From Surfboards to Diapers is a Total Drama fanfic written by ParisIsBurning, inspired by the 6teen fanfic The Secret Life of a Canadian Teenager. You can read it here.
Five weeks after Bridgette returns home to Vancouver from Total Drama Island, she discovers that she's pregnant after she and Geoff had a quick night of intercourse the day before everyone went back home. Bridgette is naturally horrified, since not only is she still just 16 years old, but Geoff lives more than three hours away from her. While she's lucky that Courtney also happens to live in Vancouver and that Trent has just moved in too, Bridgette soon finds her life spiralling into a maelstrom of drama even tougher than anything she faced back at Camp Wawanakwa. Will our sweet surfer girl and now expectant teen mom be able to make it out of this mess in one piece?
The story is told in first person from the perspective of Bridgette, with the one exception being the epilogue. The story consists of 15 chapters and the aforementioned epilogue.
This fanfic contains examples of:
- Adaptational Jerkass: Bridgette's mother is described by Bridgette's online Island bio to be very close to her daughter and very proud of her. Here, she's a far less pleasant woman who expels her daughter from her home after learning she's pregnant and goes off the deep end afterwards, bullies her son and husband into disowning Bridgette, and generally treats her daughter and her pregnancy like a mistake to be ashamed of.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Courtney maintains her canonical professionalism and bossiness, but her arrogance and temper are toned down to make her into a much more supportive friend towards the pregnant Bridgette.
- Alternate Universe Fic: The events of Action and World Tour never occur in this story, so the 22 contestants all return to their ordinary lives after Island ends (well, most of them do; Bridgette, not so much).
- Amicable Exes:
- Trent and Zooey. Trent admits the love between them was never really there, and Zooey confesses to Bridgette that she knew Trent really wanted to be with her (Bridgette) instead. Despite that, the two remain good friends and work together to support Bridgette.
- After the initial misunderstanding subsides, Geoff and Bridgette become this, with the two still remaining together to support the twins and developing a platonic and professional relationship instead of a romantic one, even after they both end up marrying different people.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Bridgette's brother Alan. He gets better though.
- Better as Friends: Bridgette and Geoff ultimately become this. As Bridgette realizes the spark in their relationship has died with her pregnancy, she decides to cut romantic ties with him and work with him strictly in a professional manner to raise the twins. Geoff misunderstands and takes it badly at first, but ultimately comes around.
- Bickering Couple, Peaceful Couple: Geoff and Bridgette slowly become a bickering couple over the course of the story due to the burden of preparing for parenthood blowing out the spark of their relationship. In contrast, Trent and Zooey form a peaceful couple, even breaking up on amicable terms.
- Break the Cutie: Poor Bridgette goes through a lot of suffering, heartbreak, and general misery as a result of getting pregnant.
- Character Narrator: The story is entirely told from Bridgette's point of view (except the epilogue, which is from one of Bridgette's daughters).
- Childhood Friends: Bridgette and Zooey are this.
- Cool Old Lady: Bridgette's coworker Maya is in her fifties, and she is nothing but a caring, understanding, and supportive mentor figure/Parental Substitute for Bridgette throughout her pregnancy.
- Dead Guy Junior: Bridgette decides to name one her newborn daughters Maya after learning the Maya who gave her so much love and support at work passed away from breast cancer.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Bridgette suffers through being pregnant with twins at 16, parental disownment, the collapse of her family, a deteriorating relationship with Geoff, remorse over cheating with her best friend's boyfriend, the death of someone very close to her, and a whole lot of pregnancy hormone mood swings. In the end however, she comes out with a stronger bond to her friends, a new family to call her own, and two beautiful baby girls who grow up into wonderful people in their own right.
- Extreme Libido: Trent reveals that Gwen is like this. This leads to him breaking up with her and dating Bridgette's best friend Zooey instead.
- Family of Choice:
- Bridgette, Courtney, Trent, and Zooey (and later Geoff) eventually become this, as the latter three give their unconditional love and support to the miserable Bridgette throughout her pregnancy while Bridgette learns that family isn't defined by conventions but love.
- The epilogue pretty much cements this, as Bridgette and Geoff marry Trent and Zooey respectively but raise the twins together, even after they have children with their new spouses, while Courtney adopts a child of her own and becomes the twins' Honorary Aunt, forming a very non-traditional family tree that is nonetheless every bit as loving and tight-knit as the standard nuclear family.
- Give the Baby a Father: After Geoff breaks up with Bridgette, Trent starts dating Bridgette and ultimately marries her several years later to become the girls' stepfather.
- I Have No Daughter!: Bridgette's mother has this reaction when Bridgette reveals she's pregnant to her family. She gets worse from there.
- Last-Minute Hookup: Geoff hooks up with Zooey literally while Bridgette's getting her cesarean in the hospital.
- Manipulative Editing: Bridgette tells Zooey that most of Total Drama Island was put through this, and the only non-edited parts were the interactions between the contestants because that was what the producers were counting on to be the show's main attraction.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Bridgette has this reaction after she cheats on Geoff with Trent while the latter is still dating her best friend Zooey.
- Nightmare Sequence: Bridgette has one where Geoff accuses her of getting pregnant from sleeping with other boys and Courtney then comes in to strangle her for it.
- Not Afraid of You Anymore: Bridgette's dad and brother stand up to mom and decide to support Bridgette rather than let mom bully them into treating her like a mistake, complete with dad having mom expelled from the house for everything she has done to the family.
- Oh, Crap!: Bridgette has this reaction when she learns she's pregnant, when she learns she's carrying twins, when she wakes up to find she's slept with Trent (who has the same reaction), and when she goes into labour earlier than expected.
- Parental Substitute: Courtney's parents and Maya replace Bridgette's own parents after they kick her out of the house for getting pregnant. Maya in particular even calls herself Mama Maya when asking to Bridgette tell her about her life problems.
- Pregnancy Makes You Crazy: Played for Drama. Bridgette has some very bad (and sometimes outright embarrassing) mood swings and makes some very questionable choices as a result of getting pregnant, severely mucking up her life and destroying her self-esteem.
- Resolved Noodle Incident: Turns out Duncan had been in juvie for having severe drug problems, which led to Courtney breaking up with him three days after everyone returned home from the show.
- Sanity Slippage: Bridgette's mom undergoes this after expelling her daughter for getting pregnant, starting with conversion into a born-again Christian fundamentalist and getting worse from there. Bridgette states that her mother had a history of mental instability before she married Bridgette's dad, but getting pregnant seems to have pushed her off the deep end.
- Teen Pregnancy: Bridgette falls pregnant with twins at 16 the night before she returns home from Total Drama Island. Also Courtney's mother mentions being pregnant with Courtney's older sister at 18, Trent says his mom had him when she was 16, and Maya sympathizes with Bridgette's situation due to having been a teen mom as well.
- True Companions: Courtney and Zooey become these for Bridgette. Zooey even says that she knew about Bridgette's affair with Trent, but will never abandon her side because of how important it is that she support her best friend during their pregnancy.
- Wacky Cravings: While pregnant, Bridgette gorges herself on strawberry poptarts and later on pickles dipped in sour cream.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Bridgette constantly beats herself up over getting pregnant, her poor preparation for the twins' birth, and her relationship troubles, but her friends help her to realize that she shouldn't be so hard on herself because of her perseverance through the drama, dedication to wanting to be a good mother, and her compassionate personality.
