Reporting for Duty! @desertbluffs-intern-vanessa - Tumblr Blog

Magical girl who had wanted to be one so badly but never had that magical mascot/mentor encounter so she summoned a demon to contract with instead.

It's not a dark story or anything, the magical girl is just as cute and cheery and friendly as factory standard and never loses that faith and optimism, she's just Pact-bound to a frightening demon from the underworld instead of a cute teddy bear mouse.

twinklecupcake

“What if he’s manipulating her to evil-“ No.

“What if she needs to eat souls to survive-“ No.

“What if she becomes horrified with what she’s becoming-“ No.

writingamongther0ses

Demon being viewed as weird for making a pact with a cute, cheery schoolgirl.

At every demon party where they show off their pacted there's evil, terrible, and frighteningly beautiful and then there's this teenager in a cute magical girl dress.

pb-dot

"I don't get you Goragog." "Listen, it's nice. Just nice! Can't things be nice? Is it a sin for things to be nice?" "No and that's part of the problem..." "You're just jealous Samantha created a "bffs forever" blingee with me. When was the last time one of your warlocks did something like that for you?" "*on the verge of tears* it's been DECADES!"

twinklecupcake

Meanwhile on the other side of the room...

"So what do you get in exchange? I get eternal youth and beauty."

"Yeah, and I get all my enemies smited."

"And my guy gave me immeasurable wealth. What'chu got, kid?"

"This super cute compact! Isn't it pretty? The heart-shaped jewels are so sparkly, and the mirror is always spotless!"

"...."

"And since we're pactbound, we're basically roomies now, so I also get a cool best friend and sleepovers on weekends!"

"...."

"Oh, and I also got my magical powers, of course."

aroaceauri

Er'trian, Harbinger of Eternal Night, Defender of the Shrieking Chasm, and Lord of Eight Furies stared at eir favorite rival in confusion.

"But it's a pact," ey said. "A deal. An exchange is built in! You can't just Bestow Magical Powers for nothing in return. So what are you getting out of this, Goragog???"

Goragog's dark eyes wept their endless ichor. A halo of eldritch nightmares flickered around his head. With deliberate slowness he turned to meet Er'trian's accursed gaze.

"The power of friendship."

digitalchristian

hamburger-howper

"And you KNOW how hard it is to find a good nail tech in Hell. Do you see these claws?"

*camera pans to the demon's 6-inch claws shimmering in the Hellfire's light with little hearts stickered onto them*

"The girl's got TALENT. And I didn't even have to give her that! I've had this polish for weeks and they haven't even chipped!"

skrytch

Goragog gets invited to the annual "Magical Mascot" convention and after the initial trepidation is a Big Hit.

The smaller and non flying Mascots especially love him because he is willing to carry them or sit on his shoulders so they have an unobstructed view.

The Ancient Guardians vote unanimously to make him an honorary Mascot including Membership in the Union with all privileges therin including his own personal chibi form to use when his normal visage would be problematic.

cronchy-baguette

a girl and her turtle (they pull up and ask you to get in the car wyd)

tiktoksthataregood-ish

arseniccattails

kitmicks

coconutlimeverbena

This is a laxative

moss-eyes

drinking this straight up undoes the effects of your baptism

friendlyfangs

Yes I die and come back. Yes you've seen it happen multiple times. But it would be NICE if you acted a LITTLE surprised every time. You don't know what it's like when you're dying in someone's arms and he asks you if you'll make it back in time to play Crash Team Racing later

friendlyfangs

Also. Yes. Obviously. Of fucking course I'll be back in time for Crash Team Racing. But like. Come on. A little suspense. Bro.

sheabutterrosesandeucalyptuspls

Teerachelle_ [ T e e ]

campmiasmas

AYO EDEBIRI Expensive Taste Test

one-time-i-dreamt

NEED!

Twitter OP is the one making them, by the way.

lazy-duck

@inexplicifics

I know that they have enough weapons in both the AW and the Wolfblood verse, but I saw this and instantly went LAMBERT AND MILENA !!! , so here you go in case you haven't seen it yet

inexplicifics

Oh these are awesome, thank you for tagging me!

polkadotmotmot

Alex Garant - Her Power, 2023

stealthrockdamage-deactivated20

immortality through not being incapable of death but by coming back to life after you die no matter what is such a cool power like it’s just so fucking metal. you can rip me apart if you want, i’ll rise from my own viscera and all you’ll have done is piss me off

stealthrockdamage-deactivated20

i cant even think of many good examples of characters with this power… like theres time loop stuff and that’s its own thing but im talkin someone who gets killed and just re-assembles on the spot no time fuckery. on some miss fortune shit. idk it just seems so cool especially like, because it would fucking suck to have that power! idk i’d love to see a character whose whole thing is just repeatedly exploding themselves simply because they can and there are no consequences in order to do whatever it is they need to do. but also kind of fucking hating their job. theres probably a great example of this archetype in something i’ve seen/read/played and enjoyed but am completely forgetting rn

vvamolian

She'll give you butterflies in your stomach

inkskinned

something bad happened to you, and you died, and you came back wrong.

not wrong all the way. the little ways. you forget important dates, stopped going out with friends. it's harder to make you smile. you're apathetic towards things you used to love, afraid of places you used to go to cheer up. quieter. flinching. different.

you came back for love. you're still here for love. what pulled you back was a brightness so loud that even death couldn't outshout it. death heard the call and smiled at you and said okay. go home. somebody is waiting for you.

but you came back different. like lot's wife; you've turned into salt. you used to chirp through life in hops and skips; but now you lose skin just standing up. you have to move slower, skimming across this world without-touching-it. most things feel dull - until they're suddenly all-too-much. life, and being alive just rushes up and over you and you get hopelessly crushed.

you try to explain it to them: it is ugly, but this is what you are, now. the huge golden hoop of your halo now a little bronze ring. you are still watering your plants and wearing the same clothes. after all, you worked hard to come home. this life; so odd and off-color, now that you are wrong.

but they waited for you - it's just that they wanted the "you" that happened before this. the "you" that could sing in the show and hug people tight and look at a blade without breaking down to cry. the you with a smile in pictures. god, holyshit, it's like looking at a completely different person, isn't it. that other-you; the one they actually wanted.

you are the consolation prize. you are the body that forgot the ghost. you are the memory of the bad thing, and the death after; like you are wearing that memory as a banner. you are a fragment, an assembly. simulacrum. you don't make eye contact in mirrors, afraid the light will glance off and your true nature will flash back at you.

you hear them talk about it in their hushed, desperate whispers. sometimes they even admit it to your face; harsh and violent, acid thrown at christmas dinner. god, can you just fucking be normal again. you do not remember what normal is. you had to climb so far to get back here; you are far too exhausted. you want to open the glass door of your heart and show all the gears. can you help resolve whatever got messed up?

you try so, so hard. you came back for them. because you believed they would love you, even when you were so horribly broken. because you believed they would be patient. because you believed unconditional meant "without exception." you cannot do things the same way. you just get tired too quickly these days.

you want to put them on a couch and pour them the tea with hands that shake more than they remember. you want to line them up and draw them a map of where you have had to wander. you want to show every bruise in a backsplash; the little helpless ant of your soul carrying all that weight, over and over. you want to say: yes! it is different! but i did it for love!

you want to say: "i'm not the same, but i'm yours and i'm here. can that be enough?"

lumsel

chinese room 2

So there’s this guy, right? He sits in a room by himself, with a computer and a keyboard full of Chinese characters. He doesn’t know Chinese, though, in fact he doesn’t even realise that Chinese is a language. He just thinks it’s a bunch of odd symbols. Anyway, the computer prints out a paragraph of Chinese, and he thinks, whoa, cool shapes. And then a message is displayed on the computer monitor: which character comes next?

This guy has no idea how the hell he’s meant to know that, so he just presses a random character on the keyboard. And then the computer goes BZZZT, wrong! The correct character was THIS one, and it flashes a character on the screen. And the guy thinks, augh, dammit! I hope I get it right next time. And sure enough, computer prints out another paragraph of Chinese, and then it asks the guy, what comes next?

He guesses again, and he gets it wrong again, and he goes augh again, and this carries on for a while. But eventually, he presses the button and it goes DING! You got it right this time! And he is so happy, you have no idea. This is the best day of his life. He is going to do everything in his power to make that machine go DING again. So he starts paying attention. He looks at the paragraph of Chinese printed out by the machine, and cross-compares it against all the other paragraphs he’s gotten. And, recall, this guy doesn’t even know that this is a language, it’s just a sequence of weird symbols to him. But it’s a sequence that forms patterns. He notices that if a particular symbol is displayed, then the next symbol is more likely to be this one. He notices some symbols are more common in general. Bit by bit, he starts to draw statistical inferences about the symbols, he analyses the printouts every way he can, he writes extensive notes to himself on how to recognise the patterns.

Over time, his guesses begin to get more and more accurate. He hears those lovely DING sounds that indicate his prediction was correct more and more often, and he manages to use that to condition his instincts better and better, picking up on cues consciously and subconsciously to get better and better at pressing the right button on the keyboard. Eventually, his accuracy is like 70% or something – pretty damn good for a guy who doesn’t even know Chinese is a language.

* * *

One day, something odd happens.

He gets a printout, the machine asks what character comes next, and he presses a button on the keyboard and– silence. No sound at all. Instead, the machine prints out the exact same sequence again, but with one small change. The character he input on the keyboard has been added to the end of the sequence.

Which character comes next?

This weirds the guy out, but he thinks, well. This is clearly a test of my prediction abilities. So I’m not going to treat this printout any differently to any other printout made by the machine – shit, I’ll pretend that last printout I got? Never even happened. I’m just going to keep acting like this is a normal day on the job, and I’m going to predict the next symbol in this sequence as if it was one of the thousands of printouts I’ve seen before. And that’s what he does! He presses what symbol comes next, and then another printout comes out with that symbol added to the end, and then he presses what he thinks will be the next symbol in that sequence. And then, eventually, he thinks, “hm. I don’t think there’s any symbol after this one. I think this is the end of the sequence.” And so he presses the “END” button on his keyboard, and sits back, satisfied.

Unbeknownst to him, the sequence of characters he input wasn’t just some meaningless string of symbols. See, the printouts he was getting, they were all always grammatically correct Chinese. And that first printout he’d gotten that day in particular? It was a question: “How do I open a door.” The string of characters he had just input, what he had determined to be the most likely string of symbols to come next, formed a comprehensible response that read, “You turn the handle and push”.

* * *

One day you decide to visit this guy’s office. You’ve heard he’s learning Chinese, and for whatever reason you decide to test his progress. So you ask him, “Hey, which character means dog?”

He looks at you like you’ve got two heads. You may as well have asked him which of his shoes means “dog”, or which of the hairs on the back of his arm. There’s no connection in his mind at all between language and his little symbol prediction game, indeed, he thinks of it as an advanced form of mathematics rather than anything to do with linguistics. He hadn’t even conceived of the idea that what he was doing could be considered a kind of communication any more than algebra is. He says to you, “Buddy, they’re just funny symbols. No need to get all philosophical about it.”

Suddenly, another printout comes out of the machine. He stares at it, puzzles over it, but you can tell he doesn’t know what it says. You do, though. You’re fluent in the language. You can see that it says the words, “Do you actually speak Chinese, or are you just a guy in a room doing statistics and shit?”

The guy leans over to you, and says confidently, “I know it looks like a jumble of completely random characters. But it’s actually a very sophisticated mathematical sequence,” and then he presses a button on the keyboard. And another, and another, and another, and slowly but surely he composes a sequence of characters that, unbeknownst to him, reads “Yes, I know Chinese fluently! If I didn’t I would not be able to speak with you.”

That is how ChatGPT works.