Code Lyoko is one of those shows where you step away for a bit, it comes back to you, and you think “it wasn’t actually that intense. I’m just misremembering, how I felt when I last saw it as a kid that’s all.”
Then you watch it.
And no, no actually, I remembered correctly. They almost drove into a nuclear power plant, a military laser as pointed at them, they team up with the big bad to rob the government, the man characters have a near death experience every day, it’s very much implied that deaths on Lyoko is very similar to the real thing, literal men in black came after Aelita’s family, William lost months of his life, Jeremy was torturing himself to keep his friends safe on the other side of the screen, Odd almost drowned, Yumi and Ulrich were nearly boiled alive.
Also, you remember how hard the intro goes.
1K notes
·
View notes
I think the worst bit for me about all Those Sorts (you know the type) of fics is that they always take Della extremely out of character in order to make her the 'antagonist.'
And that sucks because it's just not necessary! It's the worst because you can have Della & Louie angst where Della's the 'antagonist,' and it's in-character.
You just have to have Louie be wrong in the end (kind of).
The reason why Della and Louie clash in Timephoon and Glomtales! isn't because Della 'disapproves of scheming in entirety' or something, it's because she's done the same goddamn thing as him.
(And side note- Timephoon is honestly an amazing piece of storytelling, because it allows us to see Della's thought process for taking the Spear of Selene by showing us Louie doing pretty much the same thing.)
She's been through it all before, and she knows how it ends.
And that fucking terrifies her! The idea that one of her kids is making the same mistakes as her, could go through the same thing as she did, and she's the only one who can see it, is terrifying.
The way to start out a story like this is simple; have an adventure go wrong. Not in a deadly way, not in a way that's caused by Louie (at least, not that anyone but him notices), not in a way that costs anyone their life- but in a way that causes them to lose the treasure. The adventure is a failure, and they have to come back empty handed, like New Gods on the Block.
Maybe some people get hurt, maybe it's vaguely Louie's fault (and even then- it'd be better if it wasn't even his fault, it's just his brain connecting patterns where there aren't any), but the most important part is that they don't get the treasure, and it's like- one of those ones that can only be found once every hundred years or something.
Louie feels responsible (I mean all of the kids do, but as it'd be a Louie story he'd be the one focused on) and upset that they want to all that trouble and don't have anything to show for it, so he tries to figure out some way to go on the adventure again.
Turns out, after a bit of research, there is a way to get to the treasure again! Louie brings it to Scrooge's attention excitedly- but Scrooge turns it down. Says it's too dangerous, that they're not doing it, end of story.
...Not end of story- everyone's still obviously miserable. So Louie decides that 'okay, if it's 'too dangerous,' then I'll just go in secret. It'll be fine, Scrooge is just overreacting.'
So he starts trying to put a plan into place to get the treasure in secret- but Della, somehow, seems to know what he's doing (hint: it's because she knows what she'd do if she was in Louie's shoes). And is consistently getting in his way.
And there you go- a perfect setup to have Della consistently and purposefully stepping on Louie's toes, getting in his way, trying to stop him from doing things, and it's even in-character! It'd probably start out with the two acting like everything's perfectly hunky-dory, even though both of them know that the other knows that they know that the other knows why they did this one thing.
As plans get deeper, it'd escalate to Della trying to actively call Louie out, but he always manages to just barely weasel his way out of it, and eventually commence his plan.
It obviously goes wrong. But Della's there to help. And finally she'd actually explain why the fuck she's been something of a thorn in his side for the past few weeks, why it seems like she knows what he's thinking: because she does.
Because she's been through the same thing.
Because she fucked up, and left her stranded on the moon for ten years, and she does not want that for her kid. (And of course everything could've been solved if she'd just sat down and talked to Louie about that at the onset, but it's Della- she only likes to bring up the moon when it's funny. She would've thought 'nah it's fine, I can handle this, I don't need to bare my soul, I shouldn't burden anyone with that' without realizing that oh yeah, no, that's the exact same thought process she doesn't want Louie to think)
And of course they'd argue, because it'd be a high-stress situation and neither of them would have the composure to pretend that everything's alright and they haven't been sniping at each other for the past week or so, and eventually it'd finally come up; eventually, they'd finally bring up that they thought the exact same thing when Louie did this, when Louie took the Timetub, when Della took the Spear.
'...And if anything goes wrong, at least I'm the only one who'll get hurt.' (Because you cannot tell me that that was not the last thought running through both of their heads when they took the timetub/Spear of Selene, you cannot convince me that they didn't think they were doing right by their families in that moment, that they hadn't done their due diligence and minimized risk down to one person.)
And Louie wouldn't understand, because he did the right thing. He minimized risk, he made sure nobody else would get hurt. But that's wrong- because if he got hurt, then Della (Donald, Scrooge, their family, her kids) would get hurt too. That they could fly into a vacuum all they wanted, but at the end of the day, they still didn't exist in one.
Eventually, they'd get out of there and abandon the mission again. Maybe they'd succeed, but probably not. But that's not important- what'd be important is that they were both safe and alive and okay.
There- a Della & Louie thing, extremely angsty, well Della as the 'antagonist,' and it's all in-character. Easy.
191 notes
·
View notes
Part 2 of the things that would have definitly given me trauma and PTSD had I been in Code Lyoko
Trauma induced nightmares giving night terrors and hallucinations to one of the Lyoko-warriors
With the Less sympathetic version of the men in black in those recurent nightmares :
Another attack in which XANA takes inspiration from horror movies once again (with a specter monster attacking the lyoko-warriors during the night while they're in their pyjamas
Almost getting muffled to death by another of those pixelated spectra
A drowning trap (the kind of thing that can easilly give one aquaphobia)
Seeing the love of your life willing to die in order to not risk the sake of the world
Death of a beloved ("Elle est ... morte" is what Jeremie literally said at that moment T_T)
Even if she got better thanks to her father sacrificing all his virtual energy to resurrect her
But Aelita still cannot catch a breath in the enxt season because XANA will have found a way to temporarilly mind control her on Lyoko more than once
Something he also did once in the second season via other means
Having all your classmates minus one and two of your teachers being mind controlled/possessed and trying to kill you and your "just friend"
Men in black suspecting you of cyber terrorism
the improved version of the horror movie with the birds attack
And Yumi almost dies from this attack
A bomb threatening to explode everything in the factory, and it was impossible to launch a return to the past to neutralize it (so it had to be done manually)
Mutant plants
Losing a new friend and ally to the ennemy, thinking at first that he's lost, then looking foward to find his numeric DNA in the digital sea (the Web ^^) to bring him back (like they once did with Yumi)
Only for said friend to miraculously come back well and as himself
And then reveal himself to still be under the control of the evil I.A
A trick he uses again on Lyoko, using his normal voice (xanatified people have modified metallic voices) and fleeing from monsters to pretend to be free of XANA's control thanks to a new program Jeremie made
Only for William to then use his xanatified voice and strike
No but seriously being hunted by a mind controlled friend must be traumatising, you can literally see how scared Aelita is most of the time XANA send William after her
Which leads me to the very source of William and Aelita Xanatification in the serie (which also killed Aelita at some point and temporarilly stole Yumi human DNA) The freaking Scyphozoa monster, and how it probably gave jellyfish phobia to William and Aelita
Aelita is always terrified when she sees the thing that hijacked her mind and body more than once, and William is also panicked and terrified in Code Lyoko Evolution when he sees the scyphozoa again, knowing he lost months of his life under Xana's control because of it
I've got more examples but we're gonna end there for today ^^
80 notes
·
View notes