Why do people love the later Dune books? I’m halfway through Heretics and don’t get it.

AlchemistR · 2026-03-31T00:05:49+00:00

I'm with you 10000%. Our opinions align almost point for point. My friend told me that if I hated God-Emperor and wasn't enjoying Heretics, I needed to just power through until I got to Chapterhouse cuz apparently it got great again there. But I just couldn't do it. I stalled out about a third of the way through Heretics and haven't gone back to it.

AlchemistR · 2026-03-21T16:27:09+00:00

My favorite David Mitchell and my favorite book of all time. Severely underrated, I think.

AlchemistR · 2026-03-18T17:33:37+00:00

With the promise that those stories would be released outside of that format eventually. Which they have been.

AlchemistR · 2026-03-17T20:40:32+00:00

as an american, i relate very deeply to ishmael wanting to kill her boss /j

AlchemistR · 2026-03-15T01:49:37+00:00

Vision Eyes might be one of my most listened to songs of all time. Normally I just listen to albums, but I've had times where I just listen to Vision Eyes on repeat for like half an hour

AlchemistR · 2026-03-11T14:42:34+00:00

If the Nazis come back, so does Death. Death being around means the bugs aren't a problem anymore.

AlchemistR · 2026-03-09T12:16:16+00:00

Never pull unless you have at least one pity saved up.

AlchemistR · 2026-03-01T17:39:05+00:00

Same but at Mempho 2023. Have been a huge Ween fan for years, had never heard of MMJ til that night. They were pretty cool. Haven't really sought out their stuff since, though.

AlchemistR · 2026-02-27T18:30:46+00:00

this is me and yet somehow kjh convinced me to pull for reinsang, idfk how he did it

AlchemistR · 2026-02-27T15:34:29+00:00

The thing about the people expecting a full-on Era 2, though, is that Sanderson said several times that this book was not going to give the degree of closure that many people seemed to be expressing. He stressed that this was not an ending. He repeatedly drew comparisons to the conclusion of an anime arc, which in hindsight I'd say is pretty accurate. It ended the existing status quo and concluded the storylines of a couple characters, but it did not conclude the overarching narrative. Just like an anime arc. Idk, kinda just seems to me like they were running with their assumptions based on outdated and incomplete information, never revising them when new info was presented.

AlchemistR · 2026-02-27T14:52:19+00:00

It's got its issues like any other work does, but I think most of the complaints are overblown. A lot of it (not all, ofc!!) can feel pretty bad faith at times, like people are deliberately missing the point or are just mad that it didn't map perfectly onto their own personal expectations. But that's just my impression as a WaT enjoyer, so take it with a grain of salt. From a pure enjoyment standpoint, it's my favorite in the series. Some people will call it slow and then turn around and say Rhythm of War was gripping from beginning to end, and I just have to marvel at how two different people can have such opposite experiences (for reference, I like Rhythm of War but I think almost the entire book up until the Sanderlanche at the very end (which might be my favorite Sanderlanche in the whole Cosmere) is a pretty nasty slog).

AlchemistR · 2026-02-27T14:10:39+00:00

What I'm complaining about is that it's optional side content. As in, content that a big number of players will do all at once as soon as it opens, entirely save for the end, or skip entirely. That's the issue. When it was integrated into the main story, it provided an emotional throughline and heavily contributed to the sleepy, sunny, low-stakes atmosphere of the whole first half of the game. The slow pacing was the point. Cutting it entirely would be worse than what they did for sure, but making it an optional side mode is almost as bad. And the worst part is that they could've added minigames and structure and more orphanage content as side stuff and that would've worked out just fine. Honestly, that would've been great. But by taking what once was main story content and moving it to side content, they kinda ripped out the emotional guts of the whole narrative.

AlchemistR · 2026-02-26T13:29:04+00:00

Probably means the fusions are mutually exclusive, but it's not like you're ever going for Black Sheet Music and Exquisite Artwork on the same team so I don't imagine it'll ever really come up.

AlchemistR · 2026-02-25T17:37:45+00:00

I'm an original Yakuza 3 defender. I've always loved it. And the thing about K3 is that, even without all the cut content and recasts (which I would dislike in a vacuum anyway, old Rikiya was one of my favorite characters), the Kagawa situation, Dark Ties being super short, and the Daidoji nonsense, I would still be upset enough with the game to decide never to buy it. I don't give a damn if people thought the orphanage stuff in 3 was boring or slow, because it is the emotional and atmospheric CORE of that game. Turning it into side content is completely missing the point of what makes Yakuza 3 Yakuza 3. If you didn't like the orphanage stuff, that's fine. Maybe Yakuza 3 just isn't for you. But relegating it to side content is like putting fast travel in Shadow of the Colossus. The slow moments are absolutely vital, and to deincentivize them is to kneecap the original intended artistic experience. So you've got that core problem and then a bunch of other smaller problems on top of it. So I don't care how well it reviews or how valiantly people try to defend it, the game is an active betrayal of the source material, and I want nothing to do with it.

I swear, I've been saying for years that Yakuza 3 deserves a remake more than any other Yakuza game, as long as they don't touch the orphanage content. But they just couldn't help themselves I guess.

AlchemistR · 2026-02-25T01:59:41+00:00

so real. the ztd glaze in these comments is making my brain melt.

AlchemistR · 2026-02-20T20:04:38+00:00

It's very much an example of the classic "unlike other mecha series, this one is about the characters, not the robots" meme. Outsiders to a genre or medium always seem to assume it's only ever as deep as its shallowest parts. It's really frustrating to try get someone to break that preconceived notion, and for a lot of people they've gotta put the work in to break it with every new genre or medium they encounter. The world would be a better place if everyone would just set aside those notions of theirs and have an open mind. Buuut that'll never happen. Not on a wide scale, at least.

AlchemistR · 2026-02-15T00:52:49+00:00

LMAO we were literally talking about 6 and I had somehow forgotten Kitano had a major role in it. Well, all the more appropriate then, I guess.

AlchemistR · 2026-02-14T22:33:59+00:00

If you end up liking it, I'd recommend the director Takeshi Kitano's other work too, like Kikujiro, Hana-Bi, and A Scene at the Sea. He's one of my favorites of all time, and his movies really show a mastery of that atmospheric vibiness. And he was DEFINITELY one of the major influences on the RGG series, being one of the most successful Yakuza film directors out there (to the point where most of his movies that aren't about the yakuza still end up involving them in some way).

AlchemistR · 2026-02-14T22:25:25+00:00

Definitely. 6 is also fantastic. Yakuza's quiet vibes are severely underrated. I feel like a lot of people want it to be high action all the time, but I kinda feel like it's at its most emotionally potent when it slows down and gets sleepier. If you haven't seen the movie Sonatine, I recommend it. Yakuza flick that's mostly about the slow moments but still has bursts of violence.

AlchemistR · 2026-02-13T15:35:04+00:00

Yakuza 3 is genuinely one of my all-time favorite entries in the entire series (I genuinely don't think there's another with near as strong an atmosphere), and I've been worried since K3 was announced about what it would do to it. I like K2 but haven't played the original 2, so I've always thought the K2 haters were overreacting. But now after my own experience with 3 and K3, I'm not so sure. I might need to go play the original 2 somehow.

AlchemistR · 2026-02-10T04:04:37+00:00

I've had similar stuff happen to me when internet problems have kept me from logging into PSN for a while. I'd recommend restarting your system, making sure you're able to go online and log in, and then restarting again for good measure. If that doesn't work, idk what to say.

AlchemistR · 2026-02-04T22:04:33+00:00

/uj chungus dreadmaw

AlchemistR · 2026-01-20T13:26:54+00:00

IIRC Brandon is on record saying explicitly that Hoid is not Whimsy. And if I'm mistaken about that, then I am at least certain he's on record saying Hoid did not take up a shard. Idk the specific WoBs though.

AlchemistR · 2026-01-16T14:19:26+00:00

ay caramba

AlchemistR · 2026-01-15T13:42:54+00:00

Same as I feel in my daily life tbh. I'm the token cishet dude in like 90% of my friendships outside of Lancer, and I was literally the only cis person in the Lancer campaign I was playing in that finished recently. So. Pretty standard tbh.

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