User blog:Toadgamer80/The End of an Era

Well, I guess I should start this off by saying I'm not leaving the wiki entirely and I apologize if anyone had a heart attack by reading this because obviously my presence is so appreciated on this wiki. But I finished Total Drama: Superstar Showdown the other day after exactly 4 years, tomorrow morning I'm heading to college to start my sophomore year, and I just feel like this is a nice time to reflect and stuff.

I've devoted a weirdly large amount of my life to writing Total Drama fanfiction, now that I think about it. I started planning Total Drama School about a week after I started 8th grade, after first getting into Total Drama in 6th grade and proceeding to make various fake seasons in notebooks that all somehow ended up with Ezekiel winning. I wasn't exactly sure how to write extended prose, so School started off just as basically extended summaries of what I had wanted the story to be like, with teeny bits of dialogue, and I eventually realized how to actually write fiction - or Total Drama fanfiction, that is. I soon realized that  I actually really enjoyed writing (and now my college major will be Creative Writing, which says enough about me), and I decided to start a canon.

Total Drama: Tiki Jungle arrived, and at that point I had carved out quasi-plots and actually created characters who were more than one-dimensional stereotypes. The cast of newbies in Tiki Jungle is probably my group of characters who I think I'm most proud of, all of them had something fun or interesting about them (even first boot fodder Manty and just general fodder Octavia). About halfway through Tiki Jungle, I started actually interacting with other users on the wiki beyond just talk pages, thanks to Chatango, and the story's tone kind of shifted a bit as I gravitated more towards lowbrow humor and, later on, "random! XD" jokes.

This continued in Total Drama Revolution, which has to be my most (in)famous story, for better or for worse. Somehow it's the 4th story to pop up if one searches "tot" in the search bar, which makes me realize that this story was actually considered good once upon a time. I decided to cast an explosive cast of OTT characters without too many normal ones or snarkers, and I churned out chapters at an almost Sprinklemistian level, sometimes even twice a week. I really didn't put in any effort to TDRev but people seemed to be a fan of it, and it gave me an excuse to be a pervert and drop references to old memes. Even though I'm really embarrassed by the story and don't like it at all looking back, it was somehow more or less when I became respected as a writer on here, so I gotta give it props for that.

Speaking of when I became respected as a writer on here - Total Drama Tokyo is when I personally think I started becoming decent. I wrote it over the course of my freshman year, which was a pretty abhorrent year in terms of real life but I shockingly translated that into decent fanfiction. Right around the mid-merge of Tokyo, my writing style dramatically shifted and that carried into TDSS (probably my magnum opus, but it's not like there's much competition). Tokyo is also where I feel like I started actually giving characters concrete plots - sure, there was a lot of fodder, but Layla, Tolkien, Puck, Casey, and Roz all had some sort of plot that actually meant something.

And then I got to TDSS! I'm EXTREMELY relieved that I finished this story, not just because it took me four years (I mean, that's about 75% of the reason) but because I think it's really the only genuinely GOOD story I've written. Of course it too has its flaws (especially the first 4-5 chapters, which were written in 2012 before I took a huge hiatus and revamped my entire brand of humor/writing), but I don't know, it just feels... complete. I feel like the winner's story was great, the entire merged tribe had plots, and there were some quality non-contestants too. I just feel really free after finishing this story, for a while it felt like a huge weight on my shoulders especially when school was involved, but thankfully I didn't procrastinate TOO much this summer and was able to complete it, and I ended up growing really attached to the contestants.

So now I feel like I should thank some users who have especially helped me out in this whole writing process. If your name's not on here and we talk on the regular, I still probably love you, you just might not read my fanfictions and that is entirely okay, or I forgot you because I'm typing this out really quickly and I am sorry if so. Thanks to everyone! So now, I guess I should address what I'm doing next... if anything. First of all, Mt. Total Drama is definitely not happening, I hate to say. When I first thought of the idea, I was in senior year, thought I'd finish TDSS by summer 2015, and thought I could power through MTD in 3-4 months before I got to college. That definitely didn't happen, and not only do I have very little time to write anything non-school-related at this point, but I'm also just completely exhausted of Total Drama fanfiction and I think TDSS is the perfect ending point. Now, I really like some of the characters I've created so I'll probably use them for other non-TD stuff, but I'll be deleting the story soon. Here are a couple of the (very few) plotlines I had in mind, just because: So that's that, and I think I had some decent ideas but I just don't have too much of an interest in writing any of it anymore (except that sex scene ;)). Things I DO plan on writing though include a full ranking of every character I've created (I already have more than half of that done in Google Docs so I'll probably post that very soon) and then also a Total Drama Revolution rewrite, which I've been writing slowly but surely when I've gotten bored with the help of Mana and his plots from his own TDRev rewrite. So if I get a chapter or two done of that, I'll probably post that on here.
 * Gideon - for helping me out with very, very basic things such as formatting and telling me that I should respond to people on their talk pages, not my own, without Gideon I probably would've left the wiki after like 2 weeks!
 * Sprink - he definitely won't see this, but I have to thank Sprink for being THE biggest inspiration to me for many years, even if 2011SG and I pretended to be edgy and dislike his writing for the hell of it. I really hope you're doing well wherever you are now, Sprink.
 * MrD - for being one of the first people who actually commented on one of my talk pages and for telling me that my stories were great even when they really weren't, but that was probably due to us having identical 12-year-old boy senses of humor back then!
 * SG - for being my #1 TDRev planning partner, helping me create the monster that I created, and basically being the catalyst for everything I did in 2011
 * Zinc - for writing a collab with me, providing some quality feedback on my stories, and also being a part of the OG Chatango squad!
 * Reddy - for making cool fanart and reading TDRev or something back in the day, and also being one of my bigger inspirations in 2011!
 * OHF - for creating the Super Jumb-O Comment on TDTokyo's talk page and hating Gail SO much that things led to...
 * CK - for somehow devising the idea of a Gail return, and If U Seek Gail, one random day  on Facebook
 * MrE - for making some quality edgics and putting up with all my droning on about my stories in PM
 * Bruno - for being SUCH a massive Chelsey fan that I brought her back to TDSS almost entirely to appease him, and for also making great consistent comments on my stories!
 * Epic - for also being a super faithful reader who often provides quality commentary when he's reading my chapters live on chat after like a month of them being out <3
 * Mana - for... let's see here, reading all of my stories (except TDSchool :)), helping me out with many plots (fun fact: Layla's win and Kavren's boot in TDSS were entirely thanks to Mana, among other things), writing a 1-chapter rewrite of TDRev, making amazing fanart, and giving me a great pulse on readers' opinions of my stories!
 * Rhonda - for her MASSIVE comments on my talk pages, especially TDSS's, which really helped me figure out what I needed to do later on story/plotwise, having awesome conversations with me on chat about my stories that just made me feel great that someone was reading them and seemed to actually be invested in the plots, and for generally being a great support system <3
 * Suvir and Frances teamed up as a mystery-solving/investigating duo, and investigated a mysterious contestant named  Olga, who dressed in mostly black and had a thick Russian accent. They thought she was hiding this huge secret and was a villain, but it turned out she was actually a master gardener and came to Mt. Total Drama to examine the local plant life. I was pretty proud of this one, honestly.
 * Rhett was going to be UTR2 pretty much every episode and then medically evacuated after a gross food challenge where he would've eaten too many chicken nuggets.
 * Mauricio, Lexi, and Elyse were involved in a love triangle. The three would've been on the same team and Lexi and Elyse would've hated each other for their lack of any common personality traits. Mauricio was planned to fall for Lexi, and Elyse was going to be his wingwoman, but he was eventually going to realize that he and Lexi were far too similar and would've hooked up with Lexi. That would've been the only real romantic plot of the season, outside of the bizarre Frances/Jemaine thing.
 * Brendan, Kingsley, and Boris were going to be on the same team, and would've all probably had an explosive rivalry. One episode involved all three of them going to the gym together, which would've had horrible results.
 * Vaughn and Cristina were going to be a dynamic duo of sorts, probably platonic due to Vaughn's ambiguous gayness. The two of them would've definitely made endgame, with Vaughn maybe quitting heroically or something.
 * There was probably going to be some more mature-themed stuff, and it was going to really not resemble Total Drama at all other than the eliminations. I wasn't even going to do challenges in every chapter, I think. One chapter was going to involve Chris throwing them a party, and Frances would've hooked up with a character based on Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords, then woken up the next morning, regretted it, and later on started an incredibly awkward relationship/friendship with him.
 * Frances also probably would've won/gotten very far, and Ava was the planned first boot.

So I think that's about it. Again, I'll still definitely be on chat (a bit more sporadically thanks to school, but I won't die completely... hopefully) and doing various stuff around the wiki, I just wanted to post a blog commemorating the fact that I'm finally done with Total Drama fanfiction. Once again, thanks to everyone who's said or read anything about my stories ever, I really appreciate all of you <3