#1 A short comedic story about two ambiguous entities having an argument, desperately trying to prove each other wrong. Both entities are sympathetic, and the reasoning of both is coherent, but the actual topic they are arguing about is completely nonsensical, and the reader doesn’t have any way understand what is it they are actually arguing about, and therefore no way to understand who is right.

#2 A story in which the personification of Fitting* – acting as Destination Manufacturer – sends the protagonist on a mission to a different world, full of magic, but also war, chaos, and cruelty. The story explores in meticulous detail the exact personality, history and skill set of the protagonist, the magical and cultural rules of the magical world, and why exactly this protagonist’s traits fit exactly to fulfill this specific type of mission in this specific world.
One of the traits is a very specific psychology and ideology. The protagonist sometimes lies, fights people, and even murders (twice), always after a careful analysis of the situation and detailed examination of morality, and acts only if the murder is truly the only way to make everything better for everyone. Whether it really is the only way is debatable.
A note explains that this is one of many examples of the genre, focusing on different extremely specific skillsets used in extremely specific circumstances (often magical worlds, but not always) to achieve extremely specific results. But they usually have less direct conflict between people, and no murder.

#3 A 13 book series with a complicated and hard to describe plot, best summarized as “a group of random people around the world accidentally discover a very weird thing, deal with its consequences, and then discover more and more weirder and weirder things”. The story is full of twists, small random details that turn out to be extremely important, and small things that get a lot of focus but never turn out to be important.
A note explains that this series is also in large a meditation on the nature of Fitting, not presented as a person, and not serving a direct goal, but as a basic force of the universe (which it isn’t literally in reality, but the book describes a fantastical version of the world where it does), where all things are related to each other, and all the random detail (some of which are references to other works of fiction, or to real events) form a perfect logical picture together (for example, any hypothetical or hyperbole said by any character turns out to be correct, but always in unexpected contexts). In fact, the main point of the book and the source of enjoyment for the readers is how perfectly those details fit together, while the events and characters of the story, though also well written, mostly exist to give context to this structure. People are very passionate about it, most explanation-notes are somewhat shorter.

#4 A political drama where the protagonist becomes the chairman of a city council, and has to reconcile the ideological and logistical opinions of all the council members, who are all slightly wrong, but slightly wrong in exactly the kind of way where they couldn’t have ever agreed without outside interference, and figuring out how and why exactly they are wrong is long and complicated.
A note explains that the story is in, fact, intentionally unrealistic, depicting characters who behave in a way mostly imagined by philosophers as hypothetical: all councilmembers, despite being sane, educated, aware of the working of the world, and competent in their fields, commit very basic logical fallacies that schoolchildren easily understand to be false, conflate emotional reactions with their arguments, assume that events harming their interests are the result of ill intent, when coincidence or honest mistake are far more plausible, etc. And yet the story presents them as normal people, rather than aliens with bizarre psychology, and the protagonist (who does behave like a normal competent Ranalite) regards them with familiar exasperation, as if used to this kind of behavior.
Only recently, after the interworld contact, it was discovered that there are people in other worlds who behave exactly this way, and the story retroactively and unintentionally (a great case of Fitting) became an accurate potential portrayal of a Ranalite interacting with especially irrational of-worlders (not that this degree of irrationality is common of-world, of course).

#5 A logistical action where a city block and all the people in it (around 40 people, a very small number, due to the specific time and circumstances) are mysteriously teleported to a different place, lacking civilization and inhabited by weird monstrous animals. The whole book is about their survival, and all the things it requires. There are detailed accurate descriptions of architecture, basic crafting and medicine, but the author clearly knows nothing about zoology and botany, and gets several things wrong (but not extremely so) about electronics.
All the characters have distinct skills, capabilities and physical weaknesses, but barely any attention is payed to their personalities or emotions.
This book, being dry and specific, is the book most representative of most Ranalite fiction that is not in the “best timeless classic” category, as they tend to be increasingly abstract and confusing.

#6 A surrealistic short story about the deeply unhealthy relationship between two people. Those two people are mentioned to have many traits, but there is no way to really understand who they are without context.
A note explains those two people are supposed to be the collective personifications of emotions – one guilt and one doubt - of various fictional characters from other stories (one is from [the series numbered 3 in this list]) at once, and the thematic similarities between all of them (some of the characters manifest only one of the emotions, and some both). A list of all those characters and their summarized backstories is added, but doesn’t clarify too much.
The story is included because it is, technically speaking, a very good story, written with incredible skill, and is even better than #3 at connecting concepts together into one meaningful thing, in its own way. But it is obviously even harder than usual to understand having direct familiarity only with 1 series out of the ~17. The Ranalites still sent it. They always prefer to do a thing even if they are not sure it is required, if doing so doesn’t have any negative consequences, especially in social situations. If the interworld contact requires changing that social habit, they didn’t get to it yet.

#7 A story told In first person, about a person pretending to be a character in a story (clearly inspired by one of the characters whose guilt was manifested In the previous book) as realistically as possible, but can’t hold it long, and the fact that this persona is fake becomes increasingly obvious with time, to the point where they start talking about their real life events, and how much they hate soup, and why they wanted to write this book, and why they pretended to be this specific protagonist. With very big subtextual implications about the real author of the book, what events happened or did not happen in their life, and why they emulated the fictional author emulating the character.
The actual events of the story, and all characters including the narrator, are very incoherent, as result of the author's/fictional author’s/fictional persona’s lack of artistic skill and/or attention.


All stories come with an absurd amount of tags in a complicated system (which has several levels of spoiler tags and assumes that the reader already has a profile of preferences), completely incomprehensible to of-worlders, and terms like “political drama” and “logistical action” are only simplified approximations.

One of the criteria for choosing the stories (beside the obvious “general quality of higher than 137”, which filters out ~97% of all fiction ever written) was that they don’t randomly include the common Ranalite literary device where the same scene is told several times with slightly different details, so the readers have to compare them and figure out which version is the closest to truth (this device was first developed by a philosopher studying the nature of truth, and was later standardized in the schools of a big country, making it familiar and intuitive to many Ranalites, and is now as common literary device as, for example, flashbacks, or non-chronological storytelling).
#2 and #5 don’t use it because they are not focused on the search for truth. #4 already has the ambiguity of truth as result of the biased perspective of all characters. #7 has the ambiguity of truth as the basic property of the story itself. #1 and #6 have the ambiguity of truth as result of the general surrealism. #3 does use this framing device, but it is retroactively framed as diegetic**.

Another is that, turns out, some worlds have very serious standards about how much sex can be shown in fiction, and the standards different between worlds. So the fiction was also selected not to have any direct depiction or discussion of sex (until the fiction organizers actually figure out what the standards are).


In addition to the straightforward fictional stories, there is a “subtype 5 abstract-universal engine”, which is a system for the collaborative creation of a an idea for the collaborative creation of a game; and also two of the most popular (in the last decade) “song-templates”, which are a music+rhythm+theme inside which songs are improvised. One is purely comical and is supposed to be improvised with words describing your everyday actions with exaggerated drama, and the second is more thoughtful and supposed to be improvised with insights about your life and how it is different from what you expected it to be. (Song-templates are far more popular in Ranalite than actual songs).




* Fitting is a complicated philosophical principle, that describes among other things the way in which different people Specialize in different skills, have different goals, how different actions are possible in different circumstances, and those things can fit correctly together, which optimizes the world and creates value. It is not literally the Logos, but it’s the closest thing to the Logos Ranalite has.

** Several times for several reasons. In the end of book 1 it is revealed that improbably similar events happened to improbably similar people around the world. In the middle of book 3 it is revealed that the memories of the protagonists were edited. In the end of book 7 it is revealed that the starting from book 5, the story was jumping between several alternate timelines with slight deviations. In the end of book 9 it is revealed that the characters were trapped in a virtual reality all along. And in the beginning of book 12 (at the point where most people are not able to continue following the plot anymore, despite liking the series and appreciating it’s genius) it is revealed that the books included elements of the same books written in alternate timelines by alternate instances of the same author, and now the real author in our timeline needs to cooperate with the other authors, to face the metafictional threat posed by the plot of the book, his only method of communication being inference of facts about other timelines from the difference in the book details. Which the readers are encouraged to help him with (efforts are still ongoing despite the series technically being finished several years ago).



[Meta note: it’s weird that descriptions of medianworld fiction almost never have the names. I kept to the existing pattern, but also have names. #2 is “Master of Secrets”, #3 is “Limited locality”, #6 is “Horrific Duality”, #7 is “Animal Investigation”]

Marisa's Book Diary, Entry ????

That annoying hag dumped more books on me, giggling like a lunatic as always. Might as well read them.

• Apparently no title
  This one was frustrating. Some weirdos are arguing, and one is obviously right and one obviously wrong, but the story just ends with no resolution to their argument.
• Master of Secrets
  Kinda annoying. The world was cool but you have to see it through the eyes of this self-absorbed jerk. Some people really shouldn't be allowed inner monologues!
• Limited Locality
  Wow, this is huge! It starts off boring but I'm glad I powered through, it gets pretty great. Still on book 7, but I wanted to put it in here with the others.
• Apparently also no title???
  This is so weird and cool. I enjoyed the detail work on each of the characters and their positions. Going to self-insert fanfic this one, seems like good mental practice for dealing with foreign governments.
• What is it with these books and lacking titles, did that hag just remove them to piss me off?
  Nice, another RPG sourcebook. I was looking for a new one we could try out. Gonna loan this out to the others, see what they think.
• Horrific Duality
  I thought this was a heartwarming romance. I was really rooting for them to get together! Then I read that explanatory note. Now that I know it's related to Locality, I'm even more heartwarmed! Maybe I'll continue this in fanfic or something.
• Animal Investigation
  I read this but I feel like I actually just skipped over the time spent reading this. Not going to try again in case it's dodgy time magic. Wouldn't put it past a certain hag.

Well, first Aliat’s going to poke around with the tagging system for a bit. This one is definitely alien! Doesn’t hiding the tags kind of defeat the purpose of tagging? It becomes slightly more understandable once she sets it to show all spoiler tags, but only barely. They only have a handful of tags for various types of political drama! And they don’t seem to tag for character personality at all! It’s definitely odd.

Well. Onto the books!

Short Comedy

This is actually pretty amusing! Several quotes are added as various slang terms, largely used when an argument is being had for the purpose of having an argument, or for making fun of the arguments that people who know much more than others about a subject have with each other.

Proposed Tags: Alien* Protagonist, Argument-For-The-Sake-of-Arguing**, Humor

Untitled Isekai

It’s a common genre, and the personification-of-fitting thing is an interesting otherworld spin on an oft-used trope. The protagonist and magic system are interesting, and the cultural details are fascinating. The protagonist is incredibly intelligent, and uses an unusual but understandable moral code and logic, yet they make so many obvious errors in weird places! Truly a great choice as a first contact work.

Proposed Tags: Isekai, Moral Codes, Self-Doubt, Competence Fantasy, Cultural Differences, Cultural Exploration, Hard Magic System

Political Drama

It’s amazing that aliens have such similar comedy to us! The councilpeople are sympathetic and frustrating in equal measure, and the protagonist is an excellent leader figure.

Proposed Tags: Leadership, Dispute Settlements, Governance, Minimally Complicated Politics (Note: Create category for even less complicated politics? Is this even politics?)

Logistical:

I’m pretty sure I missed something. Is this a transcription of someone’s wilderness survival isekai game? Was half of the book accidentally left out? I’m going to refrain from tagging this until we get confirmation of what this actually is, considering that there aren’t any characters, or possibly even plot.

Unhealthy Relationship:

Looks incredibly interesting at a first glance, but we don’t generally publish only the latter parts of series. We’d appreciate the first sixteen books, please!

Persona

I can’t tell if this is an intentional parody or just written by a new author. Clarification is needed before it can be tagged. If it’s a parody, it looks like it will be very funny once I have the cultural context! If it’s a new author, this is an excellent beginning work, and just needs a bit of editing in the later sections.

* Used to indicate fundamental otherness in thought, not literal aliens, although there is a decent amount of overlap.

** Four Syllables