Trivia / Total Zeksmit Series

• Development Hell:
  • The entire story went on a long pause until he published something new that isn't a Stylistic Suck work. Said work was Carl Stevens Universe, which while it is a pseudo-crossover with something Stylistic Suck and generally an individual Crack Fic, it still counted enough for him. After this hiatus ended, however, chapter 5 came out really soon after chapter 4, and as the author notes it's the shortest span between chapters in this new version so far. If chapter 6 will be any indication, TZP had been updating about monthly until "Beware of Homer."
  • Following "Beware of Homer," the fic entered a hiatus that has lasted over a year, from October of 2014 to December of 2015.
• Missing Episode: Seven of them, three and a half of which have been written down already. The ideas were scrapped and planned to be moved to season 2's challenge ideas when the fan fic was remade from Total Fan Service to Total Zeksmit.
• Old Shame: Bordering on this, though the author is still willing to work with it. Great Pikmin Fan made a post on Tumblr where he looked back on it and had practically nothing positive to say. His new "darling" story became run:gifocalypse, which updated monthly on average (a rate Zeksmit barely had towards the beginning of its life, and now its update rate can be generously described as "yearly" — monthly, while not sounding like it, is lightning-fast by Fan's standards, especially considering the length of each chapter), and his self-disappointment with this fic is part of the reason why its first season is taking so long to finish^note His declining interest in and the Archive Panic behind Total Drama canon is another factor and why he eventually axed the concept of this having four seasons, settling on only two.
• What Could Have Been: A number of details from the old version/Total Fan Service Plains, and even some of the history of the current one:
  • According to the author's profile, Ezekiel would have known Kathy a lot earlier in his life. She might have even been one of his original friends along with Geoff and Blaineley, but she was bumped to having met him while he was filming about some haunting creature in a forest (her being the "creature"). Pikmin Fan says something about Justin also being newer to the crew, and since Ezekiel's quick backstory he explains in "Pairing is Caring" didn't mention him at all, it's likely that he was the last of the show staff Ezekiel met.
  • Bridgette had something about an evil split personality, which might have been surprisingly similar to Mal. Surprising because this idea seemed to pre-date his proper debut. However, the emphasis on this was toned down during the remake from Total Fan Service Plains to Total Zeksmit Plains, then retroactively editted out altogether. The first chapter originally ended with a scene of Ezekiel and Justin reviewing the tapes and discussing how Bridgette managed to slip away from the intern guards, but this was Hand Waved in the current revision as "they were too focused on Eva instead".
  • Originally, Ezekiel would have been the winner of EMDHS, yet his doctor ordered him to continue staying outside and getting more vitamin D, so he used the cash money to start up Total Zeksmit. (Back then-called Total Fan Service; and yes, the below bullet will get to that.) Now, instead of winning the game and picking TZP as the option for what to do with both the money and the orders, he simply won a challenge that specifically held the promise of the winner having their own miniseason.
  • It was originally titled Total Fan Service (yes, written as two words) and had a bigger emphasis on... well, Fanservice. The bikinis, concepts of the cavewoman/naked challenges, and the stated revision of Beth and Eva were reminants of that. The Screaming Buffalo and Killer Jackrabbits were also called the Screaming Hills and the Killer Grass, respectively, but Pikmin Fan changed it to both be more aligned with the majority of the canon team names (animals) and because he thought it would be possible to mistake those old names for Stealth Puns referring to breasts and pubic hair respectively. (As this is an all-girls series.)
  • Elimination order. Basically, the Screaming Buffalo swapped places with the Killer Jackrabbits in who lost. Katie would have gone second instead of fourth, and Bridgette third instead of fifth, which would also emphasize her being a Decoy Protagonist. He moved Gwen and Leshawna's eliminations to be earlier to simply make way for the main conflict with Eva.
  • The season originally had reward challenges, and as with them back in Total Drama Action, these would come between every elimination challenge with the exception of "Bears, Bares, and a Whole Lot of Flare" (this by itself is an example; it was then-called "Metal Gear Naked", and was implied to be a redo of the first challenge, except being spot instantly made the contestants lose, and, as the name implied, they were naked) and "Beware of Homer"(/"Homer's Revenge"), since there was already an Aftermath and having two non-elimination chapters in a row would be tiring. Another exception to this was between the final three and the final two, presumably because delaying the finale when the cast is down to two would be a bit silly. The scrapped concepts are confirmed to be added in the second season at some point.
  • Finally, speaking of seasons, while the Plains -> Island -> Woods formula was a constant until the final change, what came after wasn't. According to the author's Wikipedia Sandbox (it's in an older edit by now), there was going to be a "4-8" span of miniseasons that could be read in any order, each of which taking place in different environments (EG Total Fan Service Desert, Total Fan Service Tundra, etc) and having a new cast of contestants who were mostly supposed to be themed off the environment each time. 9 would have been similar to this rule, set-in-stone to take place in a volcanic area and be dubbed Volcanic Wasteland as its biome. And 10 was Action, which would, as the title implies, redo the movie lot premise much like the second season will with Wawanakwa. Action would involve all previous contestants joining together, and after that the pattern of miniseasons continues until some milestone like season 20. Then... pretty much everything was scrapped. Total Zeksmit will likely not become the character-loaded (Side Stories might or might not be another story), fan fic Long Runner bigshot as it was planned. The idea of a "big story" was pretty much evenly divided amongst this, 496 Reasons Why Multidating is More Complicated than it Seems (if the author's words on it is any indication), and possibly other works like the Crconikals/Hecksing universe. And so, everything after Woods was merged together into one season called Campsites Around the World, which is not only said to be the maximum for the last season, but it or even Woods isn't certain.
  • There was set to be two seasons following Plains and preceeding Campsites Around the World: Island, set on an AU counterpart to Wawanakwa, and Woods, set in a large forest. Eventually, Fan decided to shorten the story up and will use the campsite concepts from Island and Woods as the first two locations visited in Campsites Around the World. He also said that there probably won't be any concepts that will be cut purely because of this change, as he didn't think of any real challenge ideas that would fill in one full 26-chapter season, let alone at least three (as Woods and the original Campsites were intended to be growing longer, now Campsites will only have 26 chapters).
• Working Title:
  • The fic as a whole went from Total Fan Service Plains to Total Zeksmit Plains.
  • "Worst Cosplay ever" -> "Cosplay Roughplay"
  • "Metal Gear Naked" -> "Bears, Bares, and a Whole Lot of Flare"
  • "Homer's Revenge" -> "Beware of Homer"
  • "Attack of the Killer Censorbots!" -> "Campers Vs the Future"