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). Debate is heavy as to if RiDev is a modern master of storytelling, or if all of it is a complete fucking crock of shit.

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 every game genre being touched upon at least once in one format-screw or another. At least half of one game is only playable with clues that can be found in an ARG that released at the same time as said game. Fully animated and voice acted "chapter" segments are a rare but welcome treat.

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.

A majority of RILENA fan content seems to have absolutely nothing to do with its story and simply features the characters in sappy fluff completely divorced from lore. One would assume that this content was made by people who didn't feel up to the task of reading somebody else's interpretation of the lore, but this assumption can frequently be false, because even the people who know the series in and out create and engage in this content over anything else. Serious RILENA lore discussion only happens in the deepest, darkest holes of the space internet, where one may never go without returning fundamentally changed.

RILENA fans have an infamous side, where a loud minority of dedicated fans decide to simply make everything harder for everyone else. One example is the matter of translating the games- although this is the future and automatic translation technology is widely available, finding versions of the games that have been hand-translated for highest quality is quite difficult. This is intentional effort of a small group of dedicated Teceti Unified Standard-speaking fans who will bully and harass any such translation attempts, forcing anyone who doesn't speak the language to turn to lower-quality automated methods. A bizarre result of this is that the most popular free TUS-To-Galcommon translation program is RILENA-themed, with shitty pictures of the characters pasted all across the launcher.

One RILENA fan-gathering had events and fallout considered to be more destructive and brutal than at least twenty percent of the known atrocities committed as a result of the corporate wars. Research into the events that happened that day is highly advised against by even casual fans or those only vaguely acquainted with the series, because you really just do not want to fucking know. To this day, the phrase "There Was No Convention At Rilebi", abbreviated TWNCAR, is uttered in warning.

Not only are fangames common, but because of RiDev's exceeding anonymity, nobody is actually one hundred percent sure which games are fangames are not, just because of the amount of fangames that were published under their name. In fact, the series' obtuse metafictional plot makes frequent use of this very fact, given that "canonicity" is an in-universe force with quantifiable properties. One game published under RiDev's name is universally considered to be a fangame simply because of its utterly abysmal quality and deviation from the typical style of "canon" RILENA games. It is not a fangame. RiDev really made that. And nobody in-universe will ever know.

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