#But even so if Traumerei is going to die it's going to be the climax to season 3 and HARD earned

[waitingforsecretsouls]

This remains one of my favourite Traumerei moments and overall moves to date and it still makes me mad that despite this very scene I had to endure weeks of Traumerei slander about the existence of said tournament and how stupid Traumerei was for throwing it while the arc was ongoing💀

Traumerei canonically thought it was childish nonsense and immediately concocted a nearly fool-proof murder plot for every single participant other than his intended winners before it could even officially commence and yet still got blamed for SIU's choice to include it as a plot-point in the first place 😭

90% of Traumerei slander seems based on his role in the narrative as a seemingly immovable obstacle (that ultimately will have to be removed nonetheless of course) and the necessary pitfalls that come with it rather than his specific character as demonstrated in the story, and turning said necessary pitfalls into a personal failing of Traumerei's even while Traumerei himself is actively working against them and constantly choosing the most ruthless and direct options possible (as opposed to Gustang, who gets his wins handed to him by necessity of his narrative role, regardless of level of actually demonstrated ingenuity or intelligence, except no one cares about it in his case, and you can quote me on that!).

It's frustrating because despite of this limitation I think SIU is doing a wonderful job of making Traumerei competent and intimidating whenever he's actually motivated to act, in ways that don't even rely on throwing the most shinsu around. Independent from whatever shenangians him and Zahard got up to back in the day, Traumerei started severly from the backfoot against Gustang in their present day conflict, who had millennia to plan and move basically unimpeded in the current matter, all the way back to preserving Enryu's Thorn and the inner Floor of Death to contain it. And despite this, he scores plenty of surprises and small to large scale wins against Gustang (the most lackluster aspect associatable with him are the independent moves and performances of the Branch Heads, whom Traumerei canonically never cared about and considered pathetic, so🤷‍♀️)!

But fandom at large often seems to ignore or downplay that to hell and back to hype Gustang and his nonexistent feats instead.