Lucifer Morningstar (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mockeryofthedivine) wrote2019-01-13 05:19 pm
mockeryofthedivine) wrote2019-01-13 05:19 pm
Entry tags:
Personality
personality
Lucifer, upon first impressions, will appear to be a smooth, handsome, charming playboy who is confident and cheerfully-egotistical. These impressions would all be completely and utterly correct. Flirty, extroverted, and hedonistic - Lucifer is practically the pin-up boy of living according to one’s desires. He believes that people should live in the moment, that desires should not be denied, and that if you want something you shouldn’t let pesky little things like what other people or society thinks about it get in the way.
Lucifer, of course, excels at living this particular philosophy. Sex, drugs, wild parties - they’re fun, and Lucifer enjoys them all immensely, so he engages in these activities whenever he wants. Which is practically constantly, and with a dizzying array of partners. If you’re attractive and you have a pulse, Lucifer’s more than happy to have some fun under the sheets with you. And thanks to good looks and a supernatural ability to make people forget about their inhibitions, most people want to end up under the sheets with Lucifer. And why shouldn’t he encourage others to give into a little temptation, as the Devil is famous for?
And he's literally the Devil - something he will tell you brazenly and openly, because Lucifer doesn’t lie. Regardless of circumstances and whether it’d be in his own interests not to. This doesn’t mean that he won’t deceive - he’s very much capable of using selective truths and loopholes and mistaken assumptions to mislead. He’s also very much capable of lying to himself. Lucifer will tell himself all sorts of lies, in fact. But he won’t ever knowingly tell a lie. It’s a point of honour with him, and the same goes for the deals he makes with people - if Lucifer makes you a promise, or gives you his word, he’ll honour it.
As the former Lord of Hell, punishment is a thing that looms large in Lucifer’s world-view. He likes to punish the guilty, to make sure people pay for their sins. Underneath all of this there is actually a sense and desire for justice. He does feel that punishment should fit the crime, and that those who have hurt others should pay for those crimes. But his former role has warped his idea of justice somewhat, making him overly focused on punishment and not as much on the needs and desires of victims. Furthermore, his idea of justice can be very different to that of humans. He often tends to take justice into his own hands, employing psychological and physical punishments against those he feels deserve it. But as he spends more time on Earth and working with Chloe, he's struggled with whether he should be the hellish punisher, or someone who works to bring about human justice.
But apart from the hedonism and the punishment and the whole Lord of Hell thing, you can’t talk about Lucifer without talking about the elephant in the room: the major, major Daddy issues. Turns out that when your father is literally God Himself, and you and He don’t get along, things can be a bit difficult. It also turns out that being kicked out of heaven and banished to Hell also isn’t good for healthy Father-son relationships. Lucifer’s had millennia to rage and nurture his grudge against his Father - and his belief that everything that happens happens according to God’s plan means that Lucifer blames Him for everything. As far as Lucifer is concerned, God has been manipulating him his entire life. This is something he absolutely hates, and he desperately wants to get away from his Father’s influence, be his own person, and make his own choices without any divine manipulation.
But, this doesn’t mean that Lucifer doesn’t also want his Father’s love and approval. Not that he’ll admit it - even to himself - but Lucifer does still care about his family despite all the bad feelings, and he desperately wants to be accepted by his Father. And in many ways, the fact that he continued to run Hell for as long as he did was precisely because he thought it was what he thought his Father wanted. He was, on some level at least, trying to repair the relationship by performing the role given to him. But eventually Lucifer had enough of that, and decided he’d had enough of still trying to please his Father. Instead, Lucifer now puts a lot of time and energy of doing the exact opposite of whatever it is he thinks his God wants him to do.
Which can often backfire against Lucifer himself, as he is highly self-destructive. Lucifer is the kind of person who would cut off his nose to spite his own face. When he thinks his wings are a sign of divine shackles from his father, he cuts them off. When they grow back, he cuts them off again. When he thinks Chloe was put in his path by God, he attempts to run from her and sabotages their relationship. When he’s spiralling from guilt and grief after killing Uriel, he attempts suicide by rogue sniper. If something’s going well for Lucifer, he’ll find a way to spectacularly implode it.
At the core, these self-destructive tendencies are fuelled by his deep-rooted self-loathing, and the lack of awareness he has about his own emotions. For all that Lucifer is confident and egotistical, and will generally declare himself to be pretty amazing, this is really only something that exists on the surface. Underneath, Lucifer views himself as a monster and a torturer, and blames himself deeply for his part in the rebellion, his fall, and for how humanity perceives him. His blaming of his father for everything wrong in his life was simply a way for him to avoid dealing with how much he really blamed himself.
It's only in later seasons, after a lot of work with his therapist Linda, that Lucifer begins to gain some self-awareness about his self-hatred, and the fact that he's been using his father as a scapegoat. Because for the most part, Lucifer has an amazing lack of self-awareness. He has little understanding of his own emotions or how other people might negatively perceive him, and will often completely misunderstand advice and interpret it in ways that are wildly off the mark.
Lucifer, of course, excels at living this particular philosophy. Sex, drugs, wild parties - they’re fun, and Lucifer enjoys them all immensely, so he engages in these activities whenever he wants. Which is practically constantly, and with a dizzying array of partners. If you’re attractive and you have a pulse, Lucifer’s more than happy to have some fun under the sheets with you. And thanks to good looks and a supernatural ability to make people forget about their inhibitions, most people want to end up under the sheets with Lucifer. And why shouldn’t he encourage others to give into a little temptation, as the Devil is famous for?
And he's literally the Devil - something he will tell you brazenly and openly, because Lucifer doesn’t lie. Regardless of circumstances and whether it’d be in his own interests not to. This doesn’t mean that he won’t deceive - he’s very much capable of using selective truths and loopholes and mistaken assumptions to mislead. He’s also very much capable of lying to himself. Lucifer will tell himself all sorts of lies, in fact. But he won’t ever knowingly tell a lie. It’s a point of honour with him, and the same goes for the deals he makes with people - if Lucifer makes you a promise, or gives you his word, he’ll honour it.
As the former Lord of Hell, punishment is a thing that looms large in Lucifer’s world-view. He likes to punish the guilty, to make sure people pay for their sins. Underneath all of this there is actually a sense and desire for justice. He does feel that punishment should fit the crime, and that those who have hurt others should pay for those crimes. But his former role has warped his idea of justice somewhat, making him overly focused on punishment and not as much on the needs and desires of victims. Furthermore, his idea of justice can be very different to that of humans. He often tends to take justice into his own hands, employing psychological and physical punishments against those he feels deserve it. But as he spends more time on Earth and working with Chloe, he's struggled with whether he should be the hellish punisher, or someone who works to bring about human justice.
But apart from the hedonism and the punishment and the whole Lord of Hell thing, you can’t talk about Lucifer without talking about the elephant in the room: the major, major Daddy issues. Turns out that when your father is literally God Himself, and you and He don’t get along, things can be a bit difficult. It also turns out that being kicked out of heaven and banished to Hell also isn’t good for healthy Father-son relationships. Lucifer’s had millennia to rage and nurture his grudge against his Father - and his belief that everything that happens happens according to God’s plan means that Lucifer blames Him for everything. As far as Lucifer is concerned, God has been manipulating him his entire life. This is something he absolutely hates, and he desperately wants to get away from his Father’s influence, be his own person, and make his own choices without any divine manipulation.
But, this doesn’t mean that Lucifer doesn’t also want his Father’s love and approval. Not that he’ll admit it - even to himself - but Lucifer does still care about his family despite all the bad feelings, and he desperately wants to be accepted by his Father. And in many ways, the fact that he continued to run Hell for as long as he did was precisely because he thought it was what he thought his Father wanted. He was, on some level at least, trying to repair the relationship by performing the role given to him. But eventually Lucifer had enough of that, and decided he’d had enough of still trying to please his Father. Instead, Lucifer now puts a lot of time and energy of doing the exact opposite of whatever it is he thinks his God wants him to do.
Which can often backfire against Lucifer himself, as he is highly self-destructive. Lucifer is the kind of person who would cut off his nose to spite his own face. When he thinks his wings are a sign of divine shackles from his father, he cuts them off. When they grow back, he cuts them off again. When he thinks Chloe was put in his path by God, he attempts to run from her and sabotages their relationship. When he’s spiralling from guilt and grief after killing Uriel, he attempts suicide by rogue sniper. If something’s going well for Lucifer, he’ll find a way to spectacularly implode it.
At the core, these self-destructive tendencies are fuelled by his deep-rooted self-loathing, and the lack of awareness he has about his own emotions. For all that Lucifer is confident and egotistical, and will generally declare himself to be pretty amazing, this is really only something that exists on the surface. Underneath, Lucifer views himself as a monster and a torturer, and blames himself deeply for his part in the rebellion, his fall, and for how humanity perceives him. His blaming of his father for everything wrong in his life was simply a way for him to avoid dealing with how much he really blamed himself.
It's only in later seasons, after a lot of work with his therapist Linda, that Lucifer begins to gain some self-awareness about his self-hatred, and the fact that he's been using his father as a scapegoat. Because for the most part, Lucifer has an amazing lack of self-awareness. He has little understanding of his own emotions or how other people might negatively perceive him, and will often completely misunderstand advice and interpret it in ways that are wildly off the mark.