Trope Talk: Faustian Bargains

[@nobodyofimprotance7615]

Hiring a team of lawyers before I get into my warlock pact. Enough loopholes can win this.

[@Ed-1749]

Foolishly assuming the demons don't have lawers themselves. Or _are_ lawyers.

[@junconglin]

​@@Ed-1749approximately 50% of hell is lawyers

[@DellizarSlit]

I always assumed that the devil would just make a deal with them and say they get a portion of what you're supposed to have

[@nikkospelledlikethat8140]

@@Ed-1749 This is actually a common misconception. Not all demons are lawyers, but all lawyers definitely are demons.

[@rhymebeat1142]

@@nikkospelledlikethat8140 We're talking D&D. No lawyers are demons. A good chunk of them are DEVILS. LAWFUL evil. Not Chaotic Evil

[@swagner7767]

Loved how "born great, achieved greatness, had greatness thrust upon them" corresponded to the triforce of power, courage, and wisdom respectively

[@seraphiim444]

i guess ganon is born great, link is achieved greatness and zelda is had greatness thrust upon them? but maybe zelda and link could be switched, idk tho i feel like zelda has less agency about it usually

[@tekbox7909]

@@seraphiim444 I don't play legend of zelda games but doesn't link usually actively choose to help or do whatever is needed? I mean as far as I'm aware he could theoretically usually just ignore whatever call to action happens at the beginning of the game right?

[@eyald.8252]

​@@tekbox7909 link always needs to prove himself (that's kind of the point of the triforce of courage. It's the "prove yourself" triforce)

[@gguyllago]

If anything, zelda was the one born great(magical bloodline), Ganondorf achieved greatness(manipulating and scheming to secure the triforce of power) and link had greatness smacked upon him(waking up one day and discovering he had to become a legendary hero)

[@daymoarts]

Deadass😂😂😂😂

[@virdrae]

Fun fact: devils in dungeons and dragons - being lawful evil - can actually be sued if they don't hold their end of the deal. Having an erinye as their "lawyer".

[@coolgreenbug7551]

But to do that you must pay a cost that no being in the universe is willing to pay, calling on the help of the DnD version of the minions

[@virdrae]

@@coolgreenbug7551 Who is that?

[@joendeo1890]

​@@virdraemodrons I believe

[@paulgibbon5991]

Another little detail I like is that there's a fiend who will sometimes make bargains with no downside whatsoever. The warlock gets what they asked for with no word twisting or hidden costs, and the price is something utterly trivial, that doesn't turn out to be a crippling loss later on. They provide such good publicity for other people considering the same bargain!

[@TheHornedKing]

@@coolgreenbug7551 I have never heard about that. But I have heard that you will be provided with a lawyer, an erinyes, who will actually do their best to defend you.

[@Robert-hz9bj]

I wish the "Outsmarting the Devil" Faustian bargain appeared more often. One of my favorite folktales involves a young heroine doing this. Her fiancee, in a moment of frustration and haste, accidentally invoked the aid of a witch when his horse was injured near her tree, binding his soul to her in exchange. He tries to get out of it, but she keeps demanding more and more gold from him, preying on his desperation. So the girl goes to the witch and demands to parlay with her master, the devil. She offers to trade her soul to free her fiancee, and the devil eagerly agrees, because he has very few souls as pure and good as hers in his possession. He demands to dictate the contract to which she agrees, provided she can write it out (to which the devil agrees). After outlining the exchange (her soul for his) the two parties sign. The devil exalts in his triumph at acquiring such a pure and beautiful soul, only for the girl to remove her shoe and hand it to him, revealing that she had included a typo in the contract (i.e., she offered to trade her SOLE for her fiancee's SOUL). The girl departs victorious and the witch doesn't even care anymore, too busy laughing at the ancient, all-powerful lord of darkness getting outwitted by a sweet village girl. The story ends by noting that the villagers took notice of two things about the couple: 1) that the young man who married her was an unusually devoted husband who passionately doted on her for the rest of their lives, and 2) how odd it was to attend a wedding where the bride was decked in all the finest matrimonial clothing while only wearing one shoe...

[@Drekromancer]

She sounds like a keeper. 🙂

[@ike2783]

Love this, it's such a fun story

[@Aaa-vp6ug]

The power of the -dark side- PUNS are on my side

[@Bezaliel13]

Preach.

[@floffy2695]

That is hilarious, witty and charming!

[@connorwalters9223]

My favorite example of the “Faustian Bargain” trope is an SCP. The SCP is a furniture set of a table and two chairs. If someone sits in a chair, a mysterious figure implied to be the devil appears in the other chair and offers a bargain. The twist is that the person can ask for literally anything, and the devil will offer a somewhat fair price. One D-Class asks for “the power to escape this facility”, and the devil asks for all of the memories of his mother. Another D-Class asks for a cheeseburger, and the devil asks for $5. The story culminates in the Foundation sitting one of their lawyers in the chair. What follows is 48 hours of negotiations before the lawyer collapses from exhaustion. The devil leaves a note saying “I’d love to see you again. I haven’t had that much fun in centuries”. Apparently before the lawyer passed out, he had spent 4 hours negotiating a precise legal definition of the word “shall”.

[@greenhydra10]

A perfect example of why I love SCP.

[@aclaymushroomwithaberet7084]

I love that

[@jacktaylor6253]

i want the link to this article cause that sounds fracking fun

[@timothymclean]

I'm fond of Pale (and to a lesser extent Pact), serials by Wildbow which are _full_ of varying degrees of Faustian bargains-not because the characters are unusually dumb or arrogant or whatever, but because there are lots of desperate people and a wide variety of powerful entities (and wizards) willing to exploit them.

[@thehandsomeone8369]

Comedy gold 😂

[@Coel15]

My favorite way of getting out of a Faustian bargain is showcased in American Dad. Roger sells his soul to gain the ability to play guitar well enough to show up a guy who interrupted him at a coffee shop. When he beats the guy and wins the bet, Roger tells the guy “just pay for my lessons, and we’ll call it even.” When they shake on it, the guy promptly drops into a fiery portal.

[@ozzeryunarei1023]

That's actually brilliant, I'm using that.

[@ThrottleKitty]

I love this bit so much, it's like "Y'all totally overthinking this whole outsmarting the devil thing"

[@AtomSkeptic]

Oh Holy hellfire! That's brilliant!

[@dromankass8655]

Davy Jones: 'What is your purpose here?' Will Turner: 'Jack Sparrow sent me to settle his debt.' Davy Jones: 'Did he now!? I'm sorely temped to accept that offer!'

[@LuneWatcher]

@@ThrottleKitty Why should you have to outsmart the devil, when you can just outsmart some guy? I love this method.

[@QuinnBuckland]

My favourite example to this day is Homer selling his soul for a doughnut, then having Marge win it back in court.

[@DDlambchop43]

oh yeah, I love that. He can't sell his soul because he gave it to Marge on their wedding day; it's both hilarious and romantic.

[@mithos789]

this is theft. you cant sell your car to multiple people.

[@railbaron1]

Fun Fact, That was loosely based of "The Devil and Daniel Webster"

[@ravenwilder4099]

@@mithos789 True, but in this scenario, the Devil still couldn't claim Homer's soul, since Marge has a prior claim on it - most that they could demand is that Homer reimburse them for the cost of the donut.

[@meatballguy1]

🎵"I'm smarter than the Devil! I'm smarter than the Devil!" 🎵 "YOU ARE NOT SMARTER THAN ME!"

[@DarkFalcos]

I just realized that Anakin turning to the dark side is actually a faustian bargain type story, which follows both the "deal to save a loved one, but get tricked" and the "become inhumain and forget their initial motivation" archetypes.

[@Claire-tk4do]

YOOO! That's why it's so painful, I never realized. You see the doom coming and creeping, though the shorts-sighted and arrogant main character believes they can take it all. Oof. As a long-time Star Wars fan I still never saw it quite that WAY before

[@clairdeloona]

george has literally described palpatine as the devil before… very interesting bc if you look at the haircut and some of the shots, anakin kinda resembles a very paradise-lost-y version of lucifer…

[@catherinepoteat]

And it hurts every time because I Just Want The Outcome To Be Happy Skywalker Family and it never happens 😭😭😭😭😭😭

[@jonathangibson9482]

Holy heck, you just opened my eyes to this.

[@JustinWahlne]

My favorite part is when Red implicitly calls Light Yagami a "short-sighted goober." 😂🤣

[@PhoenixMerlyn69]

Yes!

[@polyman6859]

He was smart until the writer realized the story actually needed to end.

[@--------04]

​@@polyman6859 I don't think he was, at least not in the way it was intended this in the video. The Light Yagami before the death note would have been rejected killing police man etc.

[@danewardlocke9014]

@@polyman6859 Him being smart and short-sighted (and a goober) aren't mutually exclusive; the entire plot started because Light's ego was too big for him to not fall into an extremely obvious trap L placed for him, and he lost most or all of his "battles" with L (until he basically got outside help L couldn't possibly foresee coming to end things for him) for the same reason, in addition to him not being as smart as he thought he was. Also his idea for how to make a "better" world was really terrible.

[@UniDocs_Mahapushpa_Cyavana]

@@danewardlocke9014 It worked in the show. Though really, the obvious way to use the power is to get rid of nations you 🫵 don't like by constantly killing their leader until they dissolve into anarchy ❌🧑‍⚖. If only to crisis shock the other nations into sense.

[@poenpotzu2865]

I don't know why but the joke in fairly oddparents cracks me up when wishing for a lawyer is the correct answer against a Faustian deal/wish

[@Narutonarutonaruto85]

What if that lawyer is Lionel Hutz?

[@robbieaulia6462]

@@Narutonarutonaruto85 then specifically ask for Saul Goodman, THE Saul Goodman.

[@1krani]

Ah yes, Norm the Genie, who I am convinced was brought on because Butch Hartman couldn't clear the actual Devil with network censors.

[@poenpotzu2865]

Holy fuck a 1k likes!?

[@daviddaugherty2816]

Yeah, I'd say you'd get Futurama's Hyper-Chicken. He technically is a lawyer.

[@wraithcadmus]

Semantics! To paraphrase an old Tumblr thread: Fae: Your mother will be healed, and you understand the price, you shall give me your firstborn? Human: Yes, so when do we start on making the firstborn? Fae: \*blushing\* Oh

[@iamwhatitorture]

Tumblr and Faustian bargains are such a good match

[@tekbox7909]

@@iamwhatitorture Honestly internet and faustian bargains in general. just is fun to see how a super intelligent hivemind (yes the internet is technically a hivemind or at least functions as one) tries to get a beneficial deal. especially since these are hypotheticals so you get to have a super intelligent hivemind on both sides making it very fun to watch.

[@Nyota7766]

Ayeeeeeee that human got rizz like no other.

[@simonpetrikov3992]

I think that counts as attempting to outsmart the devil

[@eliaskrebs9444]

This is actually a minor plot beat in one of the early Dresden Files books, where it's explicitly part of the pitch and indeed is the actual trap inherent to the deal.

[@annakamaralli9627]

The origin of the Jack O'Lantern is a "trick the devil" story. Jack was not the lantern, as now, but the man who carried it (Jack of the lantern). Jack had previously made a bargain of his soul to get the devil to pay his bar tab (yup). When the devil came to claim his due, Jack persuaded him to climb an apple tree to grab him an apple for his last meal. When the devil was up in the tree branches, Jack carved a cross on the trunk so he couldn't get down. To get rid of the cross and let him down, Jack made the devil promise never to take his soul to hell. When Jack died and tried to enter heaven St Peter, unsurprisingly, said absolutely not. But when he went down to hell, of course, he couldn't get in there either, which left him doomed to wander. The devil gave him a coal from hell to light his way back to earth, and Jack popped it into a hollowed-out turnip, where it (being an infernal coal) continues to burn eternally.

[@silverbloodborne9495]

At least the devil was kind enough to give him something to get back

[@annakamaralli9627]

@@silverbloodborne9495 The devil kind of comes across as a big softie in this story. Climbing a tree to get an apple for someone? I think part of the gist is that Jack (who was Irish) has a gift for persuasion.

[@yohumanfrisk]

Tis a great story, if ye ask me?

[@demi-femme4821]

In this story, tricking the devil was arguably worse than the alternative.

[@jackwriter1908]

In the DC Universe John Constatine sold his soul to a bunch of different Demon Lords which then started infighting and resulted with them healing his cancer in order to stop an all out war in hell over who get's his soul.

[@liimlsan3]

"Outsmarting the devil" tales are amazing. One I heard from Quebec, the condemned man's wife, pleading for five more minutes with her husband, asks Old Scratch to take her soul along with his, if he promises not to collect the souls until the candle in the lantern melts down. He says yes - she throws the lantern in the river and lets it sink. Now it never will.

[@mattpluzhnikov519]

I imagine this can be tragically subverted through a magical flame that persists even under WATER...but, I still quite like her cleverness.

[@TheKd8lvt]

Would that not imply that _also_ made them immortal? Unless it's otherwise said in the story, that candle isn't going to melt down... ever. It might dissolve, but it never _melted_ ... 🤔

[@davidprince6877]

@@TheKd8lvt They could end up ghosts. Maybe they could even go to heaven since they have more time to repent. If the candle gets melted straight to hell, but until then you could go anywhere.

[@alexconn7473]

The character Johnny from the song the devil went down to Georgia is a character that not only outsmarted the devil when he made Johnny a kind of deal but outmatches and outdoes him simply through pure skill at his craft of playing the fiddle he not only keeps his soul but gets a solid gold fiddle from the devil as a prize sure he gloats about being the best fiddle player there ever was but considering he just beat the literal devil in a fiddle playing contest I'd say he earned that right to gloat about his skill as he showed his bragging wasn't just empty words

[@liimlsan3]

@@TheKd8lvt Nah, just means they go to heaven when they finally die, because he's not allowed to "intercept" them. Otherwise God is less powerful than the devil, and mon dieu, c'est wrong.

[@kirstenc4279]

“Sacrificed a future they never thought they would want”. That hit hard.

[@Maswartz226]

I'd love to see an urban fantasy story about a law firm trying to help people out of their bargains.

[@jacktaylor6253]

i LOVE whenever i find this stuff in books. its so funny reading a debate over this stuff

[@jarrakul]

I'd also recommend Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence, where the lawyers, the devils, and the people making deals with devils are often the same people.

[@ClericOfPholtus]

I bet Murdock and She-Hulk could've helped Parker with Mephisto lol

[@krspaceT1]

With that Jewish Satan, I'd like a U.F where people are expecting the Christian Devil and get Jewish Satan instead and get wildly confused until someone clarifies it for them. Like a version of the 'Hollywood Hades versus Mythologically accurate Hades' where they expect Disney Hades but get PJO or OSP Hades instead.

[@MrEyescream]

i hade a book once who centered arround this. When someone died, an angel (protagonist) and a demon showed up and they made a court hearing who gets the soul. The Plot starts when one time the soul was not ther, only a body. The first book was kinda ok, the rest was only boring desciptions of torture during this trip through hell (to save the damsel in distress) and really cringe sexscenes (with the damsel in distress). It ended right in the middle of the plot so it was sadly nonsense.

[@charlx8979]

“Cute kitty things offering superpowers are only benevolent like 60% of the time.” ILL TAKE THOSE ODDS

[@BlinkTvvice]

Fr

[@sciencewithfun2052]

Do you want to end like Homura akemi?

[@JHorst-r2u]

​@@sciencewithfun2052 Fellow Madoka fan spotted!

[@redgeoblaze3752]

Worked out well enough in Dark Souls 1 and 2.

[@insertstudionamehereproduction]

If it ain't 100% it's 50% accurate

[@ultra824]

My favorite D&D character I've ever played started with the concept of a _reverse_ faustian bargain. She was a chaotic evil warlock with a _celestial_ patron. She found what she _thought_ a ritual to form a pact with a devil, but it was in fact a fake, made by a chaotic good angel of redemption. She could have backed out, but the angel genuinely _was_ offering substantial power in exchange for performing some good deeds now and then. All she cared about was getting power out of it, the nature of what she had to do in return didn't really matter, so she stuck with it. This was a _super_ fun character to play, because it had a natural narrative reason for her to be working with the rest of the party; the quest was basically just what her patron told her to do in exchange for more power.

[@uber_nerd-l7r]

this is BRILLIANT

[@rianorixalaunana357]

OH THAT IS AWESOME EEEEE! SUCH a cool character concept, must have been really fun to play.

[@tekbox7909]

This is amazing

[@beardofknowledge3792]

I can appretiate a character like that, as I myself am playing a warlock in a game at the moment- A dwarf who barganed with his wealth, until the day he dies, to a miserly Dao genie. This dwarf, a half-blood with elven heritage, basically was treated as a second class citizen back home and did the roughest jobs because nobody else would take them, and one such job down in the mines led to him being buried alive. Desperate, he'd reached out for anything to save him, and found himself bound in contract to the genie. He managed to escape certain death thanks to the power given, and made it home- but things didn't improve. His wealth, non-existant at that time, was the price after all, and so partially to begin paying he learned to fleece his fellows, to oversell and haggle, so on and so forth, growing more and more like his patron each day, to the point of being driven out as a madman and a scoundril for his actions against his kind, all in his search to increase his wealth and thereby increasing his patron's. He's been very fun to roleplay as, as LE is a really entertaining alignement to work with and espeically since he's been basically the face of the party this whole time, bartering for bigger quest rewards and lower prices, handling the finacnes (to keep the burden off the less monetarily inclined members of the party [and to split an extra share for his patron]), and so on. Does good things for the sake of keeping people favoring him, so that they in turn reward him and the party better, the most recent example being personally funding an orphanage to house the surviving children of another party member's home town that had been destroyed by raiders, with the specific intent of proving to the city they led the group to that his party were good people and could be trusted with sensitive and dangerous tasks, like escorting children through raider territory.

[@thepip3599]

When you said you played a warlock with a reverse faustian bargain it reminded me of my warlock who is actually the patron in the relationship, taking advantage of the devil who made a deal with him. I only played him once but I’d love to do it more someday. An imp (mechanically, my character’s familiar) pissed off his devil boss and was in serious trouble so out of desperation he appeared to my character in a dream and agreed to swear an oath of eternal servitude in exchange for being summoned out of hell. Amusingly, the imp doesn’t literally give my character magic powers. Instead, he hides up his sleeve and casts spells for him while my character pointlessly waves a wand around, making it look like my character has powers. He’s a con artist, pretending to be a powerful wizard but basically being a magician.

[@CoronaMage]

Describing Azula and Ozais relationship as a Faustian covenant is weird and hilariously accurate. Bravo.

[@Praisethesunson]

Also. Red mentioned ATLA for the bingo card

[@philosophy_bot4171]

Beep bop... I'm the Philosophy Bot. Here, have a quote: "It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live" ~ Marcus Aurelius

[@shoyupacket5572]

@@philosophy_bot4171 Can you find some quotes that I haven't already read about 800 times?

[@michaelklassen777]

Faustian covenant?

[@metarcee2483]

​@@michaelklassen777 the big difference between a deal and a covenant, is that when one side of a deal is broken, the other side doesn't have to follow the terms anymore. With a covenant, even if one side breaks the terms, the other side still must follow the terms of the covenant, because it typically has a spiritual component. Azula and Ozai's relationship is more of a covenant, because even after Ozai breaks the terms, Azula can't do anything about it.

[@alexanderhenby1362]

Dont forget the good ol' "I'm just better than you" way of beating the devil, no out smarting, no trickery, no loopholes, just sheer, unadulterated. "I'm the best there's ever been" Sometimes that's a fiddle contest and sometimes it's a punch in the face.

[@TheDracoStar]

Which is why, historically, the Devil only ever went down to Georgia once.

[@alecLogan]

@@TheDracoStar (except that, apparently canonically, he went down there again explicitly for the runback)

[@pumpkin_pants3828]

like beating Hades in a game of blackjack. SCP fans know what's up

[@TheDracoStar]

@@alecLogan (Then he's only ever gone to Georgia twice... understandable, Georgia seems kinda nice anyway)

[@subtlewhatssubtle]

I would greatly enjoy a rendition of "Devil Went Down to Georgia" which includes a line where the devil tries to cheat by distracting Johnny while he plays and Johnny gets his back by decking the Devil while finishing his sheet.

[@wjzav1971]

I love the "Fool, I sold my soul a long time ago" Twist so the deal-making entity goes on empty handed because the mortal has no soul.

[@alexanerose4820]

Must be a rookie devil then because rule#1 of making a deal is knowing what you get out of it. But your post reminds me of the Spongebob episode where Mr.Krabs sold his soul to the Dutchman for talking money and when the Dutchamn collects he gets an IOU instead and it's revealed that there were other entities he made deals with, including spongebob who said "He was 5 dollars short on payday"

[@emanuelrojas2]

This is literally Mr Krabs!

[@TehNoobiness]

My ex had a character who made a deal with every devil he met. In the event of hia death, he'd instructed his apprentice to go to his workshop, find a box with a button underneath his bunk in the workshop, and press it. Never did find out what the rest of the plan was.

[@stombstone]

Black Panther did something like that once. He sold his soul to Mephisto for a power boost. But when Mephisto came to claim, he found out that Black Panther's soul doesn't belong to Black Panther, it belongs to Bast. Mephisto couldn't take it from her, Bast gave Black Panther a tongue lashing, Black Panther went back to normal.

[@RaptorJesus]

That feels adjacent to the John Constantine approach: just sell your soul multiple times, and let all the demons in hell fight each other on who gets to claim it.

[@tatersalad76]

OSP Bargain: "Watch this video to gain entertainment and knowledge, but you'll be pushing off washing the dishes for a few more minutes."

[@noahsmith170]

Implying I don't listen to this WHILE I do chores. As charming as the visuals are, they are optional

[@shadowarchivist2382]

Kinda funny since I was doing the dishes when this notification hit! 😂

[@templarw20]

Jokes on you, I listen WHILE I do dishes!

[@Munchkin.Of.Pern09]

I feel so called out right now, that is LITERALLY ME.

[@kazemizu]

Laundry for me

[@mythicalgirl2005]

Meg from Hercules is an example of a character who bargained to save a loved one.

[@mind_crystals]

What I find interesting is that what we see in the movie is the aftermath of that bargain. Hades held up his side of the deal, and even if Meg's bf didn't ditch her for another woman, she would still be stuck serving him with apparently no termination date.

[@thewanderer1618]

honey you mean HUNKules

[@wyattbascom9711]

“Go The Distance” even twists it further into a Faustian Bargain, as Hades actually manipulates Meg into thinking her ex abandoned her, making her go further into his service.

[@TodayLifeIsGoood]

In a twist of irony, if you look in depth at Hades' behaviour, he is actively looking for ways to release her from the deal without him loosing face, so to speak.

[@Beryllahawk]

And got screwed over, too. Also may I say that seeing Kore comment on a Greek myth (even a pop-culture-candy version) is satisfying in a very Lore Olympus Nerd way?

[@wolfeyes555]

You know, when you brought up the "Outsmarting the Devil" trope, honestly the first thing that came to my mind was "Devil Went Down to Georgia"

[@Ironlantern723]

First I thought was the Futurama episode "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings" where Fry deals with the Robot Devil, though that's not exactly outsmarting him to be fair.

[@kidtruck9157]

"He was in a bind, he was way behind, he was willin' to make a deal"

[@templarw20]

It’s a good example, and shows the progression if you consider stories like “The Devil and Daniel Webster” or… a colonial era story that I don’t remember the name of where it doesn’t end as well for the protagonist.

[@Puzzles-Pins]

That's not really outsmarting the Devil, it's simply the Devil making a bad bet.

[@Rockstar-bq5fm]

Lol just said the same thing

[@azzaelulbrinter]

A chilean folklore faustian story: Pedro Urdemales, who asked the devil for the power to trick anyone, promising to give his soul to the devil “the next day”. When the devil came the next day, Pedro insisted that it wasnt that day as the bargain said “next day”, hence, tricking the devil. There are many stories of Pedro Urdemales using his power to trick various individuals. The devil eventually got bored and yeetwd the soul out of him without respecting the bargain

[@LoboGuara5bruxaria]

"The devil eventually got bored and yeetwd the soul out of him without respecting the bargain" Loophole abuse gone wrong here...

[@felipemontero1087]

Wena culiao (For the context in English) My grandpa told me the reason the Devil was able to snatch his soul was because the deal stipulated that he was able to “trick” anyone. By definition, tricking happens because you engage in an interaction with other ones in a somewhat equal footing. Pedro never took to notice that sometimes bad things happen and bad luck exists. So the Devil snatching his soul was out of the deal

[@pedrovallefin8406]

@@felipemontero1087 So the loophole abuse could only take him so far cause to be able to trick someone that person has to hear him out? Makes sense, if someone comes out of nowhere and stabs you, being able to trick them afterwards wont really help you out of that situation.

[@felipemontero1087]

@@pedrovallefin8406 yeah, he have a saying here in Chile as well: The Devil knows more because of his age than for being the Devil. Meaning, living (?) for that long would make you pick a trick or two. The other popular version of the story goes that the devil killed Pedro Urdumales. The same logic applies, you can’t trick Death, and it still applies to the terms of the deal, cause as soon as he died the Devil snatched his soul down to Hell. A lot of Chilean folklore with the Devil has only 1 possible way to avoid getting dragged to Hell: and that is to get him to fail cause of his pride. There is a story about how a young maiden “suggests” that the Devil can’t out drink Santiago. The Devil thinks is just some rando, and accepts the Challenge. Santiago is a dude’s name but also the capitak of our country, with (at the time of the story) 4 million people, with some of the heaviest drinkers in the world.

[@MrBelles104]

Couldn't this mean the devil has the ability to yeet souls from people's bodies regardless of if they even made a deal or not? Seems like in this case, if the devil ever pays attention to you, best to take the deal and gain something out of it, or he'll just take your soul with no compensation.

[@herbertunkraut]

Goethe's version of the Faust story has the surprisingly unique twist of turning the deal into more of a bet: "if you manage to make me happy, you get my soul". I don't think too many stories actually take that route, but it allows for quite a lot of cases in the "outsmarting the devil" category.

[@ProfLakitax]

r/BeatMeToIt

[@amycox5733]

Enemies to lovers, 300k words, WIP on AO3. The story ends with the devil character saying that they want change the terms of their deal. They no longer want the deal maker’s soul, they want their heart/hand in marriage. The deal maker takes a moment to clarify that the devil wants their love as opposed to a part of their body, then tearfully accepts the new deal EDIT: some people have asked what the title is. Unfortunately, it’s not an actual story on AO3, I just wish it was :( If any talented person were to write it though, add it to the thread, I’d want to read

[@kallistiravenhurst5232]

@@amycox5733 "But you earned my soul? What about the deal?" "I think it fits better with you"

[@sophiaro4593]

Yeah I think it's an aspect most people overlook that. Also that it's actually not really about Faust wanting power - but happiness. That's the condition of his bargain. If he actually says a moment is so fulfilling he wished it lasted he loses his soul.

[@edi9892]

There's another concept that was highly unusual for it's time: Faust realises that Mephisto doesn't think like humans and thus can't comprehend them! That's why he made the bet in the first place!

[@DarthFhenix55]

"You're mad if you think I will help you" "You're wrong, I'm mad anyways" Truly the smartest being in all dimensions.

[@derpinator4912]

There's some sort of typo here

[@IndigoWhiskey]

theres an f missing. youre mad if you think i will help you.

[@DarthFhenix55]

Thank you, I already correct it.

[@allseeingportrait]

With Bill Cipher as the proud bearer of the Tumbnail Honor, I’d like to bring up one of my favorite Faustian Bargains- his initial deal with Stanford Pines. It’s such a good combination imo of “arrogant smart guy foolishly asks for power” and “helpless person desperate for answers takes the first hand offered to them”. Ford’s quest for knowledge, to learn and to understand- those goals were noble even if he considered himself of superior intellect, and with the threat of losing everything he’d fought for looming large, his deal with Bill seems almost reasonable. It’s also notable what Bill gets- the ability to possess his body while he sleeps. It’s initially framed as another positive, another way to help- but in the Journals you get a real glimpse of how, once the truth of Bill’s goals was revealed, it made Ford spiral so hard into paranoia and anxiety in a way that hits VERY well.

[@segevstormlord3713]

It's also worth noting that Bill _has no supernatural obligation to uphold his end of his bargains._ We see this when he makes a deal with Dipper. Once Dipper agreed to pay the price Bill asked, Bill was apparently empowered to take that payment...and didn't have to do a darned thing to uphold his end of it. It's closer to making a bargain with an online scammer who says he'll make you rich if you put a pile of money into his totally trustworthy account. Once you turn over the money, he doesn't have to do a thing but keep it...but he did need you to actually give him the money before he could get ahold of it.

[@Iceguppie]

​@@segevstormlord3713 It's kind of vague, actually. He did provide "a hint" as offered the first night, by revealing the microchips... but you could also argue that Bill was vague enough with the terms on the day the deal was made that he didn't actually offer Dipper anything, only heavily implied that he would.

[@hexterspectre1191]

@@segevstormlord3713 it’s been a while since I watched Gravity Falls, but iirc Bill said his end of the deal was specifically to “crack the laptop”. Dipper figured Bill meant he’d give Dipper the password, but Bill followed the exact words, cracking the laptop in half. Bill basically used careful wording to make a deal that would give Bill exactly what he wanted while giving Dipper jack shit while still *technically* upholding his end of the bargain - very fitting of a malevolent trickster entity who makes deals that always backfire on the other party. or, at least, that was how I interpreted the scene when I first watched it. 😅

[@Envy_May]

​@@hexterspectre1191 I NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT

[@peanut7920]

​@@hexterspectre1191 ooooh thats so smart I never thought if it that way!

[@1987MartinT]

Probably the saddest example of a Faustian bargain made for the sake of someone else, followed be the person making the bargain getting betrayed, is Megara from Disney's Hercules. She sold her soul to Hades to save her boyfriend. Only for said boyfriend to leave her for another girl. With no indication that Hades had anything to do with it. The boyfriend for whom she sold her soul just ditched her for someone else, entirely by his own choice. The saddest Faustian bargains are, in my opinion, the ones where the person making it does so for the sake of someone else, only to be betrayed, not by who they made the bargain with, but by who they made it for.

[@christyndoro]

This also kinda reminds me of a Mami's warning to Sayaka in Madoka Magica about becoming a magical girl, because Sayaka later ends up making her wish for that boy, only for him to end up with someone else.

[@ag-13studios51]

Ah ha ha… may I recommend the Go the Distance book from Disney's Twisted Tales to you, good sir/ma'am?

[@catbatrat1760]

@ag-13studios51 I've... never heard of that. What is it? /genq

[@Drachir0n]

And then you have Chainsaw Man, where the literal chainsaw devil grants Denji all his powers in exchange for Denji to show Pochita his dreams, probably the most wholesome version of this trope I've seen

[@losfrail6142]

This is one of the reasons why Chainsaw Man feels so fresh. Everything is a contract. The ones done for basically free in particular require the thing giving you the contract to find you attractive, or be good friends with it, or something else entirely.

[@Tayanator]

And another not so wholesome example is with aki where he is given a deal with the future devil,because he death was going to be the worse

[@timothymclean]

On one hand, that's a lovely moment, and I love the similar contracts made towards the end of part 1. On the other hand...this kind of thing is why tropes shouldn't follow strict definitions. Like, yeah Denji made a literal contract with a literal devil, but that doesn't mean he made a "deal with the devil". At least, not _that_ devil...

[@Drachir0n]

@@Tayanator *MANGA SPOILERS* The reveal isn't even that it's a bad death, Aki had a painless death where he dreamt about going home with his younger brother, the painful part was that his death is the worst death possible for DENJI, who had to kill Aki with his own hands

[@evlkenevl2721]

Lol, didn't think I'd ever see Chainsaw Man referred to as wholesome.

[@guillermopena8412]

Probably my favorite usage of the trope is the way Futurama did it. Fry makes a deal with the Robot Devil, he doesn't outsmart him but the Robot Devil does get screwed by the deal. Then the episode's climax is the Robot Devil trying to make Fry desperate enough to undo the original deal. It's straight up a subversion of the trope where the Devil is the one who gets screwed over, the Devil is the one who has to outsmart the human to fix his curse, and the normal interaction of the Faustian Deal is to break the deal, not to make it.

[@jasminesidney8174]

That the episode where Fry and the robot Devil switch hands and Fry gets really good at playing the holophoner?

[@emmabyrne9274]

It's basically a version of the text post: Demon: You sold me your soul last week Human: No refunds Demon: please it's making me sad

[@vibevibevibemcommentedtoda5717]

Like the Shoemaker and the Devil???

[@SheepUndefined]

Love that ep, lmao. The "You can't just have your characters announce how they feel, that makes me feel angry" line is something I quote on a regular basis

[@jmaldonado790]

One of my favorite twists on these Faustian deals is in “little shop of horrors” Instead of having to actually give away his soul Seymour has to give away his humanity by taking part in more and more murders escalating from people he hates to people he loves losing more control each time. It’s also interesting because he never makes a verbal agreement with the plant he just keeps feeding it and reaping the benefits until the plant begins to take control.

[@TestSubject-1498]

I’m so happy to see this comment because I was getting ready to say the same thing! I also like how Seymour doesn’t do any of it out of bloodlust, or even out of greed for the most part. At first he enjoys the success the plant brings him, and he’s desperate to get out of Skid Row, but mostly he does it for Audrey - first to save her from being abused, then because he thought he needed the success to impress her. What makes it sad is that Audrey loved him right from the beginning. If he’d been more sure of himself he might have realized he didn’t need the plant for that, but instead he felt pressure to keep feeding it until it was too late

[@jmaldonado790]

@@TestSubject-1498 I’ll always be really sad that the movie cut a lot of the “meek shall inherit” number as I feel that’s essential to understanding Seymour’s headspace going into the end

[@missybarbour6885]

Also interesting in terms of which ending you think is better! Do you want him to escape with Audrey, or does he deserve to get eaten because he killed all those people?

[@techstuff9198]

@@missybarbour6885 Neither.

[@caroline8590]

@@missybarbour6885 I like the original ending because it’s the OG, but I gotta say if I’m watching the movie, I definitely like the happy ending more. Seymour feels more like an underdog you wanna root for than a jerk you wanna see crash and burn

[@fabianglathe6131]

My favorite idea for the “outsmarting the devil” trope is making two deals with two entities, playing them against each other. Like, making a deal with a demon in exchange for bearing his child and then also making a deal with a powerful witch, promising her your firstborn child and in the end the witch gets the demon child and you dodged two bullets.

[@PaulAllPro]

Dammit you still get preg by the devil though 💀

[@goldengaruda8935]

But now the powerful witch has a demon to raise as an apprentice

[@Kusari_Downpour]

@@goldengaruda8935 Everyone wins

[@TomatenUndZwiebelSuppe]

@@PaulAllPro this is such a non problem for majority of tumblr populace, though

[@jorgecortes3789]

Love how this trope is used in FMAB. In the end Edward "outsmarts" the devil but he also doesn't. He still has to gave up something (his alchemy) which is implied by truth to be the source of pride and so he's able to get a happy ending that feels fair and also outsmart truth by being humble, in stark contrast to father who tries to overpower it and fails.

[@Levsa399]

Man, that anime is amazing!

[@alexanderguerrero347]

I still think edwards should have went down fighting

[@blacknorthwind93]

Wow I didn't though about it.

[@juniperrodley9843]

@@alexanderguerrero347 Wouldn't have fit thematically at all

[@777LoveStory]

I thought a lot of that story when watching this. Really good subversion of the trope.

[@3393matthew]

"Get struck by a pop fly in the outfield and wake up with super powers" is absolutely going to be the backstory for my next dnd character

[@Shadowreaper5]

Red was citing the plot of Rookie of the Year

[@josephperez2004]

@@Shadowreaper5 Holy heck, she really was. Kid gets hit, and his arm basically turns into a catapult.

[@raspberryjam]

Coulda been a direct lift from a douglas adams book for all i know tbh

[@bentonic4998]

Not too far off from a Space Dandy plot actually

[@furiousfyord238]

really? Damn, here I was with a whole Baseball themed superhero named "Flyball"

[@thelast9583]

Nothing like a deal with the devil for a good story

[@Broomer52]

It’s a classic easy setup for a story that the plot device is Biblical. I’m reminded of a killer line in a Christian movie (the movie itself was pretty meh and I never liked movies of any type that feel like they’re lecturing you) when an asshole business man is talking to his senile grandmother bringing up how she kept her faith and this is what she has meanwhile he walked away from it and he’s better off than most anyone. In a moment of clarity she says “Sometimes people don’t realize they’re in a cage until the door closes” (translation: it’s great right now but when you die theirs no taking it back)

[@lpk675]

*Looks over at One More Day* Doesn’t always make for a good story.

[@Thosted]

Literally the first 5 seasons of supernatural

[@AlSidre]

Your divorce lawyer has entered rhe chat

[@DISTurbedwaffle918]

My favorite ones are where the devil gets his shit kicked in anyway. Just really cathartic imo

[@T0NI_]

The outsmarting the devil part made me think of John Constantine from DC comics. The guy made deals with so many devils they all decided to just make him immortal because if he dies they’d have to wage war to decide who gets to keep his soul. Also the one with people making deals in desperation made me immediately think of Fjord from Critical Role. He was drowning and his subconscious reached out for anything that might help and something answered. I found that to be a neat way to make a character who made a deal without having to question their morals

[@skylark7921]

Dude Fjord’s whole thing was rly cool. I loved that like it started out as desperation but then once Fjord had the power he spent a good bit being like “wait this is awesome gimme more” before actually making any moves towards getting out of it

[@T0NI_]

@@skylark7921 His entire arc was great, especially because it also tied in with his exploration of masculinity and what it means to be a “real man”

[@calsalitra4689]

The TF2 comics (Naked and the Dead specifically) have probably my favorite example of outsmarting the Devil, not just once but twice! The Medic made a deal with the devil at some point in exchange for his soul. When the Medic dies the Devil is ready to collect, but comments that the Medic had been such a monster after the deal was struck that he probably would have gone to Hell anyway, so the Devil actually gave him free crap. When the Devil tries to collect the Medic uses a loophole, since the Devil requires *majority* ownership of the Medics soul to collect, and he's surgically grafted 8 additional souls to his own. This leaves the Devil with only 1/9th ownership, so he can't do anything. Instead of going to Heaven Medic negotiates for more time on Earth using flattery and bartering, by immediately trading one of his souls for the Devils pen.

[@2qup2]

treating your soul like shares of a company is my favorite concept than nobody ever uses

[@Timmir00]

I want to say John Constantine did something similar in his comics where he had actually sold his soul to a number of different entities that if he dies, it would cause a literal war in hell over who gets his soul, so they actively go out of their way to keep him alive.

[@accelleratiiincredibus446]

@@Timmir00 That sounds like what would happen to the last Dovakiin. Every playthrough of Skyrim, I make deals with over a half dozen Daedra who all want to put me in their specific afterlife. I'd place my bets on Hermaeus Mora winning the fight though.

[@bluesbest1]

@@accelleratiiincredibus446 Pretty sure Akatosh has first dibs on all Dovakiin, though, so it's really more of a "Ah, but you see, what I was promising was never mine to bargain away and was never going to be yours. So therefore, you gain nothing from any bargain with me." when the Dovakiin dies.

[@accelleratiiincredibus446]

@@bluesbest1 That's fair. Though, Hermaeus Mora does definitely have the power to hold almost anyone in Apocrypha as long as he wants, as shown with Miraak. So like... I'm willing to bet the Dovahkiin has a chance of getting stuck there for a while until Hermaeus Mora stops finding them useful or a god steps in to get them out.

[@ThatRandomEncounterGuy]

“Just sign here, in blood.” “Are you *sure* you’re not the Devil?” “Listen, kid. You can forge a signature, but I’ve never seen someone who could cheat on a blood test.” Edit: thanks for 850+ likes! :D Guess Zander Sanchez quotes really are profitable.

[@RussanoGreenstripe]

Person with Genetic Chimerism: Well, prepare to be surprised!

[@Rofflestomper]

*after the deal* muhahaha! You fool! I used someone *elses* blood!.

[@tommarsdon5644]

I mean, nowadays signing something is more of an indication of consent, rather than as authentication; it's why, when you are supposed to sign something, you can often sign it however you like.

[@ShokuaK]

@@Rofflestomper Devil: Joke's on you, that means that someone gets the benefits.

[@marctaco2624]

@@ShokuaK I’d love to see a story where this happens

[@chespin3910]

i think we need to bring back the outsmarting the devil type of stories. cause the whole "making a deal with a malevolent entity to secure your survival from a bad situation" is far, *far* too relatable right now

[@nightfall3605]

When she had the graphic of the figure face planted in a footprint and the the entity offering an out, it reminded me of someone’s example of unfettered capitalism in action: a drowning person agrees to transfer all their assets to a person on the shore in exchange for being saved from drowning. Yay! Everyone gets what they wanted! Capitalism does not care if the deal is objectively unequal, or even if the person on the shore pushed the drowning victim into the water!

[@phthalo_blue]

Yeah I felt a bit uncomfortable around that bit because like. It can't be a coincidence that the idea of 'outsmarting greedy bastards is good' fell out of favour in storytelling as soon as greedy bastards began owning the world. Food for thought.

[@gewreid5946]

That would be quite subversive indeed

[@josephdavis9234]

Me, getting a job with Amazon:

[@GilTheDragon]

Every "we need to X to save the Farm from the bank" story is that. The faustian pact is the mortage, the plot is the managing to dissolve the compact.

[@RealRaven6229]

Madoka is such an amazing deconstruction of Faustian bargains. They all make different kinds of bargains... There's Sayaka that wanted to heal her crush and hated what she became as a result, Kyoko who watched her family fall apart from her wish but chose to live her life using her powers for herself alone. Mami, who just wanted to survive. Homura, who wanted to save madoka and doomed her more and more as a result. And then Madoka, who saved all the magical girls by never giving up hope...

[@kiall-bj9bg]

In the first time line Madoka wish was to save a puppy killed a run away truck.

[@RealRaven6229]

@@kiall-bj9bg a kitten but yes! Because her wish then was so small and innocent hence why that timeline was pretty tame until the Walpurgisnacht attack.

[@kyokyodisaster4842]

GENUINELY smiling ear-to-ear with Madoka being mentioned. Its such a good story, and I am so hyped for the new movie in winter of next year.

[@belindaluna2067]

Madoka is a lazily constructed misunderstanding of the original Faust story that serves as an excuse plot for sexist Moe misery porn. There. I said it.

[@RealRaven6229]

@@belindaluna2067 you certainly did say something. Can't say I agree. Madoka isn't trying to copy the original story. It's doing its own thing with the concept. And misery was never the point of madoka. It was always about hope in spite of hardship and despair. However, it definitely can be tiresome to watch if it's not your thing, so I can't exactly blame you for holding that opinion. It's the little things, I think. Like when Sayaka was a witch, Kyoko sacrificed herself to save her. At first yeah, that seems needlessly grim, but I eventually realized that Sayaka doesn't drop a grief seed, meaning that Kyoko actually sacrificed herself to save Sayaka from a cycle of endless despair. A lot of it is awful on the surface, but underneath that are characters that want a better world, and that's what I really like about the show.

[@oximoron613]

I think a really unique Faustian bargain would be Howl and Calcifer. It's glossed over in the movie, but in the book giving your soul to a fire demon is a really bad idea, and we see the Witch of the Waste get taken over by her demon. Calcifer and Howls' deal however, was born out of compassion. Howl didn't want power, he just wanted to save Calcifer who was scared of dying. Neither of them realized the consequences of their actions, and it's actually the demon who tries to find help breaking their deal.

[@WannabeWryter]

How Unique, I suppose if an angel can fall, then a devil can rise.

[@Skyblade12]

And it was Sophie’s power to imbue life into things that allowed the deal to break without killing them.

[@HardCodedGaming]

On the note of outsmarting devils: Not *exactly* Faustian, but there's a Grimm story I love where the protagonist, a would-be doctor, makes an arrangement with the Grim Reaper. If Death stands at the foot of a patient's bed, they will recover on their own. If he stands at the head, they can't be helped. (Maybe vice versa? Been a while) (Note that the protagonist is not really being a doctor, but people think he's good because he's never wrong about a patient recovering) One day, he "treats" the King, who promises his daughter to anyone who can cure him. Death is standing at the head of the bed. But, damn, that princess is cute. I don't remember the ending or lesson to this story, but next is some of the funniest shit I've ever read. The protagonist outsmarts Death by TURNING THE KING'S BED AROUND so that Death is at the foot. THAT'S the galaxy-brain, fate-altering move. And instead of walking back over and asking why he thought that would work, Death is just like "Ah, you got me this time, kid!" and waits years to deliver his comeuppance. (Correct me if there's some detail I missed to explain why that worked beyond Death just committing to the bit)

[@OrlindeEarfalas]

The fairytale is called "Godfather Death" ! I love it as well, especially the beginning where the protagonist is born the twelth child in his family so his father needs to find a godfather but doesnt have a friend available so he goes out on the roads looking for one. He first meets God, who says he'd love to be the child's godfather but the man refuses, saying that God lets people live in poverty and suffering without doing anything, so he would do the same to his son. He then meets the Devil, would promises riches and power for his son, but the man refuses again, saying that the Devil speaks only lies. He then meets Death, who only promises that they'll be there for his son when his time comes. The man makes Death his son's Godfatther because Death treats everyone equally ! For the story, you had it right, Death is angry at their godchild for tricking them , and tells him to never do it again, or there will be consequences. BUT OF COURSE the King's daughter is then sick, and the godchild does the same "flipping the bed around" trick to save her and get her hand in marriage. Death is pissed, and carries their godchild to a cavern where they are as many candles lit as human lives, and shows their godchild that his candle is about to go out. The godchild tries to beg him to light his candle anew to let him live longer, but Death says that for a candle to light up , one as to go out. Death then takes the life of the godchild, lighting the candle of the princess's son in the process. I guess the morale of the story is : don't fuck with Death, you'll die one day you dont want that day to come sooner that you'd expect qhfwjklg

[@Scarybug]

Like all folk tales there are also many variants of Godfather Death. Sometimes death is outsmarted and sometimes he isn't, and sometimes he is for a while until the consequences of outsmarting death take their toll

[@HardCodedGaming]

Thank you! So glad someone else knew what I was talking about!

[@brendancarney1388]

@@OrlindeEarfalas The ending I encountered was a little different: That the physician, in a fit of desperation, tries to outsmart his godfather one last time in order to extend his life by affixing his candle atop a longer one, the life of a child. But the godson trips over his own cloak, his candle in tow, and it goes out in the fall.

[@arturoaguilar6002]

There is an old classical Mexican movie adaptation of that story called Macario. But in that adaptation, the trick doesn't work; the Grim Reaper just teleports to the head of the bed as soon as it's turned around.

[@doothewhat]

Speaking on dumb characters to make a deal with the devil, Homer Simpson once traded his soul for a donut! Marge then outsmarted the devil by providing evidence that Homer had promised his soul to her when they fell in love, thus proving that Homer did not have the legal ability to trade his soul to the devil! And Homer still got to eat the donut!

[@Dyneamaeus]

I personally like when the Faustian Bargainer gets dropped into the villain role by the bargain itself. The old 'act as my agent' clause, where they get what they want, but now they have to periodically ride out and burn down a village or leave their now genuinely saved home/loved ones behind to fight in someone else's war. And they're on the wrong side.

[@hilburn-]

Can't believe Red didn't mention John Constantine in the bit about outsmarting the devil - selling your soul to 3 individual demons forcing them to fight among each other rather than collect on it has gotta be up there!

[@timothymclean]

I feel like the bureaucratic Hells developed that way specifically to avoid this kind of situation.

[@gota7738]

I was both delighted and disappointed to find out that someone had done this idea. I do still kind of want to see a version of this idea where it's a less clever character does this with way too many demonic/god-like entities and the plot becomes about wading through the cosmic bureaucracy and dimensional marketplace to broker an outcome that will stop the apocalyptic war they triggered.

[@michaelbenson5677]

@@gota7738 It's a common fan-canon for the Skyrim protagonist as well. The Dovakiin may make eldritch bargains with several different daedric princes while also being the mortal champion of at least two gods. It's also established that the servants of one lord can raid the domain of another to retrieve a specific soul, so eternity could be one long game of cosmic capture the flag for the Dovakiin.

[@sirshotty7689]

@@michaelbenson5677 how do ya do my fellow vampiric werewolves?

[@battlesheep2552]

​@@michaelbenson5677 there is also the idea that the Dragoborn's soul, being a dragon soul, is a fragment of Akatosh, and therefore he/she never had any right to promise it to any other deity.

[@breadnon1740]

Can’t stop thinking about a short story I read in which the MC “outsmarts” two devil-like entities by playing them off of each other, and the twist ending reveals that it was in fact one entity making two deals with her, letting her get the best of them in order to lull them into feeling confident and potentially making more and more dangerous deals in the future

[@daviddaugherty2816]

Reminds me of Neverwinter Nights 2 (underrated game). The warlock Ammon Jerro sold his soul to a bunch of demons and devils, which would effectively force them to fight over who gets it when he dies.

[@TrueBladeSoul]

@@daviddaugherty2816so he was basically John Constantine

[@KaichouClips]

That sounds cool. Where can I find this story?

[@thomaswang2223]

This is literally just a Kansas City shuffle, and also the reason you should never play shell games with strangers

[@zhcultivator]

What if a MC became a superpower dealing entity? like a person who sells or trades various types of magic that would be interesting imo.

[@EleiyaUmei]

As a German who only knows Faust from Goethe's play where Faust makes a bargain for "good times" due to midlife crisis, the thought of the Faustian bargain originally being about power is so wild to me

[@esmeraldaloschuetz9120]

Der Faust der Folklore hat's tatsächlich für Macht & Moneten getan (und diente so der christlichen Propaganda als abschreckendes Beispiel); dieses ganze "Werd' ich zum Augenblicke sagen..."-Depressions-Ding war Goethes eigene Interpretation. Was ziemlich awesome ist, wie ich finde.

[@EleiyaUmei]

@@esmeraldaloschuetz9120 Nee, Goethe hat nur seine eigene Midlife-Crisis auf Faust projiziert (er hat mit Ü60 IRL einer Teenagerin einen Heiratsantrag gemacht, wtf), das bedarf wenig Kreativität ^^ Aber so hat er Faust wenigstens menschlicher und mehr relatable gemacht.

[@esmeraldaloschuetz9120]

@@EleiyaUmei Projektion - möglich, aber er hat in seinen 20ern angefangen, Faust zu schreiben. Urfaust und so. Das ganze Ding hat insgesamt ca 40 Jahre gedauert von der ersten Idee bis zum letzten Wort. Er hatte als Kind ein Faust-Puppenspiel, und der Prozess von Kindsmörderin Susanna Brandt hat das ganze dann gejumpstarted. Dass mit dem Heiratsantrag der Teenie-Wirtstochter im hohen Alter wusste ich und ja, ist ekelhaft. Die waren damals alle so Ekel-Creeps im Alter. Hat man einfach hingenommen, urgh.

[@pieterzegers7788]

@@esmeraldaloschuetz9120 I agree, honestly the best version of the story

[@alepenagorbe9135]

This says something about society

[@MsDaydream3r]

That moment when you realize student loans are a Faustian bargain. 😳

[@Human-san]

You get another punishment instead of a boon, though.

[@badatmathhh]

Its a reference dont worry about it

[@triggerme6144]

People really need to look up the definition of words before agreeing to something with said words included. I knew what a loan was at nine, atleast the concept of it. How do you go your entire life without knowing the meaning of the word 'loan'.

[@lucasguerra8618]

@@triggerme6144I can’t tell if your joking but they are

[@willbilly8738]

Oooooooh nooooo! I have to pay back money I borrowed! It’s just like the devil you guys!!!

[@TheBlackDemon1996]

My favourite subversion of this trope is in the Owl House. It turns out that the main villain made a deal with a god-like being, but they're still the asshole in the dynamic. The deity just wants someone to play with, while the bad guy never planned on honouring their deal.

[@maximvandepoll3008]

And Luz of course, who made a deal with the Titan himself to receive god-like powers. And the only thing she needed to do in the end was to keep the Titan's only child save, something that she would've done anyway.

[@zer0w0lf94]

Belos never honored any of his deals and nearly everyone came to collect in some form: Lilith by freeing Eda and punching him in the nose in the past, Kikimora by helping King free The Collector, The Collector by splattering Belos, Hunter by attempting to drown himself when Belos possessed him, the Isles by drawing graffiti and making t-shirts that showed their renounced faith in him, and Luz by stopping the Day of Unity. The man built a nationwide death cult on Faustian Bargains, only for it to come tumbling down because he never paid up.

[@Ah0yKatie]

It's especially fun since the mortal making the deal /lasts/ as the greater threat, even becoming more powerful than the immortal he bargained with during the series finale (by way of possessing the corpse of the Boiling Isles's god). It's a lot of fun seeing your expectations of how a dynamic like this would play out (i.e. that the Collector would be the greater villain or the final threat) subverted, especially since it places emphasis on how Belos manipulated everyone and anyone, /up to and including the immortal he made a Faustian bargain with/.

[@NapaCat]

And Belos makes that deal with Luz in King's Tide where SHE is the one who is the devil in the Faustian bargain. Belos deserved it, but still.

[@maximvandepoll3008]

@@NapaCat I don't think that that one counts. She only PRETENDED to make a deal with him so she could attack him with that branding glove.

[@LillyP-xs5qe]

As a Jewish born and raised person, that tangent about the Jewish take on arguments made me burst out laughing in the middle of a shop

[@frankwest5388]

Reminds me of a Shabbat dinner discussion I had with my family. I told made a joke about how Jews could never get along and even if you took two with the same opinion on a topic and put them in a room together, they would end up arguing about it somehow. This turned into a 10 minute argument about how litigious we were, with one brother and my mom on my side, one brother neutral and my dad opposing the idea

[@meiliyinhua7486]

To be honest, when she mentioned the Jewish role of satan I was like "that makes so much more sense!" My first big theological questions that led me to leave the christian church had to do with the conception of satan making no sense to me

[@LillyP-xs5qe]

@@meiliyinhua7486 i assume you ment leave and made a typo?

[@meiliyinhua7486]

@@LillyP-xs5qe yes, sorry

[@LillyP-xs5qe]

@@frankwest5388 we have several jokes about it (but I'm secular so never did the big shabbat stuff and barely do holidays) If there is a Jewish on a desert island they will build 2 synagogues, one to use and one to never use. In Israel we have so many political parties, we have 3 parties for every 2 people, the me party, the you party, and the us party (well that just the outcome of the election system where everyone vote to a list, and at the end all the votes from everyone are counted and seats in the parliament equivalent are divided by % of vote from the national vote, so it's very supportive of small parties as a system as you only need like 5% of the national vote to get in, so no votes wasted voting for smaller parties, leading to over 40 options for each election)

[@KigaiOkasu]

I remember one episode of Pinky and the Brain where Brain made a deal with the devil to have world domination in exchange for his soul. Once Pinky found out about it, he made a deal with the devil to trade his soul for Brain’s and an appliance he saw on TV that he couldn’t adequately describe. Once Brain figured out that the devil didn’t, or rather couldn’t, fulfill the second half of that deal, the deal was called off and the two got to keep their souls.

[@goodnewsgeek42]

God I love that show 😂

[@Lord_zeel]

With the characters that outsmart the devil, I think this usually happens when the devil is exploiting some pre-existing situation (possibly but not always one that they created) to force the character into making a deal. Rumpelstiltskin being a good example here, he shows up and offers to help the millers daughter out of an otherwise impossible situation that she didn't choose to be in. The stakes for her are very high (death) and the cost is... not as bad as dying, plus she has absolutely no hope of success without his help. From the start, he's taking advantage of her and she isn't being greedy or power hungry - she just doesn't want the king to execute her. This sets up a dynamic where the audience has no ill-will toward her, she doesn't really owe him anything and the audience is totally cool with her tricking her way out of the deal that he strong-armed her into. This wouldn't work as well if she had been the one to boast about spinning straw into gold rather than her father, or if she had chosen to undergo the test willingly because the upside was to become queen.

[@MartyNozz]

One of my favorite Faustian Bargains is the Real Ghostbusters episode "Chicken, he clucked" about a man who made a deal with a devil to get rid of all the chickens in the world. The deal was so stupid that the demon enlisted the Ghostbusters to help get him out of it.

[@rustyshovel7179]

That is hilarious

[@MrBelles104]

KFC and Chick-fil-A's greatest public enemy #1 ever of all time.

[@jacobsnyder9740]

I always enjoy the trope subversion of the "Faustian bargain turned protective father figure". It just... Gives this energy, you know?

[@SmallvilleStudio]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "Faustian bargain turned protective father figure". Is it a Faustian Bargain, made because of a father losing a child and making a deal with the devil to get them back? Or, do you mean that the devil cherishes the bargain so much to the point where he protects the bargainer to keep the deal going?

[@jacobsnyder9740]

@@SmallvilleStudio I was thinking the latter option. Sorry for the confusion

[@MegaBichiX]

ah yes, the classic "this is my mortal fool, there are many like it but this one is mine"

[@gonaldginkus6228]

I remember in order of the stick when the wizard Vaarsuvius sold their soul with some fiends for sick magical powers, the fiends only got to keep V’s soul for however long they used those powers. “And for this, you would get eternal dominion over my immortal soul once I died?” “What? No! No, no, no! How would that be fair?”

[@anthonylarocque7975]

And the fiends make a point that they will probably collect Vaarsuvius' full soul anyway, because a person's actions while controlling that much extra power are rarely good. And Vaarsuvius doesn't disappoint, by committing a tiny bit of genocide. And then they collect their shares of V's soul at the most inopportune times, just to really rub in what it will cost them. Really, that whole thing is a master class on using this trope.

[@withercat]

i was not expecting an order of the stick reference the fiends in OOTS are definitely first-class examples

[@Irn0x]

@@anthonylarocque7975 Also part of the deal is that the devils have to make sure no harm comes to V's body when they borrow his/her soul, which is very well demonstrated when they enforced the deal, the place they were at EXPLODED and V awoke in the middle of a battlefield COMPLETELY UNHARMED.

[@elijeschke]

My favorite part of that particular deal with the devil was when they were like "What? No, of course you have a choice. You could do this clever thing that we thought up instead. Buuuuut...in doing so, you'd have to give up on temporary ultimate power and admit that we're smarter than you." And V just can't do it.

[@sabertoothkim]

That scene in OOTS is probably my favorite example of this trope anywhere, in any media. Mostly because they really emphasized how Vaarsuvvius didn't really accept the deal because they were stupid, or evil, or even because they were desperate per se; ultimately, they reason they accepted the deal is because the 3 fiends were RIDICULOUSLY GOOD at using half-truths and subtle manipulation to make V's absolute worst flaws not only come to the fore against all of their good qualities, but push them to do this one specific thing in full knowledge that it's an objectively bad idea.

[@TheNeverEndingHowl]

I just read a book that falls in the "out smarting the devil" category. Its called "the invisible life of Addie laRue". She was desperate to be free of her small town and begs every god of the the daytime to help her and non ever respond. Then in a final desperate attempt she makes a deal with "the dark" and he curses her with immortality and no one ever remembers her. While also getting her soul when she no longer wants to live. Its very very good.

[@malaksafa4074]

It didn't seem like she outsmarted him.

[@TheNeverEndingHowl]

@@malaksafa4074 I left that part out to not spoil the book 😂👍

[@cyborcake]

the fact madoka magica got brought up made me so happy, that anime is so good and im glad its starting to get brought up more for its characters

[@HasekuraIsuna]

I watched it for the first time last year, after putting it off for several years. Personally, I didn't think it lived up to the hype. By no means bad, but not the "top 5 animes of the 2010s" people seem to give it. SPOILERS AHEAD I mean the premise of turning "girl gets magical powers, here are her struggles" upside down into "here is a girl's struggle, _before_ she get magical powers" is interesting, but I think it lacked in execution. In the whole series Madoka is looking for a reason to accept the Faustian bargain, but she get one early on. I thought Mami being killed right in front of her eyes would have her go "ressurect Mami and I'll accept your contract". Instead she spent some 8 another episodes doing "nothing" only to do the bargain anyway. As time travelling is part of this story, just have this timeline fail so that Madoka can do the right wish at the end.

[@hangebza6625]

I like the trick-the-devil stories because there are tons of tales like it in folklore. Where I come each region appears to have a bridge or church or else which was only finished because the devil was asked to help. And then the people had to figure out how to get off without issue. Which often leads to the devil becoming angry and throwing a rock somewhere or something. Which neatly explains geographical features like hills and lakes as well. My favorite one is about a lord trying to arrange a marriage with a women. After x years the devil gets his soul if he helps the lord. The lady later learns of this deal and doesn't want to lose her spouse. So she offers the devil her soul too, if they can have one last harvest. A year later the devil returns to collect, but to his bafflement the pair planted oaks as their crops. Meaning their "last harvest" may be millenia away. This is how the Neuenburger Forest near Oldenburg came to be according to folktale. And the Lord and Lady still roam said woods to this day. Much more fun than the offical count.

[@MinurielVilquen]

Oh, that is awesome! I've never heard that one before!

[@gota7738]

There's a story associated with an old bridge over a ravine in Wales, that the Devil was taking a holiday in Wales when he crossed an elderly lady whose cow had wandered across a river that had since overflowed. The Devil offered to build her a bridge on the condition that he got the first soul that crossed it. The lady agreed and by the next day a brand new stone bridge stood. The lady came with her dog, said thank you to the devil, then took out some bread and threw it across the bridge. Before the Devil could do anything the dog chased it and became the first soul to cross the bridge. The Devil was so humiliated he disappeared and never set foot in Wales again. It's probably only a few centuries old and invented for tourism, but who doesn't love a tale about grannies tricking satan. No word on what happened to the poor dog. If he did take him, I like to think the Devil got a new best friend.

[@MiddKnightAlphaOmega]

@@gota7738 I would imagine a variation of cerberus

[@jtyranus]

@@gota7738 Personally I would have tried whipping a the sole of a shoe across the bridge.

[@tryptchthonic]

Sounds like a great setup to a modern fantasy horror or something of that nature. Maybe the stressed-out and desperate head of a struggling lumber company is hired by a mysterious nobleman (“Please, call me Lou. Lord Fleiss was my father.”) to cut down that forest, only to encounter the vengeful spirits of the Lord and Lady, so the poor foreman finds himself with angry ghosts on one side and his increasingly worrying patron on the other.

[@Codex_of_Wisdom]

The story of Stingy Jack (and the jack'o'lantern) is a take on this I find interesting. He outsmarts the devil at every turn, but in doing so dooms himself because he played everyone so heavily that nobody has power over his soul anymore, so he's stuck walking the Earth forever.

[@philiphockenbury6563]

Oh that’s really cool

[@irondolphin9387]

It’s also funny because Jack is the one who forces the devil into desperate deals and yet Jack still loses because he has nowhere to go to for the afterlife.

[@66Roses]

Incubator is such a good example of this kind of bargaining entity because it will give you what you ask for even if it knows that isn't what you want. The devil in these stories will often give the bargainer what they want and then rip it away from them in a cruel twist of fate. However, the Incubator doesn't need to do that because it is preying on emotionally unstable girls intentionally, and knows it will get more on its end of the deal. It doesn't hide this either. When Sayaka accuses it of twisting fate to take her "boyfriend" after she had him healed, the Incubator points out that Kousuke was never her boyfriend, and if she wanted him to fall in love with her, that's what she should have asked for. She never would have, because she assumed he already was in love with her, rather than seeing her as his best friend. Incubator knew all that, which is why it targeted her and Madoka in the first place. It needs girls who will fall into despair and become witches, and it doesn't get that with happy magical girls. It's such an insidious little bastard, and it completely deserves what happens to it in Rebellion.

[@JHorst-r2u]

Note: For those of you not in the know, Incubator is Kyubey.

[@ILiekFishes]

Slight correction: Kyubei targets Madoka because her death keeps resetting the universe and therefore the entire universe hinges on her existence. "Karmic Destiny" or whatever. Kyubei targeting the mentally ill/foolish is an interesting observation, but I don't actually think it's accurate. Any magical girl would become a witch given enough time because if there aren't enough grief seeds to go around then they'd witch out naturally, no depression needed. Madoka doesn't turn into the world destroying witch because she's sad, I mean she probably is but the main reason she witches out is because she uses too much magic instantly obliterating walpurgisnacht. Either way the point stands that Kyubei really doesn't care about what the wish is, the devil always gets his due.

[@bendonatier]

"My name's Johny and it might be a sin, but I'll take your bet, you're gunna regret, cause I'm the best there's ever been" Shame trope talks don't end with covers, because I feel the devil went down to Georgia would be a great sting to cap off your last point. Honestly it's a portion of this trope I've always loved because it falls in line with the notion that the difference between a hero with a tragic backstory and a tragic hero is how much agency they wrestle back from their circumstance. Oh well more fuel for the inevitable playing games with death trope talk.

[@willmfrank]

Johnny, you rosin up yer bow and play yer fiddle hard 'Cause Hell's broke loose in Georgia and the Devil deals the cards And if you win you git this shiny fiddle made of gold But if you lose The Devil gets yer SOUL!"

[@SpellProgrammer]

I thought a good cover for the end would be "Friends on the Other Side". I completely forget about "Devil Went Down to Georgia"!

[@hannahrobbins1017]

I heard a hilarious “sequel” from a guitar player years ago about how he’d heard Devil Went Down to Georgia and challenged the devil to a similar guitar competitor… and lost! I can’t remember the exact lyrics, but it ended with the devil saying something about how he’d always been better at guitar than fiddle 😂

[@tsamoka6496]

There's also another fun character type where the protagonist IS the deal maker, and uses cunning and guile to munchkin their way into greater power by making deals with people while also avoiding getting stomped by stronger entities than them. There's a older version of Puss in Boots where Puss makes a deal with a human, the human gives him a pair of boots to wear and an honored place at his side while in return the human gains wealth, power, and a princess for a wife. I remember reading a version like this when I was little and I was always cheering for the cat in the end. =^x^=

[@coltonwilliams4153]

Lilian Vess, the preeminent dark magic witch and necromancer planeswalker of Magic: The Gathering. She made a deal with three demons to extend her life and youth, and spent years gaining the power to kill them all so there wouldn’t be anyone to collect when her debt came due, allowing her to enjoy her possibly indefinite lifespan. Of course, that method only works if the debtee has both a clear path to power apart from the debtor, and they didn’t bargain for power in the first place.

[@Sephiroth144]

@@coltonwilliams4153 Of course, I always wondered if she killed the demons, who would be granting her the boons... Like, you kill the demon who granted her eternal youth, does that stop?

[@coltonwilliams4153]

@@Sephiroth144 I’d think that depends on several things. If the anti-aging was an active spell effect, then no. But if that was the case, then it was a scam from the beginning and nowhere near worth a person’s soul. Hell, it’d have collapsed the first time she got caught in a dis-spell. If the deal specified immortality and eternal youth, with no conditions, then it would have to be those things, with no strings attached. Demons and gods have to uphold their deals in most stories. The demons in question probably didn’t think that a human would gather enough power within the time frame to be able to kill them, so they didn’t feel a need for it. Don’t know how much they knew about planeswalkers or if they knew that Liliana was one.

[@sirnikkel6746]

@coltonwilliams4153 that is like trying to make a bank go bankrupt or even to buy it with a loan/loans of that same bank. I remember that Piñera, an Ex-President of Chile, managed to do that with the Bank of Talca, albeit he was the director and was later processed for corruption.

[@Sephiroth144]

@@sirnikkel6746 Except money, even large amounts, has a set amount; magic? Magic can work a tad differently- especially when you're working with a primal source and not just a spellcaster. Like, are we talking about she's got eternal youth as long as the demon doesn't revoke it, or it is a Dorian Grey situation where she's good as long as the painting (in this case, demon) is around?

[@Theology.101]

Faust used his bargain to get laid and then got a famous play made about him being an idiot Been there, buddy

[@charlieclark9552]

Only in goethe, Marlow he sold it for magic power

[@Carewolf]

Or, he asked for immortality and will live on forever as a tale of an idiot.

[@noirscape_]

So the irony of Faust is that he actually cheats Mephistopheles and gets away with it. The bargain in question was that if Faust ever experienced eternal bliss and a moment he wishes could never end (coded through Goetes books to be "falling in love and getting married") using Mephistopheles power, the devil would get to claim his soul. But the thing is that while Faust gets Mephistopheles to do many things, the one thing Mephistopheles ends up being not responsible for is getting Faust to experience eternal bliss, which is how Faust gets to keep his soul.

[@Theology.101]

@@charlieclark9552 and once he had those cosmic powers, he used them to get laid

[@royalninja2823]

Someone made a play about your sick lay and subsequent idiocy?

[@catinglasses]

I can't stop wondering if The Little Mermaid somehow fits this trope, just in a very different way. Ariel makes a deal with Ursula, our villain, trading her voice for temporary legs hinging on a goal that Ursula manipulates out of Ariel's reach. It FEELS like it fits this trope, even if it's different from the usual roadmap for it.

[@clarekrmiller]

Yesss, I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought of that! I now realize that was probably Hans Christian Andersen’s intention, for the sea witch to represent the devil. And in his version, she rejects the bargain in the end and gets… well, an Andersen happy ending.

[@thien0300]

@@clarekrmiller nah, Andersen's original story was not like that, in the original, Ursula uphold her end to a T, there's another princess that love the prince, and she does nothing wrong, Ariel straight up just show up late, and later her sisters (she have alot of sisters in the original work) trade their hair colors for a knife to end Ariel's deal, by stabing the prince, well, Ariel couldn't, so she jump over the boat, and her curse turn her into sea foam. So no, Ursula in the OC is a honest merchant, alway keep up the deal, disney change it for the kids.

[@AricoAudio]

Yeah and tbh in the movie version she deserved the inevitable downfall that comes with these kind of bargains.

[@dahliananasi4644]

In the song Part of Your World, Ariel expresses her desire for knowledge about the human world. Although she makes the deal with Ursula for love, it's also for knowledge. She traded her freedom for knowledge and humanity, never considering that Ursula would play fair or try to sabotage her attempts to kiss Eric. Ursula had no intention of keeping her side of the bargain because she always planned to cheat, and she had the power to tip things in her favor. Ariel was very naive to trust her and it's only thanks to Eric killing Ursula that things turned out well in the end. If not for Disney's happy endings, that story would have ended really badly for everyone but Ursula.

[@manmoy4104]

​@@thien0300Andersen's version ends with the mermaid becoming an air spirit right after she jumped into the sea and given an opportunity to enter Heaven so she still has a good ending without needing the prince

[@dalozkamiya6672]

The first character I thought of when she was talking about the "end of the bargain" was Ryuk writing Light's name in his Death Note. After all of the tricks and manipulations and "playing god" Light came to the realization that his whole struggle was just a simple diversion for a bored immortal.

[@animeotaku307]

It’s even more evident in the manga when Light begs Ryuk to kill the police and Ryuk goes “hey, remember when I said I would write your name in the Death Note when your time comes? Well, since watching you rot in prison would be boring, it’s time.”

[@percabethlumity]

The last bit about outsmarting the devil is why I love stories about faeries. It's one of the few areas where outsmarting the powerful/evil immortal being is still common, and I love seeing the mc get to show off their cunning

[@oricalu448]

I think my favourite example of this trope is The Trickster, from the Sarah Jane Adventures. His whole thing is that he appears at the moment of someone's death, offering to save them. The thing is, he doesn't ask for anything in return, like you would expect. Instead, he picks people to save who will go on to drastically change the future, usually by taking Sarah Jane out of the picture somehow, and then feeds on the chaos that follows. The only way to fix it is to revoke the deal, which can only be done by the one who made it, and means they go back to being dead, which leads to some great moments.

[@Alloveck]

Ooh, they don't come up that often, but I especially like those ones. The only "payment" due is whatever results from the recipient going on their merry way as they see fit, which can go so many different directions depending on the recipient's morals and values, how they view the being who offered the deal, and so on. So many more options than the standard bargains with a clearly defined cost, thought the most obvious angle is "what horrible thing am I going to do, can I avoid it, and how?"

[@aliteralmoth2243]

Similar to the Outsider in Dishonored? There is no real price to pay since he doesn't want or need anything except the entertainment your actions will bring.

[@yigitorhan7654]

​​​​@@aliteralmoth2243Well your soul gets trapped in the Void for eternity, you eventually lose all sense of self and become a mindless Void spirit but it's more of a direct consequence of having Void powers as opposed to the Outsider demanding your soul. Same thing would happen even if you get Void powers from a source other than the Outsider, or if the Abbey's religion is correct violating the Seven Strictures also gets you there. But you are right, the Outsider is in it for the entertainment value. He sounds intrigued in Dishonored 1 when you play low chaos. Probably because he is used to the people he marked turning into bloodthirsty psychos and power hungry megalomaniacs.

[@malaksafa4074]

​@@Alloveckthe future devil in chainsawman

[@devinsweeting4978]

Kind of reminds me of Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean. Either face judgment for your sins now or put it off for 100 years serving on his cursed ship. Not telling you that the ultimate fate for many is to become fused with the Flying Dutchman. "Part of the crew, part of the ship."

[@UltriLeginaXI]

“The idea that a human being can get wild superpowers by shaking hands with a goat man really took off” - Red 2023

[@louisduarte8763]

To be fair, The Devil inspires the best music.

[@willmfrank]

"Super Powered Bad Guy Juiced Up on Satan-Ade" has GOT to be the slogan on the next Overly Sarcastic T-Shirt.

[@WolfBoy-om6dw]

I'm so glad that Madoka is an example In this video Also Faustian Bargains are basically warlocks from D&D 5e

[@jouheikisaragi6075]

Madoka is so hardcore on Faust Madoka's Witch is literally Faust's bride but none of the other characters get Faust as a Witch, Kyoko is a Shakespeare reference, Sayaka is The Little Mermaid named after a Goethe fan, Homura is a massive gay joke and Mami's is a particularly obscure literature thing.

[@ClericOfPholtus]

Except no DM ever seems to really hammer in on the Faustian part It's just all good with no price or downside and the players act like thats natural Or maybe I've just had a ton of entitled players and seen boring games.

[@warlok363]

​@@ClericOfPholtus not all warlocks really have Faustian deals in the since of being screwed over. Demonic pacts, sure. Diabolical pacts, probably. The rest of the patrons could either be a horrible co dependent situation or the drawbacks are more of a side effect of the deal.

[@bestaround3323]

​@@ClericOfPholtus Because mechanically the class isn't exactly strong enough to warrant it.

[@Raidho_Sketch]

@@jouheikisaragi6075 Well. Homura just does the whole Faust thing full-time already.

[@mr.creeper6836]

One of the most well known mythical character in Estonian folklore is a “golem” (kratt in Estonian) who you get a soul for by making a deal with the devil, and you outsmart him by not giving him drops of your blood (eternal damnation) but berry juice. And even the “golem” itself is a monkey’s paw type of deal. If you don’t give it CONSTANT work, it will drag you to hell. So I’d say we’re firmly in the “outsmart the devil” mindset.

[@techstuff9198]

Have it spin a grindstone by hand, that'll keep it there forever.

[@eskim_97]

I think my personal favorite example of this trope played straight is Death Note. Light becomes so powerful throughout the latter portions of the series that you nearly forget the parameters of the deal he made with Ryuk at the start, only for all of the consequence to come crashing down upon him at the very end in full Faustian glory. Anyone familiar with the trope should know how the series is going to end, but it's executed in such a way that pretty much everyone is at least briefly tricked into believing that Light has transcended that original deal and its consequences.

[@jdb5148]

Fun Fact: The Beast from Over the Garden Wall is voiced by Samuel Ramey, an opera singer most famous for his role as Mefistofeles in the opera; Faust

[@lthefifteenth661]

I like how Death Note plays on a pseudo version of this trope. Light never inherently makes a deal with Ryuk, but given both endings, he may as well have. Light turns into a megalomaniac, and when his doom is at hand, the one from whom he got his power symbolically collects his due by killing Light. He even warns Light of this from the get go, making Light's breakdown in the manga more fitting, given how he clearly forgot that part.

[@Levsa399]

Wait, both endings? Does Death Note have an alternative ending? I only know of one. What’s the other?!

[@lthefifteenth661]

@Alisa Levenseller You probably knew this but the anime and manga have different ways by which they end. The manga follows Light go through a third act breakdown whereas the anime has him leave the warehouse and his life flashes before his eyes as he runs down the path where he quietly dies alone in another warehouse staircase. I'm not one to debate whether it was better than the manga but I can say that it downplays the aspects of a faustian bargain a lot more

[@Levsa399]

@@lthefifteenth661 thank you. I didn’t know that.

[@whiskers1102]

I literally JUST commented about this same thing. We touched brains man.

[@NobodyC13]

@@lthefifteenth661 Manga ending is a complete humiliation conga for Light as he begs for his life on the ground or an out of his situation like a weasel now that the tables turned on him. Anime ending leaves him some dignity along with heaps of regret as he reflects on how his choices led him to this end, in keeping with the authors' interpretation that Light was the Death Note's first victim and he had a promising future before coming across the notebook.

[@charcharmunr]

My favourite one off the top of my head is Vaarsuvius' bargain in Order of the Stick. They make a deal with three evil entities to get a supermode to save their family, and the deal-makers say all they want is 20 minutes of time with V's soul. The bargain's accepted, V saves their family, stuff ensues. At a later point, when V realises something important and needs to warn the rest of the group about it, we just suddenly cut to a panel of one of the entities saying "Now." And V is suddenly sucked away for 20 minutes, because the deal never said it was meant to be after V's death that their soul would be held, and during those twenty minutes the thing V was trying to prevent comes to pass and all they can do is watch.

[@timothymclean]

I also like how the IFCC _implied_ that there was a risk that the supermode would corrupt them, which is pretty much a lie. It just gave V epic-level necromancy and a justification to feel like any atrocity committed wouldn't be _theirs._ And...well, we see how that turned out.

[@veggiedragon1000]

You'd think Vaarsuvius would have learnt his damn lesson about this shit after his spell to kill every creature related by blood to that one black dragon, no matter how far removed (incidentally wiping out a quarter of all black dragons on the planet), also backfired when the party needed one of those people with dragon blood.

[@philiphockenbury6563]

That was one of my thoughts

[@blackcitadel9]

"All that is required for Evil to succeed, is for Neutral Elves to do nothing."

[@sylvanas9329]

@@veggiedragon1000 V learned their lesson right after the whole soul splice went south.

[@thewandering01]

There was a very interesting treatment of a Faustian Bargain in a webcomic called Necropolis which, sadly, hasn't been updated in about 3 years now. The main character is a young girl, maybe 13 or 14, and one day she comes home to find her village razed by bandits, her home burned, and her father murdered. In a fury, she goes off to a local magical being and makes a deal for a magic sword so she can get revenge, and it lets her rip through the bandits who ravaged her village, and later other criminals in the area. I really liked it and thought it was interesting because she wasn't some ambitious evildoer out for herself as is often the case with this trope, and the deal didn't make her evil and the sword wasn't a cursed item like The One Ring, but her own anger issues, stubbornness, and willingness to use violence at the drop of a hat to protect herself and anything she has that started sending herself down a dark path. And then the real kicker is that she basically gets yanked off the dark path she started going down thanks to the unexpected appearance of a mentor. But still looming overhead is the fact that when she made the bargain with the demon for the magic sword, she promised it "everything" and at some point the demon is going to look to collect, with that looming over her head the entire time. So there is the big question of the comic: can this character who is unusually sympathetic compared to most who make a Faustian Bargain, ever get out from under the doom she's operating under?

[@gabesd6697]

My guess would have been "Not until it's interesting." And I always got the impression that that particular khajiit merchant doesn't collect until precisely the right time - which would be, after the heroine has achieved fame and fortune, and after she's " tried to cure herself- shopped around" as one might say.

[@janehates]

Titan Luz being, in DnD terms, an “Undead-Patron Warlock” makes a lot of sense

[@Janoha17]

With the slight caveat of said patron sacrificing himself to empower Luz.

[@RainbowGod666]

(Looks around worriedly) yeah hahaha... like, whats next, a power up granted by something beyond the screen because of a large "why not" in that something's head 😅😅😅

[@charlesacker9174]

I never really thought about King's Dad's deal with Luz in the Owl House constituted a deal with the Devil allegory until you included this clip. Because King's Dad was so nice and paying back the favor for loving and taking care of King. But you know what if King's dad was evil I totally would have fallen for that Faustian Bargain.

[@legomaniac213]

That instance is pretty much her going from a low level Wizard to a 20th level Celestial Warlock.

[@KingOpenReview]

​@@legomaniac213 +5 To floofiness.

[@jaydenklaus]

I mean he technically is a demon. A nice guy to be sure, but still a demon. So it still works.

[@GusOmega]

​@@legomaniac213 More like a Wizard, cause she is her own source of power

[@alecLogan]

@@GusOmega E... except... which definition of 'Wizard' are we working with, here? Most I'm aware of less have a power 'source' and more just study how to (read as; copy notes). If Luz has a source, even if it's herself, it'd still be more warlock, wouldn't it?

[@KayrBayr13]

I've also seen a subgenre of this where the bargain is definitely bad, but the self-destructive path of the bargainer leads them to take it and not care, even accepting the consequences willingly after getting revenge or whatever.

[@ATMOSK1234]

My favorite example of a modern "fool the devil" is the ending to Fullmetal alchemist brotherhood. Truth is interesting because it's clearly a malevolent entity and everyone who makes an exchange with it comes out all the worse for it. Yet at the end of the story when Ed gives up his gate of truth and ability to use alchemy it laughs and seems happy to have lost.

[@rayhatesu]

Truth is definitely a Faustian Bargain adjacent figure, but I hesitate to call him outright malevolent. He very clearly seems to have expectations of humanity, and while most of his punishments are karmic in relation to the individual, they're more often intended to be object lessons to those who have committed the one taboo he as a deity of sorts has handed down. Even then, he does make life easier for those he punishes as well: he doesn't have to let those who perform human transmutation gain the ability to transmute without a circle, but he finds it to be an equal recompense for their punishments. Truth, in a way, just wants "his adherents"(anyone who can use Alchemy &or Alkahestry) to search for objectively true aspects to their world and serves almost as brakes to check their conceit if they start trying to subvert the way the world works. As an example, we see through the Dwarf in the Flask that Homunculi are a being that can be created and explained through proper study and rituals without breaking any taboos, however as they are alive, they too have the same qualities as humans and even some of the same failings. When he ultimately fails in his plans and is left in front of Truth, Truth admonishes the Dwarf in the Flask for refusing to look at and engage with the world, "never truly grown from [his] days in the flask". The reason Ed ultimately "wins" isn't because he outsmarts Truth, he just demonstrates to Truth that he has learned from the time since he first committed the taboo he was punished for and has realized that, ultimately, he can still make a difference without Alchemy after he leaves. This being Truth's own goal, he's happy to see someone learn and act quite so selflessly, hence the congratulations. Ed, of course, still has to give up his Alchemy, but that is Truth's role, to be an arbiter of an "equal value exchange", and what is a more fair exchange to return what was lost through a mistake than giving up the means by which the mistake could be repeated?

[@Yal_Rathol]

truth isn't malevolent, he is ambivalent. you want the knowledge? ok, pay for it. you want your limb back? gimmie the knowledge back. the only thing that makes truth's gate an unfair situation is that truth is omniscient and you are not. besides, truth does actually show compassion. when mustang is forced into the gate by pride, truth splits the payment between them, nearly killing pride in the process, and renders mustang blind BUT does not take his eyes, allowing healing alchemy to work on him. ed and al's situation is essentially them dealing a poker game with truth and winning, because al gets out with the knowledge and body while ed pays the entire price with his gate, escaping (mostly) intact.

[@EpicNerdsWithCameras]

Stories where the entity being bargained with isn't overtly malicious, and is in fact delighted when they are outsmarted, are always a treat.

[@davidprince6877]

Truth is interesting because it plays mostly fair and it's peoples hubris or desperation that gets them to a point asking for deals they can't really afford. If anything it seems to specifically disdain the sort of people who want to claim the most power for themselves. Which of course, is most of the people who make it to the door. For an RP thing we were doing my friend brought up this serpent that comes up with alchemy(it might be The Serpent from the bible). Anyway it can help you to reach enlightenment, but the price is not something you should ever pay. Something about it being good to try to better yourself, but you shouldn't try to become as God.

[@JacksonJinn]

There's a variant I like that didn't get mentioned, the "Devil's Wager." Where the deal isn't a strict trade of goods and services, but a bet between the mortal and entity. Sometimes it's a direct competition like "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", sometimes it's a wager over how events will play out, but it's a deal all the same. And I think this is where the modern victors in the devil deals trope went, because it's victory earned on screen through the protagonist's skills, rather than rules-lawyering their way to victory. Which, thinking about it, has its roots all the way back in ancient myth. What *was* Arachne's famous weave-off with Athena but a duel with a superpowered immortal entity, for instance? *Edited because A names. Please forgive.

[@legomaniac213]

That would definitely cover Ariel's deal with Ursula. "You have three days to make Eric fall in love with and kiss you, or your soul is mine!"

[@amycox5733]

Not to be *that guy*, but you mean Arachne. Ariadne was the daughter of Minos who helped Theseus defeat the Minotaur, only to get backstabbed. Arachne, Ariadne, Athena, Ajax, Aphrodite, Achilles, Agamemnon, Artemis- there’s a lot of “A” names in greek myth, easy to get mixed up.

[@JacksonJinn]

@@amycox5733 I do, I do... hoi. It doesn't help Ariadne handed over that ball of string so even in my head I didn't think anything wrong with that A name.

[@ellac1399]

I have waited for literal years for this trope talk. I can die happy now. ...Or I *could* die happy, if I hadn't sold my soul eight months ago in exchange for a box of cake mix. :/

[@Kellan__they-them]

Was it at least good cake mix? Something fancy or fun, not just plain vanilla or chocolate? Might've been worth it ;)

[@aragonmoralesfaustodavid5548]

This video made my week, not only because I love this trope but also my father name is Fausto and my name is Fausto.

[@griffinbaker3509]

@@aragonmoralesfaustodavid5548 Fausto son of Fausto?

[@aragonmoralesfaustodavid5548]

@@griffinbaker3509 yeeeees And I plan to name my son Fausto too.

[@hexretro8112]

was it devils food cake?

[@mangomage33]

Imagine making a deal with a demon that goes like "I give you my soul right now immediately and in exchange you take care of me and never hurt me" Sounds like the setup to a romance Edit: So I decided to make a warlock DnD character with this backstory

[@ShneekeyTheLost]

It's called "Black Butler". If you haven't heard of it, give it a watch.

[@mangomage33]

@@ShneekeyTheLost I have 🤮 I said romance story not pedo pandering

[@chicoamorim429]

@@mangomage33 You might not like the magus bride then, I'm guessing. Also kinda faustian deal at the begining, and has a beuty and the beast vibe, pretty good

[@heyfell4301]

@@mangomage33 my same reaction watching that show after multiple friends recommended it as a great romance. I'm probably the only one on my friend group who doesn't like this anime.

[@byuones]

​@@mangomage33 YEAH. the concept of black butler is really good but the execution is :| just pedophilia lmao

[@jasondeutschbein8102]

I love the lawyer devils that are sometimes even bemused and impressed when the character realizes the bargain is null.

[@roguedogx]

1:48 having a benevolent barging would be an interesting concept. Something like "I will give you insane amounts of power provided you do it to help the innocent no matter how hard that is" and turns out that helping everyone can be a pretty thankless job that get's you all the wrong kinds of attention. People profit off of systems of oppression and tearing one of those up is a great way to make a bunch of powerful enemies really quickly.

[@josephperez2004]

I think the anime, Law of Ueki, may count as this. Technically the whole thing is a tournament, but one of the stipulations of being given your divine powers is that using it against someone who does not have a divine power is a violation that costs you a zai (basically your natural talent at something, like being a good cook, having a good sense of direction, being unusually tough, etc). And if you accrue enough violations, you essentially cease to exist.

[@Alexthealright]

That sounds amazing

[@tzaphkielconficturus7136]

You get a similar thing, in the Dresden Files, with the Knights of the Cross. Each knight has one of 4 swords with a nail in the hilt from the Crucifixion of Jesus. The sword finds its way to its wielder, who takes it up (usually not for long, but often for long enough) to protect the innocent, defeat the monsters, and drive back the darkness. unfortunately, one of the big themes of the books is free will, so while the power of the sword lets them slay monsters to their hearts content, but it cannot be used against innocent people, or even mortal enemies (enemies who are mortals) who have surrendered. Their antagonistic force in the series (who are usually the villains of the books the Knights of the Cross show up in) are the Knights of the Blackened Denarius, who walk the more trodden path of Faustian bargains, each having one of the 30 silver coins (denarii) paid to Judas in exchange for betraying Jesus. Each contains a fallen angel, which does all the cool stuff. Upon touching one of the coins, the human is in contact with the fallen angel (henceforth "Denarian") who offers them power, and/or whatever else seems tempting in order to get them to keep the coin; The denarian needs a host, because angels lack free will and agency, but also because it's incredibly convenient for screwing with Knights of the Sword. At one point in the books, one of the Denarians surrenders to harry and one of the knights, goads her into attacking anyway, and strikes when the sword loses its power. In the later books, they run with this idea in separate, more thematic form, as a certain, seemingly more normal faustian bargain harry made for the power to save someone, becomes this, and Harry comes to discover that the creature he made the bargain with had been mortal, and slowly become what she is, because the force it represents and directs is necessary to the functioning of the world, and that she understands Harry much better than she seems. '“You know what it is,” she said, “to sell pieces of your soul so that someone who will never know your name will have another chance at life.”'

[@SheepUndefined]

Isn't that kind of what the entire concept of a dnd paladin is?

[@Vieyram]

In the Threadbare book Series the Knight class requires you to stay true to your oath. "The Knight swears to a set of vows, either passed on by their trainer, or sworn before the gods. The vows must be significant, and reinforce the Knight's devotion to virtues, duty, or similar notions. From that point on, while the Knight keeps this code, they gain a buff of plus one to their armor for every two levels of Code of Chivalry. This skill gains a level for every week that the code is unbroken. If the code is ever broken, then the Knight's code of chivalry skill level drops to 1, and must be re-leveled all over again."

[@oneSneakySnake]

I'm working on writing a story. It has a character that symbolizes the devil, but he isn't a creature of pure evil spoiling everything he touches. He's everybody's friend, and a pretty chill mediator at that. He's an enabler, though. Anything a character comes to him to talk about, he's in favor of, and he'll do his best to talk them into it. Good or bad, whatever it is.

[@Logan_Roman]

Oh, that is really interesting. I’d love to see this.

[@camblycreeper7999]

"You're thinking about it? Well, why not? After all, interest is a first step to passion, king. Live deliciously"

[@sevenrings9450]

But is there a cost?

[@cam4636]

@@camblycreeper7999 "Wouldst thou like the taste of butter?"

[@Duiker36]

That's actually an excellent premise.

[@shadoww4818]

Madoka, Alucard, and Jewish theleogical views on Satan. I love this vid so much. One thing I want to point out is Madoka is actually more of the "monstrous transformation" trope than it appears on the surface. Sure kyuxey is explicitly making the deal and will eventually harvest their souls after they're put through the ringer but he doesn't make any of their wishes fail. Sayaka doesn't get the boy not because of kyibey's interference but because upon realizing that part of the super powers she got also essentially turned her into a 9th grade lich, she freaks out and is too ashamed of her current state to make ask out the boy she just healed. He also doesn't know it was her sacrifice that healed him. She thought she wanted him happiness but actually just wanted him to love her, but her moral code is too stringent to allow herself to actually guilt trip him which is what she was unconscionly setting that up

[@ILiekFishes]

so I'm not the biggest sayaka fan but this line offends me: "She thought she wanted him happiness but actually just wanted him to love her, but her moral code is too stringent to allow herself to actually guilt trip him which is what she was unconscionly setting that up" she did want him to be happy, probably, she just also wanted him to love her, the two aren't mutually exclusive. she's then too busy stabbing witches and Kyoko to make time for Kyosuke, then she learns the fact that she's just a soul puppeting a body (I mean, aren't we all?) and gets depressed over it, making her even more of a workaholic, and then she finds out the boy she loves who she hasn't talked to in a couple weeks is going out with her best friend who she also hasn't talked to in a couple weeks. she's not some selfish bitch, her final speech to Kyoko is lamenting the fact that the knowledge she did a single good thing that one time isn't enough to counteract being isolated from her friend, her crush, her dead mentor, her body, all the while not taking antidepressants when they're literally being handed to her, either via her own work or Homura's generosity, speaking of stressors she's been in active combat all week and has had someone outright attempt to murder her. No, her story is not as simple as "got heartache, wanna kill myself lol."

[@tickytickytango5634]

I love the way you draw the devil. He's such a cute lil guy. I'd totally make a faustian bargain with him.

[@tobymartin2137]

Given how she featured in this video, I think what's interesting about Sayaka's case is how she was neither power-hungry, or even in a tight situation. She even reflected on how much more a fortunate position she was in than other people that might need a deal-with-the-Kyubey, and more or less used that as a jumping-off point when she made her bargain, and from there we get our wonderful little dive into the true nature of selflessness and heroism. Be careful what you wish for, for sure, EVEN if what you wish for is helping people.

[@willd1790]

I think there's a point there (something you can see in all of the Madoka main cast, except maybe Mami) is about how none of them wish for what they actually *want* by putting a selfless gloss on what is ultimately a self-centered desire, none of which are actually bad. Unsurprisingly they find that those aren't exactly going to help them.

[@tobymartin2137]

@@willd1790 Indeed - each motive is understandable and relatable despite having a degree of personal want. It's the kind of want we can imagine having ourselves, with the consequences of achieving it shown with an added magical spin. There's a reason some have called this show a Buddhist retelling of Faust.

[@multiplesingular294]

I think my favorite aspect of this trope is when the bargain is straightforward, the contract involved is legit with no hidden bits or pieces. No ancient languages no one knows anymore or ultra tiny text that no mortal could ever read. But it is simply so huge, so intentionally long and densely worded, that it would take an entire mortal lifetime just to sift through to find the bits that could be negotiated down. Impatience becomes the most damning trait for the mortals involved, and even funnier when said mortals don't even think to ask for a summarized version of the contract or for help in general before signing it.

[@wjzav1971]

Well, has anyone ever read the license agreement before agreeing to it before downloading a software.

[@multiplesingular294]

Precisely! Technically yes, but that tiny handful of those that did were either those who literally wrote them as part of their jobs or the full reading of them were part of their jobs. And then once it became a known aspect of life a few 'average citizens' also read the whole things just to be one of the few who had.

[@anikanele7958]

As a german, we had to spend way too much time discussing "Faust" by Goethe in class. Interestingly, in this version Faust is not power hungry but the hedonistic type: He is already well studied and accomplished in many fields of expertise, but he finds no joy in life. His deal with the devil says "once I will call out for a moment of my life to stay because its so beautiful, you might take my life and I´ll gladly go". The devil doesnt suceed in this, but they both manage to thouroughly ruin the life of Gretchen, the girl Faust falls in love with. In the end she decides to die for the sins he pushed her to commit. And thats not even Goethes most depressing work, that guy is literally known for glorifying ending oneselfs life.

[@madeleinedartois4689]

Glorifying ? Wasn't this just a trend for young men to commit suicide after reading Wehrther ? I haven't read it, just asking.

[@DaDunge]

Yet Faust's soul is saved because the devil can't make him satisfied. Faust is simply too greedy.

[@kevingaspari5848]

"Gloryfing ending oneself's life" *cough* *cough* Werther *cough* jokes aside, Werther is literally one of the best books i have ever read (altough the first work i've read from Goethe was Faust.)

[@wjzav1971]

@@DaDunge Not a 100% sure but I think Faust II ends with Faust finally gaining happiness and he says "If I could wish for that moment to remain, I would" which the devil takes as a win and seizes his soul. But heaven intervenes and points out that Faust didn't actually wish but only said "If I COULD wish". So Faust gets out of hell on a technicality.

[@RyfkahChan]

@@DaDunge Actually like Faust is too fucking depressed to be satisfied. Goethe's Faust is about to commit suicide shortly before he meets the devil. At the start of Faust I he's a guilt ridden big brain guy in an acute mental health crisis, that's why his wish is to just be happy for a moment. But even the devil can't make his brain pump serotonin for a second (until the end of Faust II)

[@ErrorNamenotfound-mx7bv]

I imagined a power bargain situation in which the entity isnt seeking higher power, conquest, or anything like that. He just finds mortals funny, and thought that giving superpowers will make mortals more entertaining. So he literally set up a "superpower shop" to give random powers to random idiots that find him. The only cost is that they will be eternally monitored by the entity

[@kaijuge6934]

And then he sells their personal information to Cthulhu

[@randomshmuck4724]

Something very similar to this is the outsider from dishonored.

[@NWPaul72]

Start writing, kid. You've got a comic book series on your hands. I recommend 'zine style with two to four vignettes per issue in the Tales from the Crypt layout.

[@Jordan-wv2xz]

He probably has popcorn on hand.

[@pedrodarosamello64]

There's actually a player in my DND game that works kinda like that. Their patron exists outside reality and wants to watch the world due to pure curiosity. It offers power and the only downside is that you're never trully alone, the patron is always watching.

[@mitkitty]

My warlock had her soul sold without her consent-her parents planned on selling her to a devil to have a superpowered magic assassin...problem is, they messed up the ritual and sold her to the Raven Queen-who is MUCH nicer and more ethical than a devil. She was so incensed at the abuse she assisted the warlock in escaping and told her to live her mortal life normally-save for taking out undead she sees-but the warlock will have a job as a reaper after she dies.

[@SheepUndefined]

I love that, lol

[@somedragonbastard]

Free mom AND a guaranteed afterlife job? Man shes got it good

[@gregorywiederecht]

I love that you mentioned Madoka. **Spoilers** Its take on Faustian bargains is really fun to watch, because they cover all the bases: The dealer is a skilled practitioner of lying by omission and has a moral code completely alien to humans, the wishes can easily go wrong if not thought through (and they rarely are, because the dealer frequently pressures the Fausts in stressful situations where they are most vulnerable).... but in the end, the main character manages to game the system by holding out long enough to think it through and manages to completely destroy the system in the process.

[@skazwolfman8622]

Fuckin love Madoka :3

[@purplehaze2358]

I remember once writing a Faustian Bargain where the protagonist, fresh off the heels of the death of a partner of his, made a deal with a demon to rid himself of negative emotions; only for it to be revealed afterwards that the demon also took his positive emotions away from him as well.

[@geode5224]

this is the plot of an episode of that 70s show.

[@DarcOne13]

This is called depression where I'm from.

[@robbieaulia6462]

@@DarcOne13 I think it's more along the lines of being dead inside, depression is the big sad and sad is negative emotion.

[@amalramadhan5800]

So.. lobotomized?

[@FusionFullForce]

Did he feel neutral about it? How did it work? Cause there are alot of interesting options there.

[@nanardeurlambda]

3:13 I love Red's drawings. look at that little scamp of a demon. he is adorably up to no good

[@Jordan-wv2xz]

He is up to *mischief.*

[@kevingriffith6011]

100% my favorite "outsmarting the devil" story is actually a pretty recent (in the scope of fiction) little subplot in the Team Fortress 2 comics, only because of it's comedic absurdity. It's Medic and his meeting with The Devil, I highly recommend you read the comic for yourself if you haven't since it has a lot of great moments of classic TF2 absurdity. Medic: "If you were to send me back to earth, say, for another fifty years... well you're a clever man. You tempted me once, after all. I'm sure you'll find a way to trick me out of my other eight souls. In fact: That's a lovely looking pen!" ... Medic: "I said, that's a lovely looking pen." The Devil: "Would you give me a soul for this?" Medic: "I would!"

[@IAsimov]

What makes this scene hysterical is that the Devil is *absolutely livid* at the fact the Medic keeps outsmarting him. JUST when it looks like the Devil is finally getting his due, the Medic turns out to outsmart him like a psychopathic lawyer/board of directors. The Devil is fed up with this shit, while the Medic squeezes it all out for all its worth. There's even an animated version with the Medic's actual voice actor!

[@Omnywrench]

The bit about outsmarting the devil reminds me of the old tale of Stingy Jack, a lazy but shrewd swindler who meets the devil on his way home from the bar. The devil tells him he's come to take Jack's soul to Hell, but Jack convinces him to let him have one last drink before leaving. The devil agrees, but Jack asks the devil to pay for his drink since he has no money. The devil didn't have any money either, so instead he transformed himself into a silver coin and slipped into Jack's pocket, after which Jack stuck a crucifix into the pocket alongside the devil, trapping him in the form of a coin. The devil demands Jack to let him go, and Jack agrees but only if he promises he'll never go to Hell. The devil agrees, and Jack removes the crucifix, freeing the devil and sending him back to Hell. At first Jack thinks he's gotten off scot-free, and goes to spend the rest of his life gambling, drinking, womanizing, and other hedonistic pleasures, but he dies only a year or so later. Naturally, because of his sinful life, Jack was not permitted to enter Heaven, but when he was sent to the gates of Hell, where the devil greeted him, smugly explaining that while he would never go to Hell, it doesn't mean he'd automatically go to Heaven either, so Jack's spirit was doomed to wander the earth forever. Jack asked how he could see where he was going, and so the devil mockingly tossed him a glowing hot coal from the flames of Hell, which Jack stuck inside a hollowed-out turnip to make a lantern. And thus Stingy Jack, now Jack O' the Lantern, wanders the earth, guided by the hellfire, searching for a final resting place. And that's where the name Jack O'Lantern comes from.

[@ravenwilder4099]

I think the "outsmart the devil" plot still turns up fairly often. They usually get away with making the bargainer sympathetic by having the deal be something they did in their youth, so the story becomes about a now more mature person trying to undo the mistake they made when they were too young and dumb to know better. (See: The Little Mermaid)

[@p.strobus7569]

Yes! It also has the theme of outsmarting inexorable doom, the way people with little power pretty much have to deal with the over powered people in their world.

[@KrimsonKattYT]

Which Little Mermaid? Because of the ones I know of (Original fairy tale and 1988 Disney animated movie) that sort of thing never happens. In the OG tale the sea witch is extremely neutral, offering magical deals in exchange for a price but with no malevolence. When the mermaid asks the sea witch to turn her into a human, the sea witch TRIES TO WARN the mermaid against it, but the mermaid is persistent so the sea witch brews the potion WHICH REQUIRES THE MERMAID'S OWN TONGUE. No magical Disney voice stealing this time! The requirements of the spell are the same, the mermaid must kiss the prince before the dawn of the 3rd day, but if she doesn't instead of her soul being taken (which can be undone) she JUST STRAIGHT UP DIES. This is made far worse since story explicitly states that mermaids don't have immortal souls like humans, so if they die they turn into sea foam and cease to exist. This "curse" comes with of a much longer lifespan, but if they marry a human they can gain a human soul at the cost of their long lives, dying whenever their partner dies. But anyways then the mermaid turns into a human and meets the prince, and they seem to hit it off without the sea witch interfering at all like in the Disney version. However, the prince is ACTUALLY ALREADY MARRIED/BETROVED TO ANOTHER, which unlike the Disney version isn't the sea witch in disguise and is just a generally nice princess from another kingdom in a political marriage, but they do each other. The mermaid then falls into despair, knowing that she'll disappear in three days with no hope of ever being with the prince since he's already with someone else. But there is a hope. The mermaid's three sisters meet with her and tell her than they themselves made a deal with the sea witch, sacrificing their beauty in order to give the mermaid a way to undo her predicament and become a mermaid again, undoing her massive, short sighted mistake. However, it comes with a catch. The sisters give the mermaid an enchanted dagger, and the only way for her to become a mermaid again IS TO BATHE HER LEGS COMPLETELY IN THE BLOOD OF THE ONE SHE LOVES THE MOST, that being the prince. Right before the dawn of the 3rd day the mermaid attempts to kill the prince in order to return to the sea and make her sister's sacrifice not in vain, but she can't do it and decided that she would rather die than to brutally murder the one she loves most, and falls backwards into the waves as the sun rises, slowly disappearing. A tragedy of epic proportions. So, pretty much throughout the entire original tale the mermaid is incredibly short sighted and makes one bad decision that ruins everything, and doesn't even outsmart anyone. The sea witch is neutral and offers a solution, but the mermaid doesn't take it because of its brutality. It's dark magick they're dealing with here, it's not going to be pretty. If you're talking about the 1988 Disney movie it's even less nuanced. Ariel makes a deal with Ursula that's incredibly one sided because Ursula cheats, but technically from the beginning it had it's win and loss conditions easily laid out with no sort of trickery involved. The trickery only started because Ursula interfered preventing Ariel and Eric from kissing which would cause Ariel to lose, and eventually using Ariel's voice to disguise herself as a clone of Ariel and hypnotize Eric using Ariel's stolen voice. Right when it seems like Ariel is screwed and Ursula has ultimate power due to Triton giving up his life for Ariel's, Eric comes in and OKOs Ursula with 100% damage pierce 100% critical "Electromagnetic Shipwreck Soulpiercer X" and saves the day getting the OP McGuffin and undoing everything. There's never any outsmarting done. Ariel is winning at the deal, Ursula cheats in order to "win," Triton sacrifices himself to save Ariel, Ursula is killed, everything is undone, happily ever after. Very simple plot. Are you talking about the recent live action "remake?" Did they actually change up the plot that much? Because I know from an article I read that they changed the setting from taking place in the Neverealm in a fantasy Kingdom/ocean to the IRL Caribbean islands in the early 1700s. Which is IMO really weird setting THE LITTLE MERMAID in a historical setting while supposedly ignoring all the bad parts of that period. (aka slavery and racism) Do they really change up the plot that much? Because I would never know since I have zero interest in watching any of Disney's crappy live action remakes. Heck, I only watch movies in theaters now that I hear REALLY good things about, like Puss in Boots the Last Wish, the Mario Movie, or Coco. I used to be dragged to MCU slop when that was still good, but my family pretty much completely lost interest once Phase 4 started and the quality dropped off a cliff as anticipated. Excided for the DCU reboot tho since James Gunn is writing the whole thing and he's my favorite MCU director. (GotG2 is my favorite MCU film and my favorite live action film as well)

[@TurboGhast.]

​@@KrimsonKattYT While I've only seen the remake, cultural osmosis and how well your words line up with what I saw tells me that the biggest change it makes to the plot is that Ariel uses Electromagnetic Shipwreck Soulpiercer X instead of Eric.

[@ravenwilder4099]

@@KrimsonKattYT Perhaps "outsmarting the devil" isn't quite accurate in that scenario, but a more general "beat the devil" would be.

[@TehNoobiness]

One of my characters made a sort of Faustian bargain when she was 12. Thing is, she didn't even read the contract. To be fair, she had just seen her parents splattered across most of the living room, and she's _12,_ so obviously she wouldn't have the presence of mind to ask if the demon she's signing on with is the same as the one her parents signed a deal with.