Slippery Slopes

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Fanfiction
Title: Slippery Slopes
Author(s): courtney-deserved-better (persephones_garden)
Date(s): 25 June 2021 - 17 December 2022
Length: Slippery Slopes: 125,250 words

Slippery Slopes & Related Stories: 142,052 words

Genre(s): Gen; M/M

Comedy; Romance

Fandom(s): Total Drama
Relationship(s):
External Links: Slippery Slopes on AO3, Archived version
A fanmade cover for Slippery Slopes by completelyandtotalyuneventful.
A fanmade cover for Slippery Slopes by delightfully-deranged-dagur.

Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Slippery Slopes by courtney-deserved-better (persephones_garden) is an English canon-divergence fix-it AU fic for Total Drama: World Tour. In the story, Heather is eliminated in I See London... instead of Noah. Spurred by nearly being eliminated, Noah becomes determined to truly challenge Alejandro in winning the million dollar prize for himself like never before. Eventual Alejandro/Noah, the relationship is a slow-build.

After his suspicions surrounding Alejandro have been confirmed, Noah is determined not to let his two-faced teammate win without a good fight. He may not be the strongest competitor, but he's gotten this far already.

Alejandro expects his life to get easier with Heather's departure, not made even more difficult by Noah's intelligence and biting wit. He may have incorrectly presumed them to be friends, but he's determined not to underestimate his competition again.

Of course, when it comes to Total Drama, nobody can predict the chaos to come.

An Alejandro x Noah World Tour Rewrite. Starts during I See London...

Slippery Slope's summary

Slippery Slopes is Alejandro/Noah's most well-known fanfiction, and it convinced many of the pairing's potential, particularly existing Cody/Noah shippers[1]. It elevated its author, courtney-deserved-better, to BNF status in the fandom. The fanfiction is the most kudos'd fanwork in Total Drama's Archive of Our Own tag as of February 2024. It has produced a considerable amount of fanac, shared primarily on Tumblr and TikTok, where the fic itself is frequently recommended for both Alejandro/Noah and Total Drama fans alike as a must read in the fandom. Along with Alejandro and Noah, Courtney and Sierra are also prominent characters.

Slippery Slopes is sometimes shorted to Slip Slop.

In December 2023, courtney-deserved-better wrote a retrospective of the fic, how they thought about it, and its reception by the fandom.[2]

Influence on Total Drama Fanon

Elements from Slippery Slopes are sometimes seen in other Total Drama fanworks created since its completion.

  • Noah "Mudaliar": the last name Mudaliar for Noah came from Slippery Slopes. Notably included in Island of the Slaughtered.
  • Noah can bake: particularly cakes and deserts.
  • Noah once competed on game shows for prize money.
  • Noah's golden retriever is named Ark: Noah having a golden retriever is canon, "Ark" is not.
  • Noah has 8 sisters: Noah having 8 older siblings is canon, but their genders are unknown.
  • Abigail "Abs" Paine is Noah's sister: Abs is a character from Total Dramarama and not related to Noah in canon.

These elements are found in other fanworks, but were popularized partially because of Slippery Slopes.

  • Alejandro vs his family: in canon, it's implied Alejandro likes his family aside from José and he is respected. In Slippery Slopes, they disown him after he fails to win the million, and he's only particularly close to Carlos.
  • Alejandro wears the dress: seen in Niagara Brawls, Alejandro doesn't mind wearing the wedding dress.
  • Courtney can speak Spanish.

"First Step Down a Slippery Slope"?

The fic's beginnings were on a Tumblr post between Alejandro/Noah BNF alenoah and an anon discussing the potential for, at the time, rarepair Alejandro/Noah. The quote, "intellect and witty charm," was said by Alejandro's voice actor Marco Grazzini in a Reddit AMA and is elaborated further in the ship's article.

Anonymous asked:

I mean if you think about it though, the intellect and witty charm thing makes perfect sense. Canonically, Alejandro was attracted to Heather in large part because she figured him out. She was smart, and she had him pegged. That very much could've been true for Noah too, as he was in a similar situation. Alenoah could've been just as canon as Aleheather.

alenoah answered:

It could have and that’s what makes me lose it!!! Both of them are legitimately attracted to other people in the show for qualities that the other has! Like you said, Heather has that same wit and intellect as Noah, but this happens with Noah too!

Noah initially begins to like Emma for having elegant athletic prowess, but as he learns more about her and her intellect, strategy, and somewhat mean-spirited humor, he likes her more. Sound like anyone you know? Maybe someone that balanced his entire team on a goat, orchestrated 6 eliminations in his first season, and laughed with Noah during Tyler’s catwalk? Anyone at all?

courtney-deserved-better replied:

^ 100% agree, might I also add:...[3]

courtney-deserved-better's reply was a long piece speculative writing, where this idea was put to the test in the event Heather was eliminated in I see London... instead of Noah. The writing was well received, giving them inspiration to write Slippery Slopes. First Step Down a Slippery Slope was the label given to this conversation by the mod behind real-td-heritage-posts, a heritage post blog for the series as a whole.

Reviews

After revisiting Total Drama after nearly a decade, I gotta say. Wow. This fic was everything I could have asked for and more. My favorite season. My favorite characters. Amazing world building. Relationships. Characterizations. Humor. Plot. Twists. Turns! It was perfect. Thank you for writing this fic. Thank you so so much.[4]

itsalldownhillfromherehoney said:

back when slippery slopes mentioned noah being on quiz shows my first thought was about when he was on Skatoony ngl

completelyandtotalyuneventful replied:

This. This is the post that made me spend all day reading slippery slopes. I innocently stumbled upon it while looking through Noah content. My first thought was, “what the fuck is Skatoony?”, and then I watched clips from it and was mildly amused. My second thought was, “what is slippery slopes?”. So I looking it up and found a fanfic. It was long, and was alenoah which isn’t really one of my number one ships, but I had the day off for Veterans Day so I had time to kill, and it was a rewrite of world tour which I always love, so I decided to give it a shot.

What the fuck.

This is the single most show-accurate and heart wrenching thing I’ve ever read. The characters, the dialogue, the slow burn. Oh my god. There were so many backstabs and twists and misunderstandings and romantic tension and - OH MY GOD.

I was stimming and pacing and had to take several breaks just to calm myself down enough to read it. This fic Single handedly took Alenoah from a ship I hardly cared about at all, to completely obliterating Noco and making it my number one ship of the show now. In a single day.

I am going to be thinking about this fic for the rest of the week at least. Maybe the month. Maybe a year. I don’t know. It’s my canon now. It is everything to me. I want this fic to have its own fandom so I can read fanfiction based off of it. I want to punch Chris square in the jaw and make him go back in time and not change the rules at the last second so Team Chris can win in London and Noah and Alejandro can have a rivalry that lasts longer than an episode.

So yea, thank you op for introducing me to the single greatest total drama fic I’ve ever read in my entire life. With an off handed comment about Skatoony. I am forever in debt to you.

itsalldownhillfromherehoney replied:

WELL DAMN YW MY GUY

serenacypher replied:

In every fandom, there’s ‘those fics’. Ones that are so famous and beloved within the fandom that parts and elements of them start weaving their way into other stories. In particularly old fandoms or ones with open-minded creators, such as Doom or Transformers, these stories can even find themselves being referenced in official material or being outright canonized.

I feel that Slippery Slopes is or is becoming one of those for the Total Drama fandom. Nearly everyone who’s read it, even people who don’t ship AleNoah aka the entire focus of the story, has loved it or large chunks of it enough to make those moments a part of their personal canon as far as the show goes.

Which is a testament to how well written it is. Focusing on an obscure pairing that few people even liked or considered, and turning it into the pairing with the second most shipping fics on Ao3. So go read it already if you haven’t. :P[5]

I ended up reading this weeks after seeing fanart for it despite having no clue what it was for. Once I got ahold of this fic I completely melted at the writing. I loved it all, genuinely. I loved how everyone was written out and the progress between everyone. All of this, I am glad I read this. Honestly, I love how you write, even if this is a few years old, the writing style is something I always look for in fics. Something is going to continue to lead back here thinking about this and pinpoints in my brain of certain scenes, mostly the betrayals. Overall, I loved all of this and I plan to read into your other works as well. <3[6]

I recently got back into total drama island after seeing a lot of tiktoks of it. I decided to check the fandom out and was pleasantly surprised to find that they did have fics for this show I watched as a kid. Most of the fics posted recently were about a popular AU that I'm not that big a fan of, so I decided to just sort by kudos, and read what was the most "liked" fic for the fandom.

I have to say that was probably my best decision this whole week. There are very few fics that genuinely keep me captivated from beginning to end, and it's even rarer that those fics are romances, but this is genuinely one of the best fics I've ever read on this site and I mean that whole heatedly.

Even as someone like myself who didn't even LIKE Noah when I originally watched Total Drama Island as a kid, I feel like you really added depth and interest to his character that kept me wanting more out of this story. There are a lot of things about this rewrite that I enjoyed, which is saying something because World Tour was my favorite season.

I liked that Chris isn't SO much of a sociopath in this fic and he does have somewhat of a heart, I enjoyed the genuine friendship between Courtney and Alejandro, I liked Noah making friends with Sierra and Courtney, I liked all their schemes and planning on how to best take down the other teams by using their relationship drama against them. I liked Noah and Alejandros banter and quips. And I have to say I even enjoyed the rest of the cast who was eliminated before the fic began, even if we didnt get to see them that often.

They all feel like real friends in this story, people who I can see actually hanging out like teens and becoming closer after the show. It made me curious about this AU even more, like I want to know more about this version of the characters rather than the original now 😭

And I know that I will never really be able to get a likable Noah like this one from the original source material, because you truly put so much more depth and emotion into everyone's character that a silly little canadian parody show never could. The fic was amazing from beginning to end, you got me hooked on a ship I didn't even know existed until a day ago, and interested in a character I completely forgot about since I was like 10 and first watched Total Drama Island.[7]

Example/Notable Recursive Fanac

Fan Art

Fan Comics

Fan Videos

Meta

References/Further Reading

  1. ^ I just had a thought. What if the reason Noco shippers hardly exist anymore is because they read Slippery Slopes and either were obliterated by it's sheer power, or converted to AleNoah., Archived version, posted to Tumblr on May 22nd, 2023
  2. ^ (...)i decided to make a big sappy post talking about what this fic has meant to me over the last two and a half years(...) by courtney-deserved-better, Archived version (17 Dec 2023)
  3. ^ I mean if you think about it though, the intellect and witty charm thing makes perfect sense, Archived version, posted to Tumblr on June 24th, 2021
  4. ^ Review by Drowzeee; Tue 11 Jul 2023
  5. ^ back when slippery slopes mentioned noah being on quiz shows my first thought was about when he was on Skatoony ngl, Archived version, posted to Tumblr on September 9th, 2022
  6. ^ Review by Aleussy; Mon 18 Sep 2023
  7. ^ Review by Lulise; Fri 25 Aug 2023
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