#lila study.

[vitalphenomena]

tell us your favorite quotes from your character. give us an idea of who they are by the things they’ve said. then tag your friends.

listed alphabetically by my character's first name

tagged by: @petitsdieu THANK YOU! tagging: GOODNIGHT!

aria to vincent @despiterage — "You have a boner right now. You have a boner right now, and we just killed a bunch of people, and your back is literally against the wall. There is something so wrong with you. And you think you're great? Be serious. We have a job to do. You're gonna follow through, and you're gonna do it my way."

SF to AL @petitsdieu — "I do not want to hurt you. I will hurt you, I–What do you want this to be?"

beck to funke @nightrot — "My love is not a little thing. It is a big thing. A big thing still called love."

beck to homelander @rejectory — "I AM—I am good. I am ready. Terrorists, traffickers, people blowing themselves up. I am ready. Have you seen what I can do, even."

beck to houston @jupiterfree — "I am doing this for them, for all of them! And for you! For you! Because it is right, and because I can!"

burns to rex @deficd —"I DID NAWTI DID NAWT I DID NAWT! I'm not a snitch and I'm not a fuckin' spy or a fuckin' lurker or WHATEVAH! I don't know where he went or why he's got a tail and that's the end of it!"

cain to charles @id1eyouth — "What do you want from me, Charles? Do you want to visit my office hours? Do you want to get lunch somewhere with delicious sandwiches? We do not need to be friends."

cullen to ben @kylo-wrecked — "Let us not forget who put whose hands on whom first. I mean. It almost sounds like you're victim blaming right now. Are you? Victim blaming?"

dafne to chris @rassvetiye — "I don't even—I'm not cynical, you know? I'm not. I like people. Oh my god, do I have to be a feminist because of this? I have to?"

dafne to harrison @id1eyouth — "Do you even understand who you're threatening, right now?"

dafne to zachary @id1eyouth — "Hiii! Sorry. Not who you were expecting. I'm the girl coming to cut your hair. Your regular barber had a scheduling conflict, but I come highly recommended. You can give him a call, if you want. I know this is to-ta-lly freaky."

dick to harold @gordiacea — "You'll have to forgive us for the, well, I'll admit it, secretive manner in which we conduct ourselves at our little facility. Protecting my colleagues' innovations and discoveries is of the utmost importance! I do appreciate you signing that document, as it's a necessary sort of formality, but it's rather preliminary—and gives us quite the air of mystery, don't you think? Everyone who steps foot on Site A has to sign it, though. The premises liability clause is just as imperative as the non-disclosure clauses—you wouldn't believe the insurance premiums I'm shelling out on a regular basis! Besides, now we can really get down to brass tacks. I'm sure [Big University] pays the bills just fine, and it's a noble institution, but let me be frank, Doctor: we'd love to collaborate with you. Permanently."

dick to johns @eviji — "Being so dismissive will hardly service you, my good man. You're playing a dangerous game, and I'm not sure you understand the basic rules. You see, my opinion matters, and it matters far more than yours. Hypotheses matter just as much as the data our experiments yield. Do you understand me, Johns?"

dmitri to josephine @ruinaa — ""I see people in a way others can't, with a degree of detail that is maddening. It is what makes me unique. It is, I think, what allows me to recreate them so well. I can also see their potential. I see your potential. I see you conflicted, battling something. Restrained by this life you've stuck yourself in. It hurts, Josephine, to see such a waste."

elijah knight to elijah mercer @midcenturies — "Well, to start, it'd be real nice if we could put an end to these hostilities. After that, I do believe we've got more in common than you think. Do you not believe Jesus Christ died for our sins?"

lila to charles @id1eyouth —

slime texture its good

margot to hara @petitsdieu — "You are here, though. You're—shocked? In shock? Right now, but you won't always be. My first time, it was terrifying. It was self defense, but it was terrifying. But I learned. I adapted. I overcame."

max to johns @eviji — "Who is letting you listen to that British bullshit? Answer me in a plain sentence. Remember how you speak to me."

pyotr to dallas @jupiterfree — "I think if you actually give up on yourself, and on that girl, you will live the saddest, sorriest life that a man has ever lived. And when you die, you will go to hell forever. To be tortured."

stella to lorenza @holyrots — "You deserved good things as soon as you were born."

spirit to becky @scarestress — "I don't need to be better than you. I just need to be there. Does it feel good, or something? Finding ways to make yourself miserable? You look so ugly when you get so worked up."

spirit to delta @graveflwers —"When we die, we don't get heaven or hell. We don't get to let go. We get something in between, forever. And we're not part of our world anymore, but we know what happens on it. We just can't do anything to anybody who made us suffer. You never get to stop feeling—feeling. It hurts forever. It feels like this forever."

spirit to jon @sscarecrow — "Don't you know all of the twenty-year-old girls in the tri-state area all meet up, like, once a month, and we gossip, and we talk about you for, like, hours and hours and hours? We do. We really do. There's a groupchat, too."

spirit to josephine @ruinaa — "Fuck you for saying that. I'm so happy. And he takes care of me. I'm finally being taken care of. Finally, finally, finally. I love him so fucking much. Fuck, Jo!"

[vitalphenomena]

abilities breakdown for plotting and powerscaling: coeus kids

this post fails to consider things like baseline physical prowess and hand-to-hand combat skill. it only addresses meta/superhuman abilities these characters have due to body modification (mutilation?), genetic alteration, and other weird sci-fi bullshit.

BECK

his body is able to withstand nuclear power from the inside out. very little is going to injure, wound, or surprise him.

being solar-powered means he is limited by the presence or absence of the sun. earth's tilt, the seasons, etc. affect him more than anything else.

energy blasts that come from his eyes (which glow, cool) or hands are, as implied, nuclear. you are probably not going to survive if he does not want you to. nothing is. he incinerates and obliterates at will.

even when he isnt being crazy destructive, his natural body temperature can raise high enough to melt people and objects.

BURNS

pyrokinetic.

if you set him on fire directly he would live. he can survive in a burning building without firefighter-type equipment. lungs impervious to smoke inhalation, etc.

"spontaneous" combustion requires him to be able to snap his fingers. he's got weird stuff embedded in his skin that allows him to create flames this way.

HARRIS

captain america but evil

as in: super speed, strength, regenerative healing.

also: intuitive understanding of battle strategy, new weapons technology, and hand to hand combat.

LILA

delayed effects of aging in regards to her hair, skin, and bones. things like her eyes and her brain (cognitive function) will still age naturally.

regenerative healing from physical injuries, though not all infections or illnesses. like, some, but not all. for example, being intentionally infected with a particularly brutal case of meningitis as an infant is what lead to her auditory disability.

SPIRIT

has a radio in her brain that hears the afterlife. people who have killed are haunted by their victims, and she perceives this. she cannot see ghosts. she cannot travel to the afterlife.

can hear someone's exact time of death, which i guess is cool if you're the recordskeeper at a hospital.

said radio also delivers her signals for every human or metahuman entity. including undead creatures that used to be fully human. she hears no signal if the entity in question was never human at all; she has learned to treat this absence of noise as a signal in and of itself. she can recognize each individual's signal, which renders things like shapeshifting, disguising, or cloaking useless.

[vitalphenomena]

as idk if i've ever stated it explicitly, some notes about lila and speech/language. disability discussed hopefully with a careful hand, and ableism to the extent of eugenics mentioned.

has been deaf since infancy/as a toddler. reason being: the experiments dr. max theyer did on her. she was injected with various diseases/pathogens/viruses that had a devastating effect on her body—all so that dr. theyer could ultimately cure these diseases in her and others. (he was unable to undo the damage to her auditory processing system. this is why he scheduled her for termination and she ultimately was part of the escape with the others from such a young age.)

selectively mute due to:

trauma endured in the laboratory, while essentially feral after the escape, witnessing harris's treatment of juniper and spirit in particular

being made fun of by harris and burns for how her speaking voice sounds (she did attempt speech as a very young child attempting to interact with her environment.)

[vitalphenomena]

[vitalphenomena]

@schattenwerfenkeineschatten your fucking mind?

[vitalphenomena]

Lila: 🍽️ 🚬

Dmitri: 🎭 🎉

Margot: 🧩🧱🫠 ⚖️

LILA

🍽️ : do they eat to survive, for pleasure, or as comfort?

so. to survive. i do think lila has higher standards for the food she eats than, say, burns or spirit. but it has never been a comfort - merely a necessity that is sometimes really, really hard to come by.

🚬 : what vice do they justify the most?

the first thing that comes to mind is her pettiness. she's a teenage girl, and she's immature. she loves to shit talk and gossip pretty indiscriminately. she'll pick at or make fun of anything. it feels really good to say 'not to be mean but' and have someone go 'PLEASE be mean.' (and she is always the person saying Please be mean.) she justifies this because if she internalizes everything to work through it she'll snap and hurt someone.

DMITRI

🎭 : how different are they with strangers versus people they trust?

it's like some sort of bell curve or slope. stiff and severe with strangers. a little more lighthearted and awkward-funny when he gets to know someone. then when he realizes he's getting "too close" to them he typically reverts back to his stiff and severe self.

his more erratic and violent behavior is on display at every stage because to be in control of it would defeat the purpose of calling it erratic.

🎉 : do they enjoy social events, or endure them?

endure. endure endure endure. bigtime introvert. however, he does derive a sick, borderline voyeuristic pleasure from observing social interactions on their fringes, and such observation is necessary to him imitating people so well.

MARGOT 🧩 : what part of themselves do they not understand yet?

i dont know. i think margot is very in tune with himself and listens to herself. i think there are some things she will deny in order to maintain an overall positive self-conception and avoid wounding her own ego.

she's spent so long being the dominant person in a relationship (her entire romantic and sexual lifespan, primarily) that i do wonder if she's sat down and unpacked what joy she can derive by being subdued/kept by chilton once she moves in with him after italy and The Reveal.

🧱 : what walls are they aware of building? which ones are they not aware of?

aware of: distance between herself and maximus. she's always put up walls with competitors who want to cross the line over into being suitors. it's intentional.

not aware of: i think margot is pretty unwilling to discuss how learning about The Org and its nefarious deeds has played into her being frightened of men/patriarchy/parties/intoxication. admitting to that genuine dread and anxiety feels to her too much like making herself a victim preemptively.

🫠 : is it easy for them to get turned on, or do they need emotional safety first?

her sex drive is super high, and she has historically hooked up with women before finding that emotional intimacy (though ultimately craving it as an end result). i think it's already easy and only gets easier when she realizes she's comfortable and can explore and stuff.

⚖️ : what line will they never cross?

i dont know. she can be very sadistic and outright cruel. i think she also considers herself a very loyal person but does become more guarded and jaded post-rifat. so betrayal is unlikely but not out of the question. i cant even say she wouldnt eat someone because of all the chunks she's taken out of chilton. so. whatever.

[vitalphenomena]

[vitalphenomena]

ty @jupiterfree