The Official Fanfiction University of Westeros

If you've not read the marvellous Lord of the Rings original by misscam (Camilla Sandman), you definitely should. All credit goes to Cam for the idea and the format, and she does permit spinoffs and the like. I had to write a version for Westeros. I did just (read: hours ago) Google and come across one abandoned start and brainstorming session to an OFUW that didn't go anywhere, as far as I could tell, in some forum somewhere, so here we are. I didn't find this until after plotting my own OFUW, and, in truth, I didn't read much of what others had written due to not wanting to mess up my OFUW; any similarities are coincidences.

I am not GRRM, of course, and all non-original characters and anything related to ASOIAF are his property or, in the case of show-only characters who may appear, the showrunners or HBO or someone who is not me.

Saskia Crockett was one of the ones who should have known better.

As she mulled about her Ealing flat dressed only in a raggedy, oversized Laverstock and Ford rain jacket, surrounded by stacks upon stacks of literary journals long overdue – a fair many of them bookmarked, disgustingly, with old chocolate wrappers – Saskia pondered. Or, rather, she tried to ponder. It was kind of hard to do that with the last of the rum she'd had that morning – yesterday night, now, was it? – still making an horrific fog of her pounding head, and with too much of Byron in vain attempting to slog through it. Instead of really pondering, then, Saskia stared, with the blank-eyed gape of cattle and drunks and chavs, at the barely-written document before her, and for a decent five minutes, at that. That dratted essay, it seemed, would not be writing itself.

I'm clever enough to bullshit. Haven't I bullshitted my way through everything else ever? she thought. Saskia was quite clever, it was true, or so she supposed from having been told so forever. She had aced her A Levels – something of which her parents were exceptionally proud – and had turned down a life she'd dreamt to come to London, of all awful places she hated. She was also quite stupid, having come to London based just a bit too much on a love that lasted… well, much shorter than love is supposed to last, but about as long as it's expected to when you're going on eighteen and experiencing genitals for the first time. What felt like aeons later now, though, Saskia supposed she was wiser for the experience. Slightly. Maybe. She still hadn't learnt not to procrastinate, after all, or that mixing lager and rum in immense quantities didn't agree with her poor abused stomach in the slightest.

Bullshitting it was, then. But a mere two pages into that vile paper on Byron and the influence of the neoclassical on Hellenism in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, on which she'd middlingly worked for half an hour before heading out for Declan's what felt like aeons ago, Saskia caved, and she caved hard. Before she even knew what she was doing, why it was wrong, and why it was wrong particularly now when she had another twenty or so pages to finish within thirty-one hours, Saskia opened folder after folder, descending deeper and deeper into her files until she uncovered the main site of her shame and her joy: a folder entitled 'Tax Documents'. Nothing taxation-related lay here, no, and no one snooping around for fun would ever be bored enough to took here. Therein lay the one thing she cared about at the moment, and, in truth, had cared about since she binge-watched Game of Thrones a few months prior—

Robb. Robb Stark. Robb Stark. Richard Madden. ("Hnng," Saskia bit her lip and moaned softly as she opened a .gif of him smiling, a slight breeze flirting with his perfect, perfect hair.)

The King in the North would never leave her, never betray her, never do her wrong. If he did do her wrong, he would realise the errors of his ways soon enough, and they'd kiss, make up, and have the best damn sex afterwards. She'd be his helpmate, his lover, his wife, the mother of his wee auburn-haired, gorgeous little babbies that'd have her hazel eyes and his beautiful lips. If it were Robb with whom she'd lain the first time, and not Charlie, he'd have done right by her. He would have married her for her honour's sake, for her beauty, for love, goddamnit, because she was worthy of that, at least, or she thought.

Robb Stark was noble. Robb Stark was strong. Robb Stark was not dead, no, and was just sleeping off the Red Wedding with Grey Wind adorably curled up at his side, waiting for her to join him. And, of course, Robb Stark was a sexbeast. That much was undebatable.

Her ten-minute-long Robb Stark gawkfest and pre-writing ritual of watching that .gif loop like an hundred times complete, Saskia opened her newest and first fanfiction.

"No, Father!" she continued typing where she left off. "Never!"

"You must, Lyalyah. You have to marry the King in the North! The fate of House Ranford depends on it!"

Lyalyah's sea-blue eyes watered. "But I don't even know him!"

"You will come to know him," said Jurndow Ranford with a small smile, "and you will even come to love him as I came to love your mother."

"It's not fair!" Lyalyah whined, tears beginning to spill down her alabaster cheeks. How could her father be so cruel as to arrange a marriage for her? She was a strong, fierce woman. She was better than that! She wouldn't marry Robb Stark. She wouldn't. She swore upon it, by the old gods, by the new gods, on her own life. "Why Robb Stark?"

"He is the King in the North! Winterfell is his. We made a pact with the Starks, and we intend to keep it. He will be good to you, Lyalyah, and your fierce spirit will help him more than either of you know."

Lyalyah had had enough. Twisting out of her father's intrusive embrace, she ran out the room, slammed the door ferociously behind her, and hurried off down the corridor and into the godswood overlooking the sea. She wept beneath the weirwood for an hour, sobs shaking in her breast. Gods, do not make me marry Robb, she pleaded, but she knew that the gods would never answer her prayers...

"Sweet summer child, no."

Saskia slammed her laptop shut and spun around, wildly surveying her skanky mess of a room. Goodnight, books. Goodnight, unmade bed. Goodnight, trousers. Goodnight… disembodied voice? No, no one was here. She'd not had any YouTube tabs open, and her laptop was shut besides. Everything was quiet, except for whatever that had been, if that had been at all. On a scale of one to ten, exactly how ossified was she now? She guessed about an eleven if she were hearing things that weren't there, but she hadn't had a drink in two hours and was not that far gone from reality, she knew. And now something — someone — was clacking.

"Hello?" she called.

"Hello, Saskia," came the shockingly saccharine reply, to which Saskia jumped. How did it know her name? "To go forward, you must go back. To write fanfiction, you must enrol in the Official Fanfiction University of Westeros."

"Pardon?" Great. Now she was conversing with nothing.

"There is no other way. To go forward, you must go back. To write fanfiction, you must enrol in the Official Fanfiction University of Westeros and successfully graduate, for you have been caught committing atrocities against this fandom, the most dire of which are insipid fangirling, very little understanding of canon, modern notions of feminism and women's behaviour and duties, and an implausible, uncanonical, and exasperating OC."

She snorted. "Well, uh, brilliant, I'll just give up my Literature course to do that. Everyone'll be so proud. My dad especially."

"You know nothing, Saskia Crockett. You do not seem to understand. You must enrol in the Official Fanfiction University of Westeros."

"You said I must if I wanted to write fanfiction, but I don't, really, to be honest," she said. "I'm just bored of working on my paper, you know. And once I'm done and not procrastinating, and not at uni, I want to write my own novel. Something historical, probably."

"You don't? You've been thinking of this fic for months. What else do you daydream about on the bus? Oh, sweet summer child." Saskia could almost sense the smirk in the voice's speech. "No. Look."

Saskia turned to wherever it seemed the voice was. There, a black-clad girl holding an enormous stack of papers stood staring at her from the threshold. She was about a mere five foot tall and had the physique of a twelve-year-old, despite seeming just around Saskia's age, if not a little younger. Her long, purposely tousled strawberry blond hair was done up in a loose bun, and her plastic-framed 80s glasses were too big for her face and made her blue-green eyes appear almost buglike. With a scowl near to forming in the corners of her lips and one of the worst cases of resting bitch face that Saskia had seen in quite some time, she did not look unlike a pale, scrawny, human version of Grumpy Cat. She was flanked by a tall, beardless, hollow-looking creep of a man who stared, with deadened, pallid eyes, and clacked at Saskia.

"This is Ser Ilyn Payne," the intruder began, "fanbrat wrangler and resident executioner. I am Miss Ellie, the coordinator and sometime fanbrat wrangler at the Official Fanfiction University of Westeros, in beautiful, historic, utterly ruined Harrenhal, where we learn to write well through exposure, experience, explicit instruction, and, most importantly of all, thorough torture. Under the rule of Tywin of House Lannister and under the tutelage of professors from across the Seven Kingdoms, you will be learning aplenty in modules such as History of the Seven Kingdoms, Westerosi Sex and Society, Domestic Arts: Actually Acting a Lady, Military Realism 101, Honour and Dignity for Twats, Slaying 101, and Intro to Creepily Scheming, amongst others. We await you, Saskia Crockett."

Miss Ellie passed Saskia one of her many sheets of paper. "Your enrolment form, to be completed at once. And no worries, child. Your time in the real world will not be affected by your time spent in Westeros. It's a nice wee holiday. That lasts a year, or nigh on. And involves Robb Stark and Jon Snow. They are both even more attractive in person, I assure you. Jorah, not so much. Won't it be nice to have a sanctioned holiday about now?"

Saskia's heart welly stopped. Robb Stark?! Count her in.

I should know better. I'm for sure high or drunk off my arse. Surely. High enough to fill out a form signing over a year of her life to a formerly disembodied intruder in her bedroom at half past two in the morning. High enough to consider that the King in the North was, in fact, somehow real, and that signing this thing would bring her closer to her gods-chosen, fictional love. Clearly.

Her doubts cast aside just a wee some, she turned her attention to the form.

Full name: Saskia Louise Crockett.

Might as well be truthful, she thought with a grunt. Fucking Saskia. Still, objectively, better than Lyalyah, and she had no delusions of ever being the sassy eldest daughter of House Ranford of the Reach; they were close enough personality-wise, anyways.

Date and place of birth: 30 August 1995, Warminster.

Appearance: Chest-length blackish hair, hazel eyes, average height.

Any OCs? Please describe: Lyalyah Ranford, the eldest daughter of a minor house. Black hair, blue eyes, freckles, slender, feisty, strong, is skilled with a blade. She is independent and doesn't want anyone to make decisions for her, especially in love.

Preferred lust object[s] and why: ROBB STARK DO I EVEN NEED TO EXPLAIN WHY?!

Favourite ships: Robb/me, Robb/OC, Robb/Khaleesi, Khaleesi/Jorah, Grey Worm/Missandei.

But mostly Robb/me.

What kind of fics do you write?: Well, I've only just started the one. Feisty girl has an arranged marriage to Robb, comes to love him, is the best Queen in the North in the history of Westeros.

Have you ever written non-canonical slash or incest?: No. Robb is not gay.

Have you read the books?: The first chapter of the first one… does that count?

In Saskia's defence, she hadn't even had the time, energy, or willpower to do a fair lot of her assigned readings, and thus couldn't be expected to read much for leisure when leisure now meant television, Guinness, and slacking. (She did, indeed, have enough time and energy to watch HBO livestreams in the dead of morning.)

Who should sit the Iron Throne?: Khaleesi or Tyrion, with Robb as the King in the North.

How should we dispose of your remains should you die whilst on your course?:

Saskia, reeling, looked to Miss Ellie.

"This a serious question?"

Miss Ellie and Ser Ilyn grinned. "This is Game of Thrones. Naturally. Valar morghulis and all that. The Andals and Northmen from south of the Wall prefer burial, by the way. Now, how would you prefer we dispose of you should you be disposed of?"

Thank you for your interest in OFUW. Character applications are now closed as of August 2015.