Chapter Text
Cody knew this was a bad idea. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. Not knowing what the public thought of you was way better for your mental health than finding out they hated you, or worse, pitied you.
Down, down the rabbit hole Cody went. He spent all his free time consuming blogs, forums, and videos about Total Drama Island and himself. Dozens of tabs were always open on his computer ranging from media sites to some random German blog where he’d have to copy paste the text into a translator.
Some people would call him a pathetic incel, some saw him as endearing and naive. Those insults to his personality didn’t hurt so much since he could always rationalize that he was separate from the character he was playing up on screen. However, comments about his appearance hit differently. Growing up, Cody was always pretty scrawny with a baby face and he didn’t think much of it. He could never bring himself to go to the gym though, the fear of being watched and judged and possibly recognized and laughed at was overwhelming.
Cody became addicted to knowing exactly what everyone thought of him. The opinions of strangers online mattered because they were real and unfiltered, unlike those of the people in his real life who seemed either scared of going against a “celebrity” or were quick to demean him without getting to know him.
It seemed that these internet analysts wanted to know him, really know him, his motivations, his personality, him. And he wanted to share parts of himself, to correct the misconceptions and offer his perspective for the people who cared to know. Nobody in his life cared for him, obsessed over him the way people did online. He couldn’t fully trust them of course, not with his real identity – partly because on some level he didn’t feel like he was that important or worthy of such devotion, partly because his real self maybe wasn’t as cool and complex as his fans thought him to be, and partly because it just felt wrong. Thus, Cody began commenting and participating in these blogs anonymously. It was impossible to be himself as himself.
At school one day, he came across an hour long video with a few hundred views by a channel called Uber Sierra. Cody devoured the video along with the snack he brought as he hunched in the back corner of the school library. Sierra, who looked to be around his age, talked at length about every contestant on the island. She analyzed the strategy, speculated about what relationships were just for the show, how they’d be like in a normal environment, how the voting went down for every episode — even including charts and graphs of who voted for who — and just everything . It was the most thorough and nuanced take he’d seen about Total Drama. She considered things he didn’t even know about. It turned out that Sierra had some insider contact who she interviewed before making the video. Cody suspected it was Izzy.
As soon as he got home from school, he began typing out a comment on the video appreciating Sierra for her contribution to the Total Drama fandom. He then sent an email to Sierra saying that he was open to being interviewed for her channel.
Later that day he received a message back:
Hiiiiee Cody! :3
OMG I am sooo excited that you want to be interviewed! And thank you so much for commenting on my video!—
Cody’s heart stopped . He quickly scanned the rest of the email, not really reading the words. Shit. He used the email that he used for his anonymous accounts to send the message. How could he be this careless? Sierra now had a hell of a lot more info on him. With how thorough she was, there was no way she wouldn’t find all of his alt accounts and connect them to him.
Would she expose him? She had at least another hour long video’s worth of content to gain from all of Cody’s forum activities, and worse, she could paint him as some obsessively online, insecure loser.
There wasn’t really anything he could do to stop Sierra from digging up his digital footprint. The only solution would be to convince her not to leak it, and for that, he needed to set up this interview ASAP.
He wrote back, acting as if it wasn’t a mistake that he sent the email and teasing the prospect of juicy gossip if she waited to talk to him. But he knew that she would go full CIA background check on him and probably uncover everything he did online down to some long lost Wizards 101 account from middle school.
Maybe she already found him before sending the email. Panicking, he read through her message again.
…I can’t wait to hear your thoughts…You probably know ALL the tea at the Playa hehehe ^_^…Love, Sierra <3
The signs pointed to, no, she hadn’t found him out yet, but she also could be finding him out at any moment. He very well couldn’t just say to not go looking for his information; it would be akin to planting a comically large wooden sign saying “No Treasure Here!” on top of a suspiciously fresh mound of dirt with a big, red X painted on top.
They set up a Discord call for next weekend, and Cody found himself really anticipating and getting excited for it. Such was the case when what little social life you had had deteriorated and withered to nothing since you came back from the show.
Cody used to be tolerated by the popular kids; they’d allow him to sit at their lunch table and do their homework. He was even invited to their parties. “You can come if you want.” And he always wanted to, even if the others didn’t and they only invited him out of some sense of guilt or obligation to not leave him out. Coincidentally, these events always seemed to land on days when he was busy. It had to be intentional, but how would they know? It was like the universe didn’t want him to be there either.
It was always hard to be himself. He tried so hard to make friends and impress people and it was never enough. It was more laughing at him than with him, but he could pretend. He was born to be humiliated after all.
The first day of school, he felt like Harold walking into the main lodge with a marker mustache as he walked to every class - except for more self conscious. Cody was thankful towards his past self for already taking gym class, because now with his dodgeball related trauma, there was no way he could attend a gym class ever again.
When he opened his locker that morning, a black bra fell out. Cody pretended to ignore it as it laid at his feet, but he could hear the poorly stifled giggling from across the hallway and feel the amused stares of his classmates. His cheeks burned; he was always quick to burn, but he stepped over the bra and continued walking like nothing happened.
The real bra was still sitting in his suitcase, which was shoved deep in the corner of his closet, untouched since he got back home. Cody tried not to think about it and how down bad he was on the show.
He prayed that people would quickly find something else to be entertained by. Either way, he could take it. All these years of humiliation and alienation prepared him well.