#the thiccest outline

[sarunohadaki]

DQXI/Great British Bake-Off Crossover

Crossover week: Home | 1 | 2 | 3| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |

This story idea in particular is very near and dear to my heart because when I first arrived in the SOS discord server, I mentioned it, and I got to talk with a lot of cool people for a long time about it. A lot of people seemed to love the idea, and Cicada even made art for it! 😭

It’s my favorite crossover idea and would be the most intricate to write. More under the cut because it’s another long post. (very long. With graphics. What is this, an essay?)

Spoilers for a potential future Saru fic.

Funny-but-I’m-not-using-these fic title ideas: Baking Bananaza, Fluff — and not just Meringue

Relationships: Gen or M/M (depending on how heavy the luminerik will come out)

Premise: Erik is a graduate student studying biogeochemistry with a particular interest in peat bogs in the UK. He interviews and gets on the show after Mia nags him to do it in the hopes that it’ll have a monetary reward, but as they soon find out, there’s no money involved. Erik participates anyway, figuring it’ll be a fun thing to do and help him hone his skills for the next time his sister randomly begs him to make éclairs at two in the afternoon.

He doesn’t really know what to expect, having never watched the show before, and is initially a little overwhelmed when he meets other amateur bakers from all over the country.

Twelve contestants enter the tent, but only one will come out on top. Who will it be?

Initial plan is to have none of the characters be related or know each other aside from the twins and Hendrik/Jasper. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to have Rab related to El and so on and so forth, but I think it would be funner to have all the characters meet for the first time and develop friendships from there.

Everyone’s occupations are picked directly from my self-indulgent wants, haha.

And then here are some epithets, since the show uses things like this sometimes:

The structure of the fic

I initially thought it would be fun to do it sort of like a screenplay, but I am most comfortable writing in third person limited. BUT when you do it that way, you lose out on all the other disasters that are happening around the tent because you are only seeing what Erik’s seeing. And it would get boring after one episode to tell the reader, “I am now making this cake and following these directions.”

To combat this, I think it would be cool to do the omniscient POV for most of it, with the intention of writing it like an episode on TV. This would be interspersed with Erik’s director cut of events because he and Mia are watching the events play out while watching TV on the couch.

This would give us a chance to have Erik say, “Huh I didn’t realize the workstation behind me was almost literally on fire because I was too distracted trying to not over-mix my batter.” (Or staring distractedly into the back of ur crush’s head in front of you)

Plot

The short of it is you get to see a bunch of characters hang out and bake stuff semi-competitively! The long of it is, well… let me show you.

Each chapter is an episode

The Great British Bake Off usually has about 10 episodes, each with three challenges: the signature, technical, and showstopper. Whoever performs the worst holistically in each episode is eliminated. I have already roughly determined how that will play out based on some things I saw on a wiki. So, here’s the progression as it stands (don’t worry if it looks complicated at first — I can explain!):

To read this chart, each number refers to the episode. So, to see how people performed in episode 1, go to 1 and read down the column. From episode 1, you can see Erik, El, and Hendrik did well, while Ronnie and Faris did not. Vince got booted. Doing things this way, you can see Sylv had a few rough patches before they were eliminated, while El — the sweet boy — was never on the judges’ “least favourite bakers” list (alongside Jade, Rab, or Serena!)

This isn’t the final thing, and maybe there are patches that don’t make sense, but for a skeleton, it’s pretty useful for thinking up interesting plot points.

For example, Vince gets eliminated after baking an unchewable cake, and Sylv keeps pushing the envelope on how flamboyant their bakes can be in showstopper challenges, which lands them in trouble. Veronica really messes up in one episode and makes the food way too spicy.

Recipes

Okay. So you thought that chart was complicated, then behold this! Charts detailing any and every challenge from the Great British Bake Off from series 1-10, including signature, technical, and showstopper challenges with hour constraints where I could find them. Compiled from various wiki pages into one Google doc.

Potential problem: I don’t know if it would be plagiarizing to take various challenges and put them in a fic, and even more worrisome, if I could include recipes or just rip off what former contestants made. To create everything from scratch (pun intended) would take a lot of work. Based on the elimination chart, there are 225 instances of something being baked. Do you know how much work that is. (It goes down to 160 unique dishes when you take into account technical challenges all being the same recipe.)

In recent series (the gbbo say “series” and not “season”), they have had a few episodes such as “the ’80s,” “vegan,” and “forgotten bakes,” along with such classics as cakes, biscuits, etc. Pretty much every season includes the following episodes: Cakes (episode 1), biscuits (2), bread (3), desserts (~4), pastry (~6), patisserie (9), and a final challenge (episode 10). That leaves you with about 3 or 4 unique challenges each series unless you cut out one of those staple weeks, such as pastry. (Also, for anyone wondering the difference between pastry and patisserie: Pastry is a type of dough with fat and patisserie is a style of baking.)

This is where I said things were going to get intricate. Sometimes the details are what really sell a fic for me. Remember the five senses or that random thing that no one cares about but helps fill in the setting or make the story feel more alive. Having a masterful grasp of which characters are cooking what without overwhelming the reader would be difficult. Unlike TV, the reader is keeping track of all of this in their head!

I am no stranger to plopping some HTML into my fics from time to time and maybe that could help? To include graphics of what each person is baking, kind of like those… idk, “recipe blueprints” the narrator talks over where they tell you what the contestant is making and then they give you an illustrated piece of what the dish is supposed to look like.

Anyway, that’s a lot of work and I think just telling the reader, “he’s making this and I’m making this” would prolly suffice.

Why does any of this matter?

Because it’s fun. Because all of the characters will exchange jokes and poke at each other and I had plans to make Jasper and Hendrik have past beef and maybe Jasper throws food at Hennie or something. And also the pining for Elian would be very persistent. Erik and El have some stuff in common and their stations are right next to each other, maximizing the potential for banter and small talk about trying to manage school and this baking show thing at the same time.

In my heart, Erik wins because he’s the one who gets to date El at the end, but El is the hero so I know he’s the one who wins the show. And Hendrik has a secret baking sweet tooth so of course he comes in close third. (That is to prepare Hendrik for baking cakes for Jasper later.)

Unlike 80% of my fic ideas that are fusions, I think this one might be a legitimate crossover with people like Paul Hollywood, Merry Berry, and Noel Fielding. Sylv might slot into being a host, too.

#Crossover Week #my fic ideas #my writing #The Great british bake off #dqxi #luminerik #food #the thiccest outline #i have spent less time on homework than i have writing out all the notes for this