User blog:Toadgamer80/Toad Ranks Every Character In His Canon

Hey guys, so one of the big projects I told myself I'd do after I finished Total Drama: Superstar Showdown is a ranking of every contestant from my five-story canon. I've been compiling this on Google Docs over the past month or two, and this ranking is basically decided by how much I liked writing for them, if I thought they added something good to the story, if they were funny, stuff like that. So feel free to comment your thoughts below if I egregiously rob somebody or something!

The Ranking Itself
62. Cammy - I have more than a few characters who I kind of wish I didn’t create, so choosing a last place was pretty hard, but I decided to give it to a character who had a decent amount of potential, but who I just turned into something awful. As a result, even in a cast like TDRev’s, Cammy sticks out as being one of the absolute worst. At first, she was essentially created to be the girl of SG’s and my dreams (in 2011), which basically meant she was supposed to be “attractive” but also referenced nerdy things/memes constantly. That was basically the extent of her character, which didn’t allow for too much development and mostly consisted of cringeworthy references, until Trick randomly asked her out and she became even more annoying, alternating between being lovey-dovey with Trick, sobbing, and being murderous like that time she basically killed Vincent. Cammy’s character was just wildly inconsistent and she wasn’t even that likable, and it got to the point where I was genuinely glad to eliminate her. She probably could’ve returned for TDSS and gotten some actual development, but then again, that didn’t work for Trick, so.

61. Trick - And the first TDSS contestant falls! To this day, I’m not sure why I brought Trick back to the season over someone like Donny or Vincent, who would still probably be an early out, but at least they’d be pleasant/mildly likable while doing it. I’ve just always thought that Trick was one of the least likable characters I’ve created. He had a decent start, but was always kind of an under-the-radar pretentious asshole, and I felt like that increased when he and Cammy started dating. When I brought him back (which I honestly regret so much because so many other, actually likable characters could've filled that slot instead), I tried to give the guy a redemption arc, but halfway through I realized that he was too much of a jerk for it to work out and it ended up just petering out. He was antagonistic but not even in a fun way like, say, Chelsey or Trey. The worst part is that in the TDRev beta, Trick was amazing - he was like this wise, guru-type guy who was a mentor for some of the more bizarre characters like Toad. Ah, well, I don’t think he has too many fans out there so whatever, I don’t regret cutting him this early. The one redeeming quality he does have is his design though, I think it's really colorful.

60. Dolph - Oh god. Dolph has some passionate haters, and a couple defenders (...maybe? probably not) and I’m mostly in the “why did I do this” category. At first, Dolph was one of my favorite fodder characters, he was basically just a sarcastic hypocrite and actually pretty funny, and had a few good lines, but then of course I had to bring him back in probably one of the top 5 most bizarre plots in any Total Drama fanfiction. I don’t know when or why I decided to have him ride a Nyan Cat and develop supernatural powers, and I feel like he was the catalyst for why TDRev’s last few episodes were as lame as they were. Pretty much every episode after the merge was centered around Dolph and how “random! xD” he was. He also appeared a few times in Tokyo and didn’t really do anything of note, and most of it was pretty cringeworthy. I was going to bring him back for TDSS, but thankfully I decided against it and told myself I’d give him some cameos. I decided against that too, since really, I don’t think anyone needs more Dolph at this point. Overall, Dolph is pretty much the Ezekiel of my stories, I feel like - a fairly mysterious character who was an early boot and had lots of potential, but then once that potential was actually realized and acted on, things went terribly wrong.

59. Carson - Carson didn’t really have a personality. He also won my first story. I still can’t really remember anything he did, maybe that’s because I don’t often reread School thanks to not being the hugest fan of my 2010 writing and characterization, but mostly he was just incredibly forgettable. I guess I wanted my first winner to be a fun-loving everyman type like Owen, but he just kind of fell flat. Even his relationship with Amanda, which seemed interesting on paper, was just kinda… eh. The rare times he wasn’t being boring, he was being a jerk, which was especially evidenced by his return in Tiki Jungle, where he just did a bunch of pointless, dumb things and then left midway through the pre-merge. He really just pales in comparison to most of my actual stars, and vaguely unpleasant + irrelevant is not a good combo.

58. Toad - I’ll admit that Toad’s premise (being an immature 12-year-old competing with tons of teens) was pretty intriguing at first, and I could’ve done a lot more with him if I had written TDRev like a year or two after I did. Sadly, Toad ended up being an even less likable, more perverted version of Kavren. I’m not sure what I was trying to accomplish with him, but he was just creepy. Thankfully, he was also pretty forgettable, but still had very few redeeming qualities.

57. Anderson - I reread Tokyo recently and Anderson was… really really bad. His entire character consisted of the little remnants of TDRev that weaseled their way into Tokyo. Basically all he did was perv over the female contestants, say obnoxious things to Tolkien, and then get voted out in 19th place like his sister, PJ. I know I meant for Anderson to be unlikable, and I certainly accomplished my goal, but he was just a rehash of some characters that really didn’t need to be rehashed.

56. Bennett - Bennett is one of my more bizarre characters, but he was also the epitome of first boot fodder. His schtick of having two girls who were in love with him following him around everywhere was weird, probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere, and was probably just another outlet to express my hatred of the jocks at my high school at the time. I have another first boot who fulfills basically the exact same archetype as Bennett, but is much funnier and overall more worthwhile (spoilers?) so Bennett’s existence in general is mysterious.

55. Emilee - Emilee is one of my extremely boring characters from before I started actually making ~clever twists~ on boring characters. I pretty much put her in to fill a slot and I guess she accomplished that goal? I barely remember anything about her, mostly because I only gave her like 1-2 lines each chapter before she was inevitably voted out.

54. Thomas - Thomas annoys me because he was meant to be based on one of my good friends from high school, who’s a really nice/fun/goofy guy and would’ve probably translated pretty well to a Total Drama fanfiction. I kept that up for about a chapter and a half, and then for some reason I decided to make him confess that he was a Brony, and things just turned weird after that. The love triangle with Puck and Casey WAS fun which is why he’s not at the very bottom, but I just didn’t really accomplish as much as I wanted to with Thomas, and he ended up as a vaguely unlikable early out.

53. Kim - first of all, lol @me making a character called “Kim - The Strategist” about a year before Survivor: One World burst onto the scene. Anyway, Kim was based on a character from Adventure Time who had like 2 lines. If you think this is the perfect idea for a character, you’re right. Kim really did have potential at first, as a cutthroat villainess type... but I had no idea how to write strategy back then, so she was like UTRN1 every episode and got 16th place. It’s a bummer, because in the TDRev beta Kim was actually going to be a great villain, but I threw that plot away for some reason.