I’m not too sure if Fan Film Follies has ever covered text based fan fiction before but I thought I’d give this a go. For those of you confused, Code Lyoko is a French cartoon about a group of kids at a French boarding school who discover this highly advance computer system inside an abandoned factory near the school.
This computer system allows them to travel to the world called Lyoko to help this girl who lives there named Alita. She’s being terrorized by this evil computer program named ‘XANA’ who also has the ability to ‘effect’ the real world. One example being he infects a teddy bear with a computer virus of sorts resulting in the bear becoming a giant monster in an episode that gave me a Cloverfield vibe despite the fact this show aired a good 3 years before Cloverfield appeared in cinemas.
‘Odd Of The Dead’ in short a zombie horror fanfic written by someone named ‘Captain Fun’ which takes much of its elements from the better zombie movies out there. Return Of The Living Dead and the George Romero films being the ones the author mentions the most for their inspiration.
What stuck out most to me was the fact the author wrote a chapter designed to explain to the readers what Code Lyoko was in case they had never heard of it before or in case they had only watched a few episodes. To me this is a rarity in fan fiction as most authors automatically assume you’ve watched the show so you know what’s happened. Now granted I understand some people might argue ‘O if you don’t watch the show, why read it?’ but like I said I’m shocked and pleasantly surprised the author took the time to explain the show’s premise for new fans.
When I was younger a lot of the time people would ask me to read stories they liked but I couldn’t because I had no clue what the show was about. With much re-working this story would make a great original zombie story. Heck. It would probably make a better Return sequel than 4 and 5 did.
But back to the fanfic, which starts off with these two teen boys who sneak into the basement to cause a flood hoping to gain some extra time off from school. However, as there doing this the villain or entity XANA infects both boys with a virus in his black cloud form which kills them and reanimates them into flesh eating zombies.
Soon both boys infect others and chaos engulfs the school until only our core cast and the 3 bully characters are left alive. The rest of the fanfic follows them as they attempt to hold back the zombie hordes with whatever they can find as well as trying to get to the factory. You see most of XANA’s actions in the real world are caused by him affecting something on Lyoko and Alita who can correct XANA’s tampering and can only save us with the help of the others. Once Alita has done what she needs to Lyoko can ‘reset’ that day or just change things back to the way they were before XANA’s actions caused everything to go crazy. However, they need to get to the factory to enter Lyoko first which is made nearly impossible thanks to XANA’s zombie hordes.
There is some dark humor, not flat out funny ‘ha ha’ style humor but still humor much like in the first Return Of The Living Dead film and the writer does go into some pretty graphic detail once the guns start firing or skulls start getting smashed opened by zombies.
Over the course of this year my podcast co-host Matty and myself read the whole of this fanfic for our fan fiction podcast and we’re pleasantly surprised to see how spot on much of the characterization was. Yumi and Sissy bitter rivalry over Ulrich’s affections is still here and is actually a major plot point later on.
Both of us were even laughing at one point at Odd’s reaction to this whole zombie apocalypse. You see Odd is the comic relief character in this show, so you can imagine our surprise when he manages to get his hands on a sniper rifle and proceeds to shoot zombies from the rooftop just for the sheer fun of it. It actually reminded me of the character Andy in the Dawn Of The Dead remake, which is one of those types of remakes you should check out but alas that’s another review for another day.
Herb who is one of the ‘bully’ characters in the TV Show seems to get a lot of character development. He starts off terrified in the beginning (which let’s be honest who wouldn’t be?) and by chapter 7 – if I remember correctly – he finally manages to pick up a pair of guns and starts blasting zombies away. It’s a shame he and his best friend Nicholas never got this much attention or character development in the TV show itself.
My only complaint is the writer seems to give up on this story and never finished it. Sadly, this is the nature of most fan productions whatever form they be in; audio, film or even written like this piece.
If you’re a zombie fan like I am I do recommend this story. The prologue should help you familiarize yourself with the characters and it wouldn’t hurt to check out an episode or two just so you know what these people look like. Who knows. Maybe if this fanfic gets enough attention the author might decide to finish it one day. Here’s hoping!
To read the fan fiction being reviewed in this column you can link HERE.
Lee James Sands is editor and sometimes host of two podcast shows namely The Random Crap Podcast and The Random Crap Podcast vs. Fanfiction. Lee also uses his acting skills in several online productions that include HG World as well as several different roles with Everlasting Films Doctor Who audio dramas.
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