if i was going to participate in Dark cage sam and lucifer stuff more it would be in one of these forms:
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 aren’t subtle or creative or disguised as anything but what they are.
this following from lucifer’s tendencies to punch through people’s chests with his hand or beat dean’s face in or whatever. it’s just straight up “i’m mad and i’m gonna hurt you physically about it”
2) psychological torments: lucifer allows sam’s 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 in verisimilitudinous detail so it feels real and believable. so like, essentially this is lucifer as a ghost writer for sam’s fears: it’s not a creative project for lucifer, he’s 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 lucifer’s 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 else’s plan) or in response to others’ actions, and is just letting things play out the way they have to — 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 what’s 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 sam’s 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 goes “well ok. i’m lonely now but i’m not alone like last time, i will be nice now” and uses jess’s face, or dean’s, or whoever’s 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 i’ve seen people talk about where sam believes he has been out of the cage for years and is living a real life — but in the version i’m talking about here, lucifer does not mean it maliciously; he’s mostly trying to set up a situation where friendly social interaction is possible between himself and sam, and conveniently doesn’t tell sam about it, such that it’s devastating when sam realizes it’s fake.
this one follows from lucifer’s badness at estimating what will be perceived as overstepping/creepy and tendency to omit truths to get what he wants
