app for theposthumans
Player Name: Amy
Personal LJ: ladyvoldything
E-mail: ipokebadgerswithsticks@yahoo.com
AIM: socksaresocky
Other characters currently in-game: None
Who referred you to the game?: Balthazar’s mun in dear_mun
Character Name: Lucifer
Canon source: Supernatural
PB: Adrianne Palicki
Personality:
There is a certain formulaic dependability to the shadow trope; the mythic figure in the dark, the villain archetype. Most classically he lurks in the wings or in the back, overshadowing every event with his raw hugeness and the magnitude of his wrongdoing, acting as a pure arbiter of unfiltered evil. He is badness incarnate, and any sympathetic or good qualities he may ever have had are so forgotten or overshadowed as to never be explored and, indeed, never thought about- he is irredeemable.
There again he is oft also a more nuanced creature, the kinder, gentler Baddie presented to us as a character equal to the protagonists in layers and characterization. He has a heart, a soul, he prays. He has a conscience, a mother, a pet cat, and a tragic childhood or past that have made him from a gentle soul into the twisted so-called monster we see before us today. Presented first as a categorical villain meant to be hated, the work first gives us a shocking glimpse of the person within, leading into a slow, gradual deconstruction of what truly makes the person bad or good. In the end we see a redeemed (or still-fallen) soul, so thoroughly characterized and taken apart, so strongly have our heartstrings and sympathies been played that we have no choice but to cry as hard for his death as we would for any protagonist.
Lucifer is none of these things, and both of them. Her deconstruction seems to unfold in reverse. Though she doesn’t physically appear in the show until season 5, she is foreshadowed all the way back in season three. We first hear her name early in season three, on the lips of an unusually considerate and sympathetic demon, as a deity in demonic religious stories. “Did you know the name means Light-Bringer? Look it up.” The moniker “devil” is rebuffed by the demon, instead describing Lucifer as the most beautiful of all God’s angels. Her great crime was not hate or disobedience at all in this version of events. Rather, it’s framed as a very understandable refusal to kowtow to inferior beings, evidence only of principles and not of hubris or malice. The story leaves us with a feeling of anticipation for an almost Messianic figure, who the demon rhapsodizes will return some day as their much-beloved creator. This specific scene isn’t about Lucifer herself, either- it’s a device used to humanize the demon, and make the protagonist wonder if maybe they aren’t so different after all. It’s only the first time out of many that Lucifer will be presented as a softened, gentle character who almost comes off as relatable. Later, however, the foreshadowing is far different- Lucifer stands silent in the background, a boogeyman whose very existence inspires dread and relieves rational characters of their ability to think straight. She is painted very clearly as unimaginable horror, sealed evil in a can, the very worst thing that could ever happen to the world who will bring destruction and untold suffering on a scale our minds simply cannot fathom. Her name isn’t even a name anymore, but a symbol of every nightmare you have ever had and every monster and villain to ever spread pain in an already angst-ridden show.
The first time we actually see Lucifer, it’s a surprisingly emotional entrance to the show. She’s in the guise of a soft-spoken, watery-eyed, incredibly honest woman, trying only to convey a truth to a broken man as gently as she can. It stands in stark contrast to the mind-breaking horrors that the man has witnessed previously, and even as we know that Lucifer caused them with the specific intention to hurt the man, we can’t help but feel a little when she earnestly entreats him to listen to her. There’s none of the lies or deceit we expect- she is perfectly open, immediately letting him know that despite her appearance, she is not his wife, and immediately tells him her real name and what she needs him for. What stands out is how she frames her argument.
“Do you know my crime? My real crime? I loved god too much.”
Many, upon first meeting her, find it hard not to relate to her, to sympathize with the gentle creature she appears to be, who apologizes every other sentence and seems to cradle her psychological victims like injured baby birds. Her next appearance is almost as soft- until we realize that she has been posing as Jessica in Sam’s dreams and feeding on his darkest fears and insecurities. To his face, though, Lucifer is perfectly soft-spoken, almost contrite about the campaign of psychological destruction he is about to wage against Sam. Even as he calmly confirms Sam’s deepest fears about himself, he apologizes repeatedly and even extends a hand in sympathy. “I’m so sorry, Sam,” he says. “My heart breaks for you.” One sometimes leaves an encounter with the Devil thinking that, despite being a harbinger of destruction, Lucifer is a fallen angel with a real heart and redemptive possibility, and genuinely cares about the people he talks to, in a perversely gentle kind of way.
After so candidly exposing real feeling and vulnerability in his first appearances, every subsequent encounter with Lucifer seems to pull back the camera, revealing more and more layers of who this person truly is. We see him slaughter an entire town with his bare hands, and flippantly dismiss the horror of it with a casual, “Oh, I know it’s terrible, but these horsemen are so demanding.” Then as a sacrifice he kills several dozen demons, and that almost hits closer to home than the many human deaths- that Lucifer would casually murder his own loving worshipers to meet his own selfish ends. When Sam gapes at him in horror, Lucifer just raises an eyebrow. “What? They’re just demons.” This is what the Light Bringer thinks of his own hand-crafted creations, the little creatures who look at him like a father, and suddenly we realize that in spite of the angel’s sentimentality and gentle touch, that he is something new and strange and terrifyingly cold. Evil has a face, and we have seen it. It brings out a true appreciation for the term “Prince of Lies.” Despite Lucifer’s gentle promise to never lie to Sam, and never to trick him, and his repeatedly demonstration commitment to honesty, the fact that he was so able to pass himself off as a compassionate individual suddenly seems stunning, her professed sentiments revealed as so many mind games.
So duplicitous is he that he will freely embrace and tenderly caress the cheek of a demon, address her as “child,” and behave as if he actually cares about her. His intensely violent loathing of most of the things around him only seems to come out in glimpses and flashes, and is like a short sharp shock amidst the earnest sentimentality and convincing gentility that is the face she wears for the world. Because she is evil, and she does take a certain pleasure in hurting people, and is vicious, malicious, nasty, fine with committing horrible atrocities. To you, one is a tragedy, and a million is a statistic. To Lucifer, a million is just one hundred thousand individual tragedies, and she will look every single one of them in the face and feel nothing.
You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen. We don’t need him!
Lucifer is very, very good at being an angel: head-tilts, little eyebrow furrows at your strange human emotions, an ego big enough to block out the sun. Her professed motivations and driving factors are what we think of as deeply religious in nature, and she is every bit the dangerous zealot that her Heavenly brethren are. With every word spoken and action taken she presumes her will to be law, wrapping threats in pretty words and backhanded promises. She has a certain detached sensibility that seems to elevate her above the level of those around her, but she is no stranger to doing her own dirty work- for rituals and sacrifices, she can be seen doing her own manual labor, as a testament of her dedication to her craft, such as it is. Seeing her covered in dirt and so undeniably base can be quite a shock, as she usually gives the intangible impression of purity and being utterly pristine.
In her view, she often has no choice, as evidenced by statements like “Brother... please don’t make me do this.” There’s a sense of compulsion to what she does at times, as if she has always been destined to come to you, destroy your family, torch your life, and force herself into your ruined psyche. Until, of course, her seemingly limitless patience comes to its end. When she’s pushed to her limit of tolerance, the façade of serenity crumbles and she bears down on her unfortunate victim with the wrath of the very bowels of Hell, any surface-level mercy utterly forgotten in favor of unrelenting brutality. Prepare to feel the snap of your own bones if she gets angry, and pray that’s the least that happens to you.
But that all falls in line with classic angel behavior- the air of a shady politician from planet Vulcan, with a frighteningly furious temper once sufficiently provoked. She also shares something else with them- she reacts very badly if thwarted or frustrated. Sometimes Lucifer even comes off as something of a kid, and for those who see through her facade tends to remind them strongly of a child throwing a temper tantrum. All she wants is Daddy’s attention- he was mean to her, so she’s determined to break all his toys. There’s a certain immaturity about her, and she can be very whiny and petulant when hurt or frustrated. If you’re patient or (un)lucky enough, you can break down the faux classiness to see the falling-apart, whiny-ass spoiled brat that she really, truly is.
LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.
Although Lucifer spreads wanton destruction with her very being, and smugly inflicts unimaginable pain on people she takes pleasure in squashing like bugs, she seems to have little of the gleeful, twisted delight that her demonic children seem to take in sadism. She apparently appreciates it the way one appreciates fine art and fine wine, watching her inflicted devastation unfold with stoic satisfaction- a sharp reminder that she has never been demon, but is ultimately an angel. After slitting a throat or snapping a neck, she simply looks down at her victim with a resigned little ‘hm,’ utterly unaffected by it. It fits in nicely with her “sympathy for the devil” shtick, that her sadism unfolds but slowly, never belying the depth of her raw, scathing, searing loathing.
Because that’s it. Under the gentility, the false (or simply shallow) concern, the almost classy panache she puts into everything she does, there is a stunning depth of hate that is beyond what you or I could easily fathom. If she meets you, she probably hates you more than language is capable of adequately expressing, no matter how gently she puts her hand on your shoulder and tells you she’s sorry that you made her kill your family. For thousands of years she rotted in the deepest bowels of Hell, with nothing but the pain of Hellfire and long march of time spent completely and utterly alone, and in those untold aeons her resentment and dislike festered into seething hatred that motivates her every action. Don’t be fooled by her soft-spoken tenderness; she will quietly relish the look in your eyes when her hand closes around your liver and pulls. Disregard and disdain are the names of the game, with her only ever setting aside a moment of honest concern for fellow angels who she think may serve her needs- and even then, the instant they lose their value to her, she once again quietly accepts that she will personally murder them some day, and regret nothing.
The sole exceptions to this have only ever been her brothers- and not brothers in the sense that all angels are brothers, but in her three archangel brethren. Lucifer may know full well that the battle with Michael is inevitable, or that Gabriel has left her with no choice in a fight, but hurting those few closest to her makes her genuinely unhappy. They are the only people she has ever tried to back out of a fight with- but when push comes to shove, she will default to brutality over compassion every time. In a fight with Gabriel, her baby brother whom she taught everything, he made a very obvious slip-up that let her know clearly that she was about to be stabbed in the back- in such a way that he clearly made her aware on purpose. He gave her the chance to rethink her decision to kill him and to choose love over violence, and she repaid him by turning around and driving a knife through his chest, and destroying any chance of redemptive possibility. It’s in her nature to take windows of opportunity and shows of kindness, and take relentless advantage of them; she does not know the meaning of mercy, and almost certainly never will.
Though she clearly lamented killing her little brother, and actually cried over his body (in one of her only unquestionably genuine shows of emotion), she didn’t seem to regret it in the slightest. Her love for her brothers is great, but always gives way to driving hatred and selfishness. In her mind, the ends always justify the means, and her ends are the only ends.
“Some men aren’t looking for anything logical. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
By all logic and reason, Lucifer has nothing to gain by accomplishing her grand ambition of destroying the earth and razing Heaven. It is pointed out to her repeatedly that it’s a useless exercise in petulance, destroying all of Daddy’s toys because he was mean to her. Furthermore, crossing this item off her bucket list would require slaughtering all of her brothers, and destroying those last remnants of the only family she’s ever had or will ever care about. Indeed, the angels are her kin, creatures she once identified with so strongly that she ripped apart her own reality rather than admit that they could be inferior to something. Every single angel would have to die, and then what? Life as the only angel in Creation, however victorious, is an impossibly lonely one. One may well wonder why, and what she truly has to gain by destroying the very world that she herself terms stunning and the last perfect work of god.
Her actions give no clue, no hint whatsoever as to her underlying motivation. The stories point to the same things- revenge, pride, heedless hate, but Lucifer is underneath it all a son and a brother, not simply a Jungian archetype. Once upon a time, she was a being who looked up to her big brother, Michael, the one who essentially raised her and shaped her whole world- he was her brother, surrogate father, rock of Gibraltar, and in a very real sense the love of her life, and the moment when he denied her and first raised a hand to hurt her still stands clearly as the worst moment of her extremely long life. After so many years, she held out hope that if only they saw each other again, that they could work it out- that they could walk off their father’s chess board together, and be brothers again, but on some level she always knew that he would say no. Lucifer simply cannot tolerate that. She can find nothing worth saving about a world in which Michael is capable of looking into her eyes and still wanting to kill her. She would rather burn the world down and drag everyone into the darkness with her than tolerate anybody else having one single iota of happiness in a universe where the only thing she ever wanted is so utterly lost to her. Only people who have known her from the beginning and know her extremely well could tell you what really makes her tick. Only Gabriel, Raphael, and possibly Michael really know what a fundamentally unhappy creature she really is, or how miserable slaughtering the angels would make her.
Not that she has any idea of this, of course. To her twisted and deformed mind, she hurts and destroys people because they deserve it, and because it is her right. She lives with no regrets, but many grudges, and would sooner cut out your tongue than say she’s sorry.
History:
Lucifer wasn’t always the larger-than-life creature of hate you see (hopefully not in person) today. Once upon a time, he was a little boy. A son- a brother, maybe like you. And he loved his family, more than almost anything. He loved his Father and just wanted His approval, the validation that would come from some modicum of trust and being treated as an equal. Of course, having God as your father doesn’t lend itself well to respect and honesty, and in the Dad-shaped void left by an absent father chock full of inscrutable plans Lucifer latched onto his big brother, the one who took care of him where nobody else could. Michael became Lucifer’s entire world, the yin to his yang and the other half of their perfect whole. There was Raphael, the little brother who latched onto Michael, and then there was Gabriel. The youngest of the four archangels, the little sun who was so beautiful and joyous to behold- who wanted only to be like Lucifer, as badly as Lucifer wanted to emulate Michael. Lucifer took Gabriel under his wing in much the same way, raising him up and taking care of him, teaching him the joys of their father’s creation and teaching him how to troll. And Lucifer loved them- all of them. He was the most beautiful of God’s angels, a brilliant thing who shined like a thousand suns and outshone even the Lamps that it was his duty to light. Lucifer had more of their Father’s love than any other, and he knew it.
Until the day their father asked them to bow down before the newest creations, the humans. Dad brought the new baby home and loved them more than Lucifer, and the Morningstar couldn’t handle it. Who were these inferior little apes that they could take advantage of all of God’s mercy and love, and some of them didn’t even believe He exists? Then Lucifer caught God forgiving them for a disobedience, and flew off the handle. They didn’t deserve that- he did. He spent millions of years living and breathing and existing purely to make God happy, he obeyed every command and followed every one of God’s rules in the endless, futile hope that one day it would be good enough- only to learn that they had never been enough, that they would never be loved enough by their daddy.
So Lucifer did the unthinkable, and uttered the first “no” ever spoken. It hurt and was terrifying beyond measure, but he rebelled and made his own way, butting heads and fighting with his brothers frequently for a long time. In that time he managed to sow the seeds of true sin (grown out of already existing flaws), twist the first woman’s soul into the first demon, and construct Hell as a place of his own design to manufacture more abominable perversions of God’s most beloved creations. The conflict and strife he sowed in Heaven started to tear the family apart, sending waves of confusion and uncertainty through their younger brothers, and even driving Gabriel to desert, running away from home to never be seen again. And though he did fight with his brothers, Lucifer always held hope that if it ever came down to the wire, Michael would choose his other half and little brother over the father who so flagrantly forsook them both.
He was wrong.
In the moment that was everything, Lucifer looked into his brother's eyes with nothing but raw, honest vulnerability and the true desperation that said nothing else would ever be this important again, and said- brother, please. And Michael looked back, looked into his baby brother's eyes, and beat him down. The second blow was the worst- the first was almost dreamy, unbelievable, but by the second Lucifer had realized what was happening to him and could only experience it with numb, gut-wrenching horror as his big brother brutally overpowered him and kicked him down into a Cage in Hell, the very worst depths of reality. There was no love in Michael's eyes when he slammed the door on Lucifer and threw away the key.
Then came several thousand years of yawning silence.
Hell is a cage made of bone and flesh and fire and pain, and is torture even for its architect. It's documented that enough solitary confinement will drive the most stable person to utter insanity, and Lucifer in being locked away by the only person she ever really relied on was far from stable. The fear and the betrayal sparking white-hot and blinding from the moment of confinement simmered over thousands of years, burning away any beauty and goodness and nobility, coalescing down into hard-packed hatred and burning resentment that came to define her. It was no brief period, either- hugely long lifetimes of demons, over ten thousand years on Earth (not to even speak of hell-time) spent locked in the cage, in a part of hell so deep the demons couldn't reach it, for so long that most of Hell forgot he had ever existed at all, and he faded to the realm of fantasy and demonic bedtime stories.
After so many centuries, his so-called son Azazel, the second demon, found a way to whisper through the Cage door, and together they hatched a thirty-year plan to spring free. With the help of Lilith, Azazel, Meg, Ruby, and the manipulation of the entire Winchester family, Sam Winchester broke the last of 66 Seals to set Lucifer free. Finally, after untold life-ages of the earth, the Devil walked free once more.
Then, of course, it was as simple as one-two-three. Take a vessel, set off an Apocalypse, start a campaign of psychological torment of Sam Winchester (how else do you break down a good, moral man into agreeing to be Satan's vessel?). Horsemen lined up like ducks in a row, with surprisingly few hiccups in the plan- oh, sure, War got his ring cut off and he was shot once or twice, but those were just bumps in the road. It was all immaterial before the task of wearing Sam down and fighting Michael- even if he secretly hoped that it could be stopped somehow, and the two brothers could walk away free of their father's machinations.
There was a minor hiccup halfway through the whole production, when Lucifer's vessel finally overheated and spontaneously combusted, leveling four blocks of the unfortunate town he'd been in at the time. So Lucifer looked, and found that his angel brethren had closed in and somehow stolen or killed any other potential vessels on Earth except for a few who proved completely immovable. Desperate and unwilling to spend weeks incorporeal just to woo a living vessel, Lucifer resurrected Jessica Moore, the strongest of a mostly-dead bloodline of potential vessels, and coerced the poor girl into consenting to be her vessel. That settled, she returned to the neat business of getting an Apocalypse going. Dean Winchester was proving immovable as Michael's true vessel, so the grand prize-fight between her and her brother couldn't come to pass just yet.
And so it was that the world was pushed to the very brink, prompting a group of disorganized pagan gods to meet in a hotel with the intent to band together and save their world from the Judeo-Christian armageddon. Kali, Ganesh, Odin, Heimdall, Baron Samedi, Mercury, Aphrodite- powers and deities from all across the world gathered in one places, to discuss fighting the Christians and killing Lucifer, even capturing Sam and Dean as bargaining chips. Then somebody crashed their party: Loki, the Norse trickster, who hadn't been Gabriel for a very long time. The Archangel in disguise tried to persuade the gods to leave and give up, to not kill themselves trying to defeat a power greater than them- and though his pleas fell on deaf ears, every one of them was true. For one of their number betrayed the meeting's location to Lucifer, who walked into the hotel like she owned the place, repaying the god's honesty with a snapped neck. Lucifer proceeded to kill every god in the place that she could get her bloodied hands on, right up to the moment of having her boot over Kali's throat. There was nobody to stop her; nobody had ever been brave enough to challenge her directly AND strong enough to have a fighting chance.
So imagine her surprise when she was thrown into a wall and challenged by Gabriel. Gabriel! Her snot-nosed little brother who had never once met a fight he didn't run away from, standing across from her with a drawn sword. It was her personal tragedy all over again, with Lucifer in the role of the aggressor big brother. Their dramatic confrontation started, as they all do, with exchange of banter and dialoguing- pained and laden with the unresolved issues of a hundred æons.
For the first time in all her long years of existence Lucifer didn't want to fight. "Please, brother," she almost begged with the beginnings of pain in her eyes, "Don't make me do this."
Gabriel's answer came, swift and sad. "No-one makes us do anything."
And so they fought. Lucifer hardly wanted to use the full brunt of her force against her baby brother, but in her mind he gave her no choice, and his Achilles heel had always been fighting skill. She was just whirling around in the heat of the moment, sickly ready to drive the blade through his stomach-
-And found herself stabbing the empty air of a strange glass tube. Welcome to the jungle.
How does your AU differ from canon?
It diverges very minorly halfway through season 5. My Lucifer used to possess the PB seen in canon, but burned through that vessel, and after an annoying series of events was forced/inspired to dig up Sam Winchester’s dead girlfriend, bring her candy ass back to life, and use her as a vessel, in the absence of any other viable, consenting vessels on Earth. From then up until she’s pulled out of her world, everything that happens to her is identical to canon.
Strengths:
Lucifer shares the abilities of all angels and archangels in the Supernatural canon- ie, reality warping, raising the dead, teleportation, weather manipulation, invulnerability, super-strength, some psychic ability, telekinesis, and time travel.
Reality warping is probably her most useful (and god-moding) power; she can create things from thin air that are as real as anything else, and make them vanish just as easily. Archangels less powerful than her have been seen creating pocket dimensions, alternate realities, and extended Groundhog Day-style time loops. She can alter her form to appear to be anybody, and can affect the bodies of others- for example, an angel in the show was seen causing a person’s lungs to vanish from their bodies with a thought, and giving them stomach cancer on a whim. She is capable of raising the dead, and it’s implied that she can bring angels back to life.
Teleportation is a fairly simple one. When she wants to be somewhere, she just thinks about it and it happens. By a similar token, when she wants to find somebody, she can do so unless they’re specifically trying to hide from her. There are various ways to hide from angels, including protective magic, Enochian sigils, and various other methods not explored in the shows but to which I am very open. Lucifer’s disappearances and re-appearances are accompanied by thunderclaps and flashes of lightning. This plays into her ability of weather manipulation, which is often involuntary or at the very least unintentional. Her very presence somewhere can be enough to cause a few city blocks to drop ten degrees in temperature, while the rest of the city stays normal, and her presence can also cause thunderstorms, rain, and general end of the world weather. She is fully capable of bringing down hurricanes, tornados, and forest fires.
Telekinesis is a powerful ability. She can utterly destroy an angel by making them explode with a simple snap of her fingers, and can kill with her mind. In addition to this, she can pin powerful beings and humans alike to the wall with her mind, and use her abilities to fight.
Her invulnerability and super-strength are part of what make her so dangerous. She is unkillable by most means- fighting or force from other angels can hurt her, a bullet from the Colt can bring her down for about a minute, and certain weapons designed to kill angels can harm her, but in the show only an archangel’s blade is shown to be dangerous enough to actually kill her permanently. She can be blasted forcefully out of her vessel’s body with an Enochian sigil. So far, she hasn’t found a human-made weapon that can hurt her, but it’s a wide world, and full of strange things. Her super strength is simple- her true voice can destroy buildings, her true form tends to burn the eyes from peoples’ heads, and she can lift and throw people far physically bigger and heavier than her without breaking a sweat.
Weaknesses:
As far as physical weaknesses go, they're pretty few and far between. Certain weapons that are universally lethal - like the Colt in Supernatural - can hurt her very badly, and make her pass out and appear to be dead for about a minute, but in SPN she's seen getting up and healing perfectly from a point-blank head shot from the Colt. I am, however, open to exploring vulnerabilities from weapons from other canons. She can be trapped with a ring of holy fire, and if set on fire with holy oil she will go up in flames and vanish in agonizing pain for about ten minutes before returning. The sword of an Archangel can kill her, and she can be hurt in physical fights by Archangels and angels of sufficient strength. This may also extend to extremely super-strong characters such as Superman or anyone of equivalent strength, but they'd have to be pretty freaking powerful. She, however, is not invulnerable- angels of almost equal strength were shown in the show as being vulnerable to spells and magic cast by other powerful beings.
Emotional weaknesses are trickier to quantify, and even rarer than physical ones. Her weaknesses all have names- God, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. They're her family, and occupy different places in her heart. God is her Father, and although they're too far gone at this point for reconciliation or for a meeting to end in anything but hateful violence, He strikes at a place in her that's too raw and woundable for her to tolerate. Michael is even worse; he was always the one she looked to, and the one she wanted, and even now she would give up everything and lay down her weapons if he said he would accept her. With Raphael she had a different, more blunted story; a story of a little brother following Mike's footsteps and turning against big sister. She loves him, but she could honestly take him or leave him. Gabriel is her baby- the one she wanted to protect, and the one she fought with the least of all of them; seeing anyone hurt him will raise her hackles and send her into a foaming-at-the-mouth fury. Nobody is allowed to hurt him but her. Mention of any of her family or using them against her will make something young and vulnerable twist deep inside her, even if she doesn't let her feelings show on the surface.
Lucifer doesn't like to be overpowered, outwitted, or restrained. The angel is strongly claustrophobic, in a metaphysical sense that may seem strange to humans- she's fine in elevators and tight spaces, but being penned in like the world of this game or trapped inside a circle of holy fire will make her skin crawl and set her teeth on edge. Any true confinement reminds her powerfully of her long, traumatic years in the cage, and she'd gladly claw faces off to escape.
Preferred drop-in point:
Truth or Consequences, as she's being taken at the exact same time and from the same place as Gabriel.
What are some of your plans for this character in their new environment?
Naturally I'm going to be playing her off of Gabriel a lot- they're pulled in mid-fight, so after getting their bearings in a new world they will probably wind up taking care of their unfinished business eventually, and it'll probably be because of Lucifer's behavior. Being in an already Apocalyptic world will be sort of newish to her, but she never met a human race she didn't want to extinguish, so basically she'll be almost cartoonishly evil and trying merrily to hurt people- possibly even (ugh) teaming up with other baddies to help do so.
In that vein, I look forward to finding new and exciting ways for characters from other realities to kick her ass eight ways from Sunday. Could she survive being Avada Kedavra'd? Could Superman beat her in a fair fight? There's only one way to find out.
First Person Journal Sample:
[The video starts with pitch black and soft click-rattle-bang sounds accompanied by quiet cursing in Enochian. It flickers light and dark, bright and dizzying with all-encompassing smudges of orange-pink before her thumb moves out of the way, revealing an irritated but very pretty face seen from a Myspace angle.]
No, Gabriel. Whatever you're accusing me of, the answer is tragically no. As much as I would enjoy taking credit for so insipid an illusion, this is its own world, brother. I've checked. [She puts the phone down indelicately, the ambient noise and shaky camera lasting for almost a minute as she arranges it just so. When at last Lucifer pulls away, one can see her hair falling out of its ponytail and faint scorch marks on her forehead, neck, and shoulders.] I know you're still in this charming town, but I won't approach you until you've rid yourself of those ideas of violence. [The easy smugness tightens into something akin to resignation, that seems to be physically difficult for her to acknowledge.] If we're in this, brother, we're in it together.
Third Person Sample:
In North Reading, Massachusetts, a teenage girl paced the length of her room over and over, pounding a trodden path into the carpeted floor. She was supposed to be studying for a Spanish final, but her concentration was derailed; she's been muttering to herself for some twenty minutes now. Periodically she turned on her heel to face the mirror above her desk, looking into it as if seeking to divine the mysteries of the universe in reflective glass. Here she leaned over, now she stared into reflected eyes, there she spoke impassioned words to the other-self gazing back. Kristen MacDonald was carrying on a one-way conversation with herself, and any listener would think she had the Devil himself locked in that bedroom with her.
Kristen practiced that conversation almost every night when she was alone. Every night she looked into the mirror, gave herself her motivation, and got into character to rehearse her lines. Because you didn't care, did you? You've never cared about anybody else but yourself for a second in your whole fucking life. It's fucking pathetic. How dare you try to look me in the eyes and tell me this is my fault? It was your responsibility, and you-
It was a conversation that will never happen. Kristen would never get the chance to sit her father down and tell him exactly what she thought about him. The words she really wanted to say never quite came out; they talked instead of sports teams and shallow things. They would probably go the rest of their lives without a single word of honesty to each other, and still Kristen practiced the rant every night. Maybe some day she'd get that chance; maybe some day the stars would align (with her blood alcohol level) and she'd scream every word of built-up hate from the entirety of her childhood at him, and he'd be forced to sit and listen in a daze. On some level, Kristen almost knew that actually carrying out that fantasy would leave her feeling empty and hollow, worse off than before.
***
In hunting for a new second-string vessel, Lucifer left no stone unturned. A yogi in Kashmir spurned her to the point of death, whereupon he went to an afterlife that Lucifer couldn't drag him back from- a lesson in staying to her own faith for mining souls. One little African boy killed himself after his third dream about her, rightly believing her to be a dangerous spirit trying to destroy him. Three, four, ten possibilities all lost, denied, burned through, or stolen from her by the crafty angels, leaving only one choice on Earth. So she found herself in the corner of a dark bedroom one evening, invisible and ineffable in her vessel-less form, the silent observer. Lucifer didn't know what she was waiting for, only that she could know it when she saw it and that taking this vessel would be easy. Kristen was just a girl.
Lucifer watched the girl for three days and two nights, and found nothing worth saving. Nothing at all- until some small change happened, some parent or another returned home from a business trip, something Lucifer couldn't care about if she tried. But her silent vigil was soon enough broken by the door crashing open and a little child running in, hitting the light switch and slamming the door closed behind him. The little boy, no more than nine or ten, threw himself at his bed and started crying. Within seconds he was followed in by Kristen herself, who ran to the boy's side and picked him up, drawing her brother closer to her by the shoulders.
"Shhhhh," Kristen cooed, one finger stroking feather-light over a bruise blossoming on the little boy's face. "It'll be okay."
The boy, clearly her little brother, looked up at her tearfully. "Why- why doesn't he love us?" he choked out, plainly hurt and confused.
Kristen herself looked utterly lost, and completely heartbroken. "I don't know, honey." She gripped him tight, holding the little boy to her chest like a mother cradling her child, and held him through almost ten minutes of little-boy tears. She kept stopping to whisper sweet, faint things into her brother's hair, and stopping to revel in any tiny hint of a smile she could draw out of him.
It was a pity, really. Lucifer knew Kristen would have made a fine vessel- but somehow, ultimately, Lucifer couldn't bring herself to destroy this girl. Not when her eyes kept falling on the little human boy, so desperate for love and eager to curl up in his big sister's arms. Lucifer could find another vessel.
When Kristen MacDonald went to bed that night, she almost brained herself on the thick thorns of a mysterious long-stemmed wild rose she found there. Even as she picked it up and ran delicate hands along its stem, she got the feeling that she knew it before, or had always found herself in this room, smelling the roses at eleven thirty at night. Somehow, when she breathed the delicate scent in deeply, the yawning sound of her little brother's sleepless nights became easier to bear, and she could find peace. It comforted her to think she had her own personal guardian angel.
Personal LJ: ladyvoldything
E-mail: ipokebadgerswithsticks@yahoo.com
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Character Name: Lucifer
Canon source: Supernatural
PB: Adrianne Palicki
Personality:
There is a certain formulaic dependability to the shadow trope; the mythic figure in the dark, the villain archetype. Most classically he lurks in the wings or in the back, overshadowing every event with his raw hugeness and the magnitude of his wrongdoing, acting as a pure arbiter of unfiltered evil. He is badness incarnate, and any sympathetic or good qualities he may ever have had are so forgotten or overshadowed as to never be explored and, indeed, never thought about- he is irredeemable.
There again he is oft also a more nuanced creature, the kinder, gentler Baddie presented to us as a character equal to the protagonists in layers and characterization. He has a heart, a soul, he prays. He has a conscience, a mother, a pet cat, and a tragic childhood or past that have made him from a gentle soul into the twisted so-called monster we see before us today. Presented first as a categorical villain meant to be hated, the work first gives us a shocking glimpse of the person within, leading into a slow, gradual deconstruction of what truly makes the person bad or good. In the end we see a redeemed (or still-fallen) soul, so thoroughly characterized and taken apart, so strongly have our heartstrings and sympathies been played that we have no choice but to cry as hard for his death as we would for any protagonist.
Lucifer is none of these things, and both of them. Her deconstruction seems to unfold in reverse. Though she doesn’t physically appear in the show until season 5, she is foreshadowed all the way back in season three. We first hear her name early in season three, on the lips of an unusually considerate and sympathetic demon, as a deity in demonic religious stories. “Did you know the name means Light-Bringer? Look it up.” The moniker “devil” is rebuffed by the demon, instead describing Lucifer as the most beautiful of all God’s angels. Her great crime was not hate or disobedience at all in this version of events. Rather, it’s framed as a very understandable refusal to kowtow to inferior beings, evidence only of principles and not of hubris or malice. The story leaves us with a feeling of anticipation for an almost Messianic figure, who the demon rhapsodizes will return some day as their much-beloved creator. This specific scene isn’t about Lucifer herself, either- it’s a device used to humanize the demon, and make the protagonist wonder if maybe they aren’t so different after all. It’s only the first time out of many that Lucifer will be presented as a softened, gentle character who almost comes off as relatable. Later, however, the foreshadowing is far different- Lucifer stands silent in the background, a boogeyman whose very existence inspires dread and relieves rational characters of their ability to think straight. She is painted very clearly as unimaginable horror, sealed evil in a can, the very worst thing that could ever happen to the world who will bring destruction and untold suffering on a scale our minds simply cannot fathom. Her name isn’t even a name anymore, but a symbol of every nightmare you have ever had and every monster and villain to ever spread pain in an already angst-ridden show.
The first time we actually see Lucifer, it’s a surprisingly emotional entrance to the show. She’s in the guise of a soft-spoken, watery-eyed, incredibly honest woman, trying only to convey a truth to a broken man as gently as she can. It stands in stark contrast to the mind-breaking horrors that the man has witnessed previously, and even as we know that Lucifer caused them with the specific intention to hurt the man, we can’t help but feel a little when she earnestly entreats him to listen to her. There’s none of the lies or deceit we expect- she is perfectly open, immediately letting him know that despite her appearance, she is not his wife, and immediately tells him her real name and what she needs him for. What stands out is how she frames her argument.
“Do you know my crime? My real crime? I loved god too much.”
Many, upon first meeting her, find it hard not to relate to her, to sympathize with the gentle creature she appears to be, who apologizes every other sentence and seems to cradle her psychological victims like injured baby birds. Her next appearance is almost as soft- until we realize that she has been posing as Jessica in Sam’s dreams and feeding on his darkest fears and insecurities. To his face, though, Lucifer is perfectly soft-spoken, almost contrite about the campaign of psychological destruction he is about to wage against Sam. Even as he calmly confirms Sam’s deepest fears about himself, he apologizes repeatedly and even extends a hand in sympathy. “I’m so sorry, Sam,” he says. “My heart breaks for you.” One sometimes leaves an encounter with the Devil thinking that, despite being a harbinger of destruction, Lucifer is a fallen angel with a real heart and redemptive possibility, and genuinely cares about the people he talks to, in a perversely gentle kind of way.
After so candidly exposing real feeling and vulnerability in his first appearances, every subsequent encounter with Lucifer seems to pull back the camera, revealing more and more layers of who this person truly is. We see him slaughter an entire town with his bare hands, and flippantly dismiss the horror of it with a casual, “Oh, I know it’s terrible, but these horsemen are so demanding.” Then as a sacrifice he kills several dozen demons, and that almost hits closer to home than the many human deaths- that Lucifer would casually murder his own loving worshipers to meet his own selfish ends. When Sam gapes at him in horror, Lucifer just raises an eyebrow. “What? They’re just demons.” This is what the Light Bringer thinks of his own hand-crafted creations, the little creatures who look at him like a father, and suddenly we realize that in spite of the angel’s sentimentality and gentle touch, that he is something new and strange and terrifyingly cold. Evil has a face, and we have seen it. It brings out a true appreciation for the term “Prince of Lies.” Despite Lucifer’s gentle promise to never lie to Sam, and never to trick him, and his repeatedly demonstration commitment to honesty, the fact that he was so able to pass himself off as a compassionate individual suddenly seems stunning, her professed sentiments revealed as so many mind games.
So duplicitous is he that he will freely embrace and tenderly caress the cheek of a demon, address her as “child,” and behave as if he actually cares about her. His intensely violent loathing of most of the things around him only seems to come out in glimpses and flashes, and is like a short sharp shock amidst the earnest sentimentality and convincing gentility that is the face she wears for the world. Because she is evil, and she does take a certain pleasure in hurting people, and is vicious, malicious, nasty, fine with committing horrible atrocities. To you, one is a tragedy, and a million is a statistic. To Lucifer, a million is just one hundred thousand individual tragedies, and she will look every single one of them in the face and feel nothing.
You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen. We don’t need him!
Lucifer is very, very good at being an angel: head-tilts, little eyebrow furrows at your strange human emotions, an ego big enough to block out the sun. Her professed motivations and driving factors are what we think of as deeply religious in nature, and she is every bit the dangerous zealot that her Heavenly brethren are. With every word spoken and action taken she presumes her will to be law, wrapping threats in pretty words and backhanded promises. She has a certain detached sensibility that seems to elevate her above the level of those around her, but she is no stranger to doing her own dirty work- for rituals and sacrifices, she can be seen doing her own manual labor, as a testament of her dedication to her craft, such as it is. Seeing her covered in dirt and so undeniably base can be quite a shock, as she usually gives the intangible impression of purity and being utterly pristine.
In her view, she often has no choice, as evidenced by statements like “Brother... please don’t make me do this.” There’s a sense of compulsion to what she does at times, as if she has always been destined to come to you, destroy your family, torch your life, and force herself into your ruined psyche. Until, of course, her seemingly limitless patience comes to its end. When she’s pushed to her limit of tolerance, the façade of serenity crumbles and she bears down on her unfortunate victim with the wrath of the very bowels of Hell, any surface-level mercy utterly forgotten in favor of unrelenting brutality. Prepare to feel the snap of your own bones if she gets angry, and pray that’s the least that happens to you.
But that all falls in line with classic angel behavior- the air of a shady politician from planet Vulcan, with a frighteningly furious temper once sufficiently provoked. She also shares something else with them- she reacts very badly if thwarted or frustrated. Sometimes Lucifer even comes off as something of a kid, and for those who see through her facade tends to remind them strongly of a child throwing a temper tantrum. All she wants is Daddy’s attention- he was mean to her, so she’s determined to break all his toys. There’s a certain immaturity about her, and she can be very whiny and petulant when hurt or frustrated. If you’re patient or (un)lucky enough, you can break down the faux classiness to see the falling-apart, whiny-ass spoiled brat that she really, truly is.
LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.
Although Lucifer spreads wanton destruction with her very being, and smugly inflicts unimaginable pain on people she takes pleasure in squashing like bugs, she seems to have little of the gleeful, twisted delight that her demonic children seem to take in sadism. She apparently appreciates it the way one appreciates fine art and fine wine, watching her inflicted devastation unfold with stoic satisfaction- a sharp reminder that she has never been demon, but is ultimately an angel. After slitting a throat or snapping a neck, she simply looks down at her victim with a resigned little ‘hm,’ utterly unaffected by it. It fits in nicely with her “sympathy for the devil” shtick, that her sadism unfolds but slowly, never belying the depth of her raw, scathing, searing loathing.
Because that’s it. Under the gentility, the false (or simply shallow) concern, the almost classy panache she puts into everything she does, there is a stunning depth of hate that is beyond what you or I could easily fathom. If she meets you, she probably hates you more than language is capable of adequately expressing, no matter how gently she puts her hand on your shoulder and tells you she’s sorry that you made her kill your family. For thousands of years she rotted in the deepest bowels of Hell, with nothing but the pain of Hellfire and long march of time spent completely and utterly alone, and in those untold aeons her resentment and dislike festered into seething hatred that motivates her every action. Don’t be fooled by her soft-spoken tenderness; she will quietly relish the look in your eyes when her hand closes around your liver and pulls. Disregard and disdain are the names of the game, with her only ever setting aside a moment of honest concern for fellow angels who she think may serve her needs- and even then, the instant they lose their value to her, she once again quietly accepts that she will personally murder them some day, and regret nothing.
The sole exceptions to this have only ever been her brothers- and not brothers in the sense that all angels are brothers, but in her three archangel brethren. Lucifer may know full well that the battle with Michael is inevitable, or that Gabriel has left her with no choice in a fight, but hurting those few closest to her makes her genuinely unhappy. They are the only people she has ever tried to back out of a fight with- but when push comes to shove, she will default to brutality over compassion every time. In a fight with Gabriel, her baby brother whom she taught everything, he made a very obvious slip-up that let her know clearly that she was about to be stabbed in the back- in such a way that he clearly made her aware on purpose. He gave her the chance to rethink her decision to kill him and to choose love over violence, and she repaid him by turning around and driving a knife through his chest, and destroying any chance of redemptive possibility. It’s in her nature to take windows of opportunity and shows of kindness, and take relentless advantage of them; she does not know the meaning of mercy, and almost certainly never will.
Though she clearly lamented killing her little brother, and actually cried over his body (in one of her only unquestionably genuine shows of emotion), she didn’t seem to regret it in the slightest. Her love for her brothers is great, but always gives way to driving hatred and selfishness. In her mind, the ends always justify the means, and her ends are the only ends.
“Some men aren’t looking for anything logical. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
By all logic and reason, Lucifer has nothing to gain by accomplishing her grand ambition of destroying the earth and razing Heaven. It is pointed out to her repeatedly that it’s a useless exercise in petulance, destroying all of Daddy’s toys because he was mean to her. Furthermore, crossing this item off her bucket list would require slaughtering all of her brothers, and destroying those last remnants of the only family she’s ever had or will ever care about. Indeed, the angels are her kin, creatures she once identified with so strongly that she ripped apart her own reality rather than admit that they could be inferior to something. Every single angel would have to die, and then what? Life as the only angel in Creation, however victorious, is an impossibly lonely one. One may well wonder why, and what she truly has to gain by destroying the very world that she herself terms stunning and the last perfect work of god.
Her actions give no clue, no hint whatsoever as to her underlying motivation. The stories point to the same things- revenge, pride, heedless hate, but Lucifer is underneath it all a son and a brother, not simply a Jungian archetype. Once upon a time, she was a being who looked up to her big brother, Michael, the one who essentially raised her and shaped her whole world- he was her brother, surrogate father, rock of Gibraltar, and in a very real sense the love of her life, and the moment when he denied her and first raised a hand to hurt her still stands clearly as the worst moment of her extremely long life. After so many years, she held out hope that if only they saw each other again, that they could work it out- that they could walk off their father’s chess board together, and be brothers again, but on some level she always knew that he would say no. Lucifer simply cannot tolerate that. She can find nothing worth saving about a world in which Michael is capable of looking into her eyes and still wanting to kill her. She would rather burn the world down and drag everyone into the darkness with her than tolerate anybody else having one single iota of happiness in a universe where the only thing she ever wanted is so utterly lost to her. Only people who have known her from the beginning and know her extremely well could tell you what really makes her tick. Only Gabriel, Raphael, and possibly Michael really know what a fundamentally unhappy creature she really is, or how miserable slaughtering the angels would make her.
Not that she has any idea of this, of course. To her twisted and deformed mind, she hurts and destroys people because they deserve it, and because it is her right. She lives with no regrets, but many grudges, and would sooner cut out your tongue than say she’s sorry.
History:
Lucifer wasn’t always the larger-than-life creature of hate you see (hopefully not in person) today. Once upon a time, he was a little boy. A son- a brother, maybe like you. And he loved his family, more than almost anything. He loved his Father and just wanted His approval, the validation that would come from some modicum of trust and being treated as an equal. Of course, having God as your father doesn’t lend itself well to respect and honesty, and in the Dad-shaped void left by an absent father chock full of inscrutable plans Lucifer latched onto his big brother, the one who took care of him where nobody else could. Michael became Lucifer’s entire world, the yin to his yang and the other half of their perfect whole. There was Raphael, the little brother who latched onto Michael, and then there was Gabriel. The youngest of the four archangels, the little sun who was so beautiful and joyous to behold- who wanted only to be like Lucifer, as badly as Lucifer wanted to emulate Michael. Lucifer took Gabriel under his wing in much the same way, raising him up and taking care of him, teaching him the joys of their father’s creation and teaching him how to troll. And Lucifer loved them- all of them. He was the most beautiful of God’s angels, a brilliant thing who shined like a thousand suns and outshone even the Lamps that it was his duty to light. Lucifer had more of their Father’s love than any other, and he knew it.
Until the day their father asked them to bow down before the newest creations, the humans. Dad brought the new baby home and loved them more than Lucifer, and the Morningstar couldn’t handle it. Who were these inferior little apes that they could take advantage of all of God’s mercy and love, and some of them didn’t even believe He exists? Then Lucifer caught God forgiving them for a disobedience, and flew off the handle. They didn’t deserve that- he did. He spent millions of years living and breathing and existing purely to make God happy, he obeyed every command and followed every one of God’s rules in the endless, futile hope that one day it would be good enough- only to learn that they had never been enough, that they would never be loved enough by their daddy.
So Lucifer did the unthinkable, and uttered the first “no” ever spoken. It hurt and was terrifying beyond measure, but he rebelled and made his own way, butting heads and fighting with his brothers frequently for a long time. In that time he managed to sow the seeds of true sin (grown out of already existing flaws), twist the first woman’s soul into the first demon, and construct Hell as a place of his own design to manufacture more abominable perversions of God’s most beloved creations. The conflict and strife he sowed in Heaven started to tear the family apart, sending waves of confusion and uncertainty through their younger brothers, and even driving Gabriel to desert, running away from home to never be seen again. And though he did fight with his brothers, Lucifer always held hope that if it ever came down to the wire, Michael would choose his other half and little brother over the father who so flagrantly forsook them both.
He was wrong.
In the moment that was everything, Lucifer looked into his brother's eyes with nothing but raw, honest vulnerability and the true desperation that said nothing else would ever be this important again, and said- brother, please. And Michael looked back, looked into his baby brother's eyes, and beat him down. The second blow was the worst- the first was almost dreamy, unbelievable, but by the second Lucifer had realized what was happening to him and could only experience it with numb, gut-wrenching horror as his big brother brutally overpowered him and kicked him down into a Cage in Hell, the very worst depths of reality. There was no love in Michael's eyes when he slammed the door on Lucifer and threw away the key.
Then came several thousand years of yawning silence.
Hell is a cage made of bone and flesh and fire and pain, and is torture even for its architect. It's documented that enough solitary confinement will drive the most stable person to utter insanity, and Lucifer in being locked away by the only person she ever really relied on was far from stable. The fear and the betrayal sparking white-hot and blinding from the moment of confinement simmered over thousands of years, burning away any beauty and goodness and nobility, coalescing down into hard-packed hatred and burning resentment that came to define her. It was no brief period, either- hugely long lifetimes of demons, over ten thousand years on Earth (not to even speak of hell-time) spent locked in the cage, in a part of hell so deep the demons couldn't reach it, for so long that most of Hell forgot he had ever existed at all, and he faded to the realm of fantasy and demonic bedtime stories.
After so many centuries, his so-called son Azazel, the second demon, found a way to whisper through the Cage door, and together they hatched a thirty-year plan to spring free. With the help of Lilith, Azazel, Meg, Ruby, and the manipulation of the entire Winchester family, Sam Winchester broke the last of 66 Seals to set Lucifer free. Finally, after untold life-ages of the earth, the Devil walked free once more.
Then, of course, it was as simple as one-two-three. Take a vessel, set off an Apocalypse, start a campaign of psychological torment of Sam Winchester (how else do you break down a good, moral man into agreeing to be Satan's vessel?). Horsemen lined up like ducks in a row, with surprisingly few hiccups in the plan- oh, sure, War got his ring cut off and he was shot once or twice, but those were just bumps in the road. It was all immaterial before the task of wearing Sam down and fighting Michael- even if he secretly hoped that it could be stopped somehow, and the two brothers could walk away free of their father's machinations.
There was a minor hiccup halfway through the whole production, when Lucifer's vessel finally overheated and spontaneously combusted, leveling four blocks of the unfortunate town he'd been in at the time. So Lucifer looked, and found that his angel brethren had closed in and somehow stolen or killed any other potential vessels on Earth except for a few who proved completely immovable. Desperate and unwilling to spend weeks incorporeal just to woo a living vessel, Lucifer resurrected Jessica Moore, the strongest of a mostly-dead bloodline of potential vessels, and coerced the poor girl into consenting to be her vessel. That settled, she returned to the neat business of getting an Apocalypse going. Dean Winchester was proving immovable as Michael's true vessel, so the grand prize-fight between her and her brother couldn't come to pass just yet.
And so it was that the world was pushed to the very brink, prompting a group of disorganized pagan gods to meet in a hotel with the intent to band together and save their world from the Judeo-Christian armageddon. Kali, Ganesh, Odin, Heimdall, Baron Samedi, Mercury, Aphrodite- powers and deities from all across the world gathered in one places, to discuss fighting the Christians and killing Lucifer, even capturing Sam and Dean as bargaining chips. Then somebody crashed their party: Loki, the Norse trickster, who hadn't been Gabriel for a very long time. The Archangel in disguise tried to persuade the gods to leave and give up, to not kill themselves trying to defeat a power greater than them- and though his pleas fell on deaf ears, every one of them was true. For one of their number betrayed the meeting's location to Lucifer, who walked into the hotel like she owned the place, repaying the god's honesty with a snapped neck. Lucifer proceeded to kill every god in the place that she could get her bloodied hands on, right up to the moment of having her boot over Kali's throat. There was nobody to stop her; nobody had ever been brave enough to challenge her directly AND strong enough to have a fighting chance.
So imagine her surprise when she was thrown into a wall and challenged by Gabriel. Gabriel! Her snot-nosed little brother who had never once met a fight he didn't run away from, standing across from her with a drawn sword. It was her personal tragedy all over again, with Lucifer in the role of the aggressor big brother. Their dramatic confrontation started, as they all do, with exchange of banter and dialoguing- pained and laden with the unresolved issues of a hundred æons.
For the first time in all her long years of existence Lucifer didn't want to fight. "Please, brother," she almost begged with the beginnings of pain in her eyes, "Don't make me do this."
Gabriel's answer came, swift and sad. "No-one makes us do anything."
And so they fought. Lucifer hardly wanted to use the full brunt of her force against her baby brother, but in her mind he gave her no choice, and his Achilles heel had always been fighting skill. She was just whirling around in the heat of the moment, sickly ready to drive the blade through his stomach-
-And found herself stabbing the empty air of a strange glass tube. Welcome to the jungle.
How does your AU differ from canon?
It diverges very minorly halfway through season 5. My Lucifer used to possess the PB seen in canon, but burned through that vessel, and after an annoying series of events was forced/inspired to dig up Sam Winchester’s dead girlfriend, bring her candy ass back to life, and use her as a vessel, in the absence of any other viable, consenting vessels on Earth. From then up until she’s pulled out of her world, everything that happens to her is identical to canon.
Strengths:
Lucifer shares the abilities of all angels and archangels in the Supernatural canon- ie, reality warping, raising the dead, teleportation, weather manipulation, invulnerability, super-strength, some psychic ability, telekinesis, and time travel.
Reality warping is probably her most useful (and god-moding) power; she can create things from thin air that are as real as anything else, and make them vanish just as easily. Archangels less powerful than her have been seen creating pocket dimensions, alternate realities, and extended Groundhog Day-style time loops. She can alter her form to appear to be anybody, and can affect the bodies of others- for example, an angel in the show was seen causing a person’s lungs to vanish from their bodies with a thought, and giving them stomach cancer on a whim. She is capable of raising the dead, and it’s implied that she can bring angels back to life.
Teleportation is a fairly simple one. When she wants to be somewhere, she just thinks about it and it happens. By a similar token, when she wants to find somebody, she can do so unless they’re specifically trying to hide from her. There are various ways to hide from angels, including protective magic, Enochian sigils, and various other methods not explored in the shows but to which I am very open. Lucifer’s disappearances and re-appearances are accompanied by thunderclaps and flashes of lightning. This plays into her ability of weather manipulation, which is often involuntary or at the very least unintentional. Her very presence somewhere can be enough to cause a few city blocks to drop ten degrees in temperature, while the rest of the city stays normal, and her presence can also cause thunderstorms, rain, and general end of the world weather. She is fully capable of bringing down hurricanes, tornados, and forest fires.
Telekinesis is a powerful ability. She can utterly destroy an angel by making them explode with a simple snap of her fingers, and can kill with her mind. In addition to this, she can pin powerful beings and humans alike to the wall with her mind, and use her abilities to fight.
Her invulnerability and super-strength are part of what make her so dangerous. She is unkillable by most means- fighting or force from other angels can hurt her, a bullet from the Colt can bring her down for about a minute, and certain weapons designed to kill angels can harm her, but in the show only an archangel’s blade is shown to be dangerous enough to actually kill her permanently. She can be blasted forcefully out of her vessel’s body with an Enochian sigil. So far, she hasn’t found a human-made weapon that can hurt her, but it’s a wide world, and full of strange things. Her super strength is simple- her true voice can destroy buildings, her true form tends to burn the eyes from peoples’ heads, and she can lift and throw people far physically bigger and heavier than her without breaking a sweat.
Weaknesses:
As far as physical weaknesses go, they're pretty few and far between. Certain weapons that are universally lethal - like the Colt in Supernatural - can hurt her very badly, and make her pass out and appear to be dead for about a minute, but in SPN she's seen getting up and healing perfectly from a point-blank head shot from the Colt. I am, however, open to exploring vulnerabilities from weapons from other canons. She can be trapped with a ring of holy fire, and if set on fire with holy oil she will go up in flames and vanish in agonizing pain for about ten minutes before returning. The sword of an Archangel can kill her, and she can be hurt in physical fights by Archangels and angels of sufficient strength. This may also extend to extremely super-strong characters such as Superman or anyone of equivalent strength, but they'd have to be pretty freaking powerful. She, however, is not invulnerable- angels of almost equal strength were shown in the show as being vulnerable to spells and magic cast by other powerful beings.
Emotional weaknesses are trickier to quantify, and even rarer than physical ones. Her weaknesses all have names- God, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. They're her family, and occupy different places in her heart. God is her Father, and although they're too far gone at this point for reconciliation or for a meeting to end in anything but hateful violence, He strikes at a place in her that's too raw and woundable for her to tolerate. Michael is even worse; he was always the one she looked to, and the one she wanted, and even now she would give up everything and lay down her weapons if he said he would accept her. With Raphael she had a different, more blunted story; a story of a little brother following Mike's footsteps and turning against big sister. She loves him, but she could honestly take him or leave him. Gabriel is her baby- the one she wanted to protect, and the one she fought with the least of all of them; seeing anyone hurt him will raise her hackles and send her into a foaming-at-the-mouth fury. Nobody is allowed to hurt him but her. Mention of any of her family or using them against her will make something young and vulnerable twist deep inside her, even if she doesn't let her feelings show on the surface.
Lucifer doesn't like to be overpowered, outwitted, or restrained. The angel is strongly claustrophobic, in a metaphysical sense that may seem strange to humans- she's fine in elevators and tight spaces, but being penned in like the world of this game or trapped inside a circle of holy fire will make her skin crawl and set her teeth on edge. Any true confinement reminds her powerfully of her long, traumatic years in the cage, and she'd gladly claw faces off to escape.
Preferred drop-in point:
Truth or Consequences, as she's being taken at the exact same time and from the same place as Gabriel.
What are some of your plans for this character in their new environment?
Naturally I'm going to be playing her off of Gabriel a lot- they're pulled in mid-fight, so after getting their bearings in a new world they will probably wind up taking care of their unfinished business eventually, and it'll probably be because of Lucifer's behavior. Being in an already Apocalyptic world will be sort of newish to her, but she never met a human race she didn't want to extinguish, so basically she'll be almost cartoonishly evil and trying merrily to hurt people- possibly even (ugh) teaming up with other baddies to help do so.
In that vein, I look forward to finding new and exciting ways for characters from other realities to kick her ass eight ways from Sunday. Could she survive being Avada Kedavra'd? Could Superman beat her in a fair fight? There's only one way to find out.
First Person Journal Sample:
[The video starts with pitch black and soft click-rattle-bang sounds accompanied by quiet cursing in Enochian. It flickers light and dark, bright and dizzying with all-encompassing smudges of orange-pink before her thumb moves out of the way, revealing an irritated but very pretty face seen from a Myspace angle.]
No, Gabriel. Whatever you're accusing me of, the answer is tragically no. As much as I would enjoy taking credit for so insipid an illusion, this is its own world, brother. I've checked. [She puts the phone down indelicately, the ambient noise and shaky camera lasting for almost a minute as she arranges it just so. When at last Lucifer pulls away, one can see her hair falling out of its ponytail and faint scorch marks on her forehead, neck, and shoulders.] I know you're still in this charming town, but I won't approach you until you've rid yourself of those ideas of violence. [The easy smugness tightens into something akin to resignation, that seems to be physically difficult for her to acknowledge.] If we're in this, brother, we're in it together.
Third Person Sample:
In North Reading, Massachusetts, a teenage girl paced the length of her room over and over, pounding a trodden path into the carpeted floor. She was supposed to be studying for a Spanish final, but her concentration was derailed; she's been muttering to herself for some twenty minutes now. Periodically she turned on her heel to face the mirror above her desk, looking into it as if seeking to divine the mysteries of the universe in reflective glass. Here she leaned over, now she stared into reflected eyes, there she spoke impassioned words to the other-self gazing back. Kristen MacDonald was carrying on a one-way conversation with herself, and any listener would think she had the Devil himself locked in that bedroom with her.
Kristen practiced that conversation almost every night when she was alone. Every night she looked into the mirror, gave herself her motivation, and got into character to rehearse her lines. Because you didn't care, did you? You've never cared about anybody else but yourself for a second in your whole fucking life. It's fucking pathetic. How dare you try to look me in the eyes and tell me this is my fault? It was your responsibility, and you-
It was a conversation that will never happen. Kristen would never get the chance to sit her father down and tell him exactly what she thought about him. The words she really wanted to say never quite came out; they talked instead of sports teams and shallow things. They would probably go the rest of their lives without a single word of honesty to each other, and still Kristen practiced the rant every night. Maybe some day she'd get that chance; maybe some day the stars would align (with her blood alcohol level) and she'd scream every word of built-up hate from the entirety of her childhood at him, and he'd be forced to sit and listen in a daze. On some level, Kristen almost knew that actually carrying out that fantasy would leave her feeling empty and hollow, worse off than before.
***
In hunting for a new second-string vessel, Lucifer left no stone unturned. A yogi in Kashmir spurned her to the point of death, whereupon he went to an afterlife that Lucifer couldn't drag him back from- a lesson in staying to her own faith for mining souls. One little African boy killed himself after his third dream about her, rightly believing her to be a dangerous spirit trying to destroy him. Three, four, ten possibilities all lost, denied, burned through, or stolen from her by the crafty angels, leaving only one choice on Earth. So she found herself in the corner of a dark bedroom one evening, invisible and ineffable in her vessel-less form, the silent observer. Lucifer didn't know what she was waiting for, only that she could know it when she saw it and that taking this vessel would be easy. Kristen was just a girl.
Lucifer watched the girl for three days and two nights, and found nothing worth saving. Nothing at all- until some small change happened, some parent or another returned home from a business trip, something Lucifer couldn't care about if she tried. But her silent vigil was soon enough broken by the door crashing open and a little child running in, hitting the light switch and slamming the door closed behind him. The little boy, no more than nine or ten, threw himself at his bed and started crying. Within seconds he was followed in by Kristen herself, who ran to the boy's side and picked him up, drawing her brother closer to her by the shoulders.
"Shhhhh," Kristen cooed, one finger stroking feather-light over a bruise blossoming on the little boy's face. "It'll be okay."
The boy, clearly her little brother, looked up at her tearfully. "Why- why doesn't he love us?" he choked out, plainly hurt and confused.
Kristen herself looked utterly lost, and completely heartbroken. "I don't know, honey." She gripped him tight, holding the little boy to her chest like a mother cradling her child, and held him through almost ten minutes of little-boy tears. She kept stopping to whisper sweet, faint things into her brother's hair, and stopping to revel in any tiny hint of a smile she could draw out of him.
It was a pity, really. Lucifer knew Kristen would have made a fine vessel- but somehow, ultimately, Lucifer couldn't bring herself to destroy this girl. Not when her eyes kept falling on the little human boy, so desperate for love and eager to curl up in his big sister's arms. Lucifer could find another vessel.
When Kristen MacDonald went to bed that night, she almost brained herself on the thick thorns of a mysterious long-stemmed wild rose she found there. Even as she picked it up and ran delicate hands along its stem, she got the feeling that she knew it before, or had always found herself in this room, smelling the roses at eleven thirty at night. Somehow, when she breathed the delicate scent in deeply, the yawning sound of her little brother's sleepless nights became easier to bear, and she could find peace. It comforted her to think she had her own personal guardian angel.