#'you cheated once you know you're not the strongest you had to cheat to win'

[randomnameless]

Supreme Leader and her relationship to Billy and those icky and evil creatures with pointy ears, imo, can also be tied to Ashnard's so called glorious muhritocracy, on paper, the strong ones rule because they are strong enough not to rely on others?

But we're talking about the same guy who teamed up with Izuka and schemed to take down the Dragon Prince Rajaion, aka, who relied on some weak schmuck to take down a "strong one".

Just like Supreme Leader's Hero Nemesis, who "defeated" a sleeping Sothis - might makes right, even when your "might" is attested by killing a sleeping woman.

As you mentioned, Supreme Leader's entire "people should become independant and stop relying on gods" is hilarious in the context of Tru Piss, because it's only with the Goddess' help that she manages to survive the war and win (at least in FE16).

But I guess "pointy ears" don't count, just like Goldoa's dragons or Laguz in general : "might makes right, but when I talk about might, I talk about mine and yours is ignored if it's stronger than mine, or curbed down through dubious means".

Billy has leadership qualities, but can't be seen outshining Supreme Leader because she has to pretend to be the one in charge - where's the muhrit here? Why is she the leader and Emperor if there is someone more qualified or more competent at leader her army around?

You mentionned Billy's lack of titles/lands/responsabilities, but I will add : Billy, at least in the Emile ending, is the one who fights against TWSTD. Doesn't that warrant them something? No, they will keep on fighting until, well, idk. But they will not become a general, a legend or a hero (at least not in their ending cards on CF). Billy's blade (lolol) became legendary, but not themselves. They're nothing but the "wings" of the Hegemon, when in reality, they were the head, sword and shield.

I remember half-joking during the first years following the release with fans who argued that the Supreme Muhritocracy was the way to go (tm), if it was truly the case, then why Flayn and Seteth cannot rule over humans?

Flayn is, by nature, one of the best healers around, why is she banned from having "power over humans" and becoming, idk, a head nurse or a teacher in white magic? Seteth is the one running Garreg Mach, why shouldn't he be able to run another school/monastery?

Is it because muhrit - an entire subjective concept - is in itself, unfair when we consider that in Fodlan, some beings have more "power" than others? Rhea can jump 10 meters high, when Raphael with training would only be able to jump 3 meters high, who are you going to register to the olympics? Rhea or Raph? Dimitri can lift a cart with his pinky, Caspar needs the help of 5 randos, who will be called to lift a boulder ? Dimitri or Caspar?

It's a never ending circle - you cannot have muhritocracy if people with superpowers exist because they screw the rules by virtue of existing, so you have to exclude them even if, by all means, they have more muhrit than anyone else.

But if you do so, are you really advocating for a muhritocracy? Or are you just a hypocrite?

In a way, Supreme Leader's hatred for Nabateans can be explained by both fantastic racism, but also, the fact that their sheer existence ruins her rhetoric.

If every Nabatean (Nabatean blooded) disappears of Foldan and crusts disappear too, would the issue be solved?

Well, look at real life, muhritocracy, for a variety of reasons (schools, wealth, what to do with the 99% who didn't came first), never worked.

Much like Ashnard and Izuka, Supreme Leader needs "help/support" to bring down the ones who run contrary to her theories - but still preaches it even if she bends it whenever it comes to her.

But, really thinking about it, even by Edelgard's own ideals her rule should be illegitimate.

The whole idea is people need to not rely on others in order to be strong, and that those who are deemed strong should rule. But when you think about it with Edelgard, she does not meet that criteria. She gets support from TWSITD, and therefore aids their experiments as well as knowing what they did in order to weaken the Kingdom and Alliance. She needs the support of the Imperial armies that are not under the direct control of the Emperor, so she promises Count Berglitz control of the Alliance territories for his support. She needs someone like Ferdinand in order to make her ideals work, while also needing someone like Hubert to put down rebellions and any other threats to her regime from the shadows. Hell, she can't even win without Byleth supporting her where she takes credit for their leadership.

Now, people will cite her speech against Rhea as proof she grows beyond this mindset but that's not the case. The Japanese text for her solo ending uses the word independent in the context of people not relying on others, not that she brings them freedom, and even if she did grow out of those ideals that means she started a war and all the stuff before for ideals she abandons therefore calling the necessity of the war into question. She'll state the game's major thesis of working together at the end of Flower, but that goes against her own beliefs so she doesn't act on them.

And it's only in Azure Moon where those beliefs are properly explained, leaving the player ignorant of what she really thinks in Flower.

And even then, the fact is Edelgard only wins with Byleth's support. Byleth, the person who could take down Edelgard after her leadership cripples the army following Gronder with just the Church resistance forces and without the backing of any national army. Snow even makes the case that for all of Edelgard's talk of merit, Fodlan will have a leader based on merit when Byleth defeats her. By supporting Edelgard, you're undermining her very ideals. The principles she wants the world based on, which ironically would mean that Silver Snow is the route where Edelgard's merit is on full display. In the routes where's she's defeated, she falls based on her own merit with no support from the player. Supporting her undermines her cause.

Byleth supposedly has all this merit as a leader, yet Edelgard does not award them with any lands or titles. The only answer I can really think of is... well, Edelgard believes that Nabateans shouldn't have any power or authority over humans. She knows Byleth is of Nabatean descent. Basically, she ignores Byleth's merit and instead focuses on their bloodline. Their heritage. Byleth doesn't get to be a leader in her regime simply because Byleth is a Nabatean and therefore shouldn't have any power according to Edelgard.

Edelgard is racist towards Byleth at the end of Flower, while Hopes makes her admit that her being drawn to Byleth is simply her crest resonating with theirs. Somehow, a worse love story than Twilight.

[duchess-kyuupid]

~The Duchess' Thoughts and Drabbles Pt. 1~ Ft. Malleus

In order to get back into the spirit of writing (as I've had a bad case of writer's block for the past few months), I felt like I should just write some informal drabbles and short scenarios for the time being instead of my usual semi-long-form-formal writing. After all, I've heard of the best ways to cure writers block is to just... write. So here goes!

Imagine Malleus with a s/o who likes to arm wrestle.

[Gn!Reader, romantic Malleus x reader but can be read platonic, jealousy, fluff]

You have to teach him how the game works at first, but he's happy to indulge in your human interests if you ask to arm wrestle with him (agreeing to your condition that no magic is allowed during your match) and at first, you can't even get his arm to budge.

Like, you're trying so hard to get his arm the other way just a little bit, your face going red from the effort of trying to move something with the strength of a dragon.

And well, Malleus thought that the look on your face was just simply adorable, so he tried to mimic the way your arm was shaking to make it seem like he was also struggling against you. Even though he's objectively quite a terrible actor, it fooled you nonetheless, and he slowly allowed your arm to take over his.

You don't notice the satisfied look on his face as he grants you this opportunity, you were just so unbelievably happy when you had actually won. You started dancing around the room in your excitement, and all Malleus could think about was that 'losing' the game was absolutely worth it if he got to see you this side of you.

And he'd continue to indulge you in your arm wrestling games, so he continued to let you win. Of course, this winning streak against literally the strongest mage in possibly all of Twisted Wonderland made your ego inflate like a balloon. So much so that you had dared to challenge Jack to an arm wrestling match. In which he won by an almost embarrassingly large landslide.

Malleus thinks nothing of this at first- you were just playing around with your fellow man much in the same way that the smaller fae might play together in Briar Valley. But over time, he continued to catch wind that you were going to Jack and demanding rematches on a near daily basis, all of which ended up with you losing almost immediately.

Now, Malleus has a lot of patience. But it was starting to run thin with the way that you were spending a considerable amount of time away from him just to go to another man to play a silly little game. Now why in the world would you prioritize hanging out with Jack more than him? He once asked you this question (not exactly with those words), to which you replied that, "Well I mean, I know that I can win against you any time, so I'm widening my horizons and facing difficult challenges! I haven't been able to beat him yet, but when I do, I'll find a new rival to beat!" So in other words, you'd keep coming to back to Malleus instead of Jack if he just won every arm wrestling competition against you? Easy.

And so for the first time, he asks for a rematch, to which you gracefully accepted, confident that you'd easily be able to win against the opponent you've beaten 37 to 0. Unfortunately for you, Malleus was quite serious about winning this time. And every other time that you asked for consecutive rematches.

"You aren't using any magic, right? That's cheating," you claim. He shakes his head and reaffirms that he has never used magic to win against you. "This must be the first time you've had to face against the true strength of a dragon, dear, " He states with a smug smirk on his face. You, with your now severely deflated ego, sigh and officially declare your loss, coming to terms with the fact that Malleus was only going easy on you for those previous 37 times. Now you're faced with an embarrassing ratio of 37 wins to 115 loses.

With that same smugness on his face, he smiles at you and asks innocently, "Now, am I going to be your new challenge to face against from now on?"

Dejected, you sigh to yourself, "I don't think it's possible to win against you when you've got that much raw strength... At least with Jack it actually seems somewhat plausible," and you finish your reply with a small little pout.

Okay, and now you've just straight up confused Malleus at this point. Why were you humans just so weird? He thought at first that the problem was the he didn't give you enough challenge, and now he's too much of one? What do you even like about these challenges where you fail so miserably until you get a even a single victory? What's so entertaining about that? Malleus even gets mildy upset when he comes to the realization that Jack's been quite cruel to you in the sense that he never lets you win, even though he knows quite well that there was little you could do to get yourself to be able to physically overpower someone like Jack (or even Ruggie, to be honest).

Doesn't he know that your little victory dance is the single most cutest thing in this world? That your smile could singlehandedly cure any ailment? That the look of pure joy on your face after a victory hard-earned could even stop world wars? How could Jack be so cruel as to deny you any semblance of that happiness that solves world hunger and prevents global warming? What a foolish beastman, to not be able to recognize such things, Malleus thinks.

[immortalross]

I’m going to share my way of doing FB ads (which is the opposite of what many of you either do or were taught). While my way is NOT the only way, I find it easier than the ways most gurus recommend. It’s simply my preference and has worked well for the clients I’ve worked with. 1. Implement the FB pixel yesterday. This is super important because it allows you to build some audiences that give you an upper hand. 2. Identify (to FB) a retargeting audience and as many conversion events as you have in your funnel. If you’re not techy enough to do it, hire someone. It’s that important. 3. I see so many advertisers trying to sell their courses or front ends in ads. Have you tried selling the click instead? You don’t want to have to redesign your funnels, but doesn’t it make more sense to sell the click than to try to sell the entire product in an ad? What wins in 95% of my tests is to convince them to click in the ad and let the sales page or landing page do its job. 4. You absolutely must have a one to two sentence hook. For the best performance, it should not be taken from the next page, but lead into whatever copy you have on the next page. Generally, redundancy (repeating yourself) will reduce conversions. Saying something similar in a different way will generally boost them. 5. Most ads aren’t taking advantage of videos or their power. While your target is scrolling, you know you need to grab their attention. Do you think the movement in a video will catch their eye better than most images? In 95% of my tests, it does. I use Viddyoze, Breakout Clips, Powtoon, and inVideo to make most ads. If longer stuff is required, I edit in Screenflow and usually combine at least 2 of the tools I mentioned. I’ll add some examples in the comments. My way almost always works better than any other I’ve tested. 6. I see many of you using bold or other “attention getters” in your posts here (the one I'm using in this post is fine because it's provided by FB. If you're using outside tools, that causes the problem I'm describing...). Did you know they don’t work on Android phones (which is roughly a third of mobile users)? I see them in ads, too. In fact, I used to use them. Don’t. While you should test everything, having a third of mobile users see “???????” instead of your strongest words feels like a huge mistake. An alternative would be to target Android users separately. Emojis work and are fine to use. 7. Most beginner advertisers stack a bunch of interests first to create an “audience” to target. This is what most FB ad gurus teach. This is also really bad form. Instead, test individual audiences (the larger the better) to make sure they have your prospects in them. Once they’re proven, then you can add them into a larger group for targeting. If you don’t prove their value before adding them to a group of interests, you will be adding people you shouldn’t be targeting at all. Plus, if the big, combined audience does convert, you have no way of knowing which interest the target came from. 8. Use dynamic ads and include a wide variety of pieces to test (you can test as many as 10 text boxes, media (video or image), description, and headline options - use as many as you can). This is multivariate testing done with the help of FB and it does a good job of narrowing what produces results quickly. If you have 8 videos that aren’t working well, they’ll only show the 2 that are. This tells you what messaging and media to focus on with your ads. Most importantly, it allows you to spend less and get more testing done faster. 9. Even if you have to wait a few weeks to let the audience build up, use a retargeting audience to test your ads!!! Why? You don’t have to worry about whether your target is a good one. They’ve already proven they are by visiting your website. 10. If you have zero traffic to start, choose some obvious interests and stack them to test your ads. THEN, switch to testing your interests via a retargeting audience. THEN, take the winning ad and start testing interests. If you test too many things at once, you can’t trust your results. 11. Create at least 2 different lookalike audiences. One based upon your retargeting. Another based on your most important conversion event (lead, front end sale, back end sale, etc…). Test and see which performs better. Feel free to test other lookalike options. 12. Scale slowly and carefully. Most ad networks will be happy to take your money and flush your budget down the toilet. My general strategy is to double my budget every few days once I see that my numbers are where I want them to be (CTR .5 - 5%, CPC $.10 - $3, CPL $1 - $15). Know your numbers because you need to know what you can afford to pay. I have a client that has never paid less than $40 per lead, but is sitting at 12X ad spend over the last 3 years. BONUS - While this isn’t part of my strategy, it’s probably the most important thing I can share with you: Trust the pixel. Years ago, we had access to targeting options that made targeting so easy that it was almost cheating. After getting in trouble for being too invasive, FB had to remove most of the crazy ones. Where did they go? Hidden in the FB AI. Their pixel can still use those kind of options to target the right people for us. All we have to do is make sure we feed the pixel with the right leads and sales. I feel like the biggest mistake you can make is not to advertise, even if it’s a $5 per day retargeting campaign. As promised, I’ll post some video examples and I’m happy to answer any questions or clarify anything you find confusing.

I’m going to share my way of doing FB ads (which is the opposite of what many of you either do or were taught). While my way is NOT the only way, I find it easier than the ways most gurus recommend. It’s simply my preference and has worked well for the clients I’ve worked with. 1. Implement the FB pixel yesterday. This is super important because it allows you to build some audiences that give you an upper hand. 2. Identify (to FB) a retargeting audience and as many conversion events as you have in your funnel. If you’re not techy enough to do it, hire someone. It’s that important. 3. I see so many advertisers trying to sell their courses or front ends in ads. Have you tried selling the click instead? You don’t want to have to redesign your funnels, but doesn’t it make more sense to sell the click than to try to sell the entire product in an ad? What wins in 95% of my tests is to convince them to click in the ad and let the sales page or landing page do its job. 4. You absolutely must have a one to two sentence hook. For the best performance, it should not be taken from the next page, but lead into whatever copy you have on the next page. Generally, redundancy (repeating yourself) will reduce conversions. Saying something similar in a different way will generally boost them. 5. Most ads aren’t taking advantage of videos or their power. While your target is scrolling, you know you need to grab their attention. Do you think the movement in a video will catch their eye better than most images? In 95% of my tests, it does. I use Viddyoze, Breakout Clips, Powtoon, and inVideo to make most ads. If longer stuff is required, I edit in Screenflow and usually combine at least 2 of the tools I mentioned. I’ll add some examples in the comments. My way almost always works better than any other I’ve tested. 6. I see many of you using bold or other “attention getters” in your posts here (the one I'm using in this post is fine because it's provided by FB. If you're using outside tools, that causes the problem I'm describing...). Did you know they don’t work on Android phones (which is roughly a third of mobile users)? I see them in ads, too. In fact, I used to use them. Don’t. While you should test everything, having a third of mobile users see “???????” instead of your strongest words feels like a huge mistake. An alternative would be to target Android users separately. Emojis work and are fine to use. 7. Most beginner advertisers stack a bunch of interests first to create an “audience” to target. This is what most FB ad gurus teach. This is also really bad form. Instead, test individual audiences (the larger the better) to make sure they have your prospects in them. Once they’re proven, then you can add them into a larger group for targeting. If you don’t prove their value before adding them to a group of interests, you will be adding people you shouldn’t be targeting at all. Plus, if the big, combined audience does convert, you have no way of knowing which interest the target came from. 8. Use dynamic ads and include a wide variety of pieces to test (you can test as many as 10 text boxes, media (video or image), description, and headline options - use as many as you can). This is multivariate testing done with the help of FB and it does a good job of narrowing what produces results quickly. If you have 8 videos that aren’t working well, they’ll only show the 2 that are. This tells you what messaging and media to focus on with your ads. Most importantly, it allows you to spend less and get more testing done faster. 9. Even if you have to wait a few weeks to let the audience build up, use a retargeting audience to test your ads!!! Why? You don’t have to worry about whether your target is a good one. They’ve already proven they are by visiting your website. 10. If you have zero traffic to start, choose some obvious interests and stack them to test your ads. THEN, switch to testing your interests via a retargeting audience. THEN, take the winning ad and start testing interests. If you test too many things at once, you can’t trust your results. 11. Create at least 2 different lookalike audiences. One based upon your retargeting. Another based on your most important conversion event (lead, front end sale, back end sale, etc…). Test and see which performs better. Feel free to test other lookalike options. 12. Scale slowly and carefully. Most ad networks will be happy to take your money and flush your budget down the toilet. My general strategy is to double my budget every few days once I see that my numbers are where I want them to be (CTR .5 - 5%, CPC $.10 - $3, CPL $1 - $15). Know your numbers because you need to know what you can afford to pay. I have a client that has never paid less than $40 per lead, but is sitting at 12X ad spend over the last 3 years. BONUS - While this isn’t part of my strategy, it’s probably the most important thing I can share with you: Trust the pixel. Years ago, we had access to targeting options that made targeting so easy that it was almost cheating. After getting in trouble for being too invasive, FB had to remove most of the crazy ones. Where did they go? Hidden in the FB AI. Their pixel can still use those kind of options to target the right people for us. All we have to do is make sure we feed the pixel with the right leads and sales. I feel like the biggest mistake you can make is not to advertise, even if it’s a $5 per day retargeting campaign. As promised, I’ll post some video examples and I’m happy to answer any questions or clarify anything you find confusing. 2021-05-11T15:27:50.000Z