pleas do elaborate about courtney...not because i disagree with you i genuinely want to hear your thoughts about her
THANK YOU FOR ASKING.
So Courtney is one of the very very very few characters in Total Drama who gets character development that actually sticks. And, granted, a lot of this development isn't positive, but the fact remains that her characterization only changes in accordance with the events she experiences and the lessons she learns from such.
Almost every other Total Drama character who receives a modicum of character growth has that development wiped away for the sake of story convenience.
Leshawna learning to put aside her differences with Heather in Action? Gone by World Tour.
Cody learning to respect Gwen and her relationship with Trent? Gone.
Sierra learning to treat the people around her like, well, people instead of objects of her fixation? Gone.
Duncan's whole deal in Action was that he's more than just a rebellious chud and... Well. I've heard horror stories about All-stars.
Lindsay learning to stand up for herself and take charge in Action, proving she's more than just a dumb blonde? ... To be fair Lindsay wasn't so much reverted than outright flanderized, but you get the point.
Courtney never receives this treatment. Probably because the character she becomes is a lot more compelling as an antagonistic force than the character she started as, but the fact remains that she's allowed to keep those characteristics; The Courtney from Island was bossy and stand-offish, sure, but it wasn't until after her rigged elimination that she became outright aggressive. She changes, and those changes stick.
Her bossiness morphs into obsessive demanding, and almost every time she breaks out a legal threat she's rewarded with what she wants, or at the very least a compromise in her favour. She learns from her comeback in Action that contracts and lawyers and the threat of civil court can and will solve a lot of her problems, and this consequently worms its way into her everyday life to the point she starts writing up contracts and requirement forms for her personal relationships. Unfortunately, she never learned that trying to control your partner through legally binding contracts was absolutely insane. Mostly because Duncan kept getting back together with her before she could ruminate over the idea that she might be the problem.
Speaking of relationships, it's a given that she became a lot more lenient to rule-bending and sabotage after leaning such from Duncan. That was, like, a whole plot point in Island that follows her throughout the series. Doesn't really need to be discussed, but it would've been so easy for the writers to forget this and have Courtney go back to being straight-laced and incapable of comprehending someone cheating/stealing/bending the rules.
She also becomes increasingly more physically competent throughout the series. Island's Courtney couldn't handle the idea of green jell-o whilst World Tour's Courtney was helping Alejandro cheat in the gross-out food challenge with her "iron stomach" (I've also heard something about ice cream in All-stars??). Island's Courtney wasn't particularly athletically gifted in comparison to the rest of the cast; in Action she quadruple back-flips through a room full of lasers, and in World Tour she literally surfs down a waterfall during a volcanic eruption while singing. Does this athleticism come out of nowhere? Not exactly—she boasts about her CIT training a lot, but it isn't until the vengeance-fuelled fire is lit beneath her following her first elimination that she starts showing her capabilities rather than telling. This isn't so much a lesson she learned, but it is a consequence of her surroundings; if Harold hadn't gotten her eliminated unjustly, she prooobably wouldn't have gotten mad enough to unleash her final form.
She also notably learns not to put any stock in interpersonal relationships (outside of Duncan). Courtney always had a pretty tough time making friends in the series, Bridgette was the only girl on the Killer Bass team I recall being her friend rather than her begrudging teammate, which is mostly due to Courtney's strong personality. In Haute Camp-ture, Lindsay even goes so far as to point out that nobody likes Courtney, which she seems to take to heart. In Action, she isolates herself from the rest of the contestants and focuses solely on winning. In fact, the only time I remember her being friendly to someone else was when she was trying to form an alliance with Beth, and even that was just a means to an end rather than an actual relationship. Then in World Tour, it takes the better part of the season for her to let down her walls around Gwen, and that was swiftly thrown back in her face; she learned from Island (specifically Haute Caamp-ture) that being friendly and helpful will get her nowhere because people will dislike her regardless—look back to the literal first episode of the series, where Courtney is the first and only person who runs to assist an injured Izzy at the docks. The Courtney of later seasons would see an injured Izzy and think "good, that's one less person I need to compete against". This is learned callousness. And this persists into every season she stars in, because that lesson only ever gets reaffirmed.
I've rambled on a bit here, and I'm not sure how cohesive this is, so I'm gonna stop here. This is just from the top of my head LMAO.
