(Trope Inversion) The magical deal maker is… weirdly fair?

[u/Matthew_Steenson]

Most of the time there’s a magical deal maker in fiction they make it so it fucks the person up in some way or form, either slightly like asking for money but it’s in a different currency, or massively like the classic bringing someone back from the dead.

Through there are times where the one doing the deal is surprisingly fair and honest about it, possibly even including how to sidestep the negative aspects of the deal.

Death/Dream of the Endless (Sandman): In Sandman the main character is the personification of dreams, Dream, while he finds himself after being imprisoned for decades. One of the stories we see is a flashback in the late 1300s, where Dream and his sister Death are in a random English pub because Death wants Dream to take a break from work. While there they overhear a guy called Hob Gattling who says that death happens because people just follow everyone else and how he’ll live forever, hearing this Dream and Death decide to make it true by giving him immortality for a bit of a laugh. After a hundred years Dream and Hob meet again where he explains that as long as he wants to live Hob will be immortal, but if he wants Death can take him at, so unlike most immortality if he was trapped in an inescapable space Death will come for him.

Patrick (Supernatural) Patrick is a near millennia old witch who plays games and bets on people’s lifespans to stay young, with him using winning as shown in the opening of the episode where a guy died of rapid aging. But he’s surprisingly honest about it, he explains the rules to anyone that wants to play and if they win they do de-age, we saw this when an 80 something won and he was about 20 again, he’ll even let you win if he thinks the reason you want more time is nice, such as an old Jewish man wanting to see his granddaughters wedding. He also doesn’t cheat at the game it’s just that he’s been playing games for so long he’s just really good at it.

[u/Sea_dog123]

Wasn’t the acid water caused by Usher’s illegally dumping waste? I think Verna’s only influence was locking the doors.

[u/True-Atmosphere8697 → u/Sea_dog123]

She directs prosperos attention to it by standing next to the container