David Benioff liked to think he was a man somewhat used to the ins, outs and various through-ways that comprised the journey between a work being placed upon the written page and coming to life upon a screen whether big or small. When he and his co-producer Daniel Weiss managed to correctly guess the name of Jon Snow's mother and received authorial permission to commence filming a television adaptation to the popular book series A Song of Ice & Fire, he'd been happy but cautious. After all, simply because they had permission didn't mean they were even close to being ready to bring it to life yet.
There were still sets to plan, costumes to design but most important of all: actors to cast. The only two they knew from the beginning they were going to need were Sean Bean as the instigator of the whole chain of events Eddard Stark and Peter Dinklage as the only sympathetic lion Tyrion Lannister. Good men and great actors. They were very fortunate that George told them he had specifically had them in mind whenever he imagined those two central characters. They'd managed to find several of the others such as Catelyn Tully and Jon Snow. But the time had come for the royal family.
Mark Addy and Lena Hedley had given very solid auditions earlier today. They were now getting into the royal children: the supposed future kings or queen of Westeros who were in truth going to be revealed as Cersei's bastards by her twin brother Jaime. Even though that meant in the show they were all going to be blonde haired like their mother, in practice it translated to the actor being picked for what they could do rather than their hair color.
With a look to Dan and George as they sat in their chairs, they signaled for the first applicant to give it a shot.
He strode in, bold as brass. Black hair, green eyes. Decent in stature, seemed to have a good confidence to him. David wasn't sure he would top Jack Gleeson's audition as Joffrey, but maybe he'd be able to turn it off and become a Tommen that would prove an interesting character.
As a formality they had him state which part he was trying out for. Coincidentally, that was also when things began to go to hell.
"I'm trying out for the part of Steffon Baratheon." He answered.
Silence reigned in the room as Dan and he looked at each other while George's right eyebrow raised a bit.
"Well, unless David and Dan aren't telling me something, we're not going to be seeing Robert's father appear on the show." George chuckled.
"No, no, not Steffon Baratheon as in Robert's father. Steffon Baratheon as in Robert's son who is named for Robert's father." The man (what was his name? Gary something?) said.
Silence again. David wondered if the other two were starting to get a splitting headache like he himself was. But he pushed forward, deciding to give the aspiring actor (rapidly becoming classified more as a pompous ass) a chance to correct his mistaken assumption.
"You know your character's name is Tommen right? You're…the younger brother of Joffrey? Son of Cersei Lannister who doesn't know he's the son of her brother Jaime Lannister?" He asked.
An incredulous frown came across the performer's face.
"Who are you talking about? Steffon Baratheon is the trueborn son of Robert." He said.
David could see Dan glancing at him and raising both his eyebrows as if to say: "What the hell is going on here?" At least, that's what David thought he was saying. Mostly because that's what David himself was thinking.
"…I never wrote Robert as having a trueborn son." Came the cold interjection of George on his other side.
The guy seemed to mentally wave off George's observation as though it were a buzzing gnat he didn't want in his ear. He cleared his throat and began to speak.
"How can you eat so carelessly? A young boy-the son of the people who've welcomed us into their home-may be dying. And yet you sit here with such carelessness-"
"Stop!" David called, his headache worsening.
The black haired ass looked irritated at being interrupted.
"What the hell was that?" David asked, pinching his nose between the forefinger and thumb of his right hand.
"My character was reprimanding his older brother for not caring that Bran Stark was hurt." He answered with a smile. "He liked the Starks as soon as he met them thus leading to an easy friendship with Robb and then-"
David honestly couldn't believe what he was hearing. He couldn't believe this prick had the temerity to try and make up a character who was not only a trueborn son of Robert and Cersei but born after she had already dedicated herself to cheating with Jaime and making sure to use Robert's drunken, lecherous behavior against him in order to never let him between her thighs. And not only that but the snippet of dialogue he started on was apparently meant to be the spare prince reprimanding the heir to the throne about his attitude. Now, no one had ever accused the screenplay he'd written for Troy of being overthought. But still: every screen-writing instinct in him cried foul against the decidedly idiotic yet apparently supposed to noble dialogue.
"Question." Dan interjected as David could feel George's cold stare bearing down on the side of his head for this jackass's presumption. He sincerely hoped the world renowned author wasn't reconsidering whether to let them make the show or not because one self-deluded crazy had snuck their way into casting.
"What does this 'trueborn' son of Robert and Cersei look like?" He asked.
The pompous one appeared to be giving it some thought before he opened his mouth again and David's headache immediately doubled in intensity.
"Midnight black hair, Lannister green eyes, a smile that charmed a northern maiden, good musculature…"
As Gary prattled on (David privately thought it was no wonder he was in show business since with a last name like Suebert behind him it was either this or a chip n dales which he decidedly did not have the body for) about the looks of this imaginary Baratheon, David felt reasonably certain that George and Dan had noticed the same thing he did: namely, that this imaginary Baratheon's description read an awful lot like Gary's own appearance, except with the looks and personality considerably…enhanced in the retelling.
Did the guy not realize he sounded exactly like Stephanie Myer had when she was asked to describe Bella Swan's appearance?
"Thank you, we'll be in touch." David said as Gary paused to take a breath after having taken George's sarcastic question of how 'Steffon' would solve every problem in Westeros literally and having listed off how seemingly everything in the world was miraculously better for his presence in it.
Gary looked vaguely constipated and confused: as though he had gone to the bathroom in order to take a dump but now couldn't remember the process for doing so.
"But I wasn't-" The self-important narcissist began before David interrupted him again.
"That wasn't an invitation to stay. Get. Out." He ground out through the deep drums in his skull beating a war tune that demanded he pound the idea that a character is NOT supposed to be their creator's ego stroking self-aggrandizement, especially not when it's being added onto an already established work like a throbbing, cancerous pustule to otherwise healthy skin.
As the door closed behind him, David could only apologize to George for the crazy somehow getting in. He'd smiled and said it was alright. Of course he didn't quite feel the same when the next three idiots that marched in all seemed to have the exact same idea of trying out for the 'trueborn second son' character that didn't exist even if they gave different names.
Jasper, Roland and Lyonel they apparently were. After wondering with some exasperation where they had even gotten such names from, David was kind of relieved to have the third one call his "original" character Lyonel. Admittedly, that was because the one who claimed the true-born second son's name would be Lyonel had gotten David to laugh at the sheer absurdity of Cersei Lannister for some god unknown reason giving any child of hers a name purely as a joke. Which of course had caused an offended look to appear on the hopeful's face at which point David was forced to realize that it hadn't actually meant to be a joke: that the honest to god best they could apparently come up with for a name was an unintentional pun that was too weak to have been used in a seventies sketch comedy, let alone on Game of Thrones.
George and Dan were visibly exasperated by now so David asked how many more auditions were they supposed to sit through. The PA who'd come with them for this said about fifty.
If David had been listening carefully, he would've heard his own patience snap.
"No." He said quietly, standing with deliberate slowness even as Dan and George had slumped forward in dejection at the amount of dross left to sort through just so they could find a possible Tommen or Joffrey.
"I'm…sorry sir?" She asked uncertainly.
"No." He repeated as he walked around the table toward the door that led into the hallway.
"Sir, where are you going?!" The PA asked in alarm.
"No." He repeated one last time as he flung open the door.
A sea of black hair and green eyes looked back at him. His eyes hardened into chips of ice before he bellowed at the top of his lungs at them.
"ATTENTION ALL HOPEFULS PRESENT! WE ARE NOT GOING TO CAST YOU AS YOURSELF IN THE MEDIEVAL FANTASY SETTING OF A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE!" David took less than a moment to get prepare himself, intensely aware of so many offended faces opening their mouths for something besides breathing for the first time with offended looks in their otherwise dull eyes.
"I HONESTLY DON'T GIVE A RAT SHIT IF YOU THINK YOU'RE GOD'S GIFT TO WESTEROS! WE ALREADY HAVE ALL THE CHARACTERS WE NEED! IF YOUR EGO CAN BEAR THE THOUGHT OF IT, YOU ARE WELCOME TO REGISTER YOURSELF AS A BATTLEFIELD OR KING'S LANDING EXTRA! IF, HOWEVER, YOU WANT TO TAKE A SHOT AT CONVINCING ME THAT YOU TRULY BELONG IN WESTEROS: I CAN TELL YOU RIGHT NOW THAT YOU DON'T! I COULD SAY YOU DON'T BECAUSE YOU MAKE NO EFFORT TO HIDE THE MODERN SENSIBILITIES THAT NO ACTUAL POTENTIAL MONARCH WOULD POSSESS! I COULD SAY YOU DON'T BECAUSE NONE OF YOU SEEM TO HAVE ANY IDEA OF HOW THINGS COULD BE DIFFERENT ASIDE FROM 'INSERT MYSELF AS ROBERT AND CERSEI'S KID SO I CAN GO AGAINST JOFFREY AND FIX EVERYTHING WITHOUT IT COMING ACROSS AS TOO EASY!' BUT I WON'T!" David felt good to get all this off his chest. Those four auditions had really taken more out of him than he thought.
"IN YOUR IDIOTIC EFFORTS TO ALL TAKE THE SAME SHORTCUTS, YOU IDIOTS HAVE GIVEN YOURSELVES AWAY! I HONESTLY DON'T CARE IF YOU LIKE WHAT I'M SAYING OR NOT: JUST KINDLY FUCK OFF BACK TO TWILIGHT WHERE YOU BELONG EITHER WAY!" David concluded.
Amidst much grumbling, pretty much the entire lobby existed either alone or in pairs until there was a single girl left. Fixing her with a gimlet eye, David asked: "And why are you here?"
She seemed uncomfortable with the attention he was giving.
"I-I'm here as the trueborn daughter-"
"Leave. Now." David dismissed.
She bolted without another sound, sprinting away from the angry producer like a frightened doe.
Filled with relief at that potential time wasting disaster averted, David asked the PA who had come up behind him what was on the schedule for tomorrow.
"More auditions for royal family and casting for Stark family if those get done quickly enough." She told him.
David nodded with satisfaction. He'd gotten some crazies with strange ideas about what constituted respecting canon today, but surely things wouldn't be so bad for the Stark family auditions. Right?
A/N: Once again, I find myself frustrated at the vast majority of fics that seem convinced that they're 'original' because they decide they simply must insert themselves into Game of Thrones as an OC so they can show George just what he was missing out on by not being smart enough to include them as savior of the universe. "Oh wow, the second son of Robert and Cersei is the true savior of all Westeros? And they also happen to share your views of the established characters and combine those views with their position to somehow be better than the canon cast at everything? Truly you stride across the fertile fields of new ideas like a colossus. Yes, yes, I agree you make so much more interesting a character than Tommen: truly he can go fuck himself." Because god forbid you should stretch yourself as a writer by trying to write a fic exploring Tommen's perspective and see what it was that stopped him from becoming the savior of westeros it needed and deserved instead of your Gary Stu self-insert. Oh wait, my bad: I meant to say 'super serial totally 100 percent original character.' No, no, no. That makes so much less sense than slapping a Harry Potter cosplay on yourself and going 'yup this totes fits into the established world sooo much better.' Especially if it means you get to derail canon character personalities completely in order to fit them around YOUR narrative right? All I have to say to you people is that there's easier ways of getting off. Like staring lovingly into a reflective surface and admiring yourself. Sure you run the risk of starving to death while getting lost in your own eyes, but that got Narcissus a flower and an adjective named after him! And surely if you're so much better than one fictional character, you can prove yourself the superior of another right?! Only one way to find out you shining diamond you. Won't you kindly give it a shot?