If Annabelle was curating the tapes and putting them all together, did she also make the intro music? Was she sitting in Hilltop Road playing a cello? Did she get Nikola to imitate Jon and announce the episode number and name? This is very funny to imagine.
For no reason at all I always imagine Jon upstairs when he reads Jonah’s statement. There’s a fireplace in there; this doesn’t make any sense. But that’s what I imagine.
How did I just notice now that Jonah’s ritual doesn’t mention the Eye in its list of fears (that crawls and chokes and blinds and…dies)?
There’s no sees or knows. There are only thirteen descriptions. But he wants to bring the Eye into the world, too, right? Like, I know that the Eye got to be the ruler, kind of, but it’s still there. ??? Someone smart, can you explain this?
Hello, TMA fandom! I’m trying to find a fic I really liked that I didn’t save for whatever reason. It was something to do with the Web and the lighter and Mr. Spider and all that, maybe called something like An Ode To Mr. Spider or something like that. It had really pretty prose that was almost like stream-of-consciousness, like unbelievably well-written (I really should have saved it!) But I didn’t save it.
It wasn’t much of a plot as a character (ish) study.
I know this couldn’t really work, but what if Sasha pronounced her name with the first a as in (Jon’s) ‘trap’ and the Not!Sasha pronounced her name with the first a as in (Jon’s) “bath”.
Sahsha and Sawsha, is what I’m trying to say. I think in canon it’s always one way, but it would be an interesting concept.
It was five years ago today that Jane Prentiss attacked the Magnus Institute and Sasha died.
It is also my birthday.
Also also it’s the first time July 29 falls on a Thursday during TMA’s run. And there is no more bonus content. :( Edit: there actually is. Google podcasts was being weird.
Wow, there’s a lot. The Hunt and the Slaughter have none, though the Hunt’s ritual is the Everchase. This is a long post.
Buried
The Center: 2/5 not very scary or dramatic
Choke: 1/5 feels like either the Hunt or, well, something decidedly non-eldritch
Too Close I Cannot Breathe: 4/5 very dramatic but not a good name for the entity
Forever Deep Below Creation: 5/5 good job Jon you made the best name, dramatic, descriptive, everything
Corruption
Filth: 2/5 I guess it’s evocative, but come on, Gertrude. I know you’re practical, but…
Crawling Rot: 5/5 sums up, as Jon puts it, ‘bugs and bad smells’; evokes the image of rot crawling
Dark
Mr. Pitch: 1/5 I agree with Manuela that this just isn’t scary anymore.
Forever Blind: 3/5 Dramatic? Yes. Scary? No. To be fair, it is a very one-note fear.
Desolation
I just want to point out that desolation is already dramatic, and then they made 7 other names for it. We all talk about Eye avatars being dramatic, but wow.
The Lightless Flame: 3/5 points off because it sounds like it could be about the Dark, as someone else pointed out
The Torturing Flame: 4/5 Better! More Desolation-y, less Dark!.
The Devastation: 3/5 points off for sounding too much like desolation
The Blackened Earth: 4/5 this is so dramatic
Asag: 1/5 just some obscure god no one knows about
The Ravening Burn: 2/5 I had to look up ravening. It’s similar to ravenous, meaning ferociously hungry. Good description but too obscure a word.
End
Death: 2/5 pretty literal, but better than the next one since it’s Germanic
Terminus: 1/5 too literal! That’s just…end. In Latin.
The Coming End That Waits For Us All And Cannot Be Ignored: 4/5 what the heck? What the heck? They hit us with this? After Death and Terminus? Then they just hit us with the most dramatic thing ever? Sadly, points off for being too long.
Eye
This was the only one where I was able to name all the names of the entity. What does that say about me? I don’t know.
Beholding: 3/5 Dramatic. Often used by people writing fanfics as if it were the main name, which is fine, except Jon calls it the Eye most of the time.
Ceaseless Watcher: 4/5 More dramatic! Smiting time! Also just very descriptive of the Eye.
It Knows You: 3/5 The phrase ones are not as good usually, as it’s odd as a name. But this is still fun to say dramatically.
Flesh
Viscera: 2/5 I was going to say that’s what flesh is, but viscera is organs while flesh is muscle and fat, or meat. Too Latin-y.
The Body Consumed: 2/5 I’ve never heard this one at all. But it sounds like it could be Desolation, or Corruption, or even Stranger. Too ambiguous.
Hunt, Slaughter: none
Lonely
Forsaken: 3/5 I’ve seen people use this for the Lonely’s realm, the one that Jon rescues Martin from. The Left Behind. It’s very sad. Not full marks, though.
The One Alone: 5/5 Somehow it just has the right name. I don’t know why, but that just feels like the right name. Possibly it’s because it’s one, singular, and then alone. Evocative.
Spiral
Twisting Deceit: 4/5 gets the twisty part in for the Spiral, then the lying part. Good, but not amazing. Too straightforward, since it’s the spiral.
It Is Lies: 4/5 Dramatic. I can imagine someone shouting that, or this being scrawled on the walls of Michael’s halls. (Ooh, rhymes.)
It Is Not What It Is: 4/5 Properly paradoxical. Although, it almost sounds like it could be Stranger, what with the Not!Them.
Stranger
I Do Not Know You: 3/5 Straightforward. But it’s the Stranger. It shouldn’t be straightforward.
Vast
The Falling Titan: 3/5 But see, a giant’s not falling; you are. This is like the sky eating the guy. It doesn’t quite get it right.
The Awful Deep: 4/5 Very dramatic, especially in Jon’s Statement Voice. Imagine him saying it in his Ritual Statement Voice, ooh, sends shivers down my spine. Helps that he rounds the ah in awful for whatever reason. (It helps for whatever reason—I know why he rounds the ah!)
Web
There were a few very similar ones. Also, Annabelle must really call the Web a lot of things, since I’ve heard of almost none of these, and I’m up to 167-ish.
The Great Spider: 3/5 Too literal and comprehensible.
The Mother of Puppets: 3/5 Too complicated, sort of? Why is it a mother? It’s not a puppetmaster but a puppetmaker?
The Spinner of Schemes: 4/5 Very evocative. Threads and webs and plots and whatnot.
The Story Spinner: 3/5 Not very scary.
The Hidden Machination: 3/5 My immediate thought was why one machination? Also, too Latin-y to be properly evocative.
I just realized now that YYYDDMM is not the best way to organize things. Because if you’re putting it in numerical order, a statement on January 31, 2021 comes before one on December 1, 2021.
Jon must have hated that.
Probably Gertrude did it on purpose and is cackling at us from beyond the grave.
There is an AO3 fic I just saw in the magnus archives tag. I am going to give you three words and let you figure out the rest for yourself. Because I cannot type it.
mon petit araigné
And before you say the gender is masculine when it should be feminine, 1. it fits the reference better, and 2. that is very much the point
For all of Jon’s prickliness and willingness to fire back when attacked, it’s fascinating how quick he is to drop a grudge*. The split second Melanie shows any vulnerability in TMA 63, he not only PERMANENTLY drops their feud (everything after that is 100% one-sided from her end), but he does her a favor!! No warming-up period required! Nothing asked for in return, not even an apology!
Like we have our much more drastic examples over and over through the series: Jon forgiving Basira’s treatment of him despite no apology offered, Jon insisting Georgie didn’t owe him friendship after she cut him off without warning when he needed help most, Jon saving Daisy and embracing her as a friend despite her trying to kill him and his lingering fear… But somehow, this completely mundane instant is what stands out the most to me. It’s before he loses all self-worth and values every other person above himself—this is just him, just everyday Jon.
As soon as she starts telling him about the others turning on her, he says he’s sorry for her, and commiserates (“I know what it’s like to be looked down on by your peers,” aka what she did to him from the start of their very first meeting, ironically), and turns his sights to take jabs at those who abandoned her. And then, of course, promises to get her library access like she needed. “You’re the closest thing I have to a friend, here,” she says awkwardly, and he quickly rises to the opportunity. And never goes on the attack against her again.
*s1 Martin aside, which Doylistically was established as a comedic note before Jon was even considered a character in his own right. On a Watsonian level, we could maybe argue that realizing the foolishness and harm of his grudge vs. Martin led to character development of him working against ever holding grudges again.
I totally agree! I mean, Daisy tried to kill him and they became friends (as OP said), etc. The most he ever did to someone for anything that hurt himspecifically is being rude to Martin, mostly when no one could hear him (but Annabelle I guess). And being snappish to other people as well.
But then he killed Peter Lukas when he sent Martin to the Lonely. [Edit: OP pointed out that it wasn’t *because* of that, which is very true.] I don’t think that was the intention, but it’s not like he cared. When Not!Sasha called Sasha pathetic, that’s when Jon turned right around and smote her. So basically, Jon is the kindest person you’ll meet (besides maybe the snappishness) right up until you insult/hurt his friends and it’s just great. I need some fanfic of him just going absolutely all-out furious on someone for insulting Martin at a party Somewhere Else.
Oh, and I just remembered the absolute ridiculousness of Jon asking his kidnapper (Julia in this case) if they were all right. He cares that much and I love it.
A Leitner that is all eaten by worms but if you freeze the book in a sealed bag on your fridge you can pluck the frozen worms with tweezers and read the bits that have no holes and found that is a rather dull read.
Also this is a real book that my uncle left in the fridge when I was 12. I wanted Ice-cream but all I got was a frozen, wormed, old book.
Yes, I agree. One could say that my statement would begin with a “there’s a book with worms on my fridge…”
hi! what the hell?
I wrote up a statement about it. Couldn’t help it. (It’s in the next paragraph, if you’re looking at this from the “n notes” thing on the post.) TW canon-typical Corruption, grossness, eating worms
Statement of dani-r, regarding a worm-infested book in their fridge. Original statement given July 15, 2021. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
I was twelve when I first encountered the Crawling Rot. I pity my younger self: alone, naïve. They didn’t know of the love they would get and the unconditional acceptance and the feeling of being needed. I was young then. I did not know the happiness I would receive that day and forever.
I was alone one day and wanted ice cream. Being a child of my own whimsy, prone to simply doing, I got up from the couch and walked into the kitchen, opening the freezer. When I opened it, among the frozen dinners and peas and the icebox, I saw a book. It was old, the side of the pages brown. I took it out, curious but not altogether surprised.
Well, I was surprised it was in the freezer, but not surprised to see an old book in my house. My family included a lot of dealers in old books, and I myself had a few antique tomes in my bedroom. And antique tome was certainly what this book was. It was heavy and large, the cover thick and green. It was sealed in a bag, which I opened up. As I opened the book itself, I realized that it was full of holes.
This was not an uncommon sight for me. ‘Bookworms’, or, really, larvae of moths or beetles, will often burrow into and eat the pulp of old books. But I realized, fanning the pages to look through it, that the worms were still in there. I must have shuddered in disgust. I didn’t particularly like worms—not then, anyway.
I wanted to read the book, though—I might as well—so I got a pair of tweezers and pulled them all out. They were frozen stiff, cold but slightly slimy.
I left them on the kitchen counter and started to read the book. Piecing together the bits where there were no holes, I found it a rather dull read. I think something about a monk who found a giant, empty cocoon and got inside, emerging as a moth. It was grotesque, and it could have been truly scary, but it wasn’t. It was far too dry to scare me.
The garage opened, signaling my parents’ return. I had the sudden urge to put the worms back into the book, so I did. Dumping them in, I closed the book on them and ran to my room, hiding it. I don’t know why I did that, but that was just the beginning.
As the worms unfroze in the book, now sitting on my bookshelf warm and dry, they grew and burrowed and made their pale, pulsing path through the paper. They nestled, shriveled, into tiny balls at the ends of their tunnels. They had a place and a job and a purpose. They belonged in that book. And I wanted to belong too.
They called to me, inviting me to belong as well. If only I…what? I would stare at that book for hours, listening to its enthralling call. I took out one of the worms with tweezers again, and it crawled over my desk. It was pale and warm when I touched it, warm and slimy like a tongue. They smelled of rot. Of course, they smelled of rot. The pages were rotting under the worms’ warm waste, growing mold. That book was molding green and brown and yellow, sickly colors spreading from each hole the worms made. The smell was hot and heavy, cloying and clinging to the nose. It filled my nose with the unquenchable stink I have grown to love. I inhaled deeply the fumes of that book.
Of course, people wondered why I stank. I didn’t care. I didn’t have time for them, for anyone, not even my parents. They didn’t love me like the worms did. The only real attention I would give to other kids was to show them the book, smiling widely while I asked them to guess what I found in my fridge and repulsing them with the rancid, rotting book with its white, writhing worms. It filled me with a sort of glee, that I could make people afraid. But that was not my main concern.
For days I tried in vain to join those worms. They did not burrow into me like they did the book. I even slept with it in my arms, lovingly lulling it into letting its worms corkscrew into my soft skin. It didn’t work. Nothing worked. It was like they weren’t interested in me, like they didn’t want me.
No, they did, the worms reassured me. They always did and always would.
Then, how? I wondered. How could I give myself to them? I didn’t go to school anymore. I didn’t leave my room; all the meals my parents gave me were molding. A thin green fuzz grew over that hamburger; out of that plum spilled ants by the hundred. Only when they were black and blue with decay and disuse and death did I eat them, savoring the filth. I smelled wonderful—just like the worms. The glorious and gross larvae I so loved. But they still would not take me. They would not take me! What had I to do?
I tried to consume them so that they would have no choice but to eat me from inside, but they wriggled out of my grasp every time they got close to my mouth. I tried to lure them by putting pages on my skin, sleeping covered in hole-ridden, thin paper, but they never took the bait, only eating the pages. I was almost angry at this point, angry at the worms. They would not take me? Then I would have to take them. All of them.
I picked it up, the peach fuzz of mold and the slimy skin of larvae caressing my fingers, the smell of rot filling my nostrils like the mountain air. And I took a bite.
My teeth easily bit through the worn cover and the onion-skin paper, tearing off a chunk of wood. It tasted sour from the molded pages, the fuzz stroking my tongue, and a bit earthy, like mushrooms. I bit again, and again, and again, the smell of disease and putrefaction wrapping me in a layer of sickness, even getting under my fingernails like tar.
I bit into worms a few times, too. They offered a slight resistance to being bitten, like a tapioca ball the moment before you pop it, and the insides were a bit like Jell-O, if Jell-O were pulsing and twisting and alive. They were slimy on my tongue, wet and warm like a dog’s tongue on your hand. And they tasted of death and decay, the horrid, fetid stink filling me with a sweet joy.
It took me hours to eat the whole thing, but when I was done, I felt such happiness. It was glorious; I had done it. I finally belonged. I was finally needed. And when they didn’t need me anymore, when they had eaten me wholly, I would be long dead. And I would be glad to die for the worms. I am a home.
There was a book in my freezer. It soothed the longing in my soul.
I have a theory about why Georgie’s encounter with the End cauterized her fear. So in one of the Q&A’s (season 4?), Jonny and Alex talk about how you would remove yourself from different fears, like blinding for the Eye. And they say for the End you would just have to not care anymore and not fear the End. Which is as close to a canon answer for that as we’re going to get.
And it sounds like that’s what happened to Georgie, sort of? That she just….didn’t care. Except that she would have to be marked by the End in order to remove herself from it. So…maybe she was. Maybe the encounter with the End somehow involved a choice to remove herself that she didn’t know about?
Okay, I just looked at the transcript. It says that Georgie got really depressed afterwards. And her friend who was also whispered to just lay there to die. But she didn’t. Maybe she made some choice to simply not care anymore and life went on.
It also brings up the question of when Georgie was marked by the End. When did she have a near-death experience? Maybe someone should write a fic about it. Maybe I will.
Here is something really weird and funny: I think maybe in MAG 66: Held In Customs, which is the one with the guy in the buried crate, Breekon or Hope says something like “the Buried doesn’t usually let people out.”
Riiiiiight. Tell that to Buried Crate Guy, indirectly Joshua Gilliespie, Karolina Gorka (Buried Train Lady), Jon, and Daisy, who all got out of the Buried.
I’m now looking at the wiki. One person survived Lost John’s Cave, but yes, not the other one. I guess Dig Guy just kept digging? That dude survived the flood around his house.
I don’t know, obviously it’s survivorship bias, but only two people (one in the cave and one in the coffin when Daisy gave her statement) got claimed by the Buried and actually died.
As in, The Magnus Archives-The Great British Baking Show AU, Chapter 2.
This is about seven pages on Word, so, you know, pace yourself. I noted good spots to take a break in the chapter. I hope you like it!
Chapter 2: Biscuit
Week
Jon stands
at his station after saying hello to some of the bakers. Granted, he didn’t
initiate any greetings with them, but he still said hello back, and that was
something, wasn’t it? After all, he could have just as easily not. It was odd,
the things you can just do. He can just punch Manuela, his table
partner, in the face if he wanted to. Not that he would! But that’s the point.
What’s stopping him?
Well. He
doesn’t want to hurt a stranger. But he can really just do anything. He
thinks he likes Manuela a bit, though, actually. Respects her, anyway. They are
both very precise bakers. He can appreciate that.
“Are you
philosophizing?” she asks him now. Jon is startled out of his philosophical
reverie.
“Oh, uh,
yes. I-I suppose I am. How did you know?”
Manuela
shrugs. “I know that expression well enough from my own face, I guess. Oh,
look: I think Michael and Helen are going to make some spiral-related puns
now,” she says, pointing to the front of the tent. Jon laughs. Sure enough,
there they are: the headache-inducing cohosts.
“Good
morning!” says Michael. He is dressed in a deep blue suit jacket, a bright
cotton-candy pink T-shirt, and floral swim trunks. The weather isn’t really hot
enough for swim trunks, Jon muses. “Welcome to Week Two of the Great British
Bake-Off! I hope you had a good week, and that you practiced baking a lot,
because you’ll need all the practice you can get.” His blond hair is straight
on one side and curled on the other, like half of his hair curled in fright
from some eldritch horror while the other half leaned away. Or perhaps towards
it, like an enraptured devotee.
Jon
wondered if his semester studying Romantic poetry had rubbed off on him. He
didn’t usually think in quite so Gothic of metaphors.
“Don’t we
all love biscuits? I know I do! Sweet, savory, spicy, salty—well, maybe not
salty. But we want you to make 36 savory biscuits for us and the judges to
savor, preferably with cheese,” says Helen, not laughing at her terrible joke.
In Jon’s opinion, this makes it worse, as now it simply appears that she is
being redundant for no reason. She is wearing a lime green denim jacket over a
vertical-striped black and white polo shirt and two skirts, as well as bright
red foot-high flats. Jon didn’t even know they made those. (The heel is
a foot high, but the toe is also raised a foot high, hence foot-high flats.) “You
have two hours. Now, bake, bakers, bake!”
Simon is
stirring blue cheese and mashed-up blueberries together as Elias walks up.
“Simon,
what…exactly are you making?” he says, careful to not sound disgusted. Simon
smiles.
“I’m making
blue cheese and blueberry biscuits. You see, blue is my favorite color, since
it’s the color of the sky, and I love the sky!” Simon scoops the blue mixture
into each biscuit and rolls each up.
“I see. Are
you…quite sure this will, ah, taste good?” says Elias. Simon shrugs.
“I don’t
know. But I’m having fun, and that’s what matters.” Elias backs away slowly,
which is the second time he’s done that in two weeks. These contestants are
weird these days. And he can’t even chalk it up to kids these days as he
usually did, as Simon is older than he.
Simon
rather thought Elias was being too harsh. After all, the sky was beautiful. It
also tasted good when he fell through it, like open spaces and screams and pine.
So why wouldn’t these biscuits both taste good and look beautiful?
He explains
all this to his table partner, Agnes. Agnes looks into the bowl and sniffs it.
“Mmm.
Doesn’t smell very good. But who knows? Maybe it’ll taste good.” She returns to
her chili cheese biscuits.
“Hello,”
says Gertrude as Manuela uses a graduated cylinder to measure out her flour. No
one knows where she got it from. She mutters something about complex
carbohydrates and electron shells. She does not notice Gertrude
until Jon gently taps her arm and points up at her.
“Oh! Um,
hi. I’m making biscuits.”
“Yes, I can
see that. What flavor?” says Gertrude. Manuela meets her eyes, unblinking.
“No flavor.
Just biscuit. You see, biscuits are a lot like the universe. Much like darkness
is the universe’s natural, beautiful state, biscuits are naturally empty and
flavorless dough. Without flavor, there is baked dough. But without baked
dough, there is no food at all. Thus, I will serve biscuits in their natural
state, and they will be beautiful like the encroaching dark.” Manuela stares
into Gertrude’s dumbfounded face. Jon, too, stares at Manuela, biscuits
forgotten. Her tone had changed from her usual quick, light matter-of-fact-ness
to something reverent and terrifying, her voice deeper and resonant.
“All right,
then,” says Gertrude. Manuela turns back to her biscuits, muttering something else.
“Manuela?”
he says quietly, nervously. Manuela looks up at him. “Are you sure that’s a
good idea, quality-wise? I mean, I-I respect your decisions, but it seems like
one you’d regret. I’ve been through enough to know.”
“Oh, thank
you, but no. I won’t regret this decision,” she says, smiling, her voice back
to its normal register. “You’ll see.” Jon shrugs and returns to his neglected
biscuits.
“Basira!
Hello there,” says Helen. “What are you making for us today?” Basira looks up
from her food. One hand has found its way into Daisy’s, but Helen doesn’t dare
mention it. The camera notices, though. The camera notices all.
“Oh, um.
I’m making biscuits with pastry dough, and they’re going to have cheese and
chives in them. I hope they’ll be good. What about you—” Basira blushes
intensely. Helen smiles graciously.
“I’m not
making any biscuits! It’s a great system I’ve set up, you know: you bakers make
biscuits all day and I get to eat them!” Basira whispers her thanks for Helen’s
tactful yes-and.
“What do we
get out of it?” says Daisy, in an indecipherable tone.
“The
satisfaction of a job well done!” replies Helen, spreading her arms wide to
indicate all the bakers hard at work. She moves on to ask Daisy about her
biscuits, which are poppy seed and rosemary.
“That was
very nice of Helen,” says Basira later. “Somehow I didn’t know she could be so
tactful.”
“Mmm,”
replies Daisy eloquently. “Probably has lots of practice.”
Their hands
are still entangled under the table.
“Alright,
bakers!” says Michael a while later. “You have made biscuits! Now Gertrude and
Elias have—I mean, get—because they definitely haven’t been bound here
by some kind of eldritch ritual that means they can’t quit—they get to
taste your biscuits!”
“Mmm,” says
Gertrude as she tastes Manuela’s biscuit. “How does this taste like both everything
and nothing until I think about it, and then it becomes one or the other? Points
for breaking the rules of physics, I guess?” Manuela does not say that this is
what she is an expert on. It is not the time to brag about her scientific
expertise.
“Jon, this
is a very well-done sandwich biscuit. My only question is: why this is sour
cream instead of cream cheese?” says Elias. Jon’s eyes grow wide. “Apologies
for the deception, but I wanted to make sure you weren’t complacent. It tastes
brilliant.” Jon sighs in relief. It didn’t make sense that he’d been so
worried—he hadn’t gotten out any sour cream, nor had any other baker. But that
comment had scared him a bit.
“Melanie,
this biscuit is good. Or, it would be, if you had not peeled the apples and
included the bare peels in the biscuit. It makes these a bit of a choking
hazard, I’m afraid. A bit alarming how the peel is coming out of the biscuit
like blood or something, too.” Melanie wishes Elias had eaten the biscuit, not
Gertrude, if the peels were a choking hazard.
“Ah,
Basira. What have you got there for me? Mmm, quite good. I think I’ll be taking
all of these, thank you very much.” Elias smiles at Basira. Basira smiles
weakly back. “In all seriousness, these biscuits are a bit overbaked, actually.
But they’re otherwise good.” Basira nods. An overbaked pastry biscuit was a bit
gross, now that she thought about it. She had worried they would be too
undercooked, so she had overcorrected.
They
continue tasting. Simon’s blueberry and blue cheese biscuits actually turn out
great, to his own surprise. Agnes’s biscuits are so spicy that the judges have
to drink the milk she had ready for them. Daisy’s are a bit simple, good but
bland. They look quite nice, though, with scalloped edges.
Jon wonders
who would scallop a biscuit. Daisy, apparently. Martin wonders why Melanie’s
presentation skills are so bad. And he knows Melanie’s eyesight isn’t great,
but there’s a difference between fine and it looks bloody.
“Well,
bakers! It is time for your next challenge, where you will follow a recipe of
Gertrude’s very own! You will make Florentines, 36 of them in fact!” says
Helen. Everyone laughs despairingly. “I know, what a twist—something
challenging!” Helen’s grin does not waver. Jon snorts at the sarcasm. No one
else laughs.
“These
Florentines must be very good to impress Gertrude, since it is her own recipe.
Bakers, get ready, get set, twist those lacy Florentines!” says Michael.
Jon doesn’t
like Florentines particularly. He’s always thought that fruit and nuts have no
place in crispy biscuits. But he will follow this vague recipe if it helps him
win fame, glory, and a cake stand.
He realizes
that the chocolate on the bottom of a Florentine forms a sort of zig-zag
pattern. Looking around, Jon finds people using pipettes to pattern their
chocolate.
Suddenly,
he remembers, as if it was dropped in his head by the powers that be, that it
is done with a fork. So do it with a fork he does. He isn’t sure where he saw
this done, just that it was done. Maybe Gertrude had done it on her cooking
show. That happens to him sometimes, where memories will come unbidden into his
head from who knows where.
Daisy uses
a cutter to cut her Florentines into perfect circles. She has made it her
personal goal in this competition to make everything she bakes look
presentable. Not necessarily amazing, just attractive. So, she used a cutter
for her Florentines.
Basira
looks over at her cutting and nods approvingly. She does not ask to use the
cutter. She knows that the answer will be no. She does, however, spot
Jon using a fork for his chocolate patterning and recalls his technical skill
at baking, so she grabs a fork and uses it to pattern her chocolate.
Daisy
copies her, drawing zig-zags across her chocolate with the tines of a fork.
Jon seems
to notice it (somehow? Basira is behind him) and turns around, looking at the
forks in Daisy and Basira’s hands. Jon looks at Basira. Basira raises her
eyebrows at Jon. Jon shrugs and turns back.
Melanie
enjoys chopping things. She expertly chops the fruit and nuts into small pieces
and pours them into her biscuit dough. Martin watches in awe until Melanie
catches him in the act.
“What?” she
asks, voice softening by the time the t rolls around in the syllable.
“Oh, um,
nothing! It was just, uh, I was so impressed that you chopped those so fast.
You seem to, uh, really enjoy it!” he says.
“Thanks.
I’ve been doing it ever since I was three. Of course, I was cutting cream
cheese and whipped cream with a plastic knife back then, but still. It was the
first thing my mom ever taught me: ‘Always know how to chop things. You never
know when you might need that skill.’”
“Oh. I see.
Has that skill ever served you outside of cooking?” says Martin. Melanie shakes
her head.
“Oh, no,
no. No, it hasn’t. But maybe someday…” Martin nods at this as Melanie trails
off.
The
Florentines are lined up in a row in front of the bakers, and Gertrude and
Elias sample some from each plate.
“Looks like
the lacing isn’t right here,” says Gertrude. “Someone didn’t do it with a fork,
I think. And that someone hasn’t been watching my cooking show.”
“This
biscuit is indelible, and no, I do not mean inedible. I shall never forget the taste
of this biscuit. Stunning,” says Elias.
Eventually,
the judges taste them all, and a final placement is determined.
“In last
place, this one,” says Gertrude. Agnes raises her hand. They were too
overcooked, she knew…
Melanie
took a surprising third place. Jon took second, and Annabelle took first for
her stunning patterning on the chocolate. It made you want to look at it
forever.
Martin’s
Florentines were not the prettiest this time. In his defense, he barely knew
what a Florentine was. Melanie had had to explain what they would look
like. They had still tasted good.
Manuela’s
Florentines were a bit too chocolate-y, with hardly any biscuit. They looked
fine, but they didn’t taste much like Florentines. Simon’s Florentines were too
thin, with hardly any substance to them. He also forgot to pattern his
chocolate.
After the
bakers have left for the day, Helen and Michael sit around the ‘gossip table’,
as Helen call it. They ‘gossip’ about who is doing badly and well so far.
“Well, I
think that Manuela did very well with the savory biscuits, but then went a
little rogue with the Florentines. It was a surprising deviation from her
normal quality of work,” says Elias. “Jon is a very technically skilled baker,
as always.”
“Yes, that
is true. It seems like in this round, Melanie is getting better and Martin is
getting a little worse. Annabelle is doing wonderful work as always. As for
Daisy and Basira, I think they need to distinguish themselves a little. They’re
a bit too alike to last in the later rounds.”
“I agree.
Simon is not doing well, but then again, I don’t think he’s trying very hard.
As for Agnes, it’s hard to tell whether she’ll do well or poorly in the end.
She’s very middle-of-the-road.”
“Her ideas
are usually quite intriguing, and do make for interesting baked goods, though.”
[This is a good place
to stop if you need a break.]
“Hello
again, bakers!” says Helen the next day. Jon stares at her bright orange
earrings, from which drape her shirt and her pants, both bright green. (She’s
wearing them—they are just connected to her earrings.) This is too much this
early in the day, even for a morning person like Jon. “Welcome to the
showstopper challenge of Biscuit Week, where you will make a scene out of
biscuits. Any kind of scene will do, like a rocket ship, or a submarine, or a
cottage in Scotland.” That seemed specific, notes Jon. He sighs. Fine art is
not his forte. Art in general is, in fact, not his forte. His decorating had
taken the utmost concentration to come out prettily.
“You know
what to do,” says Michael. “You have four hours. Now, bake and build those
dioramas! It’s like primary school all over again.” Jon shudders at the memory.
He is glad, though, to have four hours. “And don’t forget to make them taste
good, too!”
“Hello,
Martin. What scene are you planning on building?” asks Michael, coming up to
Martin. Martin blinks and rubs his forehead after seeing what Michael is
wearing. He is wearing a neon pink crop top over a black polo shirt, as well as
pants that look like two barbershop poles.
“I, um, I’m
wearing—I mean, what are you wearing? I mean, why are—ah!” Martin puts his face
in his hands, embarrassed. He’s usually prepared for Michael’s clothing, but
Helen’s was so weird today that he was distracted by it earlier, and this is
the first time he’s really looked at Michael today.
“You know
me, Martin: always the stylish one,” Michael says, grinning.
“Um, yeah,”
Martin stutters out. “I’m making a cozy cottage in Scotland, like Helen said? I
had the idea before, sort of, but I just like the idea of a snowy little
outdoors scene, with a gingerbread biscuit house and marshmallow snow, you
know?”
Michael
nods. “Sounds great,” he says.
“Hello,
Annabelle! I don’t think I’ve talked to you this entire competition!” says
Helen. Annabelle thinks for a minute, stopping her baking.
“No, I
suppose not. At least not in front of the cameras. Well, hello then, Helen,”
says Annabelle.
“What are
you making for us? Will it be something to do with spiders?” Annabelle laughs
and shakes her head.
“No, not
this time. I’m changing it up, actually. It’s going to be something to do with
spiders.” She says this very drily. Jon laughs from somewhere behind her. He
always seems to hear everyone’s jokes, somehow. It’s almost become a running
joke in of itself. “I’m making a loom out of a biscuit, and the wool will be
marshmallow fluff, or whatever that’s called. There will be chocolate spiders
crawling around the loom.”
“That
sounds very cool, Annabelle! But don’t you think spiders every time might get a
bit old after a while?”
“No. Why
would it?” Annabelle asks innocently. Helen shrugs.
“Hello
there, Daisy,” says Elias. He sets his elbows on the opposite side of the table
from where Daisy is standing. “What are you making?”
“I’m making
a forest. The trees are pistachio and coffee. I’m also making a fox and a hound
from pieces of biscuits. I am kind of having to carve out the dough myself,
since there aren’t any fox or dog cookie cutters. But that’s fine.”
“I see. I
will be quite intrigued to see and eat your diorama.” Daisy nods.
“Yeah.
Better than in primary school, since we didn’t get to eat them after we made
them.” She chuckles. “Shoebox dioramas…” Elias nods. Privately, he wonders at
the silly things public school kids do.
Four hours
go a lot quicker than Jon would have liked. Still, he is able to finish.
Manuela helps him a little bit, since she has a steadier hand than he does.
Ever since that horrid wasps’ nest he’d found in his attic…well, let’s just say
his limbs were never the same again.
She’s made
a diorama of space. What she’s done is stand a bunch of shortbread biscuits up
and glaze them in chocolate, sticking coconut bits in for stars. It’s quite a
nice idea, but Jon wonders if it’s not too two-dimensional. Not that he would
say that out loud.
Everyone
brings their biscuit dioramas up to the judges, one by one.
“Jon, this
is very nice. Very creative, and let’s see if it tastes good too.” Gertrude
tastes a bite of Jon’s biscuit book. He made an open book out of two very large
white-chocolate-covered biscuits over two large biscuits that make the cover.
In the middle, he stood up a few biscuit trees. “Oh, yes, this is well-done.”
Jon smiles a relaxed smile for perhaps the first time in the entire
competition. It soon vanishes, but it was there.
“Ah,
excellent work, Annabelle. An interesting thing to make out of biscuits, a
loom. But you’ve done it well. And these biscuits snap quite nicely, good,”
says Elias. Annabelle nods. “Don’t you think all the spiders are going to get
old at some point?” Annabelle shrugs at this.
“Maybe they
will. And maybe they won’t. You never know.”
“This is a
very quaint scene you’ve made here, Martin. In a good way. It’s cozy.” Gertrude
munches a biscuit off the house Martin made. “Mmm, a nice snap on this biscuit.
But it is a little too hard, actually. Remember that you aren’t actually trying
to make hard gingerbread.” Martin nods.
Agnes’s
campfire scene is declared a little messy. The fire seems to have spilled over
its base onto the logs beside it, sending melted caramel and food coloring
where it shouldn’t be. However, it does taste quite good. Manuela’s scene is
declared a little too flat, but the biscuits are fine. And Daisy’s trees
actually fall over when the scene is placed on the judges’ table. She did not
use enough fondant, apparently.
Melanie did
not use homemade fondant. This earned a disapproving look from Gertrude.
Simon’s scene is a little too simple, as he just made a blue sky that didn’t
stand up.
“So,” Helen
says later, “who’s our top three and bottom three after the week?”
“Hmm…I
think that Simon, Melanie, and Agnes are near the bottom. Manuela has also
struggled this week, but she did superbly in Cake Week, so I’m loath to
eliminate her just yet.”
“We will
have to see, as you say, Gertrude. As for the top three, Annabelle did very
well, as she did last week. Jon and Martin both improved, especially Jon. So
have both Daisy and Basira. The actual top three might be Annabelle, Jon, and
Basira, in my opinion.”
“Well,
bakers. It is my turn to announce our Star Baker! This person wowed us with
their technical ability this week, and they made a biscuit diorama that would
be just as fun to read as to eat! Jon, you are our Star Baker!” says Michael.
Jon’s eyes grow wide with delight. Martin sees this and thinks it is very cute
to see Jon smiling like a kid on Christmas.
Everyone is
thinking this (if only in an aesthetic-attraction way), since Jon’s eyes are large
and kind of cute.
“And I have
the solemn duty of telling you who will be eliminated. That person is Simon,”
says Helen. Simon does not seem very surprised or upset. He accepts hugs from
everyone anyway, even if he doesn’t really like them. He prefers open spaces.
“That’s it
for another week of the Great British Bake-Off!” says Helen. “And now,
we’d like to thank our sponsor, Mr. Jurgen Leitner. Ever want a book that makes
you disappear? Or maybe one that makes you want to dig endlessly? Well, want no
longer! The Library of Jurgen Leitner has all those books and more. Just call
555-LEITNER today or go to leitnerlibrary.com for more information. That’s
L-E-I-T-N-E-R.
“As always,
we’d also like to thank our editor, Miss Sasha James, and our producer, Mr. Tim
Stoker. And a big thanks goes to Mrs. Georgie Barker for letting us use her
haunted land. Make sure to check out her podcast, What The Ghost?!
“Thanks for
watching! It Knows You, so feel free to share your deepest fears and
embarrassing secrets! There’s no harm when we already know them.” Helen smiles
directly at the camera.
Okay, this is a TMA/Great British Bake-Off AU that I made, inspired by a few others that I’ve seen. Since I want there to be one that goes through the whole show (and by the way, I completely understand why there aren’t any that do), I decided to write it myself. And I don’t have an AO3. So this is the first chapter. It’s about 4.6K words long so…put time aside to read it?
“Welcome, bakers, to Cake Week!” says the cohost of The
Great British Bake-Off, Michael. He appears to be wearing a violently pink
button-down and striped pants, but Jon can’t tell whether the stripes are blue
and black or white and gold. And the pink shirt gives him a bit of a headache.
“This week,
you will bake cakes for us. Wow, who would have guessed? Not me, that’s for
sure. Not me.” Helen isn’t any easier to look at. She has neon green hair that
appears to move more than should be physically possible from just her own
movements, as well as a violently orange dress with chartreuse spirals all over
it. Jon could swear the spirals are moving, though he knows that that’s simply
an illusion. With certain designs that were visually unsettling enough, they
will appear to pulse or ripple.
“Anyway,
for the signature challenge, you will be making your own take on Swiss rolls,
something that hits close to home for you in a special way,” says Michael.
“Or shall
we say, your own twist!” says Helen. She starts to laugh. The sound is
unsettling. Jon glances around to find his fellow contestants similarly
unsettled. One woman is glaring at Helen like she wants to murder her. She has
blue hair and is two inches taller than Jon, or rather, 5’4”. Helen finishes
laughing, to the relief of all. “Please welcome our judges, Gertrude Robinson
and Elias Bouchard!”
An elderly
woman with her hair in a tight bun and her mouth in a tight smile walks in,
accompanied by a tall man with dark hair. The woman looks like the kind of
teacher that would give you detention for daring to ask for a bathroom break,
while the man looks as though someone melded the faces of the richest
forty-year-old white men into one smug face.
Gertrude,
Jon knows, is the head chef at a three-star restaurant. Only once in her tenure
has Michelin ever given Robinson de Luxe less than three stars (it was two
stars), when she was 25 and had just become the head chef, and her response was
to fire the entire cooking staff and hire all new chefs.
Elias is
the top food critic in the United Kingdom. Legend has it he once left a
restaurant in disgust because a single bay leaf was out of place on a dish.
Whether it’s true or not, it doesn’t make Jon feel any less nervous. He reminds
himself that the judges know these are regular people, good bakers or not. They
will be nice.
Gertrude
stares at the bakers, not smiling. Elias gives them a little wave. The wave
feels so smug, Jon is irritated. The blue-haired woman’s glare is now focused
on Elias. Elias seems unperturbed. Jon fixes one of his own (reportedly
withering) glares on Elias.
“All right,
bakers! Time to spiral into chaos! Start now!” says Helen. An odd choice of
words, but probably a fair prediction of what would happen. They all had two
and a half hours to make a Swiss roll. That would certainly lead to chaos.
“What are
you making?” says Michael. Manuela Domínguez is a short Spanish woman with her
hair in two braids further tied back into a high ponytail. She is currently
pressing blackberries to get a dark-purplish jelly. Her movements are
impressively brisk and methodical, and she looks at the berries with such focus
that she doesn’t hear Michael at first.
“Ah!” she
says when Michael waves his hand in front of her face. “Geez, don’t do that.
What am I making? That’s what you’re going to ask, I assume. Yes?” Without
waiting for Michael’s answer, she continues. “I’m making a
dark-chocolate-blackberry filling. I’ll put blackberries on top of the roll as
well.”
“Interesting
combination. I’ll be interested to see how that turns out,” says Michael,
chuckling to himself for some reason. Manuela doesn’t get the joke, if there is
one. “Why does this cake have special meaning to you?” Manuela looks up
abruptly, causing 1 extra grain of flour to fall into her measuring cup. She
now has 3938 grains of flour in her cup instead of 3937, and she is glaring at
Michael with eyes that seem much too dark.
“Why do you
care—I mean,” she says, taking a breath and plucking out a grain of flour with
tweezers, “this is a cake I’d always make for the people at my church, the
People’s Church of the—” The rest is bleeped out, but if you watch her mouth
closely, Manuela appears to say the vine ghost or something like that.
Michael nods. Manuela continues measuring ingredients with mathematical
precision as Michael walks away. She doesn’t think she likes Michael very much.
“Hello,
there!” says an old man gleefully. He is smiling widely at the prospect of
baking and is wearing a sky-blue button-down shirt and khakis. Simon Fairchild
is shooting compressed air into his dough as Helen walks up.
“Hello!” says
Helen, also smiling. Simon’s happiness is contagious, apparently. “What are you
making?”
“Well, I’m
making a blueberry Swiss roll with white chocolate chips on top. You see, my
family loves skydiving and anything having to do with the sky. It’s been that
way for hundreds of years! This cake is an ancient family recipe. Of course,
the compressed air was only added in the 19th century, and the
actual recipe is for a standard cake, not a roll, but the blueberries and
chocolate chips are the same. The blue is for the sky, and the white is for
clouds, if you couldn’t tell.” Simon throws blueberries into his batter with
reckless abandon.
“It looks
like you’re having fun, and that’s what matters, I suppose. Just don’t forget
to impress the judges as well as yourself.”
“Duly
noted, Helen. Duly noted.” He nods.
“Agnes.
What are you making?” Gertrude’s voice surprises Agnes, as she sounds vaguely
upset by Agnes’s stirring. Since she’s doing it with oven mitts on, this seems
reasonable, so she shrugs it off.
Agnes Montague
looks either eighteen or seventy depending on which way you look at her. She
has long red hair and is wearing a maroon shirt and blue pants that look like
they’re made of asbestos.
“I’m making
a cake with salsa inside that will be flambéed.” She says this very quietly, so
that the cameraman has to lean quite far in to pick her voice up. Gertrude
almost looks surprised.
“Huh.
Interesting. A gutsy move for sure,” she says. Agnes nodded.
“Yeah, my
uncle Arthur really likes spicy cake. I make it for him on his birthday, since
I’m the only one he knows who can get the flambé right.” Gertrude nods and
walks away.
Later,
Agnes will take her cake out of the oven and wave her hand over it, a flambé
somehow…appearing there.
The
blue-haired woman from before chops up some strawberries, her knife flying
across the cutting board. Elias walks up to her, and when she sees him, she
nearly stabs him.
“My,
Melanie. You had best be careful there. Wouldn’t want to stab one of the
judges, would you?” His voice is calm and very smug, as usual. Melanie King glares
at him.
“No. No, I
wouldn’t. I’m making a strawberry Swiss roll with pecans on top. My gran used to
make it all the time. I got her recipe. Now I make it all the time, since she
died.”
“Okay,
then. Good to know. I’m excited to see how it will taste. It’s a bit
unoriginal, so it has to be especially good.”
“Good to
know,” repeats Melanie with absolutely no inflection in her voice. She goes
back to chopping strawberries at blinding speed.
“You have
ten minutes left, bakers! Put the finishing touches on your rolls, make sure
those spirals are excellent, and your rolls will be better than Swiss chocolate!”
says Helen. The bakers collectively start to move faster. “Get it? Because
they’re Swiss rolls? Never mind.” No one responds, not even Michael, who is
currently stealing marshmallows from someone’s table.
Once
everyone’s cakes are ready, Gertrude and Elias come around to try them.
“Annabelle,
that is a gorgeous design, but your filling tastes oddly…dusty. Not the best
flavors,” says Elias. “Perfect spiral, though.” Annabelle’s cake is decorated
with icing in the shape of webs in intricate patterns. There are cobwebs in the
filling. Annabelle eyes the judges with a blank expression on her face.
“Mmm. Do
you know, Agnes, that wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. You may have something here
with your spicy, flambéed cake,” says Gertrude. Agnes beams.
“Well, you
have a fabulous spiral here. And…ah, yes, the taste is very good. I like the
orange-chocolate filling very much, actually. Well done,” says Elias. Jon nods
and mutters his thanks, eyes fixed on his cake. He has managed to spiral his
cake with five layers instead of the more-doable four.
“Jane,
I’m…frankly disappointed. Your Swiss roll is quite cracked and look here: the
white chocolate is oozing out of the roll. The flavors, though, are all right.
Nice balance between the honey and tart blueberries.” Jane nods. She looks a
little sad. A bee lands on her ear and seems to whisper words of comfort to
her, after which she looks less sad. The bee had given her the fresh honey.
It goes on
like this. Manuela’s cake is very precise, and the flavors come out exactly how
they’re supposed to. It’s almost too perfect. Melanie’s cake is a little dry,
but the strawberries help make the cake quite pleasant to eat anyway. She
rolled her cake a little too tightly, and the strawberries ooze out and look
like blood. Melanie is oddly pleased by this. The judges are not.
“Elias,
Gertrude,” Helen says, once they’re away from the bakers, who are taking a
lunch break, “who is looking good and who is looking bad after the very first
cake?”
“Well,”
says Elias, “I thought that Jon’s cake was exquisite, and so was Manuela’s, if
a bit too perfect. Basira’s cake was also very well done.”
“Agreed. I
also liked Agnes’s cake, although more for the risk she took than the taste of
it. I think that Melanie’s roll was a bit rushed and overcooked. Simon’s roll
was falling to pieces, but it was very light and airy. I suppose that is to be
expected when he put compressed air into his cake. I think it’s a bit too soon
to tell who is doing poorly or well so far, though,” says Gertrude.
“Welcome back! I hope you all had a
good lunch, and that there were no sudden twists, bends, or curves in your time
spent eating. Oh, who am I kidding? I like a good twist!” says Helen, rather
cryptically. Jon wishes she would get to the point. He doesn’t like surprises,
twists, or even bendy roads.
“Anyway, for the technical challenge,
you will be following a recipe of Gertrude’s very own making.” Gertrude nods like
a wise turtle. Jon can’t get the image out of his head and has to bite his lip
to keep from smiling. “You will be making a cherry cake from a quite minimal
recipe,” continues Michael. That seemed contradictory to baking, which required
a certain precision and exactitude or else the baked good in question would be
a disaster. It was right up Jon’s alley.
Baking, at least. Not this
challenge, or so it seemed.
“In a good cherry cake, we are
looking for an even distribution of cherries. They should not fall to the
bottom,” says Gertrude.
“Yes, and the icing should drizzle
down beautifully,” says Elias.
“Well, bakers, you heard them. You
have two hours. Start now!” Helen waves her hands towards the bakers, which
seem to undulate hypnotically.
Jon Sims stares
at his recipe, baffled. The recipe simply says, “Prepare dough by adding flour,
sugar, eggs, and water in a bowl and mixing. Prepare cherries. Mix dough,
beating well. Add cherries, leaving five for decoration. Bake at 450 degrees.
Apply icing.” There is no baking time and no amounts of anything.
“Hey, Jon!
Are you doing okay over here?” asks Helen. Jon shakes his head slowly.
“This
recipe is minimal to an extreme, Helen. How am I supposed to bake with these directions?”
“Well, that’s
the twist, isn’t it? Just make sure the cake doesn’t spiral out of control!”
Helen laughs, giving Jon a headache, and leaves Jon to his fate. He sighs and
adds flour to the mixing bowl.
Annabelle Cane
ponders her recipe. She briefly wonders if she could somehow get one of the
judges to—no, she promised herself she was going to win this baking contest without
cheating. It’s good practice. For what, she wonders, as this thought comes to
her.
She does,
however, whack her stirring spoon on her bowl a bit too loudly so that her
table partner, Jane, gets distracted. When Jane looks back at her own bowl, she
dumps all the cherries in and starts to mix, instead of putting five aside until
the end.
It isn’t
cheating if it could have happened anyway, is it? No, it’s merely just…guiding
Jane along. Pushing her along a silken thread to disaster, if you will.
“All right,
bakers! Time to finish decorating and start gyrating,” says Michael, trying to
get in on the twisty puns. Jane starts spinning around slowly and confusedly until
Annabelle whispers something to her.
The judges
come around to taste each cake and test their cherry distribution.
“Well, Jon,
this is disappointing. Your cake is burnt, your cherries have sunk, and your icing
is too thick. It is, however, edible. Good for you.” Jon nods, resisting
glaring or making puppy dog eyes at Elias. He knew this would be his Achilles
heel, to put it grandly.
“Martin,
this is quite good,” says Gertrude. “The sponge is golden-brown. However, the
icing is a bit runny. Overall, quite good, though.” Martin smiles, pleased. He’s
never iced a cake before. Frosted, yes. Iced, no. It’s an important distinction.
“Manuela, I
am frankly a little appalled. There are no cherries in this cake—” Elias stops,
a bite of cake in his mouth, shocked. “Yet it somehow tastes like cherries?”
Manuela nods, smug. Little did Elias know that she had cut the cherries to
molecular size before putting them in the dough, so that it was if the very
cake itself was cherry-flavored. “I don’t know whether to declare you winner of
the entire contest or eliminate you for this. Well. I suppose I will have to do
neither.” Manuela half-curtseys.
“Daisy,
hello. These cherries seem to have lost structure. Look,” says Gertrude,
holding up a slice of cake with a red splatter inside. Melanie reaches over
from her table to high-five Daisy, whispering “bloody cake buddies!” Gertrude
looks like she does not know what to say about that. Frankly, neither does
Daisy, who awkwardly high-fives her while Basira, her table partner, laughs. “Yes.
Well. The cake is a bit dry, as well. All in all, though, the cake is structurally
and compositionally sound.”
The judges
continue tasting cakes. Gertrude and Elias stake their claims on some of them,
and Helen and Michael sneak away the rest. After all, it’s good food. Even Jon’s
cherry cake.
Annabelle’s
cake is quite good. Her cherries have dispersed in an oddly weblike pattern,
and her icing is also in the shape of a web. Jane did not have cherries on the
top of her cake, which made Gertrude look disapprovingly down the bridge of her
nose at her.
Later, the
bakers have left for the day. Helen walks over to Gertrude and asks her for the
‘gossip’, namely, who they think is top of the pack on the first day and who is
not doing so well.
“Well…I
think that Jane hasn’t done very well so far. First, she didn’t roll her roll
well, then she forgot her decorative cherries. Simon’s cherry dispersion was
lacking.
“Agnes,
though, was very good, as well as Annabelle. That goes for both challenges.”
“I thought
that Jon did very well on the first challenge and very badly on the second
challenge. It was quite interesting, in fact. Manuela is also doing stunning work
so far, somehow making the cake itself cherry-flavored. However, we didn’t say
to do that, I will note. I quite agree with you about Jane, Gertrude. She seems
likely to be eliminated, even.”
“Well, now,
we will just have to wait and see.”
The next
day, Jon got up bright and early for a full day of baking. To be fair, though,
it was only a morning, with the rest of the day being a break to eat what they would
bake that morning and chat with the other bakers.
Jon was not
looking forward to the social element of the afternoon. He didn’t even know if
he liked any of the other contestants. True, they mostly seemed kind enough,
but still.
He supposed
it had to happen, though.
“Hello, bakers!
Good morning, and welcome to the second day of Cake Week!” says Michael. Ten
bakers stand sleepily at their stations. “This week, we find out who will be
eliminated, and who will be Star Baker!”
“Yes, we
will. Yes, we will. Yes…sorry, I’m a bit sleepy today. I had too much coffee!”
Helen laughs. Jon thinks she is making even less sense than usual. “You will
stop the show this week, because this challenge is the showstopper!” Yes, she
truly is making less sense than usual. “You have to make any traditional
British cake—but here’s the twist,” and here she laughs yet again, “they have
to be miniature and in trigintasexplicate!” Jon’s Latin is rusty, but he is
pretty sure that that means they have to make 36 cupcakes. “You must make thirty-six
identical cupcakes. Exactly the same. And you have two hours to do so. Go,
bakers, go!” The bakers ran around in vague panic. Jon managed to contain his
panic to the inside, but thirty-six cupcakes was a lot of them. It needed
planning…
Martin Blackwood
hurriedly heaves bags of flour over his shoulders, carrying them to different
tables. There were a lot of short people here (Jon, Manuela, Agnes, Jane, and
others), so he was helping them out. So is Daisy, who is (quite impressively)
carrying two bags of flour per shoulder.
As he brings
a bag to Jon’s table, he gets a close look at the man and is irritated that
they’d expected people to get their own flour bags. Jon is 5 foot 2 and about
as skinny as a lamppost (almost literally). A cane lies by his table, and
Martin wonders if the odd pockmark scars that littered his forearms extend to
his legs too. Jon smiles slightly and mutters a thank-you, fingers fumbling at
the knots. Martin nods.
Martin doesn’t
know what to do about his own cakes. How will he make 36 individual cakes so
fast? Tears start to his eyes.
Melanie,
his table partner, turns to him with concern. Or maybe it’s pity. Probably
pity. He isn’t supposed to be crying about this. He’s a baker. He knows how to
bake!
“Hey,” says
Melanie, in a surprisingly gentle voice. “It’s all right to cry. This is hard.
That’s sort of the point, right? They throw you into the deep end with these
challenges. But look: they don’t expect perfection. They expect your best. That’s
all you can give.
“I’ll help
you, if you want. We can work on all, uh, 72 of our cakes together. Does that
sound good?” Martin doesn’t want to accept the offer. He doesn’t need the help.
Except he
does. So he nods, and they work together.
“Thank you,”
he says to Melanie later. “Didn’t expect you to be quite so…”
“Caring?”
she says drily.
“Yeah.”
“Well, don’t
tell anyone else.”
“I won’t,”
says Martin, smiling.
“Hello,
Jane. What are you making for us today?” says Elias, walking up to Jane. Jane Prentiss
blinks, surprised. She is a small woman with dark brown hair and chicken pox
scars all over her body. Isn’t she too young for chicken pox?
“Oh, um. I’m
making almond and raspberry sponge cakes. They will be very good, I think. Or
at least, that’s what the bees tell me,” she says, smiling. A bee hovers around
her hair and lands on her nose. “Yes, I know, I’ll hurry up,” Jane says,
apparently to the bee. Elias slowly backs away as Jane and the bee express
their love for each other. Tomorrow, they will go on a picnic in a beehive. Then,
Jane will take the bee to the waterpark.
“Hi, Daisy,”
says Helen. Daisy Tonner is a large, muscular woman with blond hair. She levels
a stare at Helen that only four people at this contest could withstand.
Apparently, Helen is one of those four. (Elias, Melanie, and Basira are the
other three. Jon can give as good as he gets stare-wise, Daisy’s found, but he
wilts at the prospect of Daisy’s glare.)
Helen
simply looks back in blithe cheeriness.
“Oh, right,”
says Daisy. “Hi. Um, I’m making Genoise sponge cakes with blueberries and
orange curd. It’s my mom’s favorite type of cake, and she showed me how to make
it very fast.”
“That
sounds great! Bye!” Although Helen does not seem fazed by Daisy’s glare, it
cannot be said that Daisy radiates hospitality, so she leaves quickly.
“Hello,
Basira. How are you today?” says Gertrude. Basira Hussain looks up from
underneath her hijab, which is red with daisies all over it. She is a Middle
Eastern woman and is wearing a light blue sweater and blue jeans, despite the day’s
warmth.
“Hello. I’m
good, thank you. How are you?” she says. Gertrude looks as though she didn’t
expect to be asked that in return.
“Oh, I, I
expect I’m good. Thank you. Can you tell me what you’re making?”
“Two things.
A thyme and lemon drizzle cake and sure I don’t panic.” Gertrude smiles a
little at the joke. “I just have to keep going steady, or else I’m not going to
do well. Seems like a crazy challenge to do on the first week.”
“Yes, well,
maybe this will make the next challenges seem easier in comparison.”
“Hey, that’s
the spirit!” says Basira, smiling.
“Bakers, it’s
time to do something crazy: stop baking!” says Michael.
“Gasp,”
says Helen, “what a twist. Who would’ve guessed it? Not me, that’s for sure.
Not me.”
“You said
that yesterday,” says Michael.
“I did? How
silly of me. Or rather, how quirky. How twisty, so to speak. How…spirally. Like
a shell!” Maybe Helen really had had too much coffee, Jon pondered. Her jokes
were bad before, but now they were awful.
Of course,
Jon thought wryly, it would be quite a twist to find out that the
previous day’s jokes had been less genuine than these, and she had had too much
coffee then and not today.
The judges
taste the cakes.
“Agnes, I
do think you made these a bit too tall. Otherwise, they all came out nicely and
are well-decorated.” Agnes nods thoughtfully at Elias’s judgement. The cakes
are each a foot tall, so Elias is understating their height. Agnes doesn’t
mention it.
“Daisy,
perhaps you glared at these a bit too hard, since they’re oddly flat.” Daisy
does not look like she appreciates Gertrude’s joke. “The baking is also a bit uneven,
but the presentation is beautiful. Very well-done there.”
“Simon, I believe
there is more air than cake in these cakes, but the blueberry topping is quite
good. This is passable,” says Elias. Simon smiles like Elias had said his cake
was perfect. Elias does not contradict that idea.
“Martin,
the baking is well-done, but the presentation is sloppy. Perhaps you ran out of
time?” Martin nods. Gertrude smiles, to reassure him. “It still looks adequate,
don’t worry.”
The judges
continue. Melanie’s cake frosting is horrendous, red frosting everywhere. She
seems to have a knack for terrible presentation. Jane’s cakes are perfectly
identical, to the judges’ well-hidden surprise, but the cake is too chewy, as
if undercooked. Basira’s cake is very middle-of-the-road, nothing showstopping,
as it were, but not bad at all.
“Well,
bakers, you have performed so well in Cake Week! Fabulous family traditions,
chewy cherry cakes, and showstopping showstoppers galore have been made,” says
Michael.
“But now,”
continues Helen, “one of you has to leave and one of you will be named Star
Baker! It’s that time of the week—the very end. Although, of course, you will be
invited to stay for an afternoon of eating cake and chatting with your fellow
bakers.
“Judges,
what say you? Who will be Star Baker this week?”
“All of you
have done admirably, producing stunning and delicious cakes in all three
challenges this week. But there is one of you that has outperformed the rest.
Someone who really stepped up to the challenge. Someone who crafted weblike
masterpieces.
“Annabelle,
you are our Star Baker. Congratulations!” Elias hugs Annabelle first, and then
she hugs the rest of the bakers. Jon shudders. He does not like spiders. Ever
since he read that awful book when he was eight, he’s had nightmares of spiders
eating him alive.
Annabelle
smirks a little when she’s announced as Star Baker. It disappears when she
finds out who got eliminated.
It’s Jane. Annabelle
can’t help but feel a little sad, like maybe she shouldn’t have sabotaged
someone who was already doing poorly.
Oh, well.
It was how she’d always lived, and she isn’t going to change now. She does hug
Jane, though, and whispers to her that she hoped she had a good date with her
bee. Jane smiles gratefully. She doesn’t seem too fazed or surprised by her
loss.
Granted,
neither was Annabelle, although Simon and Melanie also did somewhat badly. What
is up with Simon’s obsession with airy cake and Melanie’s blood-resembling
presentations? She shakes her head as she munches on one of her cupcakes. All
together, their frosting forms a web design. She can admit it: she loves spidery
aesthetics.
“All right,
congratulations, bakers, on completing a wild and cakey week! Take a break, eat
some cake, eat your lunch, make friends, lose friends, murder friends—” Helen
stops short and excuses herself. She does not come back, but an extremely loud
creak can be heard from afar, like that of an old door opening.
The bakers
leave, but Michael still stands there, smiling. He has a piece of paper in his
hands, and he reads from it.
“We’d like
to thank our sponsors, the Lukas family. Have you ever wanted to be alone? Away
from the madding crowd? Well, now you can! Buy a portable LukasFog fog machine,
and you can enter a world of fog and mist where you are the only inhabitant.
Side effects may include social anxiety, depression, and a crippling terror of
being alone.
“We’d also
like to thank our editor, Miss Sasha James, and our producer, Mr. Tim Stoker.
And a big thanks goes to Mrs. Georgie Barker, the wife of one of our
contestants, for letting us use this haunted piece of land for our show.
“And the
biggest thanks go to viewers like you. Remember, the Eye is always watching.
And it wants your thanks. And your fear!” Michael smiles directly into the
camera after he says that.
