i think i finally figured out "who's Lila"

[（眩晕、呕吐、匮乏)]

Lila is an anthropomorphized symbol, whose existence rely on the belief that "there is still something i don't know about her". Of course, Lila is just one of the infinite names of this "thing". What Lawrence and his followers tried to do is to make a prison to trap this thing, and the container is merely a name and an image.
This explains why Lila looks like Tanya in the perspective of William. He actually fell for Tanya and was deeply attracted by this girl. He always tried to find something more than the way Tanya looks like, and this structure of desire is as same as the way Lila exists. So, that's why he unintentionally projected the image of Tanya to Lila. And that's why he lost the memory of Lila after having sex with Tanya------ because the mystery of Tanya is revealed, and Tanya is not that far away anymore. The structure broke. William lost his own prison.

[Thundercracker]

Originally posted by （眩晕、呕吐、匮乏):

Lila is an anthropomorphized symbol, whose existence rely on the belief that "there is still something i don't know about her". Of course, Lila is just one of the infinite names of this "thing". What Lawrence and his followers tried to do is to make a prison to trap this thing, and the container is merely a name and an image.
This explains why Lila looks like Tanya in the perspective of William. He actually fell for Tanya and was deeply attracted by this girl. He always tried to find something more than the way Tanya looks like, and this structure of desire is as same as the way Lila exists. So, that's why he unintentionally projected the image of Tanya to Lila. And that's why he lost the memory of Lila after having sex with Tanya------ because the mystery of Tanya is revealed, and Tanya is not that far away anymore. The structure broke. William lost his own prison.

you've got some things wrong, but you're really close.

lila looks like tanya to everyone. martha mentions it when you visit her apartment. lila herself comments on it several times.

william purposefully forgot lila before having relations with tanya. in fact, if you remember the flashback to the post-coital scene during the interrogation, will only remembers lila after doing the deed with tanya.

yes, lila is "the mystery of who lila is." she's a sentient meme (in the scientific sense, not the internet culture use of the word,) that could be described as an artificial god.

the in-story logic is that when people believe something is real, it becomes real. at least in the alternate reality/ alternate universe that is the "noosphere," or the metaphysical world of ideas. we do visit this place a few times in the game. this is where the "forest of 1000 sycamores," and "the cafe" are.

[（眩晕、呕吐、匮乏)]

Originally posted by Terrorsaur:

Originally posted by （眩晕、呕吐、匮乏):

Lila is an anthropomorphized symbol, whose existence rely on the belief that "there is still something i don't know about her". Of course, Lila is just one of the infinite names of this "thing". What Lawrence and his followers tried to do is to make a prison to trap this thing, and the container is merely a name and an image.
This explains why Lila looks like Tanya in the perspective of William. He actually fell for Tanya and was deeply attracted by this girl. He always tried to find something more than the way Tanya looks like, and this structure of desire is as same as the way Lila exists. So, that's why he unintentionally projected the image of Tanya to Lila. And that's why he lost the memory of Lila after having sex with Tanya------ because the mystery of Tanya is revealed, and Tanya is not that far away anymore. The structure broke. William lost his own prison.

you've got some things wrong, but you're really close.

lila looks like tanya to everyone. martha mentions it when you visit her apartment. lila herself comments on it several times.

william purposefully forgot lila before having relations with tanya. in fact, if you remember the flashback to the post-coital scene during the interrogation, will only remembers lila after doing the deed with tanya.

yes, lila is "the mystery of who lila is." she's a sentient meme (in the scientific sense, not the internet culture use of the word,) that could be described as an artificial god.

the in-story logic is that when people believe something is real, it becomes real. at least in the alternate reality/ alternate universe that is the "noosphere," or the metaphysical world of ideas. we do visit this place a few times in the game. this is where the "forest of 1000 sycamores," and "the cafe" are.

thank you for the correction and explanation!

you're right, it seems that Lila can only use the body which William gave to her, because she has no shell without someone's belief.

And after i thought about it, i found it quite... scary.

This phenomenon suggests that the reality of Lila can easily infects someone when they feel confused about it even if they've never heard of Lila.

Btw, is every puzzle in this game solved? or is there still some mystery remains?

[Thundercracker]

Originally posted by （眩晕、呕吐、匮乏):

thank you for the correction and explanation!

you're right, it seems that Lila can only use the body which William gave to her, because she has no shell without someone's belief.

And after i thought about it, i found it quite... scary.

This phenomenon suggests that the reality of Lila can easily infects someone when they feel confused about it even if they've never heard of Lila.

Btw, is every puzzle in this game solved? or is there still some mystery remains?

yes, it is scary, especially when you look into real wold "tulpamancy."

lila can only exist when people know about her. will actually almost killed her with the fire at the fraternity compound. only will and that russian-named guy know about lila at that point. now, we know about lila. she's functionally immortal now.

not every puzzle is solved, as there are a few set up in the game that are not resolved. we can make inferences and guesses, but we cannot know the answer for sure.

a few of these include:

the identity of "the stranger."
who killed big mike's little brother?
why does lila look like tanya?
what are the goals of the other "noosphere dwellers," like "the empress."
why did will's mother really commit suicide?

there's probably even more, i just cannot remember off the top of my head.

[Graknorke]

Originally posted by Terrorsaur:

the in-story logic is that when people believe something is real, it becomes real. at least in the alternate reality/ alternate universe that is the "noosphere," or the metaphysical world of ideas.

idk if that's exactly right either. the material from the cult implies to me that a lot of these things are floating around pre-formed, and people becoming aware of them is more discovering a preexisting thing than it is making something. there's even mention some of the archetypes exist in everyone's mind from birth, they're in some way innate to thought itself. I would guess based on vibes that The Empress is one of those (i think Yu calls it Lila's "mother", which kind of implies it's bigger and older)

The point of the cult was to create a noosphere dweller that's unusual in being artificial and designed specifically to be controllable. a predetermined specific appearance and character makes it difficult to spread and the "vampiric" qualities make it dependent on its hosts. doing this they could safely use L as a kind of interface/intermediary to design memes for the unspecified "good of humanity". except according to Lila/L (i forgot in what conversation though) the plan didn't work and maybe was impossible, she isn't an artificial noospheric construct at all. she's very very old and was at most superficially squashed into the shape demanded by the cult's instructions. and then you get the uncontrollable consequences that were warned of if that happened.

the Tanya connection is i think pure coincidence. they're not identical after all, and we know that Lila's appearance was determined by Lawrence in the instructions given to the participants in his plan. he has zero reason to know Tanya or anything about her, and he would have to for it to be deliberate. it was just a moderately improbable coincidence that will got close to someone who looked a lot like the thought-entity he's been suppressing

[Thundercracker]

Originally posted by Graknorke:

Originally posted by Terrorsaur:

the in-story logic is that when people believe something is real, it becomes real. at least in the alternate reality/ alternate universe that is the "noosphere," or the metaphysical world of ideas.

idk if that's exactly right either. the material from the cult implies to me that a lot of these things are floating around pre-formed, and people becoming aware of them is more discovering a preexisting thing than it is making something. there's even mention some of the archetypes exist in everyone's mind from birth, they're in some way innate to thought itself. I would guess based on vibes that The Empress is one of those (i think Yu calls it Lila's "mother", which kind of implies it's bigger and older)

The point of the cult was to create a noosphere dweller that's unusual in being artificial and designed specifically to be controllable. a predetermined specific appearance and character makes it difficult to spread and the "vampiric" qualities make it dependent on its hosts. doing this they could safely use L as a kind of interface/intermediary to design memes for the unspecified "good of humanity". except according to Lila/L (i forgot in what conversation though) the plan didn't work and maybe was impossible, she isn't an artificial noospheric construct at all. she's very very old and was at most superficially squashed into the shape demanded by the cult's instructions. and then you get the uncontrollable consequences that were warned of if that happened.

the Tanya connection is i think pure coincidence. they're not identical after all, and we know that Lila's appearance was determined by Lawrence in the instructions given to the participants in his plan. he has zero reason to know Tanya or anything about her, and he would have to for it to be deliberate. it was just a moderately improbable coincidence that will got close to someone who looked a lot like the thought-entity he's been suppressing

i think a point you may be missing, as it's not really established very well in-game, is that time in the "otherworld" isnt really a thing. once something exists in the "noosphere," it's always existed in the noosphere. recall the conversation about how all consciousness is just "the prince" looking through various "windows," (people, minds,) and the implication is "nonlinaer time" is the mechanism, not simultaneous action.

this point is a lot more obvious in twin peaks, which is very plainly a very strong influence on this story, all of the major concepts are from there.

as i recall, the lawrence fraternity members were separately given instructions on how the tulpa was to appear. as will did know tanya at that point, it could be that he disregarded his instructions and thought of tanya instead, or that his instructions were to simply "think of a female you like," or something to that effect. with will being her primary host, and one of the only two people left alive that know of her existence (it is very debatable if yu counts, his office is outside of space and time, after all,) it is possible lila is locked into tanya's form because of will.

for your next point, it is more than possible that the lawrence fraternity, despite their efforts to create a new noosphere dweller, gave an old one a new form. that "vampiric" attribute is the link. lila makes allusions to lillith, who is sometimes held to be the first vampire, mother of monsters.

though it is strange that lila and tanya seemingly had some sort of connection, as detailed in tanya's account of her dream.

it's also noting that while the empress may be lila's "mother," lila herself has a child. T. or, more properly, T-gotchi.

T-gotchi is the title character of "your amazing T-gotchi," a previous game by garage heathen. you can play that one if you want, it's not long, but it is heavy and very depressing. i'll spoiler this just in case:

in the final ending, t-gotchi escapes her virtual-pet confines to the forest of 1000 sycamores, freed and going to meet her "daddy."

i mention this because t-gotchi was not only released long before who's lila, but also because i am fairly sure it is set years before lila, as well.

[Graknorke]

Originally posted by Terrorsaur:

i think a point you may be missing, as it's not really established very well in-game, is that time in the "otherworld" isnt really a thing. once something exists in the "noosphere," it's always existed in the noosphere. recall the conversation about how all consciousness is just "the prince" looking through various "windows," (people, minds,) and the implication is "nonlinaer time" is the mechanism, not simultaneous action.

i can see the reasoning for time not really mattering since after all ideas aren't material things, but i'm not sure how much that lines up with everything else. the dwellers didn't talk very much like they were cross-temporal or anything, Lila even gets taken by surprise by a few things like Will freaking out from under her control or the police finding all that evidence. though that could be to do with being tied to Will controlling him and the other stuff could just be that they try to talk normal for the benefit of Will/Yu. I wish I could remember the exact convo but i'm pretty sure Lila doesn't just call herself timeless but specifically old, like as a measure of time.

Originally posted by Terrorsaur:

as i recall, the lawrence fraternity members were separately given instructions on how the tulpa was to appear. as will did know tanya at that point, it could be that he disregarded his instructions and thought of tanya instead, or that his instructions were to simply "think of a female you like," or something to that effect.

this one i'm very confident on though. it's easy to find the quotes bc it's just in a PDF, the description of the practical process was as follows:

As the newly created dweller needs a psychic base for its existence, we had to hather a group of people, who, for the purpose of this experiment, wee all told to create a tulpa with a predetermined appearance. While the bretheren believed that the individual tulpas belonged to them only and didn't have any way of contacting each other, the very starting conditions (same tulpa appearance, character and the same meditation practicesd) have led to the birth of a psychic creature that persisted beyond their individual minds.

the appearance was predetermined by Lawrence and the same specific description given to all the participants. so if Will had gone off the rails the exercise wouldn't have worked, and even if it did Lawrence would have noticed that something was up and was actively on the lookout for that kind of thing. also just in terms of the timeline i don't think Will did know Tanya while he was with the cult - since mistaking Tanya for Lila is what brought her back from having previously been repressed/deliberately forgotten by Will. that situation wouldn't work if he knew her all along. there's not that many concrete dates but Will's friend group talk about the party as if it was a recent event, so it's not even as if he could have met them, grown distant, all the cult stuff happened, then on re-meeting Tanya having the "so you're Lila right" scene.

[Thundercracker]

Originally posted by Graknorke:

the appearance was predetermined by Lawrence and the same specific description given to all the participants. so if Will had gone off the rails the exercise wouldn't have worked, and even if it did Lawrence would have noticed that something was up and was actively on the lookout for that kind of thing. also just in terms of the timeline i don't think Will did know Tanya while he was with the cult - since mistaking Tanya for Lila is what brought her back from having previously been repressed/deliberately forgotten by Will. that situation wouldn't work if he knew her all along. there's not that many concrete dates but Will's friend group talk about the party as if it was a recent event, so it's not even as if he could have met them, grown distant, all the cult stuff happened, then on re-meeting Tanya having the "so you're Lila right" scene.

for lila's appearance, do not discount lila's actions and intentions, she was not a passive player in the process. nothing concrete is stated, though, so this is all speculation on my part.

as for the timeline, this is something that can be checked. we do have the date of the party, and also the "so you're lila, right?" scene. i dont have them in front of me right now, i'll have to load the game and write them down later. furthermore, we know from the party, that will had at least seen tanya around before, though they were not close at all.

[hipotermia]

Originally posted by Thundercracker:

a few of these include:

the identity of "the stranger."
who killed big mike's little brother?
why does lila look like tanya?
what are the goals of the other "noosphere dwellers," like "the empress."
why did will's mother really commit suicide?

there's probably even more, i just cannot remember off the top of my head.

1. I have no idea, but I assume they're a Lila-esque being.
2. I believe the implication is that it was someone under the control of the Dada dog meme. If you look at Tanya's Twitter she says that Malcolm received a Dada dog sticker.
3. In the classified document by Ryibkin and Lawrence, you'll see that they mention a UIW-AM that's L's child and its name starts with a T. I'm guessing that implies Tanya is a "tulpa" as well.
4. No idea.
5. I've always thought she was part of the cult and that William might not be fully human, hence why Will's dad "ran away" and he never met him. Perhaps she conceived William with some kind of creature, and that's why William has issues with facial expressions.

[Thundercracker]

Originally posted by hipotermia:

2. I believe the implication is that it was someone under the control of the Dada dog meme.
If you look at Tanya's Twitter she says that Malcolm received a Dada dog sticker.

i always thought the implication was that lila-as-will did it, for food, shortly before the lawrence fraternity was burned. we hear big mike's brother was strangled, and that's how lila had her other two victims killed.

Originally posted by hipotermia:

3. In the classified document by Ryibkin and Lawrence, you'll see that they mention a UIW-AM that's L's child and its name starts with a T. I'm guessing that implies Tanya is a "tulpa" as well.

now this is flat out incorrect. T is T-Gotchi, the character from the "your amazing t-gotchi" a short game by this same dev. it has a little connection to this game by way of an overarching universe. i wouldent play it for that reason, though. there's only a little of that, and there's a lot of suffering to sit through to see it.

[just_another_tree]

Originally posted by Thundercracker:

Originally posted by hipotermia:

3. In the classified document by Ryibkin and Lawrence, you'll see that they mention a UIW-AM that's L's child and its name starts with a T. I'm guessing that implies Tanya is a "tulpa" as well.

now this is flat out incorrect. T is T-Gotchi, the character from the "your amazing t-gotchi" a short game by this same dev. it has a little connection to this game by way of an overarching universe. i wouldent play it for that reason, though. there's only a little of that, and there's a lot of suffering to sit through to see it.

Okay this being said i think they might have a point with t-gotchi possibly having a connection to tanya, though i def do not know how exactly. Maybe worth looking into?

[Thundercracker]

Originally posted by just_another_tree:

Originally posted by Thundercracker:

now this is flat out incorrect. T is T-Gotchi, the character from the "your amazing t-gotchi" a short game by this same dev. it has a little connection to this game by way of an overarching universe. i wouldent play it for that reason, though. there's only a little of that, and there's a lot of suffering to sit through to see it.

Okay this being said i think they might have a point with t-gotchi possibly having a connection to tanya, though i def do not know how exactly. Maybe worth looking into?

nope. trust me, i've seen all there is to see in t-gotchi. the only connection they could possibly share is a very tenuously connected theme of "being trapped."

t-gotchi is stuck in her virtual pet-house, tanya is stuck in her life and everyone's expectations of it.

t-gotchi escapes into the forest of 1,000 sycamores, tanya "escapes" to will. but not really. it's only temporary respite.

t-gotchi mentions her "daddy" often, and in ryibkin's paper, we see that t-gotch is known to be the "child" of lila. we also know that the appearances of dwellers is mutable.

i am fairly certain that lila's use of tanya's appearance is 100% a product of will being lila's primary conduit into the physical world.