User blog:Epic~00/Character Appreciation - Week 45: Sierra



Welcome back to Character Appreciation, a blog series that will run for the whole year alongside Project 10. Each week we'll take a look at one Total Drama character, what we like and dislike about them, how they've grown, and what we hope to see from them in the future. I'm Epic~00 and this week, we're looking at The Obsessive Uber-Fan, Sierra!

Overview
Sierra is first introduced in Celebrity Manhunt's Total Drama Action Reunion Special and is hired as an anonymous source of information about contestants on the show before her identity is exposed. She gets hired by Celebrity Manhunt to host the Total Drama cast at the Gemmie Awards on the red carpet, due to her extensive knowledge of the show being a reliable asset, though fails as an interviewer. After the cast find out the troubling news that Chris plans to replace their show with Total Drama Dirtbags, Sierra motivates them to prevent this by joining up with them in a bus chase against the Dirtbags to steal their fame by hijacking their debut on the Orpah show, only for their bus to topple off a cliff. Chris is impressed enough by their exploits enough to invite all nearby contestants back for the next season, including Sierra.

Sierra's superfan-level excitement at the prospect of being in Total Drama World Tour take a permanent hold on her, and is especially determined to impress her favorite contestant and crush, Cody. This quickly envelopes her into stalking him to drastic levels and being overtly protective of him and trying as hard as she can for him to reciprocate her feelings but to no avail. She has immediate jealousy towards people he likes or is even attracted to such as Gwen and will try any means necessary to convince him she's his true love, frequently invading his personal space to prove this. Despite being an over-the-top stalker, Sierra frequently looks out for Cody, examples including saving his life when he drowns, rescuing him from getting smothered by the Statue of Liberty and injecting him with an Epi-Pen after he gets an allergic reaction. He doesn't return her passionate feelings at all despite this but that doesn't stop her from pursuing her goal. Sierra is also a pivotal help to Team Amazon's many victories and helps Courtney vote off Gwen after being enraged at Gwen for kissing Duncan over Cody.

As the season progresses, it gradually unfolds that Sierra isn't just a creepy stalker superfan, but truly cares for Cody and looking out for him, especially becoming apparent in Awwwwww, Drumheller when she's blissfully ignorant of the many times he's voted her off and prepares a special birthday present for him. Her love for him is tested when Alejandro drives a wedge to the rest of his competitors by photoshopping a fake picture of Cody and Heather sleeping together in economy class. His plans initially work on her only for Cody to snap her out of it, having gained enough trust in Sierra to appreciate her, as the two combine their forces to convince Heather to vote Alejandro off.

Sadly for Sierra, these plans fail when she presents her surprise birthday cake for Cody right before Chris is about to announce Alejandro as eliminated. Her birthday cake is too flammable and destroys the plane, heavily injuring herself and burning her hair off. As a result of her accidental destruction, she gets disqualified. Regardless, she's determined to help Cody win, even initially letting him bring a wheelchair she was strapped into as a result of her injuries. But having finally realized Sierra as a well-meaning and thoughtful person, Cody brings her along for the ride too. Her efforts in helping Cody are strong enough for him to tie with Alejandro for second against Heather. And though Cody is easily defeated by Alejandro when he whacks Cody inside a shark's mouth, Sierra saves his life one more time by dropping him out of the shark's mouth.

Sierra returns in Total Drama All-Stars with her crippling injuries and burnt hair recovered. Though her goal at first is to win for Cody, she develops withdrawal symptoms from being apart from him for so long, only getting worse once Mal smashes her phone with thousands of pictures of Cody. This causes her to develop hallucinations and use Cameron as a means of coping with this by frequently imagining him as Cody and treating him like Cody. This is ultimately her downfall when the Villainous Vultures get the opportunity to eliminate a Heroic Hamster of their choice, choosing Sierra for sympathy towards her desperation of wanting to be with Cody again.

Opinions
Sierra is one of my all-time favorite characters ever! The idea of making a superfan a contestant already sounds like a hilariously fun idea on paper but the actual execution was the best possible way I could imagine and more, thanks in part to Sierra's very large personality envoked on screen. I'm sure any of us, not just superfans, can relate to someone with hyper-clingy tendencies and high interest and addiction in something. We all have that one thing we're especially interested in, and with Sierra it's her ginormous dedication to Cody. Not only is she relatable to people with one or two obsessions, but she's also hugely relatable to the Total Drama fanbase. On the surface she's just some creepy obsessed stalker to Cody. But in actuality this is her greatest strength for me. She both parodies the average Total Drama superfan to a mocking degree in terms of her unhealthy obsession with the show, yet also pays homage to it with how heroic and reliable she is to the people she really cares about, eventually proving to be a well-meaning and wonderfully loyal person.

Nevertheless, even without mentioning her terrific characterization, Sierra is one of the most hilarious characters ever in my opinion, largely due to her role of being a hyper-obsessed fan who adores Cody. It's not that she loves Cody and wants to be with him. It's that she wants to make it clear her Cody love is of the ~PUREST~ and ~TRUEST LOVE~ there is!!! She goes to any means necessary of repeatedly harassing his personal space, intruding on him and temporarily traumatizing him lol. But to her credit they could've easily have just made her an antagonist creep for him to overcome or whatever, but thankfully they didn't go that route and instead balanced things out by having her always looking out for Cody and being as protective of him as possible, and had she not competed I very much doubt he'd even be alive with the amount of times she's saved his life. Regardless the horror movie-esque element of Sierra's Cody obsession could also still get very hilarious ("You're so cute when you're terrified ^_^).

In my opinion Sierra had such an intriguing psychosis to her. She's obviously highly delusional and obsessed with the idea and notion that she'll marry Cody and be with him forever and ever, but the passion and dedication she has towards it while they also show a lot of things from her perspective paves the way in making her a terrifically high-functioning spectacle of a mess on screen whilst simultaneously showing all she wants is Cod-aaay! And though she's really over-the-top and invasive of people's privacy like an unhealthy stalker is, I'd argue Sierra is one of the most selfless, loveliest, caring, and well-meaning people on the show. This is all bearing in mind she's pretty deranged and yet has those qualities. She may be super creepy to Cody but ultimately she wants to look out for him as best she can (or look for him lmao). And if you really think she was nothing more than a creepy stalker, ignoring the amount of times she's saved Cody from certain death, she also not only encouraged him to actually try in the Final 3, but sacrificed a wheelchair she was injured enough to be in just so he could use it to his advantage. As haunting as Sierra probably was to live on a plane with, it was proven various times that when the chips are down, she'll always put Cody before her, and that kind of selflessness she constantly displays makes me actually root for her, which feels all the better with how over-the-top she is on the whole lol.

Sierra's downfall even relates to Cody. She makes him a surprise birthday cake but it's so flammable that it blows up the plane and injures her too, disqualifying her from the competition for destroying Chris' jet with the cake. The old saying goes here; she lived by the sword and died by the sword, or in this case the Cody. Some haters call her a 'satellite' to Cody, and that's probably true. But the point of her stereotype was to be the obsessed uber-fan. So naturally there was bound to be a contestant she'd fawn over far more than everyone else.

Her portrayal in AS I also feel gets too much hate. Sure she didn't reach nearly as many highs as she did in World Tour, but I enjoyed the revelation she experienced of Cody withdrawal symptoms that pushed her mania over him to drastic levels, hallucinating people as him. And before people criticize the Cam-Cody thing, that was just a desperate substitute Sierra made in her head, using Cameron as a tool for it. She could've used anyone. There was even one time in which she asked Duncan if she could call him Cody. It was desperation that made her act much more outlandish than she did. Sure it was pretty cartoony and all over-the-place but that was the nature in AS and in Sierra's case it actually worked as a strength for her in my opinion since she's already an OTT character as is.

I know this is getting super long but it was really hard to make my Sierra appreciation abbreviated. I could've made this way longer so consider this the short version haha. My point is that I think Sierra owns and is a hilarious parody yet a surprisingly likeable and endearing protagonist. Apologies again for making this so long by the way

Best Season: Total Drama World Tour

Best Episode: Awwwwww, Drumheller!

Best Moment: