User:Tiramisu/RILENA
RILENA: Lenelasa Me Refi!! is a series of browser game/webcomic hybrids within Shiptest's universe, known primarily for their difficulty, obtusely complex metafictional storyline, and massive cast of characters. Its subtitle, Lenelasa Me Refi, is typically translated to "Pretty Girls Can Run Faster", which is the phrase's literal Teceti Unified Standard meaning, as its idiomatic meaning is untranslatable.
The games came into existence around twenty years ago hosted on a small public browser-game website, published by user RiDev. The actual identity of RiDev is still unknown after all these years, with the only details on their life being pure speculation (although most see it fit to assume that they're kepori, given the games are written in Teceti Unified Standard and a significant number of its characters are kepori or kepori-derived designs).
Story The overarching story of the series is deceptively simple for how much utter bullshit it's interwoven in. The first game begins with the story of a kepori named Ri being transported to another world- one assumes Ri is from "our" (Shiptest's) reality, but it's eventually revealed in a twist that the universe she is from is itself not "ours". Along the way she meets with a vast number of characters (almost all feminine in one of the few breaks of Rekian norms in the series), who all inevitably seem to want to fight her. With bullets, real, magical, metaphorical, or narrative.
RILENA lore is heavily metafictional- although these elements only appear starting halfway through the first game, their hooks run deep through the series. The fabric of the games' reality is woven heavily with the concept of narrative as a force, the fourth wall neither a wall nor a shattered window but a complex four-dimensional maze of crystals and clown funhouse mirrors with no beginning or end. Understanding the true lore of RILENA is a headache all but the most dedicated fans are really capable of, and most only have a grasp of specific segments of the lore (generally the segments that pertain to their favorite character). Gameplay The games generally phase between integrated webcomic segments and individual shmuppy bullet hell danmaku whatever the fuck it's called segments. There is absolutely no concept of a save system, the games being browser-based, and each has its own segment select system (rife with easter eggs such as entire chapters only accessible through entering codes or changing obscure browser settings) that lets you skip to any individual "chapter" or "battle". "Battle" segments are infamously brutal, with those blaming the difficulty on them being attuned to kepori reflexes (although they are entirely beatable without being kepori). They are, however, forgiving, and you can retry as much as you'd damn like.
Diversions in this format, obviously, are extremely common, with the most common examples being pieces of webcomic autoplaying in the background during "battle" segments, with you being expected to somehow pay attention to both, or small QTE-like minigames present in the "chapter" segments. It frequently gets weirder than those, however, with nearly
Fanbase With its obtuse story and brutally difficult gameplay, RILENA should by all rights be utterly impossible to ever get into. Naturally, of course, it is a cult hit with fucking millions of fans.
Characters
- Ri- Main character and usually the one played as in the game segments. Commonly called Rilena by either fans, or those not in the know, in a "what if Zelda was a woman" kind of way. Daft and utterly unattuned to reality in every way- the twist reveal that her home reality is not our own manages to hit hard because one typically initially assumes that all clues towards this are just her own stupidity. A perfect tabula rasa in certain respects, but in enough of a way that it makes her her own distinct self.
- T4L1- Minor stage boss with little to no story significance yet significantly recurring across the series. Kepori-shaped robot- it's never clarified if she's a FBP or a positronic, and the fans really like to get up in arms about this. Integrated JET BOOSTERS and LASER ARM CANNON. Bright and bubbly personality in kind of a nothingburger way. You either love her or hate her. And for some reason a LOT of people really love her, even though she's such a minor character.
- thweres more of these just make your own up go ahead and ptu them on here if u want
