The contestants just *couldn't* catch a break.
The Battle for Dream Island has been going on for years, and years, and *years* now, and still it shows no signs of letting up. When that speaker box first fell out of the sky and signaled the beginning of the end, they naively thought that it was just gonna be a quick affair: they'd try their hardest to stay standing on a balance beam, and whoever was able to survive the longest would win the island. If you didn't win, tough luck; here's hoping that whoever did cared about you enough to let you in.
But they would not be let off the hook so easily; BFDI would not, in fact, last for just a single episode. Those that survived the balance beams turned out to just be the ones selected to pick the teams, the teams for a much longer, much more *painful*, competition that'll take countless amounts of time and energy away from them. Lines would be drawn in the sand, hostilities would be created from nowhere, and everyone proceeded to have a not fun time. Though they had plenty of time in-between episodes, it didn't seem like it was *remotely* close enough to allow them to rest and recuperate. Every single challenge was a stressful affair, one that took *everything* from you. And if you didn't give it your all, if you (or your team, in the earlier stages) ended up on the losing end of the battle, you'd be at risk of getting the boot. And you'd be saddled with that uncomfortable truth for *weeks*. That's already bad enough, but it also carried the risk of being thrown into a metal box and forgotten by time, overlooked by the cameras and ignored by everyone that mattered. That's... *fun* to think about.
And when the Battle for Dream Island finally came to a close, when someone was finally able to win the eponymous landmass, they *still* weren't allowed to catch their breath. They hadn't even gotten a glimpse of the thing before it just... disappeared; Leafy stole it, there was much arguing, and the hunt began. They ran around and around, in circles and circles, until the futility of the situation truly set in for them. Though they'd successfully be able to chase the island stealer out of their lives, there was no getting away from the fact that all that time spent competing, all that fighting and arguing, it'd all been for *nothing*.
In that situation of desperation, with all their efforts having been for naught, in their haste they decided that doing that *again* was the best course of action.
And so they did, and so they suffered once again. When that *also* finally came to pass without a satisfying conclusion, they finally saw reason; they decided to make the journey to Yoyle City, to set up shop there and call it home, and to *not* Battle for Anything ever again. And then that ended up making them fight over 2,763 smaller things instead of just one big thing. Life in the city eventually became a complete and utter trainwreck, and so *again* they were forced to move out and search for a new place to start a new chapter of their new life. And they'd just barely gotten comfortable *there* when some incompetent child, that terrifying algebralian, came knocking and demanded that they battle for a prize; a prize that didn't even really make much sense, mind you. The prize was... a BFDI. The competition, apparently. What does that even *mean*? How does that even work?
And then another number appeared out of nowhere, offered *another* (slightly more tangible) prize, and everyone proceeded to jump ship and start competing for that instead. Except for some, but that split is yet *another* headache that they'd just rather not get into.
Though the adrenaline forced them to keep going, though the allure of a prize such as *limitless* power gave them a reason to push on, there was only so much motivation can do, only so much those living objects could give before they snap like a fine twig. They'd burned through *three* (or four, depending on who's counting) competitions now, none of them having a good ending, and they were poised to make that four (or five, or whatever). Though the day-to-day events, the little minutiae, constantly differed, the overall strokes are all the same: they were split up into arbitrary teams, made to do a bunch of arbitrary tasks, and if they failed to do so to a satisfactory degree, as deemed by the soulless number and the horde of voters, they'd get sent to an arbitrary place where there is no escape or refuge. How *fun*.
