Hello everyone. Once again I have a "behind the scenes" chapter for you all, to help you see inside my thought process while developing this episode for you all. We have a lot to go over, so may as well get started.

TPReboot: Total Drama Island - Episode #2
Welcome to the Jungle

The Challenge

Seeing as this was going to be the first challenge of the season, I knew that I wanted it to be front and center in terms of staging and focus. As such, I needed to develop one that'd act as a platform for developing the cast and their relationships further based on what was already established with them in the first episode, while leaving room to still have their story throughout the episode naturally progress without needing to force it forward.

As a result, actually determining what I wanted to do with it was...A bit of a struggle. I know it couldn't anything too complicated, as a means of easing both the contestants, and the readers, into the status quo of the game going forward. Obviously this took out plenty of options; no challenges that knock out contestants over time, nothing too extensively athletic, nothing relay based, etc. It had to be simple, easy to understand, and kept the team together throughout the whole challenge as a means of forcing them to interact.

And so, the perfect choice hit me; the camping challenges from season #1 of the OG Total Drama show (The Sucky Outdoors, Camp Castaways, Are We There Yeti?). These provided the perfect backdrop, as in my eyes those were some of the most character driven episodes of the series.

With the challenge decided, I ultimately decided I'd use the opportunity as a way to expand upon the island. Namely, setting up it's wildlife (the Exeggutor, Alpha Ursaring, Beedrill, etc) and more importantly, a location/character who'd come into play more later on in the form of Camp Crystal and Dusknoir (a fairly obvious homage to the 1980 film, Friday the 13th). I want to get into them some more...But seeing as they will be returning for future episodes, I feel it's best to move on to the next point.

A Survivor, a Ghost, and a Whole Lotta Drama...

I knew going into the episode that I wanted one member from each team to split off from the main group for the sake of developing their more individual-based storylines. And in terms of who those would ultimately be selected for such...That was easy to say the least.

Firstly, for the Oranguru, I knew it was going to be Samurott from moment one. Beyond having an easy in for such a storyline (him having gone off to do his own thing as soon as the cast settled into camp), his status as a loner made it easy to validate developing him on his own at first. It also worked to my benefit because, of the cast, Samurott arguably made the smallest impression last episode, on account of arriving last and not really talking, so this would serve as a good way of properly introducing him to readers, while helping to establish his mystique further.

And then for the Passimian, while the choice was a bit more scattered originally, I ended up settling on Gengar because from the outset, he has arguably the least to actually do with the rest of his team. As the resident scaredy cat and an insecure mess of a person, he probably wouldn't have done or said much beyond the occasional panic, which while not the worst form of comic relief, would have gotten stale quickly and could have forced me to give him the backseat for a bit. This just worked out in everyone's favor to keep him away from his team this episode.

Then came developing what their storylines would actually be. And luckily, when compared to the rest of the cast, Samurott and Gengar's faults are largely more on the personal and mental side of the spectrum. Their weaknesses are deeply engrained into who they are, and as such, I realized I could use this against them by forcing them to confront their flaws out in the open.

Samurott is a lonely, workaholic survivalist who trusts nobody and can't carry a conversation to save his life, and so as a way to work with this, I decided to play up that Samurott's big flaw is that he'd much rather ignore his problems than actually confront as much. Sure, he could have stayed in camp and have to talk to people, but he'd much rather stay in his comfort zone out in the woods, where he can dress up a shelter nice and fine, spend days scavenging for supplies and scouting out the environment, and never have enough free time to actually have to talk to himself about how he's actually feeling at any given moment. Everything he faced throughout his time out in the woods was designed as a way of truly showing the lengths he's willing to go just to ignore what's actually going on. And in the end...He didn't really learn anything. If anything he's just on lockdown now because his teammates aren't going to tolerate him going on his own anymore.

Gengar meanwhile is a loner in his own right and also has zero social skills...But more because he's controlled by his insecurity instead of ignoring it like Samurott. In a way, the two are foils to one another, as while Samurott spent the whole episode avoiding confrontation with himself and others, Gengar was forced to confront his own flaws because of his encounter with Dusknoir. And I should note...Gengar won because of luck more than anything; had he not had the moment to get off that Dark Pulse and momentarily distract Dusknoir with that hit to the face, he would have been destroyed. On the whole though, Gengar didn't win per say in terms of fighting his issues...But now he's acknowledged them, and if only for a moment got a chance to actually think without that perpetual feeling of insecurity.

Oh and because I have nowhere else to discuss it, uh...Dubwool getting lost was a completely on the fly decision. I knew I wanted her to establish her competitive streak and I decided to use that against Samurott as a means of escalating his trust issues. I'd get into it a bit more, but I don't really have anything to say. She's fun to write, however.

Leadership; or the Lack of It

Besides the solo stories across the forest, the secondary scenes of the chapter easily fell onto the teams of the Oranguru and the Passimian. Namely, establishing team dynamics, as that's what'd be the most important aspect to come out of this episode going forward. And so spurred a storyline of leadership...Or more accurately, a failure to establish it. Luxray and Aggron were largely the faces of the teams this episode, and shared a similar role on the teams; they're the power players who tried to establish themselves as the commanding lead of their respective teams.

And, as was to be expected, both ultimately failed to earn the respect of the majority. Luxray, while having experience with teams and scouting, ultimately suffered from her inability to face her own failures and being unable to hold back her emotions, leading to the mistimed confrontation with Gloom. Aggron meanwhile just plain rushed ahead and didn't really think much about how his team felt, gladly seeing himself as the center of the team and the one who deserved the attention/glory if they were to win.

Ultimately, what held them both back was an overlaying sense of pride. In the end though, what allowed the Oranguru to win over the Passimian was their ability to elect a new leader in a moment of crisis; Braixen, humble and wise despite her unnotable surface, was ultimately the root cause of the team's success in the end...Well, in terms of meaning, at least. Realistically Samurott was always going to arrive before Gengar but let's ignore that part in exchange for imagining that I wrote this better than I'd like to admit.

With that said, not much was really going on that wasn't already obvious; several contestants became friends or enemies, allowing for interactions in the future. I'd expand on these...If I actually had anything to say on them. Really, what you see is what you get with a lot of them until later..

Get Your Head in the Game

And the final part of the challenge I wanted to go over, and possibly the part I was most interested in; the strategy. I'm unsure if this is a hot take or not, but I've always felt strategy as a whole has been mishandled heavily in most TPI stories. That's not me saying its outright bad or anything, but more it almost always feels poorly placed in stories. Generally speaking, it almost always falls onto one of two extremes for me; either strategy is there too little and it almost feels like an afterthought (Total Drama Island is a great example of this, since only Heather strategized for the first half, and Duncan didn't start until episode #17.), or its so there that it almost feels like it takes up all of the time that could have gone to character building (modern Survivor often falls victim to this).

And so, a goal of mine for this story is that I want TPReboot to balance strategy inbetween, something I feel has only really been done with Amphithere's stories...Well, more specifically Redux. May as well go over what I tried to do then with it this time around...

Firstly, the most obvious example, Gabite(Fred)'s gamble with the firepit. These two (or at least the puppet) are a lot smarter than the cast gives them credit for, and managed to use a move the others weren't aware of to get into their good books. It's small, but people remember moments like that; say it had come down to Aggron and Gabite as the bottom two instead of the canon pair, who's to say somebody doesn't just bring up how the former failed to start the fire. Something that small really can secure someone's fate in this sort of story.

Secondly was Staravia, specifically doing something I'd like to call "overplaying". Staravia decided to swing for the trees and ended up more accurately smacking a thorn bush. On the surface her play against Scrafty isn't a terrible idea; if it worked, it would have secured her a loyal ally in Gengar. But two things; one, nobody on her team really liked/knew her, and two, the opposite was true for Scrafty. Really it's the epitome of just trying too hard to make things happen too early. In this sort of stuff, I think somebody flaming out as early as they do is always an entertaining sort of disaster you can't help but watch, and I'd like to think Staravia was just that.

And lastly there was Scrafty's gambit; relying on the undecided outlooks of his teammates to determine his fate. Beyond the fact it was such a massive gamble (it was), the reality here is that Scrafty was in complete control. He planted all the seeds needed to stir doubt in his team, ensuring in the end either Gengar would get out "as planned" or Staravia would try something and be taken out instead. He managed to perfectly rig a win-win situation for himself where he comes out perfectly fine with either outcome.

There was some smaller stuff of course, such as Espeon poisoning Luxray (which'll continue into next chapter), but I think for now that's a good place to call it in this category at least. I enjoy strategy. And I hope you do as well, because it'll be an ever-present part of this story going forward.

18th place- Staravia, the Thespian

And so, we arrive and what I'm sure most of you were waiting for; an in-depth analysis of the most recent eliminated character, something I plan to do for every elimination going forward. Buckle up...This is gonna take a bit.

"First boots", as they've been nicknamed by the community, I've felt have always gotten a bad rep. More often than not, they're just sort of seen as jokes; the punchline added onto the end of an episode that only really exists to tell everyone, "this person lost, please laugh at them for their failure". They're not taken seriously is more or less the point here. And in a lot of ways, I feel that's to their detriment; they're an essential aspect to every TPI story, and yet in all of them, their actual role is never acknowledged much. Usually a character will just be created to solely serve the purpose of being the first boot, being bland, boring, generic, or purposefully obnoxious as a way of forcing the reader more or less to not give a crap about them when they go home. Which is unfair, since so much can still be done with them so they can at the very least leave an impression.

And because TPReboot is an SYOC story, where all eighteen characters were not made by me, I had the unenviable task of having to get the most out of a character who, at the end of the day, only would be getting 4 chapters total to establish themselves, among a cast of 18 characters who also need screen time.

So, let's start with this; Staravia is a character defined less by their personality, and more by how they want to be perceived. Staravia, in all reality, is a painfully normal person. She has a very normal life and has never suffered any sort of injustice, consequence for her actions, or form of tragedy. She has lived an absolutely uninteresting lifestyle...And she hates that. She doesn't like that, in her eyes at least, she isn't the "main character" of life. And so her way of coping with this aspect of life that everyone must deal with is to simply try and ignore it by taking on whatever "role" she wants to, as a way of feeling a bit more special.

One minute, she's a knight of the round table from medieval times. The next she's a doting mother who wants to look out for those around her. The next she's a rambunctious Australian survivalist with a smart mouth. And finally, she could be a cocky manipulator game-bot...These aren't actually who she is obviously. It's acting for a stage show that doesn't exist; lies added on top of a facade that rules over how she talks to others and does...Basically anything. Staravia is a nobody who desperately wants to be a somebody. And so she signs up for Total Drama, and knowing she wouldn't be accepted if she was normal ol' Staravia, plays up that these roles are who she actually is, and gets cast.

This, on the surface, has an enormous amount of potential. Trust me when I say that coming to the decision that a character like Staravia had to go this early was a tough one...But in the end, was there ever really another option? Staravia, as I said, isn't defined by her actual personality, because her actual personality was designed to be boring. And how much can a reader be asked to get attached to someone who isn't actually a person, but rather a rotating mask of different personas? She's defined by her "gimmick" (I hate that word immensely), and this is a story that more than anything is going to be defined by change and transformation. And let me ask you something?

How do you change somebody who has nothing to change?

And so, after a lengthy period of time and swapping her between two other characters constantly, her role as the first boot was finalized. Then came the question; how should she get out? It'd be too easy, and frankly, too boring, to just have her screw up the challenge or annoy her teammates with her bad acting. While accurate to how the actual Total Drama series usually handles this sort of thing, that doesn't mean it was the best way to go about it, especially as it just felt like the obvious road to walk down, and the last thing I wanted was the first boot to be obnoxiously obvious. So, I decided to have Staravia, as I said before, ultimately fall victim to her own attempt at strategy as a result of her dislike of another player; Scrafty.

Honestly, Staravia's conflict with Scrafty has been a part of the story since the very first draft. Beyond the fact that I simply enjoyed forcing the two to play off each other, I thought that their dynamic could be a great lead-in to Scrafty's future stories in upcoming chapters. As an actor, Staravia knows when somebody isn't who they say they are, and Scrafty radiated such energy perfectly by acting so...Normal, an act that could never last long in the sights of someone who knows the pains of normality so well. Their conflict, while short lived, I felt was a good way to engage the audience into the politics of the game. And with her elimination at his hands, the game has offically started, and Scrafty claimed first blood.

Unfortunately, had she survived the episode...It's unlikely she would have lasted much longer. To give an idea here, the furthest she ever got in a draft, was episode #3. She just wasn't long for this sort of game; like I said, there wasn't enough there for an audience to attach to, and even if there was, her acting would have gotten annoying sooner rather than later. If I really wanted to, maybe I could have actually had her take up Scrafty's offer and have the two in a distrusting alliance for a couple episodes as a sort of power couple, but in the end, her fate was always going to be sealed by the insidious reptile.

But hey, on the bright side, now she's at the resort, and more than that, been given a possible chance to rejoin the game as long as she stays on it (which yes, I wanted to establish the fact that returnees are happening as early as possible). While I can't confirm anything, I can definitely tell you Staravia's story isn't up just yet. You'll just have to keep an eye on her whenever we check back in if you wanna see how that will develop...

In Conclusion...

Episode #2 was a learning experience. What I wanted to do with this story in terms of plot and tone going forward were firmly cemented for me with the results of this episode, and in the end I think it'll lead to a far stronger final product. It also set-up effectively any storylines I wanted to immediately follow-up on in the coming episodes. While I do think I have some room to improve here, I couldn't have asked for a better starting place.

With that said, I can now confirm exactly how long this story will be; in total, this story will be 20 episodes long, spread across 40 chapters. So, I hope you're all hooked, as we've got a long way to go. Especially because I can now confirm the release date of the next chapter:

February 25th, 2022.

See all of you next time...