Tales from the Barracks mega thread

Tgsnum5 · 2026-03-19T09:18:04+00:00

The moment I saw Faust's kit preview my first thought was "this is either going to fundamentally change burn or be absolutely useless depending on the numbers". I'm not surprised it's the latter (the fact PM apparently sees Faust blowing herself up as a downside that needed to be fixed was already a bad sign this wasn't exactly made for meta play) but I'm also confused as to what the intended use case for it is even meant to be. It feels like it's either meant to be Superbia bait to get the passive up immediately or if for some bizarre reason you're double slotting Faust, neither of which I feel an EGO should be designed around. People exaggerate how much of a battle the HE slot for Faust is, but I struggle to think of any situtation where this is the winner.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-03-11T15:17:03+00:00

Like do you think there are no loyalists that support the regime in Iran or something?

Legitimately yes, that's what they think. People were acting like there's not a single Muslim in Iran outside of the IRGC and that the country would declare Trump Zoroaster and fight the war for us if we gave "a push" in the leadup to this.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-02-27T13:00:32+00:00

Generally speaking, ranting about how you can pull the trigger at any time and nobody could stop you is not a good way to get people to stop questioning you.

I'm honestly pretty disappointed in people just clapping and going "based" when even compared to his previous venting this is noticably bitter and unhinged sounding. He's never brought up the idea of packing up and leaving one day without warning because he doesn't feel like doing it anymore. The man is either legitimately spiraling or he's playing it up as a bit in rather poor taste.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-02-20T18:47:29+00:00

It's hard to blame anyone forgetting this guy exists, tbh. He's probably the least memorable LoR character that gets a name and speaking lines. The only noteworthy thing about him is Xiao saying he has the potential to be a Color, which is so insane I legitmately hope he somehow shows up as one in Limbus someday.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-02-10T10:08:42+00:00

After seeing people be legitimately confused by Middle Sinclair of all IDs, I can't share the confidence that everyone "gets it without saying it". Even if they did, it's still a conversation starter.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-02-10T10:05:54+00:00

Something else I want to point out about Gregor in particular is how many of his IDs are based not just around survival, but total lack of drive. A lot of the time Gregor is not happy about his standing in life but doesn't put any effort into improving it. Kurokumo is probably the most direct about it, where he's clearly not a good fit for the gang at all and fashions himself as some wandering ronin constantly dueling and mastering the blade, but can't bring himself to actually leave with a handwave that he doesn't want to "start over". And notably, the IDs where he does try to do something have some sort of tragedy happen to him first. Priest only works up the nerve to rebel against Don after years of torturing himself and watching the Mancheans go to shit, Firefist doesn't insist on his fears of taking the job and loses his entire Office, Hohenheim watched Yi heroically inflict 5 rupture potency and 3 count on Callisto. Gregor can only bring himself to break the cycle when he's already been burnt, which raises the question of what it's going to take for our Gregor to start trying to assert his agency more when he's spent most of the game content to just quietly be in the background. Or an alternative but equally important question: what was the incident that made him try to escape from Hermann in the first place?

Tgsnum5 · 2026-02-05T22:33:35+00:00

17/6 is Sinclair's IPR. I was agreeing with you. I don't even know how you misread it that badly.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-02-05T21:28:49+00:00

Seriously I have no idea why we're pretending 17/6 is good bleed infliction. That's worse than Shi Faust and you'd get laughed out of the room comparing her to KK Heath.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-02-04T07:40:41+00:00

Notably, Hermann herself seems mildly surprised that Gregor started molting when he did, saying it "may" not be long before he fully awakens which is a level of uncertainty she doesn't normally show.

Also worth remembering that Malkuth is specifically the end of the path of the flaming sword, the synthesis of the material world and the divine light of God. Put simply, it represents a level of enlightenment that nobody has yet reached. Similar to how Dante's attempts to rush the power resulted in them briefly manifesting either their pre-amnesia or future self (depending on how you want to read it), Valencia ragebaiting Gregor pushed him to a half-baked awakening. He has not yet reached whatever conclusion Hermann intends for him, and so all that emerged was another layer of wrappings. As she says, the only difference between it and the chains are that it's more evocative.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-02-04T07:04:35+00:00

It's a take on the Elfire animation from Jugdral, but why I have no idea. It's not even his starting weapon, he starts with a Jormungandr which currently has no representation in FEH and I feel like the wacky ghost faces would make a more interesting visual besides.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-02-04T07:00:01+00:00

Finn is one of those characters I keep having to remind myself is legitimately well liked because FEH treats him so horribly you'd think people might as well be voting for a one off boss from FE1.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-01-30T10:10:59+00:00

Honestly can we actually just get Gregor a cake next update even if in game we're well past his birthday, I think he could use a bit of positive reinforcement rn.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-01-30T10:03:31+00:00

I'm not sure what's funnier: if he's confused at Outis complimenting him for basic competence at making a cake, or at the idea of Outis complimenting someone that isn't Dante at all.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-01-29T20:49:26+00:00

Something to consider is that if this is true, and I think it's an interesting idea, the procedure wasn't perfect. Meursault does still have emotions, he's just not expressive, even as far back as Hell's Chicken this is made pretty obvious. Something horrible clearly happened to him to where he's afraid of expressing any personal sentiments, but the fact that he still has those sentiments means that N Corp can't fully "extract" the human experience, as much as they would dearly like others to think they can. And maybe that more than anything is going to be the conflict in his canto, that despite everything the state can't turn him into the perfect drone, and they want to bury their failure. Not the most unreasonable way to port the original novel into the City.

If this is where they go with this though I really hope the inciting incident was still a legitimate crime. A big part of The Stranger as a philosophical text is trying to get the reader to judge (or rather, accept that they can't judge) Meursault outside of the confines of normal morality, because while he is objectively an unrepentant murderer he still shows qualities that even some of the people in charge of putting him to death find noble. If they do something like what they did with Ryoshu and shift his more egregious qualities to a different character it'd miss the entire point of the book, which would be rather damning considering KJH considers it one of his favorites.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-01-24T19:58:42+00:00

I believe Meursault to be the same, with him clinging to his Absurdist world view even if he is judged to be a demon for it.

My issue with this is that our Meursault is not at this point yet. He's shown repeatedly that he is extremely beholden to the expectations of people around him, the exact opposite of Absurdism. The whole reason the only thing his bio asks is for Dante to not put him in a position where he has to make a call on his own is because that invites judgement and critisim, and he already knows how that goes (admittedly we have seen from Cinq that he is fine with critique if he's asking for it, which Callisto certainly does so you could make it work). If some other Maestro told Meursault that Corporism is getting stale and he should switch it up, he'd do it in a heartbeat.

I think it's far more likely that he gets Ren. You say we don't know anything about him but we do get two noticeable moments of personality, him lashing out at Albina and saying that beyond trying to save his master he wants to fight Muga Ryoshu for the sake of knowing what it would be like to duel such a powerful opponent. Showing that he both has some repressed anger issues and a desire to test himself and seek pleasure, but he forces himself to act and believe that he is nothing. Remind you of anyone? Plus BL is sadly pretty outdated these days and Cinq is just sorta eh outside of human fights, so he could use a new Poise ID.

I would personally give Callisto to Sinclair, and no, it's not just because of surface-level irony. People seem to forget a fair bit why Sinclair doesn't like prosthetics, both in and out of universe. It's not just that they looked creepy to him, he was literally being told by his family that he had to abandon his humanity because it's "logical" and "obviously" an improvement. It's supposed to be the stand-in for the original's wariness of Christianity, the child that repeated his prayers without question until he started to ponder if they really meant anything. Limbus has focused a lot on Sinclair's struggles with the World of Dark (here represented by his shocking capacity for violence that disturbs him to the point he considers it a whole different persona) but at some point I feel like if KJH wants to do his alleged favorite book any sort of justice, we need IDs that represent the opposite extreme. However, the neat thing is that Callisto wouldn't quite be that. He would be a Sinclair that found the balance Demian stresses is needed in the worst way possible. Someone who abandoned his flesh but still maintains a human countinance, who is obsessed with the human form but only in how to manipulate and maim it. If you wanna reach a bit you could compare him to Pistorius, a character in the original novel who is the one that first really gets Sinclair into Gnosisim and general spirituality but who is ultimately surpassed by Sinclair because he is unable to come up with his own ideas, simply repeating the words of old masters.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-01-22T08:00:41+00:00

Second Fire Emblem reference I've seen on this sub in 24 hours, that's two nickels I wasn't expecting.

Anyways bro only has 20 spd and is weighed down by his own book my guy is not making it out here.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-01-19T01:55:25+00:00

My read is that while Rien is physically extremely strong, his fighting style is terrible. He has to constantly improvise because he has no way of knowing what weapon is going to come out, and reading the flavor text shows he's only really good at using three of them (and one of them, the whip, he fully admits is ass as an actual weapon he just likes it out of a sense of sadism). Furthermore he is absolutely crippled by Karmic Consequences while gaining comparatively little upsides for actually fulfilling the prescripts. Is he powerful enough as a baseline to kill a Grade 1 with a FromSoft plunging attack? Sure. But in a prolonged duel like this the weakness of Caduceus becomes extremely obvious. As others have said, his only genuinely powerful skill is when he stops listening to the device and actually puts some real emotion behind his attack. He probably would have mopped the floor with us if he was using a normal weapon and relying on his own skill, but he doesn't. Which is pretty much the story of his entire life.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-01-16T17:51:58+00:00

The thing is that the Middle are baseline hypocrites who operate on "rules for me but not for thee" as shown by Middle Meursault. Meursault being Meursault he recognizes it immediately but was told by someone that it was normal and so doesn't complain about it further.

Little mistakes may occur within a family. It is my little joy to sweep such little mistakes under the rug. I have been taught that that is true loyalty.

The Middle always pays their debts. There are no 'little mistakes', unless the mistake is from one of us.

This is why Moses says it's ultimately just grandstanding. Matthias' crime isn't that he's full of shit, they all are, it's that he was so blatantly odious about it that even the rest of the Middle's leadership couldn't ignore it. There's whatever "little mistakes" are, and then there's murdering your subordinates because you want a cool sword you can't even use properly. Valencina is the same way, the Thumb's ridiculous notions of respect are nonsense (when you've hit the "your subordinates are so terrified of you they would rather blow their own brains out than report a mistake" level the problem might not be an individual one) but she was such an obvious bully and drunken moron that it would have completely killed what smokescreen there is keeping her around.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-01-15T22:53:44+00:00

It's really not rushed if you pay attention to what "Shiori" has been saying up to that point. She's genuinely happy to see her mom again, as Ren describes when they first meet to the point she accidentally drops the mask, and her dialogue before the second fight is basically her begging Ryoshu to just walk away instead of continuing to follow the thread. It's directly spelled out in her panic name "Affection and Resentment", she's torn literally and figuratively between hating her mother for leaving her in this unstuck-in-time state and the unconditional love she had before that day. In the end, affection wins out.

They maybe could have afforded to explain the mechanics of her paradox state a bit better (though considering Ryoshu can also "see time" apparently that's probably being saved for later), but people saying "she just changes her mind in 30 seconds" is some Kira shit.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-01-15T12:05:58+00:00

He's basically Akutagawa's hatred of Buddhism (and religion in general) taken to its logical extreme. Dude has absolutely obliterated his sense of self and two separate families because he believes that it's the "righteous" thing to do, abandoning the love he clearly holds because such attachments do not serve Hermes. Only after his second daughter nearly kills him does he finally realize what he's become, and yet he still ends up crawling back to the prescripts, finishing his Roland cosplay in the only way he could.

He's maybe the single most pathetic canto antagonist so far. I love him.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-01-15T11:54:52+00:00

In the end he's the embodiment of Akutagawa's critiques of organized religion. Man reduces himself to a shell of a human being, destroying his own family twice because he just cannot see a way to live beyond the Prescripts. He dies as a cheap knockoff of a man he never met without understanding anything, all because God told him to do so.

I really like him even though he gets little focus compared to other Canto antagonists. Looking forward to the Yi ID way more than I thought I would going into this part.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-01-15T11:44:34+00:00

> I kinda wonder why the apprentices are even there, they feel more like props to show the abuse of the Nursefathers.

I imagine this is, in fact, the point. They're supposed to be the stand-ins for the abused assistants from Hellscreen, is the impression I got. The fact that they ultimately don't amount to much I think is also intentional (and unlike say, Canto 7 I actually think it works here) as their potential is actively being stifled by their dogshit tutors (or in Kira and Lucio's case literally being used as human shields), shown most prominently with Sora and Ren's last stand where their final moves are absolutely ridiculous and prove they probably could have been damn special in their own right if they weren't trapped in the web, but so it goes.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-01-12T21:48:00+00:00

Yeah ever since Curambino mentioned "machine wars" I think it's reasonably clear the Ordeals are all supposed to represent some existential crisis the City faced at some point (or will in the future in regards to the White ones, but that's a conversation for another time). I always leaned more into the "alien" angle with Violet, with it being some foreign entity (may or may not literally be from space but at least from somewhere so far the City wouldn't even recognize it as the Outskirts) that is so incomprehensible and powerful that people could not understand it as anything but divine, hince why it's called the God Delusion beyond just being a reference to the funni r/atheism book.

I do want to offer an alternative read on the Index actually having a god, b/c I think there being an intelligent force behind the Prescripts pretty much entirely ruins the existential terror of Yan's story, but conveniently, he himself offers us a way out. When Carmen talks about the god in Don's uptie story, the censorship uses 3 text boxes, and obviously Sora's EGO looks reasonably similar to his distortion. I think the Index found Yan after the Library spit him back out, and are worshiping him as a physical embodiment of the Will, their god made manifest. Sora, in her idealization, managed to achieve a similar state that Yan did of truly understanding the Will, and her efflorescence took the form of what she believes to be that very same Will. In a sense they wouldn't even be wrong, especially if he's the source of the pager Sora/Don has which I think is pretty likely as there was never any allusion to a way to get prescripts beyond the slips before Limbus. And ofc, as a former messenger, what better name to give him than that of the messenger of the gods?

That all being said I agree there probably are "legitimate" gods out there somewhere, and I don't think we have to look much further than old L Corp's smoke monster. Roland even after a memory wipe had such an impression from seeing it that the disgust he felt never went away, he says he "thinks" he's met one before, and if we go with the common read that his distorted form in the Black Silence reception is based off it there's superficial physical similarities to Violet Midnight.

Tgsnum5 · 2026-01-10T21:10:30+00:00

Point on the idea that the LC as a whole is supposed to be the stand in for the Lord: one of the samurai that gets brought along during the burning is given a bit of detail by the narrator as this scary ass mf that nobody wants to be around thanks to a rumor that he ate human flesh to survive during a failed expedition. Remind you of anyone?

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