relaxed guy- the sort that drifts along and doesn't really stick around. Though Odd certainly does have his moments, I have to counter that Odd comes off as a playboy, and does not stick with any single person, which makes possibly any Odd pairing redundant. I suppose he's the sort of person that has a lot of an ego around himself, and prefers that people would treat him as a special person.
Q: Why did you name Jeremie and Aelita's dogs and children after people in the show?
A: With the exception of the wolf pup I named Catherine; I had no imagination to what I should name them. I did not think of a reasonable explanation until thesovietwarmachine asked me about it (the kids). I responded that Jeremie had thought that it would be better if Aelita had a piece of her past in the present (Jeremie thought Aelita's parents were not coming back at all and that there was no hope of bringing them back or reviving them, and so this is why he named their children as such). I named two of the wolf pups as Michael and Patrick, purely because I was unimaginative at the moment.
Q: Why are you naming some chapters after some songs?
A: I felt like doing so, because the lyrics or the song name perfectly describes the situation at the moment. Also, it's because I'm legally allowed to do it.
Q: How is your XANA different from the other writers' XANA?
A: I imagined XANA to be a sadistic type of AI that has an odd sense of humor. For example, he might torture his enemies before killing them, or toying around with them, like a cat might do with a ball of yarn. Because he is constantly angry from his failures, I suppose I made him more butter as the show progresses, and I suppose that in remembering his constant failures, his overwhelming hatred propels him to eradicate them without any mercy. Pitting one of their group against them seems like an ideal way to begin, I suppose.
In all honesty, I don't think I made XANA very different from other writers' XANA. Basically, he's still cruel and having little to no remorse over peoples' plights. I didn't make him nice or with a sunshiny personality because quite frankly, I don't think he is capable of being happy (except when he has won, but happiness in general is far out of reach for XANA).
Q: What is with your fascination with wolves? *asked on my formspring account months ago*
A: I suppose it has stemmed from my fascination of Code Lyoko, and it really kicked off a little over a year ago. I always was fascinated what the wolf had to do in Aelita's life, and how it related to Code Lyoko itself. I suppose it was an incarnation of XANA observing them, using it as scare-fuel for the Lyoko Warriors in general. So far, I have not come up with any leads. SearchingLyoko has mentioned that wolves are extinct in France a few months ago.
Unresolved questions asked before the ending of Code: Apocalypse that will be now answered here:
Q: Why didn't the group check out the original supercomputer earlier? It was the only weapon they had against XANA.
A: It's been approximately 10 years since they last deactivacauted or saw the supercomputer. I suppose that seeing the supercomputer right away would invoke an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia. Actually, I don't know. You write the story.
Q: Why does everyone suddenly seem to believe that the solution exists in the real world (William and his guns) when the answer was a program the first time.
A: But the Multi Agent Program didn't work out as well as the Lyoko Warriors hoped; didn't it?
-Real Answer-
Have you heard of the term "Kill it with Fire"? I supposed I had chosen that way, since their first priority is removing the most threats, then killing off XANA, like it has been for most of the episodes in Code Lyoko. In this case, the first priority is freeing the possessed people from XANA's grasp, eliminating the future threat (the Hybrids, once Clone Aelita has informed them of the clones), and then killing off XANA for good.
The Lyoko Warriors use weapons due to their belief that the hybrids, being part human, would die upon the impact of bullets, or the loss of blood. Since the polymorphs are bound to the human parts and the networking XANA is connected to, it would remove their ability to hide among real humans and act as spies (The specters/Polymorphic Clones of XANA have shown a static-like distortion upon impact, while going through things, when they are changing, or when pursuing /approaching a target (an example would be the MIB specter in "Crash Course").
When XANA uses a virus to kill off organic material such as humans, the specter half would have been wholly transferred onto the networking before the virus would be released, so they will not be affected as it sweeps through. However, the Lyoko Warriors infer that if they kill the hybrids without the specter side being wholly transferred onto the networking/XANA's network base, the specter half would be destroyed due to the specter losing its host, and it not being integrated enough into the networking to survive.
Q: What happens to the fanfiction pieces that you write, but never get finished or published?
A: The fanfiction pieces would either be sent to a person for completion or for general review, or it would remain forever within my computer or USB flash drive, to be taken out whenever I feel like completing it (If I don't feel like completing it, it would go straight to the digital graveyard). ...Actually, The XANAfication was meant to be a one-shot thing, but people liked it so much that I expanded it into a series. Once I give a person an incomplete story that I am sure that I will not complete, it is theirs to do with as they wish, as I have given it to them. A prime example would be "The Runaway", which is a slightly AUish story I wrote earlier on. If anyone here wants me to publish a collection of unfinished fanfictions here, I will respectfully do so.
Questions, comments, or just flame-mail you want to send to me? That's what my formspring page is for- the link is on the profile. However, be warned that I will bite back if you give questions that are inappropriate, or if you decide to flame me. Hate mail is always accepted for the purpose of the flamers being embarrassed in some way or another when I retort. Support the stop of Cyber-Bullying! Send me hate mail!