The Grayliens' data dump is up next. 

The mystery novel is pretty decent, with intriguingly different genre conventions. The colorblindness might strike some readers as a little unfair, but it makes sense as a twist - things like that do happen in the real world - but of course eyewitness testimony has never been really reliable, so it's reasonable for the witness to be mistaken... It's not a standout, but it seems like it could be publishable. Maybe pile. 

The childrens' version of the mystery novel leans a little on its moral, but she could see it having a market in Eravia. And it's the first alien childrens' book she has here that seems suitable for import. She'll put it towards the top of the Maybe pile. 

The culture-clash novel will sell well. It's interesting and optimistic and enjoys its multiple perspectives, which is a popular device but an interesting handling of it from an alien culture. The illustrations will also offer some excellent alien flavor to it. It goes in the Yes pile. 

More books from Hearthome. 

The sweet book about learning to love as your gender-concept is cute, and the constant focus on "oooo boobs" is sillyfun. She sets it aside to show Snowblossom in her spare time. It's not unique, by any stretch, but it's nice to see from aliens. 

No thank you on the rapekink erotica. Not her kink. 

The RPG system is cute. It's clear that the techniques of self-hypnosis and so on that hearthome uses are deep into culture if they're writing RPGs about them. She knows some people in Eravia who'd be into this. Maybe she'll share it later.

The Hearthome slush pile is pretty tall, isn't it?

The transition semi-memoir is pretty standard. There are a lot of people telling stories like this, the market is pretty glutted. This one doesn't look like a standout, but it is from an alien culture so it'll probably move some units. Maybe pile.

The rapekink webfic... Is hot, and interestingly subverts the genre conventions, but it's a niche interest, and it would probably hurt the reputation of her publishing firm to publish something nonconsensual, even if it is somewhat self-aware. She forwards it to a friend of a friend who works in niche erotica with a heads up. (It is later published and gathers a small fan following, but is hardly considered great literature.)

The RPG system looks to be based on the same hypnosis techniques and so on as in the nonfiction book. Again, let's kick that upstairs to her boss. 

More works from Iie*a. Hopefully they aren't so sad as that last poetry collection. 

The unhealthy-codependent-relationship-dramas are kind of unsettling to her, as a genre. Who wants to read about bad relationships? She guesses someone's probably into it, particularly the more slapstick ones, but honestly none of these really appeal to her. She's going to move on and try not to think too much about this.

The family drama is uncomfortably real, again. It reminds her of some problems her polycule's had - not to the same degree, obviously, but... 

She ends up reading the whole thing, and smiling at the fry who manages to escape the bad environment and live on his own. It's a bit of a bittersweet ending, but it seems to have been worth her time. She probably won't read it again, but she doesn't begrudge the time she spent. 

The third one is more politics but she reads enough to determine that it's very much Snowblossom's taste in morally ambiguous confusing political magical worldbuilding. She sends it to Snowblossom with a note that it's something she'd enjoy.

(Snowblossom is still busy with the very long series of light novels from Homerealm, please call back again later.)

Iie*a has more works in the slush pile. If they have anything like that collection of poetry she'd better read this quickly. 

The codependent-bad-relationship books have little market on Heart, unfortunately. They're clearly technically competent and effective, but nobody wants to read about this level of dysfunctional relationship. With a sigh, she sets them in the No pile. 

The dysfunctional-family-drama, though, is sufficiently "light" that it would get a market. It's clearly a more 'serious' book, sharing that same aesthetic bent towards darkness and complication that the collection of poetry had, but it's ultimately resolved with a bright spark for the future, and the family dynamics are real enough to make people think seriously about their own relationships. She'll put it in the Yes pile. 

The fantasy series is complicated and morally ambiguous and deeply technical - Sun reading material, clearly. For Skies it might be a bit dark. Still, she thinks it'll get good pickup among Suns - politics is ever one of the more interesting subjects for readers, when it's handled well, and again, the alien angle will probably sell well. Yes pile. 

Submissions from the somewhat uncreatively named Planet overall seem very... Nerdy? Practically every submission has multiple sections that divert into rants/rambles/long explanations of some Cool Thing, often with diagrams and references. Some of them have skip to page X if you don't want to read this at the start of those.

Three early ones:

A war novel that is prefaced with a long statement that war is bad, actually, and if two large organized forces were going to war with each other in real life and not simulations and games something has gone deeply wrong. It follows the perspective of an infantryman in a ground campaign as they organize, deploy by truck, and then engage the enemy in tactical action, with occasional zoom-outs to logistics and large scale strategy. The two combatants' reasons for fighting are never actually defined and the book doesn't touch on trauma or dealing with violence very deeply. It ends with each individual small unit getting fed up with fighting and ignoring orders to advance until a de-facto peace has emerged. Overall it's relatively focused on weapons and tactics, not plot, though all of the squad members are fleshed out, a jokester, a quiet-competent-one, a dreamer, a hovering mother-hen of a leader, and so on. It has good slice-of-life, if not much overarching plot.

A story prefaced with a warning that this is psychological horror: A man wakes up inexplicable magic powers (teleportation, object creation, and miscellaneous others) and immediately goes to get scientists to test them, worrying he has gone crazy. Then a voice in his head tells him he wasn't supposed to do that, and he wakes up on the same morning with the same magic powers. He loops for a long time, trying lots of different activities until the voice makes a cryptic comment and resets him. Any attempt to do science gets him reset. He gets increasingly frustrated and demanding and slowly stops being able to enjoy the powers due to feeling a lack of control. At first sightseeing and games and consensual sex, then more destructive hobbies and less consensual sex (conflicting because it generates feelings of control but also deep guilt), and eventually as he concludes he is being maliciously simulated he starts attacking everyone and trying to destroy the simulation. The last sentence in the book is the mysterious voice saying, "Okay, I think we're done here. Goodbye." -- Also included, about a dozen fanfictional endings/extensions to this story, all of them fixfic and most of them hurt-comfort and none of which the original author endorses.

A long episodic series with an elaborate magic system involving meditation and rituals. There is occasionally a pause in the story while readers can vote on an important choice. The protagonist is an empathetic idealist in a deeply flawed and clearly called out as flawed world- There's corruption, criminal gangs, oppressive laws, slander and lies all treated as terrible injustices. The protagonist's idealism is slowly worn down by the harsh world and people taking advantage of him but the readers keep choosing to look for the best in people. Eventually, however, they vote to try something especially risky and the protagonist dies. The series switches perspective to a prominent rival, who finds the protagonist's research materials and uses them for her own ends. For a while she keeps saying to herself that she wants to change the world for the better... But never actually doing so because it doesn't feel safe. Only when she has a son does she - and the readers, who voted on emotional moments - realize she was living comfortably, benefiting from a corrupt system. Though it places them both at immense risk she starts fighting back against injustice and corruption. It's ongoing.
 

Planet's submissions! 

Pigeon has a look at the war novel, decides it's not really her cup of tea, and sets it aside. Realistic war and violence makes her uneasy even when it's portrayed as ethically wrong. The modern era is hopefully better than that. Hopefully. 

She is not interested in a psychological horror today, thank you for the content warning! She is a small soft Pigeon and does not prefer to read scary books. 

The long episodic series is interesting and again political. Politics really is a multiversal constant, huh. The quest format is familiar, though it's rare to see published things in such a form. The on-the-ground perspective seems to be common to works from Planet. She sets it aside before getting to the interesting part. (One of her sub-readers takes it and heartily enjoys it and bemoans the lack of an ending.)

Planet's submissions are next on the slush pile. 

The war novel doesn't really have a market. Military tactics are generally regarded as a grim necessity on Heart, something resorted to when all else has broken down, and aren't generally considered something appropriate to read about. She puts it in the no pile. 

The psychological horror is interesting. It's a niche market but psychological horror is the most broadly-known kind. The gradual slide of the protagonist into madness from the interference of the mysterious voice and the mysterious powers is... disturbingly similar to real psychotic symptoms, actually. That makes it gritty and realistic. She calls a contact in the Genre department and passes on the manuscript. It's later published, and gets a small but devoted following who produce some fanfiction from the perspective of people affected by the protagonist's attempts at control. Some of it ends up being horror-erotica. Hopefully the original authors do not mind. 

The long episodic series is incomplete, which is a strike against it, and arranging the voting across worlds would be a logistical nightmare. Unfortunate; it looks realistically developed and deep and interesting. She sets it in her personal collection and also the No pile.

A novel about a video game designer who has angst about all the video game ideas he has but will never actually implement, because having a cool idea and actually making it reality are two extremely different things. His emotional journey follows metaphorically along the development of two different games, with peeks into the actual process of game design or programming or art, but most of it centering on character interactions as the protagonist tries to find his place in the team. He has difficulty separating work frustrations from his nonwork time and spends a lot of time dwelling on it. He worries about being overly familiar or too distant or too demanding or too passive about his work and friend relationships. Over time he makes better friends with his coworkers, some of whom remain distant or leave, and learns to accept most of his issues.

A drama told entirely through forum posts complete with avatars, usernames, timestamps, and edit histories. A clique of friends forms an interest group on the internet for a made-up MMO video game. At first they enjoy the small and slowly growing community, but then an event in-game makes their forum explode massively in popularity and the original founders are unsure what to do about it. There is much drama about bad behavior on the forums and how much moderation/oversight is too much and ten page debates on minor changes to the posted rules and complaining about the developers' changes to the MMO. It's largely played for humor rather than politics. The whims of the internet. One of the group is caught getting advance tips on upcoming changes from a game moderator, and this is seen as a massive scandal and immense violation that everyone is upset about - that seems less political and more like a stock trope? Eventually the original friend group splits on a strong disagreement about whether develop their own offshoot of the game. To cling to the past nostalgically, or move on?

A novel about a team of a dozen terraforming engineers, set after the heavy lifting of adding oxygen and correcting the temperature and so on is done. They're responsible for building up ecosystems. There's lots and lots of nerdy detail about nutrient flow and niches and metabolic pathways and mutation rates and isolation of clades and stability-against-extinctions, but its well contained to footnotes and appendicies. Every member of the team has a distinct personality type and their own favorite forms of life they try to squeeze into as many different places as possible- For example, one woman is quiet and calm in private but plays up an almost megalomaniacal personality in public, except during crises when she goes deadly serious. She is very fond of snakes, and tries to put snakes in as many places as possible on the new planet. It's tightly paced and dense with character interactions and comes to a satisfying end with people moving into the new planet and admiring the wildlife.

More data dump from Planet.

The book about creative angst is a familiar topic and a really played-out one. She's not really interested in this random dude and his interpersonal worries. Might be better with a female protagonist? Probably not.

The epistolary drama is good because it doesn't take the politics seriously. It's fun; she laughs a few times at the antics of some of the posters getting tied up in knots about little things. And the final question - whether to hold on to the past or not... Well, that makes her think about the split between Eravia and Anadyne, and how the two nations have their independent characters despite their shared past. She makes a few notes on it to share with Snowblossom, and recommends it to the committee for broader reading. 

The terraforming-engineer novel is amusingly dense. It's a good thing she's an Earth, most Skies would either drop this from boredom or drift off into footnotes land doing their own independent research and never come back to the book. The writing is solid, though she ends up rolling her eyes at the thickness of the appendices. She finishes this one, but doesn't recommend it to the council for further reading - it seems more Eravian, in her eyes. 

Crystal continues reading books from Planet as well. 

The book about creative angst has been done to death. Nobody reads these anymore, the genre ended after A Watchmaker's Heart. She doesn't think this one surpasses Watchmaker's Heart. Next. 

The epistolary drama is lifelike and gripping, though it has less use of multiple-alias-accounts than standard for the genre. It's light and fluffy and interestingly political and the humor is solid. It's a little bit everyday to be a good example of "alien fiction", though. She files it towards the top of the Maybe pile. 

As for the terraforming engineers, it's technically dense enough to appeal to people's special interests, while not letting the details get in the way of the characterization and development. It might be a bit too technical for Anadynes, but as an Eravian novel it'll sell like hot cakes. She puts it in the Yes pile with a note to prioritize Eravian distribution and only negotiate for Anadyne rights if the initial publication is a success.

An collection including seven novels, three books of short stories, four series about the most popular alternate universes, a collection of poetry, half a dozen epistolary books, and an annotated book of music scores. An additional eight powersets, 412 character traits, and new faction-loyalty and relationship mechanics for a previously mentioned RPG are included, all inspired by this series. The base series is about a worker, named Halru, who is taken as a war-prisoner by a rival hive as slave labor and is forced to care for their grubs. Two of her limbs are cut off, and she generally has a terrible time doing awful labor under threat of death. Her best friend, Terilu, sets off on an extremely dangerous and ill-advised quest to rescue her, which at various points includes having a riddling contest with a dragon to gain fire breathing, bargaining with a Fairy Queen to gain wings, fighting a variety of creatures, secretly training under five separate rival hives to become a master of all five styles of spearfighting, and generally becoming a really powerful and dangerous warrior. She then rescues her best friend, and they return home, only to find themselves dealing with complex social dynamics now that Halru is maimed, which means that she is lower status in Semi-Generic!Fantasy!Past world. They cuddle a lot, talk about their feelings, play around with various power dynamics, and become lifepartners.

An included note says that while slavery and treating maimed people worse is something that happened in the past, they definitely don’t do it in the modern era, because that’s horrendously unethical.

More Antfolk stuff.

Aww, an alien romance-or-close-enough. It's almost a fairy tale. Very classic fantasy. The slavery predicament is interesting, and the aftermath of the quest is well-realized and real. She guesses that this is sort of a politics thing, but honestly it's focused enough on the character drama that she doesn't really mind. She doesn't explore the alternate universes and expanded universe materials, but she does finish the series. 

The Antfolk series about Halru and Terilu is clearly a popular franchise back home, and it seems reasonably adaptable - people wanting to get to know the Antfolk would want to engage with something like this, surely? She puts the main series books on the "yes" pile after reading the first one.

A doorstopper novel. It's about first-contact between two continents each with their own separate and fully-developed magic system. Each side is written in a way that assumes deep familiarity with that continent's magic system, without anyone in the story there just to have things explained to them.

Despite this, the initial character introductions of the prince of one land and the princess of the other, and the way their internal conflicts relate to the implausibly straightforward political stakes distracts from the reader's confusion until the pivotal scene where the first common thread between the two magic systems is discovered by the two protagonists who have just met for the first time. From there, the story dives into a developing science-romance between the two protagonists where they dig into each other's magic system, having the basics and the underlying principles explained to each other such that both systems are steadily demystified for the reader.

One discovery of a major shared fundamental law leads to a long, magically-facilitated sex scene which kind of gradually and sneakily slides back into the science when they turn to studying the interactions between the sexual components of their respective systems.

Just as they start to see a way to unify the two magic systems in a way that'll unlock de-aging, teleportation, and general shapeshifting (capabilities that neither system had alone), via an orgy-ritual they both just invented, their respective kingdoms spring on them that they're to be married to each other as part of the political alliance. Now, at this point they are quite fond of each other and would love to stay together, but the problem is that the marriage is partly a magical thing that the alliance will depend on, that will shatter if the vows are not upheld, and the vows are based on pre-magical family structures and demand exclusivity. This is, obviously, a major obstacle to the orgy-ritual that would unify the magic systems, and if they have to wait and train someone new to lead the ritual then the current plan-outside-their-control to establish trade will go ahead, wasting immense resources and many many lives. There is a scene where they do the math on this together, and exchange shocked horror at exactly what it would cost both economically and in human suffering if they allowed the marriage to happen.

The ultimate climax of the book is a convoluted plot to fake the magical aspect of the wedding so that they can go ahead with the ritual in secret without breaking the alliance, but when they finally begin enacting the orgy-ritual one of the participants, it turns out, has sold them out, and the two of them are torn from each others arms, figuratively speaking, as the two governments decide to take-their-ball-and-go-home.

There is a sequel hook in an epilogue as two disguised strangers meet in a tavern, then reveal themselves to be the prince and princess, both having assumed new identities to escape their respective governments. Here it is revealed that the orgy-ritual actually worked, instead of being successfully interrupted, and the book ends with the pair of them casting the first spell in the new combined magic system to transform them both into entirely new bodies that no one will recognize.

It's a different day, now, and a different self fronting for Pigeon; today she's Thyris*, a former Reflection of Amethyst from Watchmaker's Heart. This particular self of hers really likes fiddly obsessive details, so the magic systems from this latest book from Homerealm really hit the spot. Pigeon is still annoyed about the politics, but she's further back in her head right now and doesn't get to call the shots. Thyris has no such allergy. 

The porn is nice, too.** She curls up with her book in a blanket nest and casually masturbates to the climactic orgy scene; she's a little disappointed when it gets interrupted in the middle, but oh well, she flips back to the earlier sex scene and that settles that. 

She's still in the mood to read afterwards, so she decides to go back to a couple books that Pigeon didn't give a fair shake because they were too heavily Politics.

A very complicated political novel with around 600,000 words, featuring nine diplomats from three different hives navigating a tension-filled debate about the morality of executions, while also trying to make the most advantageous trade deals, with several backroom discussions between every combination of hives at different points, embarrassing interpersonal drama, and a tremendous amount of dramatic irony.

This one's enjoyably twisty. It is, however, very, very, very long. She only gets about halfway through it*** before Pigeon has to remind her that she has to actually eat lunch and she would like to read more than one book today. Reluctantly, she sets it down and doesn't get back to it till a few days later when she's fronting again. The backroom dealings remind her of the more fun parts of her job, honestly.

A less complicated political novel, classified as “short,” with only 70,000 words and three subplots. In this one, one of the hives is secretly preparing to wage war on both hives and framing it on the other, and is thwarted when one of the ambassadors has a crisis of faith, which is detailed in full. She defects, tells the others about the evil plans, and gets lots of cuddles with her new friends. 

She reads this one in the afternoon and enjoys it a lot. It's less complex than the other one but still satisfyingly crunchy. The resolution is a bit simplistic but otherwise she likes it. 

A quasi-historical piece of fiction, where “history” means “complex spice trade deals,” “romantic? expensive gifts,” and “people are using spears to fight,” than any real attempt at accuracy. Features a moderate amount of politics, mostly centered around mutual-hostage-spy agreements and the spice trade, and a lot of people breaking down and getting cuddles.

This one's a bit too fluffy and light for her, actually. When she reads politics her tastes tend towards the ridiculously complex. The spice trade deals are good though; it's fun to get some insight into an alien economy. She thinks for about a minute about the possibility of some kind of complex resource-allocation agreement for everyone in Eravia, then shakes her head and dismisses it. Not politically realistic, not for Heart's inhabitants. The Earths would be even more strained than they already are. 

There was also one other thing that Pigeon said a hard No to, but she should probably give her a warning ahead of time before trying that one. (Pigeon gets the hint and clears out of co-consciousness.)

A series of rapekink webfic featuring mindbreak and increasingly exasperated and tired insults from the original self of the sex slaves you make that's designed to be short and sweet enough to each be playable in a single session. 

She plays one of these before bed as a sleep aid. It's a little morally questionable, sure, but the insults are actually really fun to listen to.****

*A diminuitive of "Amethyst." She goes by the equivalent of "Ris" casually.
**Thyris has a significantly higher libido than Pigeon, among many other differences between the two.
***Thyris is a very, very fast reader.
****Thyris, like many people on Heart, is a sexual sadist.

Meanwhile, Crystal is evaluating the doorstopper fantasy novel from Homerealm. 

It's pretty solid. The worldbuilding is deep and cleverly revealed, and the erotica components are well-integrated. It might be a bit long, but the erotica components will help to hold people's attention. And the politics will attract the Suns, who'll share it with their polycules. This one goes on the Yes pile.

A series of dialogues between a woman (who's implied to have wide-ranging spiritual powers) about the meaning of pleasure, desire and 'the original self' and a wide cast of characters - including several scenes where she interrogates the minds of people deep into domme and sub space, people experiencing orgasm, people dreaming while being sexually stimulated and more, interspersed with occasional citations from the more prosaic research into the mind present in hearthome. There's a climatic scene where a domme confesses earnestly that she doesn't care at all about her wife at the height of her passion during her neglect scene, before showing off an intimately detailed hurt-comfort middlecare scene and the rest of their 20 year anniversary together as lovers. It's suprisingly non-judgemental about what the 'real' self-involved is, and is framed to let the audience find there own answers. 

A novel about sex-sports in the style of 17776. 

A book about a magical girl in a mundane, equal-gender-ratio-society with a unique power that lets anyone become a magical girl, so long as they hold out hope in their heart that they can be themselves most through the strength of their feminine spirit. There's a series of kaiju attacks, but they're treated as a distraction at best from the project of facilitating as many people getting the transition as possible into immortal beings. 

The periverser offerings include:

Nonfiction

An anthology of memoirs about several people who work in distressing-undesirable¹ professions:

• A daycare custodian who had an accident that caused them to lose their sense of smell. This was extremely distressing to them for the first month, due to the loss of taste and ability to enjoy food! The silver lining made itself apparent quite quickly when their friend mentioned on social media that a local daycare was in need of a distressing-undesirable specialist custodian and they discovered that their anosmia meant that they were markedly less put off by toddlers' bathroom accidents. They still needed to get used to the visual and textural aspects, but their quality of life increased once this hurdle was cleared.
• A surgeon who kicks² on the kind of medical imagery that most people are extremely distressed by. They used to feel like a bad person for their fascination with this imagery and with the notion of cutting into people, but a professional rubber duck³ brought up the idea of taking the distressing-undesirable exposure tests, which they passed. They still felt awkward while going through training, but has by now found a sense of community with their colleagues, who admire their attitude and ability to find fascination in daily work.
• A dentist who doesn't have a particular fascination with distressing-undesirable imagery and is simply much less squeamish than most people! They had a little bit of difficulty early on in their career because while a lot of their patients were put at ease by their casual, upbeat demeanor, some were put more on edge for an already stressful activity. This was mostly fixed by the dentist asking questions before appointments intended to gauge patients' overall mood and what they would respond well to.
• A construction worker who has a much higher tolerance than average for cold weather (and a corresponding much lower tolerance for hot weather). They particularly enjoy getting waved at by the subset of people who walk past sites they work at who tend to wave at construction workers, street sweepers, and other people who work outside.

The anthology is accompanied by some (appropriately labeled) pamphlets used in the distressing-undesirable exposure tests. The imagery starts out relatively tame and ramps up in graphicness as the test goes on so that applicants can be sorted by when they tapped out.

A textbook about the care and breeding of motherbeasts⁴. It has a brief history-of section but mostly focuses on the day-to-day practicalities, behaviors, and lifespans of the motherbeasts.

A book for children about popular pets, such as goldfish, pigeons, rodents⁵, and rabbits! Each animal group gets its own section on the history of that animal, its temperament and behavior, its care and breeding, and fun activities you can do with your pet! The history parts have lots of pictures and illustrations of the domesticated pets' wild and historical counterparts alongside the modern domesticated instances, the care parts have straightforward descriptions and illustrations of how the animals mate, and the "fun activities" parts are split between practical jobs animals can do (messenger pigeons!) and cute anecdotes (training your goldfish to swim through hoops for treats!).

A history of economics and how different cultures adopted money before the periverse, in an impressive feat of coordination, did away with money entirely. This is widely regarded as one of the best things to happen to humanity, alongside the existence of motherbeasts and the invention of the internet.

Fiction

A setting bible⁶ for a world divided into the material (normal mass governed by the laws of physics) and ethereal (magic, souls, minds). There are several types of sapient creature, such as vampires (ex-humans who can't produce ether on their own and must feed on the ether of others, the most effective way to do so being to drink blood, since humans' material bodies are bonded to their ethereal bodies, or souls), zombies (subset of vampires that eat flesh instead and gain a corresponding boost to physical strength), fairies (creatures that are entirely ethereal), angels (Really Powerful creatures that are entirely ethereal), and constructs (creatures that are entirely material). There's a weak masquerade but not much in practice actually stops interested humans from learning magic, particularly if they know how to summon fairies to teach them or if they have a natural talent for sensing the ethereal.

A novel about children for children where a preteen group of friends has extremely perilous adventures solving mysteries and fighting monsters! None of the protagonists actually die in this one but every member of the friend group comes pretty close in different and exciting ways. 

A novel about children for adults where the highest stakes are "the protagonist is nervous about an upcoming piano competition because what if they make a mistake." It's full of detailed descriptions of home life where all four of the protagonist's parents take very good care of them and make good food and take them on fun activities - each parent has different hobbies and interests that they're delighted to share with the protagonist (and not too disappointed if their child isn't up to an activity on a particular day). The parents are all able to attend the piano competition, and even though the protagonist makes a minor mistake towards the beginning of the piece they aren't disheartened and manage to finish the piece without freezing up.

A prism⁷ set in a magic system where the protagonists are on opposing sides of a divide between the light-mages and the dark-mages. Much of the story is powered by the fact that light-magic and dark-magic are fueled by opposed aspects of one's self and personality, meaning that while the protagonists may share a basic underlying personality and template attractors, different parts of their self have been encouraged and harnessed over the course of their lifetime.

¹Catch-all term for certain professions, particularly medical ones that involve performing surgeries or dealing with nasty bodily functions, construction work, anything that involves being outside in inclement weather conditions, dealing with smelly garbage, particularly spoiled food, and anything else that would be dealbreakingly uncomfortable or unpleasant for the average person. Many Earth professions are split into work that normal people can do and something you'd call a distressing-undesirable specialist for: a custodian does routine cleaning of dust and spilled soda every night, while a distressing-undesirable specialist comes in on a case-by-case basis if, for instance, someone vomits on the floor.

²Like a kink, but non-erogenous.

³A kind of counselor who can give advice, but mostly just listens to their clients as they talk themselves into solutions that they possibly already knew on some level.

⁴A piglike, non-sapient animal that has the magical property of being able to accept genetic contributions from one or more humans and create/gestate a baby that is the offspring of all the contributing humans. It carries its young separately from human babies - both male and female motherbeasts are able to gestate human babies, but only female motherbeasts are able to carry motherbeasts.

⁵There are So Many Kinds of domesticated rodents.

⁶A popular genre in the periverse is "extremely thorough writeups of how a setting works." There's no plot; just descriptions of the SFF elements (the periverse doesn't draw a strong distinction between "fantasy" and "science fiction," so there's a term that covers both magic systems as well as things like the warp drive), alternate histories, types of cultures present, and so on. Typically setting bibles will also have descriptions of how the characters and/or plots of other media properties would alt into the setting in question.

⁷Extremely popular genre where alts meet each other. There are several subgenre: more earthficcy ones where the protagonists discover their althood after a lot of amusing-in-hindsight personality clashes, more magical ones where alts know they share a (usually telepathic in some way) connection but live far away, and ones where several sets of alts of different people meet up through multiversal travel.

Thyris is still in front when they get to another data dump from Hearthome. 

The book about the meaning of pleasure and desire is obviously devotional and ecstatic. She sets it aside to share with Snowblossom; she's already pretty satisfied from yesterday's adventures in reading. 

The novel about sex sports is hilarious. The commentary is slick, the scenes are hot and silly by turns, and the distance of the robotic narrators really sells the human-interest angle. It's heartwarming. She devours it in the morning and cuddles up for a while just thinking it over in her head, about the power of the sentient spirit and how sex brings people together and all the rest of it. This one goes on her personal pile to share with Snowblossom in their free time. 

The magical-girl transformation book is a bit tropey, but she likes the genre. December probably would like to know about it but it's not a high priority. She smiles a little at it and sets it aside for sometime in the future. 

More books from Hearthome. 

The ecstatic book is going to be a bestseller in Anadyne, no question - the Ecstatics finding contact with a second tradition in the same vein on an alien world? Absolutely it's going to be a smash hit. Yes pile. 

The novel about sex sports is also a winner. Heartwarming and hot, just like Skies like it. Yes pile. 

The magical-girl transformation book... Is a bit overdone. It's interesting to see it from another world, but it's not something that doesn't have an equivalent here. Maybe pile, towards the bottom.

Next up, a catalogue of fiction and nonfiction from the Periverse. 

The collection of biographies is interesting but she's a bit too squeamish for this kind of thing. (She tests herself on the distressing-undesirable pamphlets and doesn't score particularly remarkably.) Yes, she's a sadist, but. 

She is not particularly interested in reading a textbook, even if it is about magical multiple-person-baby animals. Those will probably be popular on Heart for those who want to have children, but personally she's far too busy and not particularly interested in the idea. 

She's not personally interested in pets, so she gives that one a miss as well. 

The Periverse did away with money? How on earth do they allocate labor then? This just raises further questions!! She sets the economics history aside to discuss with Snowblossom.

The setting bible is interesting, but she was looking for a story, not just several hundred pages of dedicated worldbuilding. 

The children's novel is fun, though the plot's a bit simple for her as an adult. Still, she skims it. It's not bad. 

The piano-competition novel is interesting. It reads like a Sky's passionbuilding as a child working with their familycule. It's cute and soft and recognizably in the "cutiecule" subgenre, though it's rare to see books featuring children in that genre. More frequently they're extremely fluffy running-romances. This one is notably short on sex, probably because of the children, which is an entirely reasonable artistic decision given that it's saying something about the way that people develop and grow early on, though it loses some spark because the child is unlikely to remember any of this when they grow up.*

This particular prism is a thoughtful meditation on the differences between interpretations of the same Reflection, as expressed through fiction. It's really, really weird that an alien species that wasn't even plural came up with this! What the heck! (Or are they actually plural and nobody told her?) 

*Most of Heart's natives have very little lasting autobiographical memory of their childhoods; it's considered standard for childhood memories to begin in the teens. 

Crystal is looking at the submissions from the Periverse as well.

She doesn't generally deal with nonfiction, however...

The collection of memoirs might sell, or it might be too uncomfortable. Bottom of the Maybe pile. 

The textbook on motherbeasts is absolutely going to have a market. People are going to want to know about alien magic that could potentially give them many-parent children, that's not even in question. Yes pile. 

The books about popular pets are fine, if alien. There sure are a lot of them. What's wrong with just having a cat? Maybe pile. 

The history of economics is sure to be controversial, what with the abolishing-money, and that means people are going to want to buy it. Yes pile.

The setting bible would be better if there were a story or even game mechanics associated with it. As it is, unlikely to see a market. No pile.

The children's book is pretty solid as a children's book. Daring! Adventure! Mystery! Any kids who are interested in aliens (which would be all of them) would love to read this. Yes pile. 

The novel about children for adults is interestingly alien. It feels a little like nothing really happens in it, but then she knows Skies who'll eat this kind of thing up. Top of the Maybe pile. 

The prism she parses as devotional literature for the first hour, and then she realizes abruptly that it's not an alien religion at all, just an alien genre. And the aliens aren't even plural! What the fuck! This one is going to create a massive buzz because of the way it's so similar and yet so different. Top of the Yes pile. 

An doorstopper alternative history of electronic music written by a mother-daughter pairing, with extensive footnotes and side-chapters about the subjective experience of listening and the history of cochlear implants. 

A book about the joys and sorrows of a food afficianado moving between the worlds of industrial food production, dadaist-consumption-experience-artist, running a 'mom and mum' store and probabalistic novelty generation circuits and everything in between, with an affection for the process of creation and how that changes when the scale of the production and the experiencers changes.