if i was going to participate in Dark cage sam and lucifer stuff more it would be in one of these forms:Ā
1) blatent: lucifer loses his self-control and lashes out at sam (or michael or adam or just whoever happens to be available) in pretty obvious ways that arenāt subtle or creative or disguised as anything but what they are.
this following from luciferās tendencies to punch through peopleās chests with his hand or beat deanās face in or whatever. itās just straight upĀ āiām mad and iām gonna hurt you physically about itā
2) psychological torments: lucifer allows samās mind to set up bad situations all on its own and just...leans into them. so like if sam is worried about how the world will recover from the failed apocalypse, then lucifer will just illustrate that for him inĀ verisimilitudinous detail so it feels real and believable. so like, essentially this is lucifer as a ghost writer for samās fears: itās not a creative project for lucifer, heās just following the direction of how sam is already torturing himself. i could see this being appealing to lucifer as a way to study sam and potentially even a self-reflection exercise since they might both have this self-tormenting tendency given some of their other similarities.
this one follows from luciferās apparent belief that most of his wrongdoing comes from him just pointing out existing flaws rather than creating new ones, acting according to fate (i.e., someone elseās plan) or in response to othersā actions, and is just letting things play out the way they have to ā rather than him necessarily being an inventor of new horrors.
it also follows from the cage being kind of like time-out: i feel like part of whatās cool and awful about the cage is that it lets whatever is in it consume itself, sort of? so letting lucifer play into that seems more in keeping what what the cage is than giving him more explicit authorship over samās tortures. lucifer and the cage are just helping sam torture himself
3) attempts at reconciliation: actions that do not stem from any kind of ill-will nonetheless come across as horrifying and creepy. after whatever the initial fallout is dies down, lucifer goesĀ āwell ok. iām lonely now but iām not alone like last time, i will be nice nowā and uses jessās face, or deanās, or whoeverās to try to approach sam peaceably, but it comes across as cruel because that crosses boundaries. this impulse could go so far as leading lucifer to create the kinds of situations iāve seen people talk about where sam believes he has been out of the cage for years and is living a real life ā but in the version iām talking about here, lucifer does not mean it maliciously; heās mostly trying to set up a situation where friendly social interaction is possible between himself and sam, and conveniently doesnāt tell sam about it, such that itās devastating when sam realizes itās fake.
this one follows from luciferās badness at estimating what will be perceived as overstepping/creepy and tendency to omit truths to get what he wants
