Dance on a Tightrope of Weird
Crowley x GN!Reader
Summary: Crowley was not expecting you to lose your shit when he asked what you were reading.
Soundtrack: Crazy = Genius by Panic! at the Disco
Requests: Open!
Warnings: The ravings of a madwoman. (It's me, I'm the madwoman.)
It wasn't unusual for Crowley to find you tucked away somewhere in the bookshop reading one of the countless old books Aziraphale kept around. You liked classic literature, and history, and philosophy, and who knew whatever other subjects you happened to find lying around the place.
What was unusual, however, was finding you sat in his usual armchair, reading what was decidedly not a two-hundred-year-old first-edition copy of the random novel you'd decided to bury yourself in that day.
He paused in front of you, carefully tilting the book you held up so that he could look at the cover.
"Dead Mountain?" he asked, an eyebrow cocked so high you could see it over the rim of his sunglasses.
"No, no," you said, a fire immediately lighting in your eyes. "No. Don't even get me started. This is fucking insane."
Crowley never was one to listen to your advice. "Oh?" he prompted casually, and suddenly a chair appeared behind him that he, without looking, flopped down into and sprawled across.
"No, because--"
He loved watching you read. The quiet intent, the way your face moved in tandem with whatever emotions the text wanted you to feel. He'd once walked in on you sobbing along with some tearjerking novel (as a side note, that was the first time Crowley had found himself wanting to kill a book?), and another time he'd walked in on you cheering over something... triumphant, he assumed, or at least something like that.
This was different. New.
He loved it too. The fevered look in your eyes, the frustrated set of your jaw. The way your hand, shaped like a predator's claws, gripped his knee tightly in excitement.
"This is--" you were saying, and Crowley startled back into the moment, eyes on you, attention now unwaveringly on your blazing gaze. "This is so fucking insane. I can't get over this."
"Over what, darling?" he asked, and your gaze sharpened on him, as if only just realizing he was there.
"Do you know about the Dyatlov Pass Incident?"
It sounded familiar. "Tell me all about it, darling."
"Oh, you're gonna regret that."
He wouldn't. Not ever.
"Okay, so -- Soviet Russia. 1959. Middle of winter. These nine hikers -- actually, it was originally ten. These ten experienced hikers go into the Ural Mountains to, like. Upgrade themselves? 'Cause I guess there are levels to being a hiker, and you have to go on increasingly more difficult hikes to level up. So all ten were level two or whatever, and they were going on a level three hike to upgrade to level three."
He nodded, even though all the information was secondary in his attention. He just liked listening to you.
"Okay. So they get to this little town, and while they're there, all the locals are telling them shit like, 'Don't go up that mountain,' or 'you'll die up there!' Like, horror movie type shit. The kind of stuff that makes you yell at the TV."
He was familiar with that. You did that a lot -- but so did he.
"Oh, and the mountain they were hiking on? In the local language it's called Kholat Syakhl. Do you know what that means?"
He... he did. He knew what everything in every language meant. But he let you have this, because you were clearly excited. Seeing the way you motioned with the book, he waved toward it and asked, "Dead mountain?"
"Fucking -- dead mountain!"
He chuckled, but otherwise stayed silent.
"So they're getting all these crazy warnings and the mountain is literally called Dead Mountain in the local language, but they decide to go anyway! So they go off, but before they get very far, one of them is like, 'I'm so sick, I can't go on!' and so he tells them he's gonna go back to the town, and they leave without him."
"I take it he's the only survivor?"
You nodded. "Yeah. The other nine kept going. Oh, and another crazy thing -- one of the girls on the trip was keeping a journal? That's how we know about, like... 90% of the things that happened after they left the town."
He nodded. "Makes sense."
"So, because of this girl's journal, right? We know that one of the hikers just, like, fully went off his fucking rocker about a day into the trip."
"What?" Crowley asked, leaning forward with interest.
"Yeah! He started getting really antsy, and he kept shouting stuff at seemingly nothing? He yelled, like, 'Stop following us!' and stuff like that. At nothing!"
Crowley, for effect, took his sunglasses off so that you could see his surprised look.
"Anyway. So they keep going, even though literally everything that could ever say 'turn back' is saying 'turn the fuck back!' They got off course --"
"As you do."
"As you fucking do. They got off course and decided to hunker down for the night and retrace their steps in the morning. They set up camp, went to bed, and then they all fucking died."
"Oh, I imagine there's more to it than that," Crowley said.
The grin on your face was bordering on manic. "Oh, of course. First of all, according to the girl's journal, two of the hikers went batshit, started laughing hysterically for no reason, and then took off into the night, never to be seen again -- well, not alive, anyway."
"Ominous," Crowley observed thoughtfully.
"Right? And the other weird thing about that -- well, pre them all dying. There was, according to the girl, a big, glowing orange ball of light in the sky that night. They have a picture of it," you said, turning the book so that he could see. "Of course, it's in black and white, but still. And -- the craziest part of that, is that there were hikers on the other side of the mountain on the same night who confirmed the big glowing orange ball of light!"
Crowley's mouth dropped open.
"I KNOW! And then -- their deaths are even more bizarre! First of all, they cut their way out of their tent? Like, they didn't just -- open it and leave. They cut. Their way out. And then they ran down the side of the mountain into the trees. No one's really sure how anything else happened, but what we know for sure is that three of them were found a little up the mountain, like they'd been trying to make their way back up."
"Mhm."
"And two were found naked -- right at the edge of the trees, under one of the bigger ones. Some branches in the tree were broken in a way that seems to indicate that they were trying to climb up and get a view of the camp. There were also remains of a fire beside the bodies. We don't know for sure why they were naked, but the theory is paradoxical stripping."
"And what's that?" Crowley asked, even though he knew.
"It's when you're so cold that you start to feel hot, and so you take off all your clothes."
Demonic work, he was sure.
"So that's five of them. They were found shortly after they died. The other four weren't found until a few months later, after the spring thawed a lot of the snow."
"Why weren't they found right away?"
"Because they were found in a ravine about a mile past the treeline! Three of them were found in a stream in this ravine. One of them had a piece of her skull missing? And all of them had major trauma to their chests -- like, high-speed impact by a delivery truck kind of major impact. To this day, no one's sure what the fuck caused that kind of damage."
Crowley clicked his tongue in thought.
"And the last one -- she was found sitting up against a big boulder? The official report describes her like that. Sitting up against a boulder. She had, like, chunks of her face missing? And her tongue was missing. Like, the whole thing."
"You specified the official report," Crowley observed. "Is that important?"
"Oh! Yes! Because the pictures of the area? They show her as laying face down in the stream with the others!"
"That's suspicious."
"Right? On top of all that, their bodies had traces of radiation! Not their clothes, though, or their belongings. Just the bodies."
Crowley hummed.
"Oh! And their tent -- when authorities found the tent, it looked like it had been put up by amateurs. Like, level zero hikers. But these were level two hikers doing their level three hike. There's no reason their tent would've been put up like that. Even if they were in a rush or scared or whatever, it would've been put up at least sort of better."
He nodded in understanding.
"It's just -- it's all so crazy!"
"I can tell," he mused aloud, lips quirking into a smirk at your perplexed and frustrated expression.
"The thing with the girl's face is really weird," you said after a moment of thought. "The theory is scavengers, but reports of the incident specify there were no animals in the area. Like, I feel like if there were scavengers, you'd write down 'no predators,' or even 'no wolves or bears.' But no, they wrote, very specifically, 'no animals.' Like, I dunno, it just feels like that's a weird distinction to make. But then, if there weren't any animals, how did her face end up with bits missing?"
"I couldn't tell you."
"And why lie about her, too? Why move her and put her in the stream when the report literally says she was up against the boulder?"
He shrugged, before shifting forward to grip your knee.
"I just -- it's all so crazy, and weird, and -- and --"
"Oh," Crowley interjected, looking thoughtful. "Now I know why that all sounds familiar."
"Huh?"
"Yeah, that was demonic work," he continued, blissfully unaware of your increasingly maddening expression. "I'm pretty sure that was my side."
"So you -- you know what happened?"
He finally caught your expression, the set of your jaw and slight twitch in your eye. "Oh -- yeah. Of course," he said, sounding rather unsure, actually. If anything, that just seemed to aggravate you more. "Space yetis."
"... SPACE YETIS!?"
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Hello! I hope you are doing fine! I am *definitely* going to add to you overflowing askbox, so I apologise in advance.... (I didn't know where to post this, and I seriously don't know how to feel about this post)
Hi there! I...wow. Okay, I clearly turned off my Anons just in time, or at the worst possible time (I'm not sure which). But this was a hell of a thing to see first thing this morning, and after seeing the notes on that post, I think this person was right to send this question via a throwaway account, because they knew they would get flamed for it.
First of all, whether or not this person should have even asked Neil this question is entirely up for debate. GO season 2 is done, it's in the can and about to be released, so it's not as if there is anything Neil can do about Peter and Ty being in it. I can also understand Neil likening this person's concern about the casting to people saying prior to GO season 1 that it was a huge mistake to cast Michael and David. I could see him equating the two, in his mind, and feeling like this is déjà vu all over again and thusly responding from that vantage.
However...I'm really at a loss as to his opening sentence, in which he describes the person's question as "creepy." I've read and reread the person's question multiple times, and for my part, I did not think there was anything creepy about this question. The person seemed to take great care in asking it--especially with English not being their first language--and did not make any threats toward anyone, nor say anything inappropriate (again, as far as I could tell). This leads me to think that Neil very deliberately used that word, setting the stage for and tacitly encouraging what he alluded to but did not say aloud--that this person is silly and stupid for asking a seemingly harmless question and deserves to be treated accordingly.
There was one part of the person's question that Neil homed in on (and that seems to be a common refrain in the notes and on Twitter), which was that this person cannot separate the characters from the actors, nor tell fiction from reality. Yet I also did not get this feeling from their question, and was taken aback by Neil seemingly twisting around what the person was actually trying to say. The specific focus on this part of the question also seemed to serve the purpose of steering discussion away from the heart of the person's question, which was about nepotism. And it's here, at this particular point, that Neil's response does not really seem to stand up to scrutiny.
First of all, the comment about "a season that hasn't even been commissioned in parts that haven't been written" is disingenuous at best, as not even a week ago, it was Neil himself who said that Georgia was offered a part in season 2. So this is not really a hypothetical concern, as Georgia actually was offered a part. I also thought it was interesting that Neil conveniently did not mention the bonus episode of Sandman, in which both Georgia and Anna had voice roles in scenes with their respective partners. So again, not a hypothetical, but something that actually previously happened. And in both these cases, it does not seem that an audition was required, but rather that the roles were offered to Georgia and AL because they happened to be there/it simplified things since Sandman was recorded during Covid times.
Another thing that has been overlooked was David himself at the Basingstoke Comic Con this past weekend being asked about his favorite scene in GO 2. After mentioning that his son is in the scene, David also says his father-in-law (Peter) is in the show. The interviewer then asks, "And your wife and your neighbor?" to which David's response is "They are not in it, but it’s a sore point, so don’t dwell on it." I thought that was an interesting choice of words, because if everything involving offering Georgia a part did go exactly the way Neil described, why would it be a sore point? If Georgia researched the role and had absolutely no compunction about turning it down, why would she be annoyed or upset? It seems like something small, I know, but it just makes me question some of the things we're being told.
In terms of Peter and Ty's roles, I do understand that Peter is a fixture on the acting landscape in the UK, so I fully get Neil offering him a part, but I find his answer regarding Ty to be extremely dubious, at best. Neil and David have been friends since 2017--so, six years now--and is he truly expecting us to believe that he has no idea what David's son looks like? Even if they haven't had occasion to meet in person, does it really make sense that David would have never shown him a picture? Especially given how he beams with pride when talking about Ty and his accomplishments. Also, I realize the days of traditional audition tapes are long gone, but does it seem at all plausible that Neil wouldn't have seen Ty's name on the clip he watched, or that if he'd seen the name "Ty Tennant," it wouldn't have rung a bell?
But rather than address any of this, Neil--for reasons I can only begin to guess--decided to respond to this person as condescendingly and dismissively as possible. The bit about "shattered the fragile illusion and revealed to people that the David Tennant and Michael Sheen who play Crowley and Aziraphale are actors" was beyond insulting (as if we don't know that Michael and David are actors?), but what really grates my cheese is the fact that it opened the door to people in the notes accusing people who have had concerns about these issues of being "in an echo chamber." I would argue that the people who are somehow not aware of these concerns are the ones actually living in an echo chamber, because there has been a LOT of talk about this ever since Neil shared that cropped photo two months ago.
(Also, I am aware that a combined 146 votes is by no mean a representative sample of an entire fandom, but if the results of the two polls I recently posted are any indication, a lot of people seem ambivalent (in the case of Ty and Peter) or outright against (in the case of Georgia and AL) these casting choices.)
Overall, I would say that I am deeply disappointed in this type of response from someone I've always thought was a brilliant writer and a really cool guy. I fully acknowledge that Neil can say whatever he wants, of course, but it's really strange to me that someone who has been so tight-lipped and "wait and see" about everything GO 2 up until now is suddenly delving into details. For months, Neil gave no answers regarding a trailer or character names or even a crumb of plot, so I'm just downright confused as to why these particular questions merited an answer. Neil could've even simply said, "Your concern is noted and appreciated, but everything is fine", or not answered this question at all (which I think probably would've been the better route), but instead, he went the way he did, and here we are.
So those are pretty much my thoughts on this whole thing. I am still looking forward to GO season 2, but this has definitely colored my perceptions to a degree. I guess we'll see what happens...
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