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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3395 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 13, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I'm reading the new Malazan Karsa book: No Life Forsaken and I noticed something strange. The foreword is dedicated to Youtube book streamers and Booktok explicitly. This feels oddly tacky and off-putting. I never really thought of Steven Erikson in that light. Anyone know if this is some new weird parasocial thing authors are doing? Or is Erikson a trailblazer.

Do the Karsa books tell us a lot about the world and plot after the events of The Crippled God, or is it more like side story focused on Karsa?

It almost doesn’t feature Karsa at all. It’s very post CG Malazan empire. The first was more theloman focused, and this second one was very 7th cities focused. This last one had some odd azathani focus that made it feel more like a fall of light/walk in shadow prelude

Whatever gets people to read more.

We took our 17 year olds phone for three days and he started reading Blood Meridian and pondering that he may be a loser - both good things!

pondering that he may be a loser

Heh, I suppose I am removed the youth of these days, video games were ubiquitous in my days but so was reading. I didn't have the super-stimulus of a smart phone available until much later

Huh that feels quite weird for Erikson yeah. I didn't know about that. Excited he's finally publishing the Karsa trilogy though. I love Malazan have read it a few times now.

The first book was good but the themes felt far more heavy handed than his previous works. I'm hoping this second book isn't so... degraded? idk the exact feeling.

Keep us posted. FWIW I felt the Karsa parts, while cool, we're the most morally degraded of the whole series. Well perhaps besides that one part with Toc the Younger... blech.

Different kind of degraded. You are talking morally degraded, and yeah Karsa has super foreign morals. I agree with the Erikson blogpost on the purpose of writing him is, to really bring into the perspective the narrative of "Noble Savage".

I meant degraded in terms of tropes/quality. The first book had this almost preachy take on modern social issues wrapped up into the plot that felt distinctly heavy handed in a way that a high quality author like Erikson should be above. It is also fundamentally at odds with my understanding of his general literary style: he writes civilizations with the dispassionate style of an archeologist(which he is). There's no: "this is right" "this is wrong" only "this is a socio-cultural permutation that could exist, lets explore it in a story". He has overarching themes, but the pro-immigration/pro-refugee stance was so off kilter, so black and white, and so pronounced that it felt like a departure.

Every time I see a section of a brick-and-mortar bookshop called "booktok" I cringe.

I've heard of video games that include a little notice at the start inviting the player to stream the game on Twitch, which strikes me as tacky in the same way.

Tacky, yes, but I'll not blame them for trying to be a bit trendy and get sales/numbers/interest up.

Yeah its the tackiness that seems to impact my mind the most. I feel like its one of these costly signals. Erikson is a well established writer with a well established fan base. One would suppose that he has no need to really engage in the new-rich/tacky/booktok style marketing for a mass market audience. The costly signal for high quality reading material is that it doesn't need to try and be trendy because its quality will make it so regardless. It likely jars me, because it is directly coming into conflict with my estimation, making me re-evaluate

Every time I see a section of a brick-and-mortar bookshop called "booktok" I cringe.

This would make me squirm. I'm now dreading going to my local trendy Brick-and-Mortar. Yeah the game thing feels the same way, it's almost like begging for attention. It would feel actually worse if they directly thanked certain game streamers on twitch by the handles

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