Total Drama Redemption is a Peggy Sue Total Drama fanfic written by PurpleBandit3000. It can be found here
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In the story, a grown-up Noah finds himself magically transported back into his teenage body and re-experiencing Total Drama Island all over again. Determined to improve his lot in the game this time around, our favourite cynical egghead gets to work changing up his gameplay, causing some significant alterations to the way the competition plays out. As the story progresses though, Noah notices some slight differences in the timeline that cannot be attributed to his new playstyle.
The story also has a sequel called TDR3: Noah's Tour of the World, in which Noah finds himself transported again to the altered timeline of the previous story, but this time he's participating on Total Drama World Tour with no knowledge of the altered events of Action. And as the competition progresses, he finds things are much more different than the last time around, and there may in fact be higher stakes for him than a million dollar prize. It can be found here.
This work contains examples of:
- Adaptation Expansion: Trent participates in World Tour this time around, raising the starting contestant count to 18.
- Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In canon, Noah and Gwen had very little interaction, and neither seemed to have a particularly high opinion of the other. Here, Gwen considers Noah one of her best male friends on the show, and ends up in a relationship with him after breaking up with Trent.
- Adaptational Villainy:
- Heather goes from being merely power-hungry and manipulative to being outright cruel and amoral. For example, she engineers Cody's elimination by planting berries in his pants pocket so that he will be brutally mauled by a bear. When Lindsay reveals this to everyone, Heather shows no remorse for the fact that Cody was left in a body cast and wheelchair by her actions. And unlike in canon, she never improves as a person in the later seasons.
- Alejandro is even worse. In canon, he was simply just incredibly self-centered. Here, he's a sadistic nihilist who believes that Might Makes Right and that he is Above Good and Evil, and at several points attempts to brutally injure or even kill Noah for little reason.
- Trent, of all people, gets this. After breaking up with Gwen in Action, he goes completely off the deep end when she hooks up with Noah and never reverts to his original Nice Guy personality in World Tour. He repeatedly threatens to kill and injure Noah and even sides with Alejandro for the sole purpose of taking Noah down.
- Adapted Out: Justin does not participate in Action in the alternate timeline and is replaced with Noah.
- Alternate Universe Fic: Noah finds himself transported by higher powers to an alternate timeline where he is given the opportunity to redeem himself for his actions. At first the differences are subtle, but by the time of World Tour, they're massive.
- Ascended Extra:
- Noah is able to ascend further into the competition, due to being the protagonist, and ends up becoming coming in fourth place in Island.
- Tyler makes it much further in Island than he does in canon, and ends up coming in sixth place this time. Similarly, Katie, Lindsay, Geoff, and Duncan make it further than in canon, with the latter two becoming the season's finalists.
- Bridgette is not eliminated so early in World Tour this time, and gets switched over to Team Amazon after the Yukon challenge instead.
- With the two fics, Owen gets many more scenes in the sequel than he does in the first story, due to being eliminated extremely early in the latter.
- Author Appeal: The Noah/Izzy pairing in the first story, which is the author's self-confessed favourite Total Drama ship.
- Character Narrator: Both fics are entirely told from Noah's POV, which means the story is occasionally sidetracked to follow his personal thoughts stream-of-consciousness-style.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Izzy, as usual. In one chapter, she dangles her bare feet above water just to catch fish with them.
- Completed Fic: Averted for the sequel, which has not been updated since 2018.
- Darker and Edgier: The sequel, when compared to both the previous fic and the canon World Tour. Alejandro is even more evil than he is canon, while Noah finds himself besieged from all sides by enemies, plagued by disturbing nightmares, and having to face bigger priorities than winning the contest.
- Demoted to Extra: Several contestants are eliminated earlier than they were in the canon Island, with the biggest example being Owen, who goes from a finalist to one of the first eliminated. Justin, Sadie, Courtney, DJ, Leshawna, Heather, and Gwen are also eliminated earlier than in canon.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Izzy votes for Noah in the talent show contest just because she couldn't understand his Shakespeare retical. Noah is understandably pissed off at the moment.
- Does Not Like Spam: Noah really despises the book series Twilight, which is an allusion to the author's own dislike of the series.
- Epic Fail: Like in canon, Geoff gets distracted by the sound of an ice cream truck during the events of "Hook, Line, and Screamer". What's new about it however, is that rather than being captured by Chef, Geoff just walks into the production tent where all of the caught campers are.
- Fighting Your Friend: Noah brawls with Tyler in response to Tyler swatting him in the head after Lindsay's elimination.
- Flipping the Bird: Noah flips his middle finger at the camera while jumping off the cliff in the second episode, fully aware of the fact that he wasn't shown jumping to the real-life viewers.
- For Want Of A Nail: Noah's decision to participate in the dodgeball challenge instead of slacking off like he did last time gets the ball rolling to the point where the situation at the start of World Tour is nearly unrecognizable (Noah has hooked up with Gwen; Geoff and Bridgette broke up; Trent is no longer the Nice Guy of the first season; the team compositions are totally different; etc.)
- Frame-Up: Heather leaks out Gwen's diary for everyone to see, leading the latter to accuse Cody of doing so. Noah also mentions that back home, he's not allowed to eat cookies because someone stole a stash of them and he got in trouble for it.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The Board, whom the higher powers that transported Noah want him to defeat.
- Hypocrite: Trent calls Noah a faker in the Newfoundland challenge. And this is coming from a guy who faked a broken limb.
- In Spite of a Nail:
- Some of the events of the season occur just as they did in canon, even with those who were eliminated earlier or later. Izzy, Cody, Beth, Harold, Trent, and Bridgette are also still eliminated in the same challenges they were in canon; Noah lampshades this, remarking that despite the new timeline, some things have not changed at all.
- World Tour's elimination order has so far remained identical to canon (complete with Duncan quitting the game and the implication that Ezekiel has managed to stow away on the plane), except that Bridgette escapes elimination in the Yukon and is instead switched over to Team Amazon that episode.
- Mysterious Backer: The Board, who Chris implies is made up of the people who produce Total Drama and allow it to get away with everything it does. Noah finds himself tasked by greater powers with having to expose and end them.
- Off Screen Moment Of Awesome: Noah discovers that he won Action in the alternate timeline, but he has no memory of this.
- Out-of-Character Moment: Chris reads Gwen's diary out loud when it's exposed for everyone in the Mess Hall to see. Chris is a jerk, so it's not too out of character, but this is the first season, and he had yet to lose his sanity. Plus, he admitted that reading someone's diary out loud was messed up in canon.
- Peggy Sue: The adult Noah is transported by mysterious higher powers into the body of his teenage self in an alternate universe, giving himself the chance to redo his playthrough of Total Drama.
- Plot Hole: Noah claims to not like Eva, even though they were shown hanging out with each other after their eliminations in canon.
- Ship Tease:
- Noah and Izzy throughout Island They ultimately hook up, but Noah discovers they broke up in Action and Izzy is now with Owen, like in canon. The higher powers, however, want Noah to break up Owen and Izzy to get back with her.
- There's some minor Noah/Gwen in the first story,including Noah having a dream of Gwen being his girlfriend. They even hook up in the sequel, but the higher powers want him to break up with her and get back with Izzy.
- Cody and Bridgette get some of this during World Tour after Bridgette is moved over to Team Amazon.
- Shout-Out: Numerous examples scattered throughout both fics.
- Island's psycho killer challenge sneaks in plenty of horror movie references; World Tour's Japan challenge has anime references; Cody and Harold make many video game, cartoon, and comic book references; the characters often quote movies; Noah himself references many well-known literary works; etc.
- Geoff mentions Despair Island by name at one point.
- Many scenes and lines of dialogue throughout the sequel are references to or even directly taken from A Codette World Tour (namely the Ship Tease between Cody and Bridgette) and TDWT Reducks Redux.
- Smart People Play Chess: Noah and Cody, both nerds, always try to get in at least one game of chess between each other every day during Island.
- The Stations of the Canon: During Island, Ezekiel and Eva are still the first eliminated. Things only really start changing once Noah decides to actually participate in the dodgeball challenge.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Trent in the sequel. Due to the fact that Gwen dated Noah after she broke up with him, Trent has become a jerk to Noah and is acting cruel and angry all the time.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Noah and Cody frequently make fun of each other through snarky remarks and teasing, but are nonetheless very good friends throughout Island.
- We Used to Be Friends: In the sequel, Noah finds out this happened to him with Trent and Cody during Action, and then it later occurs with Tyler. Trent, because he's dating Gwen now; Cody, because after he won Action, he forgot to speak to him (he patches things up with Cody however); and Tyler, because he got Lindsay eliminated to save himself.
