User blog:Rhonda the stalker fan!/A Guide To Toadal Drama: A Refresher for Total Drama: Superstar Showdown

So I’ve heard a lot of people wanting to read Toad’s last story, Total Drama: Superstar Showdown, but not wanting to read through the others. I can understand that, they’ve changed a lot from their start. Toad’s stories were one of the first stories I read, so they’re special to me. I also think very highly of TD:SS, so I’m making this blog to recap the previous four stories in his series, provide background on a series that has been on the wiki and get you ready for this all star story!

So let’s start!

What Is This Series?
Toad’s Total Drama series, sometimes called Toadal Drama, is a series of Total Drama fanfictions starring original characters written by Toadgamer80. They focus mainly on comedy, having characters with big personalities, lampshading tropes in Total Drama and reality shows, and having clever references. If this sounds like something for you, then check it out.

Now let’s talk about the first season.

Background
Total Drama School is Toad’s first story and he has admitted is very basic. Everyone has to start somewhere, and middle school me liked enough to comment, so I don’t think it isn’t bad per say. It's not very deep or surprising though, so I wouldn’t recommend it.

Still, it kicked off the series so let’s look at what happened with it.

The Major Players
I’ll summarize all the characters worth mentioning here. Obviously, there are some early boots and fodder who don’t really matter, so I won’t bother with a character unless I think they’re notable. I also won’t go into detail about the Host; it's Chris McLean this season, with Chef as his aide.

The Story
In Total Drama School, the teens stay at a high school ‘taught’ by Chris and Chef. Each challenge is themed around a different school subject, such as P.E., English, Spanish, Art, etc. The teams are divided into the Screaming Rulers and the Killer Apples. At the elimination ceremony, an A+ symbolizes safety, while the eliminated contestant boards The Bus Of Losers.

On the Killer Apples, love is in the air! Sharissa becomes smitten with Alex, expressing her crush but stalking and kidnapping him regularly. Sadly, Sharissa is voted off the team early, but promises Alex she’ll return... Meanwhile, Gary falls hard for Meg, who isn’t interested in the least.

On the Screaming Rulers, Amanda easily takes control of the team. She forms an alliance with Veronica, who begins doing whatever Amanda says. Carson is also clearly in love with Amanda, and tries to flirt with her. Devin is voted off early unsurprisingly.

Meg and Amanda hate each other throughout the season, even though they aren’t on the same team. Helga finds herself voted off right before the merge, ironically at the English challenge. Helga didn’t really do anything while she competed, but this elimination makes her very bitter…

At the merge, Devin and Sharissa return! At the first elimination ceremony, Amanda betrays Veronica and has her voted off. Devin is voted off next, but not before forming a friendship with Gary and Carson, who he tries to teach to be gangsta.

At the next ceremony, Amanda successfully votes off Meg. However, Gary decides to quit to spare Meg and give her another chance. Meg appreciates it, but doesn’t become more interested in Gary. It also doesn’t really matter because Meg goes home next anyway.

At this point, Sharissa and Alex have gotten closer, but Alex still doesn’t care for the crazy girl. At the final four challenge, it's a race and Alex is so lazy he comes in last. As a result, he’s instantly eliminated.

The final three duke it out in a math challenge, where Amanda is eliminated for being a villain, per the tradition of villains leaving in the final three.

Sharissa and Carson compete in the final two, where Carson wins it! However the million dollar prize was eaten by a bear, so Chris decides to host a new season called Total Drama: Tiki Jungle.

He chooses Carson, Sharissa, Amanda, Alex, Gary, Meg, Devin and Helga to compete in this new season. They all board The Bus Of Losers to see what the next season brings them…

Reception
This is basically where I want to discuss how this season is remembered as time passed, and the characters.

School isn’t that fondly remembered, and is probably the least popular season of the show. Its understandable, but does have some good points.

Most of the main characters aren’t that fondly remembered, either for being annoying, stereotypical or bland. There are some who are liked for sure though, and everyone has their random faves. I particularly love Sharissa, but I’m probably in the minority.

The most remembered character from School at the time would probably be Gary. He was a nerdy underdog and made meme references, so he was liked. In the early toad years, Gary was sort of a mascot character for the series.

I don’t know how well Carson was received, but nowadays he’s not that fondly remembered, and probably the least liked winner. He was suppose to be cool, but he wasn’t that funny or had a story besides liking Amanda.

His character represents an archetype you’ll find in Toad stories; the random brunette weirdo who is kind of the main character of the season and a bit of a pervert. This character tends to get the girl. I’m not saying this as a knock against Toad; not all tropes are bad and all writers have recurring motifs.

Helga was a very minor character, so it was rather surprising to see her return. She is the only contestant not to make the merge and make the next season. We’ll talk more about her later.

Speaking of minor characters, we have to talk about the main WHO? of the season. The character for a long time represented the boring, forgotten WHO? characters of the wiki. Who is this WHO?

Veronica of course! Don’t remember her? I won’t blame you. She was Amanda’s follower who get betrayed in a not at all surprising way. She’s the only person to make the merge and not compete next season.

To illustrate how pointless she was, for years after the story she never had a character page. The author thought she never really needed one. Even the fodder I didn’t think deserved mention got a character page!

One could say Veronica might have been the queen of WHO?s of the wiki. She became kind of ironically remembered and liked for being so boring, but not as much as other boring girls in other seasons. Truly she is forgettable. So let’s forget this bitch, cause she ain’t important. She’s honestly probably dead in a ditch somewhere.

Total Drama: Tiki Jungle
Toad’s second season, featuring half veteran players from School and half newcomers! Tiki Jungle was being written when I first joined the wiki and was one of Toad’s stories that got a lot of its current readers. So I’d say its the story that sort of elevated the canon to being a bigger series on the wiki. It put the series on the map, so to say.

I think it holds up well, especially compared to School. It was written along time ago, so it is still predictable and has a lot of the same flaws, but a strong cast and some funny moments. I don’t know if its ‘unreadable’ like School is deemed, so if you’re interested maybe try reading it. If you can’t get into it, just comeback here and read the recap.

The Major Players
To recap, returning this season from School is Alex, Amanda, Devin, Carson, Gary, Helga, Meg, Sharissa. I won’t remind you who they are, and we probably won’t focus on most of them because they’re very minor characters in the story, so don’t be surprised if I don’t mention them.

Let’s talk about are new major players from the new cast!

The Story
Chris hosts a sequel to School on a volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean, which he calls Tiki Jungle. At elimination, the contestants receive marshmallows like Island. The eliminated contestant must board The Raft Of Losers and paddle away.

Chris reintroduces us to the returning veterans, except for Alex who is mysteriously absent. Chris lampshades Helga’s lack of plot relevance as she arrives last, but Helga is different. She’s become bitter about her boot, and has become quite the deadpan snarker.

Chris introduces the noobs next, then sends them on their first challenge! Everyone will compete individually to bring back two ‘tiki deities’ from the island. First two players to do so get to pick and form teams.

Elena quickly makes friends with the rest of the cast, including Meg. The two capture the deities and pick teams. It turns out one of the tiki deities is actually Alex, who ends up on Elena’s team because she captured him.

Elena’s team consists of her, Alex, Sharissa, Julia, Nic, Devin, Carson and Amanda. She names the team, The Terrible Tikis after the theme of the season.

Meg’s team consists of her, Chrissy, Gary, Octavia, Arthur, Trey, Helga, and the first boot who we don’t have time for. Gary accidentally names the team, Over Nine Thousand.

The Terrible Tikis win the challenge for having the better team name and Elena thinks her team is looking great already...

As the game starts, the Terrible Tikis do...well terrible. They lose the next three challenges, where Alex, Amanda and Sharissa are eliminated. Nic constantly fails and annoys everyone with his Alejandro obsession, yet always gets the final marshmallow.

Team Over Nine Thousand meanwhile gets fed up with each other, and try to purposely lose a challenge. However despite trying to throw the challenge and Chris giving the Tikis advantages, the Tikis keep losing.

As the Tikis fail, Elena begins showing a new side to her personality, being rude and pointlessly flirting. She admits to being an antagonist and only using the boys to take control. However, she’s voted out after the Tikis lose again. This is all thanks to...Nic? He actually does some strategy!

The Tikis lose again and vote off Carson. That’s five losses in a row, leaving only Julia, Nic and Devin. At that point, Team Over Nine Thousand doesn’t even try. But somehow, The Tikis win the next challenge!

At the elimination ceremony, someone Octasia is eliminated! This really saddens Trey, who has started dating her. Over Nine Thousand loses again, and Meg is eliminated. The team realizes that no one voted for the two, and a secret antagonist is rigging the votes!

The teams merge at this point, where Devin learns that Trey is actually an evil villain and sent home Meg and Octasia! He’s not even a surfer or from California! However, Trey eliminates Devin before he can reveal the truth…

...until he texts his old friend Gary the truth. Trey brags about being a villain, so naturally he’s humiliated at the challenge and voted off next. Helga leaves next, followed by Gary, who loses an instant elimination challenge thanks to Julia. This means all the returning players are gone, and the final four are all newcomers!

At the losers resort, Elena is full on evil and no one likes her. She and Trey have formed a villain couple and make out repeatedly.

Nic, despite seeming like an obvious early out, makes it all the way to final four before he’s eliminated. Chrissy is eliminated next, leaving long time rivals Julia and Arthur to duke it out in the final challenge!

It's a heated battle, but Julia wins the million dollars and defeats Arthur. It also turns out that Arthur’s loose peanuts, were actually a jar of loose peanuts the whole time! In a show of kindness, Julia does let Arthur have a little money, even if it's only a hundred dollars.

However, Trey steals the suitcase containing the prize money and escapes from Tiki Jungle with it! But he’s caught by a police helicopter before he gets too far, where Julia knees him in the groin, takes her money and everyone leaves Trey on Tiki Jungle by himself.

Reception
Like I said, Tiki Jungle was really liked in comparison to School. I think it says something that most of the veterans were eliminated early, and the newcomers were so strong that Toad decided the final four would be only newcomers, eliminating Gary, ‘the mascot’ of the series at this point.

The exception to this is Helga, whose snarky personality won her over a lot of fans! She became a breakout star in a way, and ended up becoming the most popular School contestant. Quite the turnaround.

Elena was originally meant to win the season, and was a Mary Sue for the early chapters, before suddenly becoming evil out of nowhere. Elena is based off a real girl the author knew, who became a horrible person. Toad didn’t like her winning anymore, so he eliminated her then.

Nic was also meant to be a first boot, unsurprisingly. However he was so funny with his failing and Alejandro worship that he ended up going pretty far!

Trey being a villain is super obvious in hindsight. Like he does almost nothing until revealing he’s a villain. To be fair, younger me was convinced he was a red herring. There’s probably a blog somewhere on this crazy theory.

Julia was pretty well-liked; she was funny and see as a good winner. She was definitely more liked than Arthur. I can’t remember how I felt about him at the time, but I love him now. I think he’s a character people are split on; some people love him, while others hate him. He and Juila’s shtick was very funny however.

Also, you notice how Julia and Arthur knew each other beforehand and were from the same town? Think it's a bit odd. Well I’m about to explain another common Toad trope; everyone knows everybody before the show.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But a lot of contestants across multiple seasons go to the same school, are from the same town or are even neighbors. My personal theory is that Chris is lazy and only recruits contestants from like two towns.

Overall, Tiki Jungle was a good season and well regarded.

Total Drama Revolution
The next season in Toad’s canon, it's a big one! It was a huge story, winning favorite story at the Wiki Awards we use to have. It's the first all new cast, and for a time some of its characters were the most well known from the series on the wiki.

Its also the worst story in the entire series, even School. Toad admits this himself, so I don’t think I’m exaggerating. It has a lot of fodder characters and relies heavily on reference humor. It doesn’t hold up well, and I don’t recommend reading it unless you really want to. I did love it at the time of course. It does have some important characters and fan faves, so let’s look at!

The Story
Chris hosts this new season in Revolution City, where twenty new contestants will compete in challenges! At elimination, Chris passes out items related to the challenge, while the loser will ride the Taxi of Losers out of here!

We meet this twenty newcomers and have our first teams formed; The Epic Platypi and The Dancing Bugs.

The Dancing Bugs have a rough start, voting off Lizza first. On the Bugs, Donny and Vincent became fast friends and jokers together.

The Epic Platypi start losing challenges soon however, sending home PJ as the second boot and in 19th place. Chelsey and Elle are the two most popular girls, so they became fast friends and watch Nebraska Shore together.

Dolph is booted off soon, and that’s when things get...weird. When Dolph leaves, he leaves on the Nyan Cat. The Poptart Cat that shoots rainbows. Dolph continues to appear throughout the season, riding the cat and wearing disguises while messing with people.

Mackenzie later leaves in a double boot, without doing much of anything….

Cammy and Trick meanwhile fall in love with each other, becoming obsessed with one another. This leads to Trick being voted off, causing Cammy to become depressed and cry at everything.

We also meet The Smoothie Guy, a man who is mystery wrapped in an enigma. Basically, he’s a grouchy guy who works various odd jobs, including selling smoothies at one point. The contestants bother him constantly, though at times he ends up getting a job with the show.

At the merge, Abbey suddenly falls in love with Kavern...for no real reason. She’s then eliminated. Ooh well.

We meet Ori’s dad Darryl, a hilarious and awkward man who embarrasess his son often, revealing his name is Orianna. Ori leaves soon after Abbey.

In a memorable challenge, the contestants must react a video that parodies Super Smash Bros, dressing as video game characters and fake fighting. However Cammy has done a 180 on her personality, and has become a psycho bitch. She uses a freakin laser gun on Vincent in the challenge, against the rules, and hurts him so bad that he must be medically evacuated. The others vote her off for being such an ass.

Chelsey is voted off soon after, but ends up forming a relationship with Donny and kisses him before she leaves. Donny leaves next, putting Elle, Tasia and Kavern in the final 3. A very unusual and unlikely final three.

Kavern wins the final 3 challenge, and chooses to take Tasia to the finale. There, Tasia manages to win the final challenge and become winner of Total Drama Revolution.

Reception
Like I said, Total Drama Revolution was big. It was huge. It was everyone and being referenced all the time! It won Best Story in 2012. Most everybody knew the stand out characters.

...In hindsight however, time has not been kind to Revolution. People admit the story isn’t good and a lot of the characters are filler and switched personalities often, and I’m not talking about Ori. The humor was much for random and reference based, so it doesn’t hold up well.

You might be wondering why I mentioned Lizza, a first boot. The answer is that she actually developed a little fan following, which leads to cameos in the future. Ori was also liked pretty well, having some funny lines. His dad Daryl is also adored!

However, their fan following can’t compare to the love of another early out; PJ! PJ said almost nothing and did about the same, yet she was loved! PJ became a meme on the wiki, with people speaking by using ‘...’ It was typical on chat to type ‘...’ and for someone to reply ‘PJ’. It still happens at time. And no, it's not just me who does it.

The most popular character however? That goes to our popular girl, Chelsey! Chelsey was a kind of funny character, but didn’t do a lot. Yet she was adored and worshipped. She had an army of thirsty fanboys! People jokingly had a crush on her (I think it was a joke).

Her purple scarf became iconic as well! It became a fashion trend on the wiki for OCs to wear scarves, with scarves symbolizing that character was fashionable! I even have a character wearing a purple scarf as a reference.

Yet with such loved characters, we also had despised characters. Abbey was one of the characters I hated! She had an interesting backstory, but basically was there to just do nothing, fall in love with Kavren, then disappear.

Honestly though, the worst character and who I now know is my least favorite, is Cammy. She was an actually funny and cool character, but after dating Trick she went to boy obsessed, then depressed, then mean and then outright violent. And she never really gets any karma for it. Like she got voted off, but was still treated as cool, despite being kind of bitchy.

The final two weren’t loved. Kavren was basically Carson but even more random, and people feared he would win. I hated him at the time. So I was glad Tasia won, but even then she didn’t really do anything. A fun, random weirdo, but not well liked I think. Certainly not a breakout character like the others.

Dolph was just very strange, riding an actual Nyan Cat and being weird. I don’t hate him, but I don’t think Toad remembers him fondly.

Finally MacKenzie was there. Yup. She and some other early boots that weren’t worth mentioning became remembered for being borings. Kinda like that girl from School we talked about, but they were ironically remembered for being boring.

Total Drama Tokyo
The fourth season in Toad’s story and a pretty highly remembered one! I’d say it's the second most liked and definitely something you can read, and I’d recommend if you don’t want to jump into the fifth story after this. It has a lot of fan favorite characters in it.

One thing to note was that Tokyo was rewritten after its first few chapters. Initially, all of the cast were related to previous contestants and half of the cast were entirely different characters. I don’t think there’s any mention of this original version, but its worth noting, especially because many characters are still related to past favorites.

The Storyline
Chris hosts a new season in Tokyo, Japan. He brings twenty-two newbies, and for the first time divides them into three teams.

Romance quickly happens early on. Julian is obviously attracted to Estrella, who repeatedly tells him to drop dead. Tolkien falls for Ari at first sight, but she doesn’t seem that into him.

Ari and Roz became fast friends, while Puck thinks he’s friends with Wolfgang, who actually despises him.

Flora is pretty generic and boring, something Gail insults Flora with. Unfortunately for Gail, she’s voted off second and becomes rather forgettable. Wolfgang is voted out just after, where he finally speaks.

Anderson has been obnoxious for the most part, but decides to accept his destiny as being PJ’s brother and leave at 19th place, the same place she did...even though he might not have been voted off.

Romance continues to heat up, as Casey finds herself in a love triangle. She starts flirting with Thomas, but then begins flirting with Puck. It culminates when she decides to corner Puck and make out violently with him. They become a hilarious couple afterwards. Thomas becomes a jerk afterwards and leaves soon.

Throughout the show, Layla abuses her butler Charles and tries to do as little work as possible. She’s insulting to most of the cast, and Charles occasionally tries to rebel, but always goes back to being subservient.

Surprisingly, Ari is voted off early in the premerge. Tolkien is heartbroken, but discovers from Roz that Ari is secretly a huge nerd with a lot of the same interests as him.

Flora tries extremely hard to be interesting, but no one really cares. Sadly, she’s voted off just before the merge.

At the merge, Ari returns! Tolkien is happy to see her again, but also begun developing feelings for Roz, forming a love triangle. Roz meanwhile has been making out with a few guys, interns of the show. Tolkien seems to chose Roz, but sadly is eliminated before the love triangle can really be resolved.

Estrella is eliminated soon after, Julian never getting with her. Casey follows, eliminated in an iconic challenge where the cast goes Whale Watching. There we meet a club of Whale Watchers, taught by Mr. Chapman or ‘Chappy’. He’s a nice if old and eccentric teacher...who Roz is obsessed with.

Julian leaves after Casey, and Puck is eliminated right after him. In the end it's a female final three; Roz, Ari and surprisingly enough Layla. Ari leaves next, causing the final two to be Roz and Layla.

At the final two challenge, Layla has a change of heart. She feels guilty for mistreating the others and acting so cruel to Charles. With new found optimism, she wins the final challenge. She decides to let Charles go and gives him the million, allowing him to travel the world as a millionaire.

Roz is pretty bummed she lost, but Chris reveals he has a consolation prize for her; she gets to host the next season while he goes on vacation! But what is the next season…

Reception
Like I said, Tokyo was pretty well received. It has a lot of faves; even the minor boots are remembered fondly. I skipped some just for the sake of length, but I think this has some of the most remembered ‘fodder’ of any Toad season.

That said, you’re probably wondering...who was the most popular character out of the cast? Who was the fan-favorite? Well look no further because its…

Flora! Yes, Flora. She was found hilarious for being generic, and loved for being sweet and trying so hard even though no one took her seriously. There might have been so ironic love for her that turned into genuine love, but she was just very lovable.

Ironically, Flora wasn’t the boring, forgotten girl of the season. That would be the girl who called Flora boring, Gail! She developed an ironic fan following after reader and user OwenHeatherFan called her boring and didn’t remember her.

Actually, Flora maybe the most obvious ensemble darkhorse but there was one character who was extremely popular while reading and had a fanbase that could rival Chelsey of all people! That was Layla.

Layla was hilarious with her and her antics for Charles, and gained a lot of love. Her actually having some character development was a nice twist. I think it's rare for the winner of a fic to be the most popular character, but Layla is the exception to the rule.

Other popular characters were Casey of course; she’s a fan of Chelsey, the Rev fan favorite, so how could she not be? Roz was well liked, much more than her cousin Sharissa. Wolfgang was also liked, people remembering him despite his early departure.

Overall, I’d say Tokyo is the best of the pre-All Stars Toad fics. It's worth checking out!

Total Drama: Superstar Showdown
And finally we’ve reached it! The fifth and last story in the series, the All-Star story! Here Roz, with help from Chef, hosts the season as twenty two previous competitors return to compete for TWO million dollars!

The story is really one of my favorites and I think worth a read. The first few chapters aren’t as a strong, but really pick up!

So while we’re here, why not go over who is competing again and what’s up with them now!

The Returning Contestants
So that’s the cast. A few expected choices, but quite a few unexpected choices and even WHO?s in the mix. I mean, Veronica? WHAT?

Now it's your turn! Go read Total Drama: Superstar Showdown! Share your thoughts and have fun!