I don’t really understand how the author is using 系. Here’s a few examples:
これさ、ホントにあった系の話だと思う？
えー。めちゃホントにあった系っぽくない？
よっちゃんいっつもそうやってアタシの話否定すんよね。じゃあ現場の人が投稿した系の話かもしれないじゃん。
I have no idea what these 系 are.
終了直前、スノーホワイトはラ・ピュセルから話しかけられた。担当地域が隣ということもあるので新人の教育系を引き受けた。
系 has a very broad usage. When you use it as a suffix (X系), it takes the very general meaning of “things that are like X”, the same type, genre as X, more or less:
名詞に付いて、一つのまとまりのある関係にあることを表す語。
You could say ホラー系, for example, to talk about the horror genre. These girls in the sentences you posted are discussing if the stories are actually real, or more literally (less natural in English), if they belong to the subset of stories that actually happened.
I found someone asking a question on hinative. They give a weird example too.
I had to actually check the book for this one because it seemed so weird, and it’s not actually 系. It’s 係 
It’s a different suffix, and the definition and meaning in that sentence are pretty straightforward:
Ah, I see. I read that very definition, but my brain kept trying to shoehorn it into English words (like “genre” in your example). You explanation helped a lot!
I actually know that suffix, so if I had realized it wouldn’t have been a problem. Thanks again!
I’ve read this many times now and I’m still not sure if the 男 that is being referred is a childhood friend or if スノーホワイト is originally a boy. Which means I’m not getting the sentence over all 
I feel like I should be able to tell the difference but…not happening. Long sentences are still haaard.
I guess with this information it would be reasonable to assume that the 魔法少女 helping the girl in the prologue is actually スノーホワイト. 
By the way I feel like all the names are super weird.
I was confused on this at first too, but logically it has to be the former. スノーホワイト is saying she’ll become a magical girl, so it wouldn’t make sense to reference a supposed reason she couldn’t become one. (I think you might subconsciously still want to be reading 放浪息子 
).
It’s saying that the childhood friend seemed to be jealous because at best he could become a 魔法使い (because he’s a boy). More specifically, I think it’s saying that she seemed to make the childhood friend jealous by making this declaration (because of がる + causative).
By the way, I can’t believe you’re almost caught up to me already! I’d better get back to reading!
EDIT: I edited “latter” to “former”. Oops. 
That’s right. It is a weird way of writing that though, so it does look like she is a dude when you read it the first time.
Yeah, I agree. I wonder how it could have been rephrased to not have the 男だから dangling there ambiguously.
I…I think so too.
But now I want to see a 魔法少女 story where this actually happens
Well that makes me feel better about having such doubts 
Asking the important questions. 
I feel like in general the grammar is easier than in ハルヒ although there are some difficult bits as well, while the vocab is about the same. On the other hand I’m finding ハルヒ much easier to read at the moment, which is probably because:
I gues we’ll see if this changes as I get further in the book.
You can check the picture at the start that shows all the 魔法少女 if it helps
I went there every time a new girl was introduced too because I can’t do descriptions.
I’m fine with descriptions in general, but I’ve still been going to the picture every time to fill in the gaps. That doesn’t help with remembering their real names though, unfortunately.
That’s been the biggest adjustment for me. I think I’m finally getting used to it though.
This got me curious about what perspective the other books I’ve read were in. All three books before コンビニ人間 were in third person. This was just from a quick glance at 魔女の宅急便, 時をかける少女, and キノの旅 looking for first person pronouns outside of dialogue. For the books I have sitting on my shelf unread, it looks about 50/50.
俺
ハハハ
Hm? I guess boys can also become Magical Girls.
It kinda brings this to mind
Edit
I knew it was coming from the description of the book way back when @seanblue proposed it for the intermediate book club, but I didn’t expect Fav to be so matter-of-fact about it…
This book has been a wild ride for me so far and I only reached the half mark. As can be probably expected from other things I mentioned on the Haruhi threads, I can’t say I’m fond of the overtly sexual shapes of most of the magical girls. I believe they are cliched on purpose, but come on.
On the other hand, I’ve been thinking a lot that, if I did turn into such a magical girl, I would go full Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. You are near indestructible and over powered, and would not suffer any consequences from your actions, since no one would know your true identity. (Even if they did, they can’t really put you in jail, since you could just one-punch-man your way out).
On the other other hand, I could never manage to act evil in RPG games as I feel bad for the NPCs 
so maybe not?
Well, going back to the story, I got to hate Ruler (? I guess that’s what the katakana stands for) with a passion, to the point of looking forward to her death. Next page, she fricking died. Yay! Also Swimswim is a psychopath. Un-yay.
Overall, I’d say this story is a bit too much for me (not too big on dark stuff, it seems), but it does elicit emotional reactions, so there’s that.
Funny how your opinion of ルーラ (was it supposed to be Ruler? It didn’t cross my head, but makes sense ) was the polar opposite of mine 
In case you didn’t see it:
To be fair, I was aware this would probably be an unpopular opinion. We’ll see when the others get there…
I want to read this comment, but I’ll need at least a week…
Well I didn’t have to wait long. Dreams come true sometimes.
Also you are all going too fast you are going to end up with a speeding ticket.
I want to read those comments too
Oh! I completely missed it! I remembered to check past comments when I finished the first chapter, but forgot this time around.
I’ve been trying to understand the origin of all katakana names So far, the only one I didn’t get is the ヴェス in ヴェス・ウィンタープリズン. I’m also wondering how many Japanese people would know who La Pucelle (d’Orléans) is and why it makes complete sense for her to be a medieval swordwoman. I’m actually also wondering how many non-French people would get it in general 
(hint: the English translation is “the Maid of Orléans”).
Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t mind ruthless characters, but treating your team poorly is really enraging me. She got it coming, as far as I am concerned.
I do agree that Swimswim planning it was a surprise. Also, her motives do make a lot of sense in a twisted way, hence why I said she is a psychopath.
About the death being spoiled, I missed that, since I skipped the color pages at the start. I had a bad experience with ハルヒ So, yeah, the announce got me completely by surprise.
Anyway, one thing I forgot to talk about is that my most hated character is Fav, ぽん. God I hate its guts. Also, I don’t understand why all the girls are taking what it’s saying at face value. Why did they keep getting new magical girl if they knew it was too much? I mean, I could get it if they had overshot a little bit over a very short period of time, but obviously they had time to think about it. Plus they still got an extra one even after they knew it was not sustainable.
Also, work hard and you won’t die? That strikes a bit too close to “Arbeit macht frei” for my tastes. Let’s say they get down to 8. What prevents them from saying “oh boy, oh geez, y’all have been going all out and depleted the reserves way more than we expected, but if we get down to 4, we should be alright”, then 2, then 1. Then get 15 more for kicks and giggles for whatever reason (“we found a pool of magic in the permafrost!”) and do it all over again.
They should just all band against the country of magic or whatever. (They may instakill them, but they were gonna do that anyway…)