William Clarke

SPECIES: Human GENDER: Male ALIASES: Will. Freak (by his peers), My dear William (by Father Lawrence) RELATIVES: William's Mother AFFILIATION: The Lawrence Fraternity (low-ranking member).

William Clarke is the main protagonist of Who's Lila?, and at certain times is the playable character that the player controls.

Although the game presents itself as though the player is controlling William, it is revealed fairly early on (varies depending on the player's choices in gameplay) that Lila, who is inhabiting Will's body, is actually the main character that the player has control over. Most of William's actions and personality is instead revealed through flashbacks and anecdotes from Lila.

Backstory, Childhood: William's father left the family when he was young and as such, William doesn't have much memory of him and was instead raised solely by his mother. She was very strict with him growing up, driving him to and from school until he was twelve and expecting a lot out of him and his grades. She also didn't allow him to date until he was sixteen years old, claiming that he shouldn't be thinking about girls before then. Despite the difficult childhood Will had, it is claimed by Lila that he still loved her and knew she did the things she did because she cared about him.

When William was five years old, he apparently broke his knee. The circumstances for this injury are not elaborated upon.

When William was fifteen years old, there was a girl he had a crush on named Annie. His mother would get upset whenever he brought her up until eventually she stopped. He thought this meant she had changed her mind, so he took Annie home one day. Will's mother asked to speak to them and Will agreed so she sat the two of them down at a table. For the next several minutes William's mother proceeded to say vile things both about her own son and Annie, to the point where William was in tears begging for her to stop.

Three years before the events of the game, William's mother died in an accident that occurred in the boiler room of their house, when she had gone to fix something. This event had a large impact on William's life, forcing him to skip a lot of school in order to work. He also ended up repressing a lot of the events surrounding her death due to how traumatic it was.

The Fraternity: On June 11, William became a member of the Lawrence Fraternity, after having previously helped out here and there in an unofficial capacity. The fraternity gave the isolated William a much needed sense of community, calling them his "second family". At first he only helped out with tasks related to the nearby farm that was used to produce animal sacrifices for Lila, but later progressed to communicating with Lila directly, which apparently came to him rather quickly and easily. This made the other members of the fraternity jealous of him.

On November 12, Lila instructed William to stay home instead of attending the Fraternity's meeting that day, sparing him from the fire that destroyed Lawrence's apartment and killed all other members except him and Strupnev.

The day after, William learned of the fire through a newspaper and realized that Lila had tricked him into staying behind and making him one of her only remaining hosts. Disgusted with her actions, he locked her out of his mind (by symbolically removing her reel from his projector and throwing it into a pit, seen in The Tower ending), allowing him to forget about her for a time. He later poured cans of beer onto the newspaper, making the address of the apartment impossible for Lila to read, if ever she did come back.

On November 16, William decided to visit the burned remains of Lawrence's apartment in order to investigate what had happened. He entered the building by lying to a police officer about being a tenant there.

Possession and Tanya's Death From that point onward, William and Tanya began hanging out a lot, even meeting each other late at night, despite Tanya still officially dating Michael. William however became increasingly troubled by their relationship, with memories of Lila floating around and her at times even taking control of William's body for short periods of time.

This all came to a head on November 29, William and Tanya were lying in bed together, discussing their feelings for one another. William, confused in that moment, accidentally called her Lila instead of Tanya. Tanya, confused, asked who Lila is. This moment gave Lila enough power to completely take over William's body, forcing him out of control. From here, Lila/the Stranger murdered Tanya in William's kitchen, while William, a disembodied soul, was forced to watch what his body was doing in horror.

Lila, an entity who thrives off of the attention given to her by humans, she is incredibly narcissistic and manipulative, doing whatever she deems necessary in order to continue feeding off of attention.

Lila is also shown to be very intelligent and philosophical, which she displays during her conversations with William and Detective Yu. She often uses this to her advantage, posing complex philosophical questions in order to disarm and confuse whoever she is talking to.

On the whole, she seems to despise humanity and easily becomes jealous, of William for the friend group he formed, and of Tanya for sharing a similar appearance and catching William's attention.

Throughout the game, many possibilities of what Lila is are presented to the player, some being explicitly named by her during a conversation with Detective Yu about the High Priestess (a tulpa formed from Will's tormented psyche, the vengeful spirit of Tanya, a US government experiment, a metaphor for mental abuse). None of them however are explicitly confirmed to be correct in-game. During their discussion of the Hierophant card, Detective Yu gives perhaps the most informative description of Lila's nature: "...a haze, composed of many human minds intersecting. A construction of thoughts of many hosts. ...composed by an intersection of many rays of attention."

On November 12, Lila told William to stay home and not attending the Fraternity meeting for that day, sparing his life from the fire that destroyed Lawrence's apartment and wiped out nearly every other member of the Fraternity. This left him as one of her only hosts, besides Strupnev.

The next day, William learned of the fire and quickly realized what Lila had done. Disgusted with her actions, he locked her out of his mind (by metaphorically removing her reel from his projector and throwing it down a pit, seen in the Tower ending), allowing him to forget about her for a time.

The memory of Lila began to reawaken on the night of November 20, when William attended a party at Matt Hurley's house and met Tanya Kennedy for the first time, whose strikingly similar appearance to Lila made William remember her.

Lila seemed to take full control of William's body on the day that he and Tanya went to her house to talk in bed together (seen in The Lovers ending). Now able to do whatever she pleased, she took Tanya to William's apartment and murdered her in the kitchen. Her body was then dismembered and gradually disposed of in the trash dumpster of William's Apartment. This is the point at which the game's story begins and we, the player, take control of Lila, piloting William's body.

Regardless of her exact nature and origins, she came to be the main idol that was worshiped by the Lawrence Fraternity. They set up a farm in order to have a steady supply of animal sacrifices to give her and regularly used yantras and hallucinogenic mushrooms in order to communicate with her.

At some point, William began getting closer to Father Lawrence and began communicating to Lila as well. He seemed to form a strong bond with her over a short period of time, and talked with her a lot more regularly than the other members of the fraternity. He also ended up writing her name in his journal despite Lawrence's warning not to do so.