No new threads since my last one? Really?

Anyway, I started watching My Hero Academia recently, and most of the way through season one I realized that this series would be perfect for a rationalist remake. For those not familiar with it, the show is about a world where 80% of the population has a quirk, i.e. superpower, and superheroes are officially sanctioned government workers with specialized combat and disaster training. The story follows Izuku Midoriya, a boy born quirkless whose biggest dream is to be like his personal role model, the #1 hero All Might, and his journey through the superhero training program.

Now, a story about a kid without powers trying to surpass everyone else who has them is deeply compelling, especially since he is the first in his world to try and we are familiar with guys like Batman. However, the story has one major stumbling block that leaves a gaping hole in the premise. In the second episode, Izuku manages to impress All Might with his courage, and the hero offers to train him to make him strong enough to inherit his power, the quirk One For All. Inheriting a quirk is something that no one in universe has ever heard of because it's a closely guarded secret, and of course Izuku accepts. Now the kid has an extremely powerful quirk, but one he can only barely control and that shattered every bone in his right arm and both his legs the first time he used it.

While this may sound like a cop-out on the premise (it is) and worth dropping the show entirely, once I got deeper into the series (and had perused a few fanfics for context) I understood why it happened: hero training is extremely strict, with Izuku's first teacher being willing to flunk entire classes if he thinks they won't make the cut. The author probably couldn't think of any way for Izuku to achieve his dream without the quirk, a pattern that continues into the fanfiction. (Edit: This is completely wrong. The author's original pitch was for a quirkless protagonist, and One For All was added at the suggestion of an editor. That explains why it seems so out of place and jars the early tone so badly.) Even the story I read where he doesn't get a quirk gave him unrealistically good sword skills that acted as a substitute, effectively changing nothing.

This is where rationality comes in. Rational training, especially at such a young age, with Izuku's anime protagonist levels of determination and a ten month time skip between the first time we meet him and the entry into Hero training program, would allow the story to walk the fine line between the main character not being strong enough to succeed and abandoning the premise that makes it so compelling. On top of that, the canon Izuku already spends his spare time studying quirks and how people use them, then demonstrated that he can turn that knowledge against his opponents on the fly. This is in addition to his highly creative problem solving, both traits that Rationalism would make far stronger. Rational thought being different enough from normal thought to almost be a quirk in its own right is just a bonus.

Also, the society he lives in seems to think quirks are everything, and other natural talents like intelligence and innovation have fallen to the wayside. This provides a second thread to the plot where Izuku slowly begins to realize that humanity's quirks are causing them to stagnate, and that he'll become the world's greatest hero not in spite of being quirkless, but because of it. This is an opinion he will keep to himself, and part of his struggle as a hero will be to keep his heroic empathy in a world where more and more he recognizes the stupidity around him for what it is.

All it takes to get the ball rolling is four simple changes in the first three episodes:
1. All Might runs off before Izuku finds out how the quirk One For All Works.
2. In the slime villain battle, his brain, under the influence of puberty, really clicks on for the first time, and he taunts the villain into smashing a fire hydrant open before using a trash can lid to direct the flow and soak him, causing him to dissolve and be easy to capture. There's another hero on the scene that has fire hoses for arms, and Izuku can get his revelation by asking why that guy didn't do it instead while he's getting chewed out afterword.
3. Izuku's father is not present or mentioned in canon, so after Izuku comes home soaked and depressed his mother gives him an early birthday present: his father's copy of Rationality: From A.I. to Zombies, meant to be inherited on his son's 14th birthday to help him into adulthood. Inside, he finds a letter detailing how this book will make him better at anything he wants to do, including herowork, and an apology for not being there for him.
4. Izuku spends the next ten months training his mind in addition to his body, and by the time he's ready for the written and practical hero exams he's an apprentice rationalist (which is higher than a novice but lower than a journeyman or master).

Just like that, the entire series realigns for the better. Izuku faces the challenge he should have faced with the tools he needs to overcome it, and has to earn his way up from the bottom without All Might swooping in like a Fairy Godmother, making him more relatable and his struggles more meaningful. If I'm still into this show in about a month I might write this myself, but until then feel free to get typing or leave some suggestions below.

You are right of course, I was much more engaged when I thought All Might was lying when he said he could transfer his power. But like Batman Izuku would need to be rich in order to really compete. You need to have some resource base to manipulate and leverage or it doesnt matter how !rational the character is, they are going to get crushed. It is already somewhat clever in showing Izuku figuring out how to use an almost unusable power, so I will give it credit for that.

I would happily read an r!fic with a baseline Izuku though. I think it would be really hard to write without being contrived, but it could be great.

5931602

I would happily read an r!fic with a baseline Izuku though. I think it would be really hard to write without being contrived, but it could be great.

This is the original show's problem in a nutshell: the line you need to walk is narrow to the point of vanishing, and the creator probably couldn't see it at all. Any attempt made would have to be carefully mapped out from start to finish.

Well, I was thinking that since the school provides them with costumes and specialized gear, Izuku could request a bunch of useful gadgets, including flashbang grenades, a gas mask to paint his grin on, a grappling hook, plus some actual weapons that would give him an edge. He could get some more leverage out of constantly being underestimated, but I think his best chance is if he can somehow impress Eraser Head with his mind and gain his favor. That guy's quirk brings others down to his level instead of elating him to theirs, so he'd know how to fight like a quirkless, and might be willing to teach anyone who could gain his interest.

5931252 Sounds good to me! A writer should be able to make that work. I have a related script project myself--not My Hero Academia related, but about a kid who's the only one without powers. You might want to read the first 30 chapters or so of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality if you haven't; you can see in there that Harry could have taken the wizarding world over without using magic.

5931252
I think you got a few facts wrong there:
1) According to the pedriatician, being powerless is extremely rare, not 20% uncommon. Rare to the degree of rarity as IRL we see about cleft lip or so. Or at least rare enough that he's seen like a freak at school.
2) There isn't really a time skip between meeting All Mighty and the exam. While abbreviated, we do see how he trains.
3) His society doesn't really give me the idea of being power centrered. It may give such an impression due to the series focusing on him and him being totally fixated on heroes and powers, but the society itself is just Japan: people go to the office and the market and school, and the piss-poor state of mental healthcare has the place full of barely restrained psychos. The only real difference is that criminals are more dangerous than normal, and that law enforcement dresses up as clowns.

Other than that, your idea is awesome: No powers at all except for being smart. Although you would then need to reformat the entrance exam: have him be admitted by his through-the-roof written test score, perhaps helped with him performing a few minor rescues during the practical. And then, once admitted, the creepy instructor should have been carefully briefed that Midoriya is to be trained toward high command, thus cannot be failed for underperforming on strictly physical tasks. And of course, for him to be fitted with power armour rather than the mostly decorative costumes of his teammates.

5945196 1. They recite the 80% thing as part of the opening and theme song of every season two episode (go look it up if you don't believe me), so if that's not right it's a plot hole in the story, not a hole in my knowledge.

2. A montage, then. A large amount of time passes very quickly with the viewer only seeing a few snippets of it. The overall affect on the story would not shift.

3. During the slime villain attack a whole bunch of heroes were on site, but didn't fight directly because they didn't think their quirks would help, even though blasting the guy with a fire hose would probably have been quite effective. That suggests, if not a focus, then a narrowing of the mind, that having a quirk reduces your need for creative thinking. Izuku could easily exploit that.

As for the exam, while he would get a better score on the written portion, his real trick will be figuring out that the stated rules don't actually judge how good you are at being a hero, deducing that there's another scoring system, and scoring rescue points by distracting the villains so that the other heroes can easily take them out. That, and maybe a bit of Shadow of the Colossus style parkour where he shoves a grenade (or other weapon) into the wires at the base of the zero point villain's skull and takes it out that way.

The High Command idea was something I hadn't considered, but the bottom of the class flunk is a good, grounded, difficult challenge, and a real test for Izuku's wit. My current solution was that Eraser Head had figured out that Izuku solved the entrance exam, which sufficiently impressed him that he asked Izuku to see him after class. There, he would give Izuku one chance to convince him that he should stay. This won't be easy, since the guy is jaded, but there Izuku can drop the revelation that not having a quirk has made him more creative and more resourceful than anyone else in the class, and that he'll become a great hero because he's quirkless and has to use his mind. He could also mention the villain he'd already beaten, an impressive feat even for someone gifted with a powerful quirk.

Power armor is just a good idea, though it might not be a full suit depending on whether Izuku's style favors strength, speed, or mobility. Him not having One for All is the whole point of this, and part of being rational is recognizing that maybe you're not suited to using brute strength like All Might does.

The real key here, however, is that canon Izuku is rational. Unlike in HPMOR, his personality is already aligned with a rational mindset and doesn't need to be changed in the slightest for the story to work. He's not trained, but that's an easy fix in comparison.

5933243 What do you think introduced me to rationalism in the first place?

5945226
1. Well, I've only seen the first season. If they raised the percentage to 20%, it changes things a bit, although it doesn't really affect the universe.

3. As to the narrow-mindedness, I see that as a current Japanese psycho-sociological feature rather than a future development. The Japanese are very much programmed for conformity and complacency, as their absolutely overcrowded cities cannot accommodate the expression of creativity. Him and his explosive-skinned "friend" are outliers. The fireman, on the other hand, couldn't truly conceptualize doing something other than putting out fires or working crowd control. We see the same with the black hole lady, who stayed put rather than even tried to run forward toward the enemy she was supposedly trying to defeat. And never mind the utter bullshit that was All Mighty as a character: presenting himself as larger than life, and absolutely always smiling with absolute confidence. A character like that is either setting himself up for failure, or setting himself as the target for every world class villain coming out of Japan!

As for the exam, while he would get a better score on the written portion, his real trick will be figuring out that the stated rules don't actually judge how good you are at being a hero, deducing that there's another scoring system, and scoring rescue points by distracting the villains so that the other heroes can easily take them out.

Something else I just thought about could be that the exam isn't in two parts, but in three. First part, of course, would be a written examination. Second part would be a fifteen-minute-long verbal questionnaire, administered by a panel of three judges. Third part, of course, would be the robot hunt. Students are told that the questionnaire isn't important, and it isn't for most, as the school doesn't expect most 15-year-olds to understand tactics beyond knowing how to play chess. As is, though, Midoriya flies through it and is offered the thirty-minute intermediate exam, which he aces, too. He is then offered the advanced exam, which requires arrangements for a small amphitheater and for Nezumi-sensei, the UA headmaster, to preside the 6 judge panel, while every available teacher sits and witnesses. At the end of this exam, he is told to go and rest for his practical the next day. He is unconcerned, though, as he is very much conscious that if the second exam was already optional, then it is extremely rare for an applicant to be examined by the headmaster. furthermore, he also thinks about how UA does indeed graduate many heroes that have utility-oriented rather than combat-oriented powers, so he consciously runs into the practical without thinking about making a single combat point. He does rescues the girl, just without harming the zeroth robot.
Does it sound good that once he has the girl, and she is totally dazed, he drags he not away from the zeroth, but into the gap between the ground and the robot?

That, and maybe a bit of Shadow of the Colossus style parkour where he shoves a grenade (or other weapon) into the wires at the base of the zero point villain's skull and takes it out that way.

Well, I've never watched Shadow of the Colossus, but I am rather skeptical about high-level acrobatics on a moving object, and especially one that doesn't actually have handholds. If we want to paint Midoriya as a rationalist, he wouldn't take the risk of falling of a thirty-meter-tall robot for what he rationally knows to be a safe examination.

Following my idea, Eraser Head knows that Midoriya would flunk a purely physical examination against mutants, so rather than be cruel, includes one or two intellectual exercises. How does it sound playing five chess games at once?

Power armor is just a good idea, though it might not be a full suit depending on whether Izuku's style favors strength, speed, or mobility. Him not having One for All is the whole point of this, and part of being rational is recognizing that maybe you're not suited to using brute strength like All Might does.

In all honesty, I'm thinking a little "Ender's Game" here, so Nezumi-sensei kind of sponsors Midoriya toward high command, and noticing that Midoriya didn't submit a design for a supersuit, calls him in to be fitted for power-armor. Of course, Nezumi wants him in a Master-Chief armor, meant to survive anything, but Midoriya argues back that if he wants to be an effective commander, he needs speed rather than sheer armor. How does it sound to you if Midoriya ends up with kevlar clothing and a minimalist exoskeleton, one that gives him mobility rather than any real superhuman attributes?
So, from Nezumi's proposal of this:
Midoriya argues down to this:

And perhaps Nezumi even embraces the concept of mobility, and when Midoriya receives his suit, it turn out to include wheels on his knees, hips and shoulders, so Midoriya can now lay down and roll out.

The real key here, however, is that canon Izuku is rational. Unlike in HPMOR, his personality is already aligned with a rational mindset and doesn't need to be changed in the slightest for the story to work. He's not trained, but that's an easy fix in comparison.

Considering that Nezumi is a rat, and Midoriya is a flake of a boy (even after being trained by All Mighty), I could easily imagine that he will see Midoriya trained to be slippery and very, very mobile.

5945543 3. I'm just going to steal that, it'll mix things up.

Shadow of the Colossus is a video game for the PS2 that involves jumping onto, climbing, and then killing sixteen titans scattered over a vast, deary landscape. Izuku, if he followed that, would use a grappling hook to get up and coordinate with Tsuyu or Ochako to get back down again.

As far as I can tell, while theoretically all the heroes answer to someone else, practically they seem to act like a bunch of competing freelancers. If there is a high command it doesn't have much authority, or only subtly uses its power.

They chess idea makes sense, but as Japanese they'd play Go instead, and only one game at a time. Izuku is a rationalist, not a super genius, and I'm not trying to make his quirk enhanced intelligence. That just defeats the purpose. Still, if Izuku easily beat everyone else that'd get him off the bottom of the list.

As for the power armor, miss far-sight could be commissioned to make it for him, and give him a jetpack too. He'd be like one of those omnidirectional RC drones.

I'm predicting he'll face some prejudice for not having a quirk, though, so he won't get as much help as we might like to give him.

5945698

I'm just going to steal that, it'll mix things up.

Take it all if you want. You wouldn't be here if you weren't asking for ideas, and I wouldn't be giving them if I didn't want to see them used.

As far as I can tell, while theoretically all the heroes answer to someone else, practically they seem to act like a bunch of competing freelancers. If there is a high command it doesn't have much authority, or only subtly uses its power.

(A) Better try the comparison with the San Francisco Police Department: each precinct is privately owned, yet is funded through tax money; each of its cops must be certified through police academy; answers to a central command and a central 911 dispatch; and can call for larger backup or be called to larger events. Basically, you have police, except that each police chief happens to own the building he sits in.
(B) The activity of superheroes, as far as the Midoriya is concerned, happens to centre on local rescue and law enforcement. Can we trust Midoriya to have seen beyond the activities where All Mighty was engaged? How about SWAT teams? How about city or state police command centres? How about disaster relief agencies? How about national/federal police? How about the various military branches? How about militarized police services, such as Coast Guard and Secret Service? All of them require, or are, high command.

They chess idea makes sense, but as Japanese they'd play Go instead, and only one game at a time. Izuku is a rationalist, not a super genius, and I'm not trying to make his quirk enhanced intelligence. That just defeats the purpose. Still, if Izuku easily beat everyone else that'd get him off the bottom of the list.

(A) The Japanese equivalent would be shogi, Shoji is chess, except that the board is all-white, the pieces are all white, and that the pieces move differently. I would still suggest to go with chess simply due to being harder to cheat than shogi, although I guess it would be the same with Go.
(B) The idea of playing several games at once isn't so much an exercise of superior intellect, but of mental flexibility and fast analysis, plus a little of memory. Furthermore, consider that it wouldn't be Midoriya alone who would be playing 5 games at once, but also his five opponents.

As to specifics, I would suggest that the teacher says that this last exercise is optional, and then only six students step forward: Midoriya, the eventual class representative, Ochako, Tsuyu, somebody at random, and finally the explosive pseudo-friend steps in at the last second because he doesn't want Midoriya to be better than him at anything. Eraser Head then picks up the remaining class to sit as judges around the fifteen boards, to make sure that nobody cheats. The way I see it going is that Firebrand is casually beaten all around, Ochako loses four games but ends up cheerful, and Midoriya only loses against the surprisingly good Tsuyu.

By the way: is it wrong that I found Tsuyu to be adorable?

He'd be like one of those omnidirectional RC drones.

A multi-copter flightpack? Interesting!

I'm predicting he'll face some prejudice for not having a quirk, though, so he won't get as much help as we might like to give him.

If the quirkless were a vanishing small minority, yes. On the other hand, if the population is 20% quirkless and he's the very first quirkless to enter the U Academia, then he is an instant celebrity, and might even get invisible backing from quirkless politicians and business leaders who also dreamed to become heroes, and were forced into business school due to prejudice. Midoriya will become the Robin to a bazillion anonymous Batmen.
Furthermore, consider the headmaster: a rat the size of a medium dog. If anything, Nezumi-sensei will likely identify with the new underdog and will subtly cover his back.

5945825 (A) That would seem reasonable, except, (B) There are a few scenes in season two that showcase a couple of mid-level heroes (some of the guys we've seen around the city before) backstage at the roaring sports festival the season is built around. These heroes are concerned with their popularity, staying relevant, and while on duty as extra security don't mention their bosses or any other kind of higher authority that might be leaning on them to do well. Izuku isn't even aware of them, much less present, so it's unlikely that any filter of his clouds their actions. That said, there are superhero organizations that scout the games for promising recruits and new sidekicks as internships, but not every hero joins one. All Might isn't a member of any organization, after all.

The specifics sound good, and I guess five games each makes sense if you're playing against all the other players at once. Izuku could come out on top by winning four games out of five, with Tsuyu only beating him because she lost interest in the other games after realizing he was really good and giving him her full attention. That could spark a friendship between them when she asks to play again to see how he is when he's not distracted.

Tsuyu is a prime shipping candidate and also my favorite, so you're not alone here.

We could have it both ways. On one side he's a celebrity to the quirkless, while on the other those who have had quirks for a long time look down on him. He could end up at the heart of a growing social tension between the quirked and the quirkless. The occasional scene where he sorts through his fan and hate mail could illustrate this really well.

You should get caught up on the new season so we're on the same page.

What does any of this have to do with ponies and/or friendship being magic?

5945861
This group is about a fanfic called "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality", which has absolutely nothing to do with FiM. And we are talking about adapting the concept to yet another fandom.
So... nothing.

5945840

You should get caught up on the new season so we're on the same page.

I tend to prefer to wait until the series has been finished before watching it, but now I just watched the first six episodes. If you have seen more, please tell me the name of the website.

(A) That would seem reasonable, except, (B) There are a few scenes in season two that showcase a couple of mid-level heroes (some of the guys we've seen around the city before) backstage at the roaring sports festival the season is built around. These heroes are concerned with their popularity, staying relevant, and while on duty as extra security don't mention their bosses or any other kind of higher authority that might be leaning on them to do well.

It is stated in the first season that most of those guys are members of government sponsored hero teams. Besides, their conversations were about the sport's festival, not about their bosses. If anything, on the subject of senior heroes interacting, the only really important thing I got was the firm impression that Endeavour might have been the sponsor behind last season's assassination attempt.

Anyway, the subject of people not using their powers unless they are heroes or villains seems like a huge plot hole in this story. People should be using them in everything from spandex to industry to general utility. Never mind that the military would be downright idiotic to not try and obtain every force multiplier available. And due to Ochako's reverse declaration that for her to use her antigravity in construction she needs to be a licensed hero, it seems that the plot hole does exist.

5946064
This group is about extending the LessWrong website to the MLP fandom. The thread is here because, people are generally free to do as they please on this site and discuss whatever they wish. It would be pointless to try to police the general site expectation of being about ponies and the fandom of ponies.

I question how rational it is to bring this idea, entirely devoid of MLP content/purpose, up for discussion here instead of on LessWrong.com or some other more wide-appealing audience. It would invite less dissonance to promote discussion of ideas about ponies here, and seek the most beneficial forum for non-pony ideas elsewhere.

5946120

I question how rational it is to bring this idea, entirely devoid of MLP content/purpose, up for discussion here instead of on LessWrong.com or some other more wide-appealing audience.

Because lesswrong.com has moved away from fanfiction, while Fimfiction.net remains eminently a fanfiction website?

5946099 Nope, only six are out so far.

You mean a canon plothole right? Yeah, that does seem weird now that you mention it. I'm reminded of ATLA, the original, where bending was only used for warfare and some normal stuff that didn't exist beyond a single city or village. In Korra they fixed that somewhat with lighting benders powering the generators, but still. It could tie into the idea that the world is starting to focus on heroes and villains to detriment of everything else.

The 20% figure seems off too, so maybe it's out of date or fake news and the real number is below 1% and dropping steadily.

Finally, you mentioned that All Might was a mess of a character. Please elaborate, it could make a big difference in Izuku's character arc.

5946120 Because I don't have a LessWrong account, this is the only place on this site where the thread wouldn't be instantly shut down, and the place was pretty much dead anyway. The last new thread was one I created almost exactly one year ago.

5946183

You mean a canon plothole right?

The 20% figure seems off too, so maybe it's out of date or fake news and the real number is below 1% and dropping steadily.

For the phenomenon of both fan and hate mail (and the underlying social tension), you would need a visible figure, yet for him to be seen as a freak in primary school, he would have needed to be the only one in his class. How about something like 2-5%? Should be enough for everybody to know a squib, yet not enough for everybody to have a living squib in their extended family.

Finally, you mentioned that All Might was a mess of a character. Please elaborate, it could make a big difference in Izuku's character arc.

When the person named Toshinori Yagi took the One For All quirk and styled himself as All Mighty, he committed the error of styling himself as absolutely larger than life. As such, he can never appear in public as anything other than absolutely cheerful and as unflappable as a mountain. People would become scandalised if he stopped smiling, let alone did something as human as appear tired. That's why he tries as hard as he can to not let the student body know that the real All Mighty is a stick of a man with a penchant for coughing blood. And Yagi doesn't seem to be smart enough to understand that he's setting Midoriya up for the same nightmare of a life. His only saving throw is having a bulletproof secret identity, but he then had the advantage of having risen from obscurity. Will Midoriya have anonymity coming from the country's most famous academy?

And then, there's the fact that All Mighty can't be a member of a team. This isn't because he is antisocial or something, but a question of public safety: due to being the apex hero, every high level villain will long to bring him down a peg, and failing that, will attack him indirectly. And with Yagi not being the sharpest knife in the drawer, I bet he buried several teammates before he understood that people were in danger just by being his known associates.

5945698
Something I just noticed:

Shadow of the Colossus is a video game for the PS2 that involves jumping onto, climbing, and then killing sixteen titans scattered over a vast, deary landscape. Izuku, if he followed that, would use a grappling hook to get up and coordinate with Tsuyu or Ochako to get back down again.

Using One For All, he did know he could face the monster. Without, though... it wouldn't be too logical for a baseline human to attempt getting on the shoulders of a giant combat robot to then... ahem, attempt seeing what could he do to disable it.
Furthermore, if he had a grapple, why not grapple and pull the girl, rather than go for the hare-brained plan? And were did he get a grapple from in the first place? Or the explosive that he would have needed to disable the monster?

5946183
Another plot hole that I'm finding in canon:
It makes no sense for Midoriya to be in last place at Eraser Head's physical test:
- Katsuki happens to have a quirk very useful for general purpose applications, so he would have a generally good performance.
- Iida would dominate the races and the standing jump, and just being tall would put him at an advantage at the tosses, but he would have no special advantage anywhere else.
- Tsuyu would have quite a performance on the 50m sprint and the jumps, but she would likely underperform at the 1500m race.
- Ochako breezed through the tosses, but she has no other advantages.
- Mineta dominated the continuos sideways jump, and his particular quirk should have made him practice his tosses, but he is at an obvious physical disadvantage for everything else.
- Toru is invisible, but otherwise a regular bubbly girl with no real combat advantages.
- Aoyama. Mr Pretty Boy is a one-trick-pony that doesn't sweat unless somebody forces his hand. Expect him to hover near the bottom.
* The rest of the class would be wildcards.
- And finally, Midoriya: while on the negative he has a quirk that he can't use without hurting himself, on the positive he spent the last ten months training like a madman. He's a squib, but he's a squib fresh from Navy SEAL camp. Quirks notwithstanding, I would expect him to be competing for the top place, and quirks accounted, I would expect that, at each and every event, he would be drawing the line between the students who could draw advantage from their quirks and those who couldn't.

5946521 It was just a random cool thought. It doesn't actually have to be part of the story.

5946283 The ratio should be 2.5%, or 1 in 40. That's few enough that Izuku is the only one in his class, but not the only one in the school.

As for All Might, well you have a point. I'm thinking the culmination of Izuku's character arc here will be that All Might chooses him to inherit One for All, but Izuku, having realized his own strength, turns him down. He doesn't need it, and knows it. This could be part of his reasoning for doing so.

5947650 Now that is an excellent point. Rational! Izuku wouldn't be as strong as his canon self, but he'd probably be solidly in the middle of the pack. In fact, that solves the problem then and there. I'll still add the Go games just because it sounds fun and I like Tsuyu, but Izuku worrying over nothing will show he still has a long way to go, or that he successfully managed to undershoot reality for once.

5947672

Well, I think we only need to discuss two more events pertaining the first season: All Mighty's mock nuke hunt, and the fight against the League.

For the first one, All Mighty is adviced that Midoriya is one of only three or four students in Command Path in all of the school, and the first firsty to be admitted in a good decade. He is then advised to conduct the exercise in largish squads, and to tell Midoriya that he is not allowed to enter the building until his squad has located the nuke if he's playing hero, or cannot leave the nuke if he's playing villain.
One way or another, the exercise gets two results: it is revealed to the group at large that he isn't on the Hero Path, and he gains the respect of Iida, Momo and Shoto.

As to the League invasion, I would advise he gets an injured Shoto or an injured Momo in addition to Tsuyu and Mineta. First of all, he asks Mineta to glue the wound closed. Second, if he gets the diminished Momo, he asks her for a depth charge and a small flight pack, and they repeat the feat from canon. If he gets the concussed Shoto, he stares at Mineta's sticky grapes, then asks Tsuyu to climb on his back and asks Shoto to simply reduce the ship's temperature as much as possible. He and Mineta then start loudly baiting the villains, and the wet villains decide to jump on en masse and end up contact-frozen to the metallic surfaces (like a kid getting his tongue glued to a metallic pole), and Mineta and Tsuyu can then finish them off between enough grapes and hallucinogenic spit. Shoto then creates an ice raft, Tsuyu pushes the raft while Midoriya helps her to avoid touching it directly, and the squad moves to shore.
The following fight then goes much more poorly for All Mighty, and he offers Midoriya his quirk from a hospital bed.

Another detail to consider is Midoriya's armour.
From the second season, we learned that there are several Paths at the school: Hero, Support, General Education and Business. Of all of these, only Support Path was allowed to carry gadgets through the Sports' Festival (provided they were made by the user). I say we state that those on Command Path can wear power armour at any time they could wear their PE uniforms.

Furthermore, what would be the differences between Hero and Command Path?
Other than the power armour allowance, and getting a bye for a couple classroom subjects (Basic Tactics, Basic Strategy), I'd imagine something like two three-hour sessions a week, once being a seminar being imparted by the headmaster himself, the other being a simulated battle between commanders, Ender's Game style.
I don't know if you've read "Ender's Game", but in the book, after being graduated from Battle School and into Command School, he is first allowed to learn to directly control a single fighter (space fighter "jet"), then command it, then command a fighter squad, then a destroyer, then a carrier and its entire flight of fighters, then a battleship, and finally entire armadas. Thing is, his controls reduce progressively, first from the full controls of the fighter, to end up with nothing but a microphone diadem.
Adapted to My Hero Academia, Flake Boy would likely have a commander experience of sitting in a command station and looking at an array of monitors with helmet cam feeds, and this being the 23th century, a real-time holographic map. And with Midoriya not being a freaking god, he doesn't get to win at all for the first few weeks/months. And just to spice things up, on his simulations he gets computer generated avatars fo his own classmates, programmed by the school with their real powers and psych profiles, and he quickly gets to understand that his adored Kacchan is nothing but a loose canon. I could even envision a scene where he gets to cry on his pillow after a simulation where he finally learned how to use Kacchan in battle: let him charge the enemy and trip the enemy's traps and ambushes, then let the rest of his squad roll in and perform the mission objectives while a medic scrapes Kacchan off the floor.

5948044 Why the focus on having Izuku follow a unique path? You've provided some interesting stuff, but I don't see why he has to not go through the same protocols as everyone else. In fact, putting him on a special path seems to fly against the story's intended goals. Izuku is supposed to use rational thinking to become the greatest hero without a quirk and without special consideration. That is what makes the story an interesting read. Putting him on this non-canon Command Path violates that second tenant, and diminishes his struggle.

Other than that, this all looks pretty good, and I've read Ender's Game at least twice, and Ender's Shadow so many times I wore out the book I was using.

5948109

Why the focus on having Izuku follow a unique path? You've provided some interesting stuff, but I don't see why he has to not go through the same protocols as everyone else. In fact, putting him on a special path seems to fly against the story's intended goals. Izuku is supposed to use rational thinking to become the greatest hero without a quirk and without special consideration.

Thing is:

A) You and I have already proven, through syllogism, that there is a need for command education, and thus somebody must be giving it, and somebody must be receiving it.

B) IRL, there might be hundreds, or even thousands of subordinates to a CO (commanding officer), and yet not every West Point graduate actually makes general, and not every USNA graduate makes admiral, so one officer trainee out of a generation of 40 soldiers seems quite reasonable. Even a little low.

C) Isn't Midoriya too young to be starting officer's training? First, everybody around him is his own age and training to become government-sponsored mercenaries. Second, IRL, JROTC (in the USA) recruits as young as 14. And never mind the history of the Boy Scouts...

D) the very fact that UA has four departments (heroes, support, gen ed and business) means that everybody who gets into the hero program is already receiving an especial consideration above the other programs (except business), and the sheer exclusiveness of UA means that Gen Ed students are already a mile above the general population.

E) We see that the entrance exam is ultimately decided by a panel of judges. Out of the entire population of Japan, only 40 people per year get to try being trained here to be heroes. It is therefore absolutely impossible to get into the hero program unless 1. you were very effective in the combat trial, 2. you seriously impressed the panel of judges otherwise or 3. you had one heck of a patron vouching for your potential. Midoriya, without All Mighty and without a quirk, only fits the possibility of impressing the judges with his intelligence, especially when he won't try a suicidal gamble to save Ochako from the zeroth robot. And as the panel of judges would most likely discriminate the Quirkless into Gen Ed or Support, he would absolutely depend on some other factor sponsoring not into, but above the hero program.
E.1) Due to admissions being filtered through a panel of judges, I seriously doubt Eraser Head would have had the authority to directly expel students. This being regardless of what canon says.

F) While not universal, it is very common for students around the world to receive special dispensations to go to a special class, or for the group to be broken up to go to special courses. And Japan does have the tradition of the cram school. Even in México, I didn't go to music class in middle school due to having tested out (and into the school's choir).

That is what makes the story an interesting read. Putting him on this non-canon Command Path violates that second tenant, and diminishes his struggle.

I don't think his struggles would be diminished, at all. His special consideration of the exoskeleton will rub some of his fellows the wrong way; having less classes with them will impair (to a degree) his socialisation; and his special classes will add to his work load. And never mind the stress of being in a class/seminar usually meant for older students, so he will have to do or die rather than be able to have the foundational studies for these advanced classes.

5948774 How about this: The Command Path is like an Honors College: Izuku is still getting the standard hero course, only with extra work and harder classes. We make it clear that he's still in the hero course, and that Command is not a separate entity like the support path is. In that case, Izuku shouldn't be the only one in his class with the extra load. Iida should be right beside him as the born leader, Tsuyu as miss unflappable, and maybe one or two others whose personalities are suited to it. Kacchan will not be part of it despite trying to get in as he is completely unsuited for it, and that will feed into his growing anger.

The trick is that it has to not feel like Izuku is getting special treatment because he's the main character. That's what the original series messed up, which is why we have to work so hard to avoid it. If we fall into the same trap as everyone else, both canon and fanon, and give him special treatment, then this story might as well not exist.

5948804

How about this: The Command Path is like an Honors College: Izuku is still getting the standard hero course, only with extra work and harder classes. We make it clear that he's still in the hero course, and that Command is not a separate entity like the support path is. In that case, Izuku shouldn't be the only one in his class with the extra load. Iida should be right beside him as the born leader, Tsuyu as miss unflappable, and maybe one or two others whose personalities are suited to it. Kacchan will not be part of it despite trying to get in as he is completely unsuited for it, and that will feed into his growing anger.

Your option seems good to me. Say that UA is so exclusive not only because its top-notch hero program, but also because it is like one of five schools in all of Japan that offer the Advance Placement Command Optative.

Still, I just thought of how to have absolutely nobody get extra workload: In my middle school, I had two classes that disintegrated my group and mixed it with every other group in my same grade: Foreign Language (English) and Workshop. For English, it was because not everybody had the same level, and for workshop because not everybody had the same interests (not that I actually wanted to learn three years of Bookbinding). Applied to Boku No Hero Academia, say that the class is broken up for two subjects: Battle Theory, and Physical Aptitude. Physical Aptitude would be PE, but the groups would be broken up around people's Quirks, so the superstrong train together, the superfast race each others, those who can shoot or toss stuff play together, and those whose powers don't modify their physical performance (like Tooru and Midoriya) can have a normal PE class. For Battle Theory, on the other hand, I would like to see something between three and six levels. Say: Basic Tactics, Basic Strategy, Intermediate Battle 1, Intermediate Battle 2, Command 1, and Command 2. Firecracker feels humiliated because he's almost alone in Basic Tactics (because he was regarded as a one trick pony); most of the group get split between Basic Strategy and Intermediate 1, Tsuyu, Iida, Ochako, Momo and Shota went up to Intermediate 2, and Midoriya is the only one that makes it into Command 1. Say that the criteria for these groups was the questionnaire exam: failing the first interview gets you into Basic 1 or 2, and acing it gets you into Intermediate 1; passing the second interview gets you into Intermediate 2, and just being invited to the third interview is already qualification for getting into Command 1. Unfortunately, Midoriya barely held his own in the third interview, so he didn't either get into Command 2 or tested out.
As he gets to the classroom, he's surprised to find it empty. A minute later, an aide comes in and tells him that his class has been relocated to Holography Lab 3 on the third floor. The headmaster greets him there, and tells him that, while he didn't really have the necessary knowledge to be on Command class, Nezumi himself had been impressed with his highly rational way of thinking.

And here's a weird idea: what if he wasn't the only firsty in the command class, despite being the only hero? Say, that people don't only test for heroes, but can also test directly toward support or business, and Gen Ed usually gets the lesser applicants to the other three. And while business students may opt out of battle related subjects, I would imagine that Mei Hatsumi (their fourth member in the horse fights) would have the brains and the intelligence to impress.

5950082 You know, if we keep working on this I'm going to have to write it at some point. Any suggestions on websites to post on?

Command as a sub option for all four schools would be perfectly balanced. Everything needs leadership, so it makes total sense, and it would allow for people wishing to transfer to prove their skill. In addition to Mei we should also have that brainwashing guy, since he's been shown to be a highly strategic thinker and really tricky to boot. There'd also be collaborative simulations, where those in the upper classes lead those in the lower through a large scale operation, such as disaster relief or a large brawl. Or, to really spice things up, add some wargames where the heroes get mixed in with normal soldiers a la Captain America. After all, we're going for "realistic" to a lesser extent, and I can't imagine any government school not adding these.

As for the levels, I'm thinking three. Squad, for working as part of a small team and taking and executing orders, Tactical, for overseeing a single battle or portion of a battle under the command of a higher rank, and Strategic, for keeping an eye on the big picture, deciding which battles to fight, and managing resources. To sum up, in a disaster relief operation Strategy would be in charge of getting everyone where they needed to be with the gear they needed and their goals made clear, Tactics would tell those people what they needed to do to achieve those goals, and Squads would turn those goals into reality. Personally, I'm an excellent tactician but a weaker strategist and I tend towards doing my own thing, so I'd naturally gravitate towards the middle rank.

Split PE is brilliant, that's now a thing. The general test Eraser Head gives will be to sort people into the right slot, and while he'll threaten to kick out the worst student to make everyone try harder he won't actually have the authority to do so, so it'll be like canon. I think Izuku's course should be parkour, though, since treating everything as a hand or foothold requires creative thinking and high mobility is extremely valuable in hero work.

5950128

You know, if we keep working on this I'm going to have to write it at some point. Any suggestions on websites to post on?

A) If you need help with edition of prereading, or even just a sound board, MP me for my email. I will not be fast, but I'll be glad to help.
B) As to websites: I am partial toward Fanfiction.net, especially considering that HP&MOR was originally posted there. Even if you don't use that site, archive your story there, and make sure to add into the summary "inspired on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" (and perhaps also add the word "Rationality" on the title), so to dope the search engines. However, I would suggest simultaneous cross-posting there and either Space Battles or Sufficient Velocity, as their forum system seems to be rather friendly toward fanfiction.

Command as a sub option for all four schools would be perfectly balanced.

Not so much. While it would be obviously useful to the Hero and Support programs, it may actually be argued to be wasted time for both Gen Ed and Business. These two programs should get, rather than ranged classes, a menu of semester long optionals (I, for example, got at my university Choir, Creative Writing, several gastronomy courses and four different subjects on international politics, and audited some Engineering courses). Applied to Boku no Hero Academia, I would imagine, mentioned in passing:
+ Logistics and Supply chains
+ War philosophy applied to business
+ Physical expressed powers applied to business activities
+ Marketing 101
+ Marketing 201
+ Reading Club
+ Movie Club
+ Theatre Club
et al.
Thing is, people in these programs can't get into the battle classes, while the people in Hero and Support, once they finish the last level, can opt to audit these Gen Ed / Business classes.

As to the wargames, I would put those vertically too, with older students guiding, commanding and/or supervising younger ones. Mixing in soldiers wouldn't be good, considering that most grads will actually be going into private security rather than into the armed forces. Thinking about it, it may not even be a good idea to have war games beyond computer simulations at the Command classroom: Japan is a non-armed society and very proud of the fact, to the point where people assume " realistic toy" when they see a gun (a fact very much underlined on the anime Full Metal Panic). The fact that their law actually states that Japan cannot engage into war as an aggressor is the reason why their armed forces are all called Self Defence Forces. So, while nobody should bat an eye at an actual military academy training for warfare, the general population would seriously object to that happening at a non-militarised high school, no matter how elitist.

The classification you are generating here seems to refer to practical classes. My classification was theory-heavy with little practice of the first levels, then going theory light and practice heavy going into the Command classes:
A) Basic tactics for the one-trick ponies who aren't making their best of their own powers (such as Mr. Sparkly, who chose to engage Hawk Boy and Tsuyu at close quarters rather than take advantage of his raged power), and hot heads who might be getting their money's worth of their own power, but are cocky and have a hammer-and-nail mentality (such as Kacchan).
B) Basic strategy then goes for people who understand and appreciate powers, but may not know how to be team players. Tooru comes to mind here. The two basic classes could be merged, though.
C) Intermediate 1 and 2 then go into battle and warfare theory, Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, campaign economics, logistics and supply chains, new technologies and how they have affected historic wars, troop morale, the triangle of an armored unit (armour-mobility-armament), the importance of rules of engagement and humane treatment of POW's, and the main four strategies (defensive war, offensive war, flanking war, guerrilla war) as applied throughout history.
D) Command would have a relatively light theory component (Sun Tzu (review), political motivations behind historic wars, mob mentality and the rise of the Nazi regime, battlefield economics (the reduction of human lives into numbers), notable modern tactics and strategies (the Napoleonic full-army charge, the Blitzkrieg, Total War, Mutually Assured Destruction, Scorched Earth, Agent Orange, mine fields, commando units, sniper tactics and strategy, cyberspace warfare)), then dive hard into simulations for small unit command, task force command and army command.

Parkour is awesome, but who's gonna teach Midoriya?

5951261 Eraser Head, that's who. His quirk has nothing to with physical enhancement, so every trick with those bandages of his is pure skill. I would be surprised if he didn't know parkour.

I'm thinking the title will be: My Hero Rationality. It even has the same syllable count.

Not so much. While it would be obviously useful to the Hero and Support programs, it may actually be argued to be wasted time for both Gen Ed and Business. These two programs should get, rather than ranged classes, a menu of semester long optionals (I, for example, got at my university Choir, Creative Writing, several gastronomy courses and four different subjects on international politics, and audited some Engineering courses). Applied to Boku no Hero Academia, I would imagine, mentioned in passing:

+ Logistics and Supply chains
+ War philosophy applied to business
+ Physical expressed powers applied to business activities
+ Marketing 101
+ Marketing 201
+ Reading Club
+ Movie Club
+ Theatre Club
et al.

Thing is, people in these programs can't get into the battle classes, while the people in Hero and Support, once they finish the last level, can opt to audit these Gen Ed / Business classes.

Looks good to me.

Fun fact, that law about Japan not declaring war was actually imposed by the U.S. after WW2, so it's not something that's native to them. Izuku trying to get his hands on a gun or other real weapon could make for an interesting subplot, though.

Your stratification looks good, but I get the feeling you proposed a solution too early and ended up attached to it. You might want to look out for that in the future.

5952677

Eraser Head, that's who. His quirk has nothing to with physical enhancement, so every trick with those bandages of his is pure skill. I would be surprised if he didn't know parkour.

These last couple days I've been reading the manga, and up to the villain invasion, it doesn't seem that Eraser Head's bandage thing is telekinetic like the anime. More wood to your fire.
Furthermore, it would be all kinds of ironic if, in this story, All Mighty's #1 fan then becomes the protege of a hero who actively despises him.

Further regarding the manga: in it, the author does explain that All Mighty did seriously impact crime statistics, but unlike the anime, where it is sort-of implied that All Mighty did so by performing hundreds and hundreds of arrests, the manga explains that he did so by performing very-high-profile arrests, and by becoming a deterrent to recruitment into criminal organisations. Basically, he scared people straight before they actually became villains. And it is also mentioned that many heroes resent him for diminishing their relevance, from Mount Lady sighing when she was trying to arrest somebody and he suddenly appeared from nowhere, to Shota's dad hating him enough to basically torture his own son.

Fun fact, that law about Japan not declaring war was actually imposed by the U.S. after WW2, so it's not something that's native to them.

A) Considering that the US turned Japan from a feudal economy and a socially stratified absolutist monarchy to a capitalistic democracy (with a figurehead monarch), I don't think that was too much of an imposition.
B) Whatever, considering that Mexico has a similar law, but it was pronounced right after the beginning of the war. Mexico simply wanted to state official neutrality as soon as possible, and we haven't had any reason or motivation to repeal such a law ever since.

Izuku trying to get his hands on a gun or other real weapon could make for an interesting subplot, though.

A) As a matter of fact, one of the instructors at the academy is called Snipe, and his quirk seems to be ridiculous accuracy, being capable of putting bullets on people's wrists from hundreds of meters away, with a revolver, and without pausing to aim between shots.
B) A little further into the manga, Izuku will be getting a tech upgrade to his costume from Hatsumi, the Support Girl. An upgrade meant to protect Izuku from the self destructive properties of his power.
C) Apparently, Kacchan was capable of requisitioning the design and construction of his tricked-up, grenade gauntlets, that let him shoot his explosions forward rather than his usual point-blank. Some others requisitioned functional armour.
D) Based on the previous, I have no doubt that if Izuku wants a ranged weapon, he simply has to ask for it. Especially thinking that he actually forgot to requisition anything from the school.

Your stratification looks good, but I get the feeling you proposed a solution too early and ended up attached to it. You might want to look out for that in the future.

Actually, that's pretty much the learning curve to any highly strategical game:
1) You learn how to move your pieces, and what each piece can and cannot do. You could do this from a book, without ever touching the game itself.
2) You learn how to weave your pieces together to achieve objectives.
3) Through practice, and the occasional Master's lesson, you then begin to learn how to play several steps ahead from the present.

Or the stratification of Aztec military education:
(1) Starting at age 7, and if you were of any degree of noble blood, you were entered into the Calmecac. And regardless if you were on the Calmecac by being a lowly priest's son, or were a prince-hostage or a prince-heir, you had to learn how to properly wield the diverse weapons, and had to learn how to properly fight with them. And to make sure you weren't ever coddled, the military would pick from the best prisoners obtained through Garland Wars, and Calmecac students would be employed to sacrifice them in sacrifice-by-combat (a long series of 1-on-1 fights were the prisoner would be given blunted weapons, and would be fought until he bleed to death).
(And if you weren't a noble, you were entered into the Tepochcalli, which taught you religious ritual, being a soldier and a civilian job. Think of it as community college.)
(And yes: Aztecs practiced the exchange of royal hostages, to be then raised by your enemy as if he was his own nephew. This was also why the Aztec Tlatoani was expected to have many wives.)

(2) Coming from the Calmecac, and in 7 year cycles, you were rotated between governmental middle-management and military junior-officer jobs.

(3) If you survived, impressed with your competence, and learned with your frequent rotations back toward receiving higher education at the Calmecac, you could climb the ranks and end up a high priest or a general. And upon the Tlatoani's death, you could be elected for the Aztec throne. (Funny how Aztecs were extremely meritocratic.)

And really, that's how military officer education works nowadays:
1) No matter if you want to be a camp janitor or have been accepted to officer's academy, you have to undergo Basic (usually known as Boot Camp).
2) If you were accepted into officer's academy, you then go there, and graduate with a junior officer's rank.
3) Reaching command is then achieved through impressing your superiors and on-the-job training.

And how Ender was taught:
1) He started through militarised Primary school, and he was evaluated there for his potential to be an officer.
2) He was then transferred to Battle school, were he prospered as an officer and even taught himself how to delegate.
3) He was then transferred to the so-called Command School, were he mostly learned how to make things happen with no more tools than a microphone, camera feeds, and an inner knowledge not only on how the weapons worked, but also how his people worked.

5954826 I guess I should track the manga down myself if there's that much extra detail in it. Who knows what vital plot points I could be missing, on top of it being farther ahead in the story. We run additional risk because this series is ongoing and we don't have all the pieces yet. HPMOR would have been a very different story if it was based off only the first four novels.

The law only stands as long as the lawmakers will it, so if Japan really wanted to start a war they probably could, but I'm getting off on a tangent. This Izuku, since he's supposed to be more rational, would probably read all the fine print on his application, so he would know to request stuff in advance. If he can ask for a gun, then he definitely has to get flashbang grenades too, and a lot of them, along with something in his gear to shield himself from their effects. A good flashbang would allow him to get the drop on entire groups of villains, having a similar tactical effect to Eraser Head's quirk. A taser or other nonlethal stun weapon would be in order as well, and maybe some other grenade types depending on how ruthless he becomes. I've wanted him to have them from the start, but was having trouble thinking of how they'd get into his gear.

The difference between a training setup you thought up off the top of your head and one you learned/deduced from a large number of real life sources is not trivial. I'm happy to use anything that well thought out, and the tidbit about the Aztec was fascinating.

Anyway, has the manga said anything about Izuku's father yet? If not, I'm thinking he should be an American. Rationality is very much a Western concept, and the culture clash between how Izuku was raised and the thought patterns within the text could make for some wonderful character development. Also, he's still alive and is off doing something vitally important (I'm not sure what yet) that will tie into the main plot later in the story.

5954849

I guess I should track the manga down myself if there's that much extra detail in it.

http://www.mangatown.com/manga/boku_no_hero_academia/

For example, on the extras of chapter 35, we see that people in Support are studying for their own licenses as... think it should be engineers, inventors or something, and their stuff requires a hero license to then be purchased or used. And the Academy has workshops for their use.

and maybe some other grenade types depending on how ruthless he becomes.

No ruthlessness needed there. Instead of just starting off with flashbangs, include thermite charges, and smoke canisters, and include a case of nitros oxide canisters by mistake. Denying visibility is always useful in a hostile situation; thermite is useful in all kinds of situations; and I could easily envision Izuku would read up on NOx, find out that the combustion accelerant can also be used to make people laugh, and I imagine the NOx canister could turn out to be a useful distraction against Noumo, the dozen-handed man-child and Mr Smoky.

I've wanted him to have them from the start, but was having trouble thinking of how they'd get into his gear.

Two or three layers of biometric security built into a latch, perhaps? It's supposed to be some 200 years into the future...
Also, turn the entire back of their homeroom into dresser-sized lockers. I'll eat my socks if somebody could fit those plate armours into those sardine tins of lockers.

and the tidbit about the Aztec was fascinating.

I find the entire subject of precolumbian Mesoamerican customs to be utterly fascinating.
Here are a few others tidbits:
+ Some other local civilisations had them, but Aztecs had no real concept of slavery. Theirs was what we would call "credit cards": if you wanted something but couldn't pay it, you could sell yourself for it. You would then return later and work off the difference. Prisoners of war weren't kept as slaves, either: they were sacrificed as soon as possible. The only real slaves were convicted criminal purging their sentences, and then only mid-level criminals, as higher levels of crime were met with execution.
+ The Aztecs had a whole scale of ways of dying, and even had different heavens for the most wholesome deaths. The Tlalocan was reserved to the most elevated of warrior's deaths: men who fell bearing arms, and women who fell birthing child. Then there was the utter difference between a sacrifice and an execution: the sacrifice was meant to be efficient and as dignified as possible, while executions were, on the contrary, meant to be examples. Did you know that a properly sharpened obsidian blade can be ten times sharper than steel, and will exercise tremendous cuts without eliciting pain? (That's why modern surgeons use obsidian scalpels for eye surgery.) Sacrifice victims didn't pass out from the pain of having their hearts extracted, but from lack of oxygen to their brains. Grand robbery or corruption, on the other hand, was dealt by first removing the offender from the city, then opening the offender's gut and hanging him up by his intestines, and then actually killed by lighting a fire under him. And that's rather mild compared to how they dealt with sexual crimes.
+ Consider that the Japanese had an interesting concept of honour? Google "Tlahuicole", a Goliath who actually lived, and who was a captured enemy who was captured and demanded to be sacrificed, but the Aztec Tlatoani wanted as a general. Thahuicole lived some 2-5 years inside the Aztec court as a esteemed guest, even led an Aztec army as a general, but eventually wore down the emperor and was allowed to have his gladiatorial sacrifice. And he killed eight and wounded twenty more before he collapsed.
+ Contrary to the Japanese, however, the Aztec considered personal honour to be above family honour. As such, you could be made a slave by your parents' debt, but you could then challenge for your own freedom, and it was even carefully ritualised: you and your "owner" and his/her family would meet on Tenochtitlan's main square, and you would then bolt with them in hot pursuit, and nobody could help either party. If you managed to run out of one of the city's four gates, you could then march back in with your portion of the debt pardoned; if they caught you, on the other hand, you received a beating and had lost the appeal.
+ Remember how the Aztecs used cacao seeds as currency? It's all kinds of funny that for an Aztec to drink a cup of Xocolatl is the same concept as it would be for a fat capitalist to light up cigars with one hundred dollar bills. And, by the way, chocolates of all kinds still taste all kinds of awesome if you mix in a little hot sauce.

5954973 What does having a hero license even mean anyway? "I have mastered my quirk and can use it for anything without harming others?" The characters are treating it like a general certificate of competence instead of a permit to do a specific kind of job.

What I meant is that Izuku is in love with being a hero, and heroes don't harm. They beat up villains, but they don't maim or kill them, and definitely not anyone else. I get the feeling he would balk at any lethal weaponry, however necessary, and explosives would bring back bad memories of Kacchaan.

200 years? Really? I would have put it at fifty at most, considering how much it looks like the modern day. That would explain why they can make so much stuff though. I kept wondering where the budget to make that massive biodome disaster simulator came from, and the type 0 robots.

The Aztec stuff is cool, especially the race to avoid debt. I bet the obesity epidemic would disappear real quick if such a practice existed in the U.S.A.

5956987

What does having a hero license even mean anyway? "I have mastered my quirk and can use it for anything without harming others?" The characters are treating it like a general certificate of competence instead of a permit to do a specific kind of job.

I think is is kind-of explained in the Field Training Arc: a certified hero stands above being a vigilante because he's has been certified to understand police procedure, best practices on a rescue situation, knowing CPR, and such. It is then the difference between being a polyglot or a certified interpreter: you saying that you know, or having a paper that says that you are legally certified to do what you want to do in the first place. It could also be argued to be the difference between flying RC planes or having a license to fly commercial flights. And then certified heroes organice in agencies because or (A) accountability, (B) so to organice by specialities (such as search and rescue, disaster relief, combat, SWAT, CSI, et al), (C) so they can be called into action by emergency services dispatchers and (D) so they can be paid.
At that, I actually imagine All Mighty legally counts as a team with a single member.

I get the feeling he would balk at any lethal weaponry, however necessary,

There are plenty of possible levels of weaponry, even if they were bows, crossbows or guns. Years and years ago, I played an RPG campaign, where I had my character armed with a 12-gauge shotgun and a shitload of non-conventional ammo for preferably-not-lethal firepower. And then a flechette machine gun for anti-material and less-lethal antipersonnel firepower (this being due to flechettes having awesome penetration, yet a needle being more painful than harmful against a living body).

and explosives would bring back bad memories of Kacchaan.

With Midoriya being a rationalist, he would fight against his irrational phobias, so he would be even more likely to use them. On the opposite side, Kacchan can only perform one type of explosion, while Deku will do all the rest, so Kacchan will feel upstaged.

200 years? Really? I would have put it at fifty at most, considering how much it looks like the modern day.

I would have believed the same, but it is explained that technological advancement pretty much came to a halt due to villains easily breaking anything that was built. However, there were subtle advancements, such as non-combat robots being pretty much self aware; holography and flight packs. Still, I too believe this to be something of a plot hole.

The Aztec stuff is cool, especially the race to avoid debt. I bet the obesity epidemic would disappear real quick if such a practice existed in the U.S.A.

Well, be aware that the ritual applied not to personal debt, but to you being used as collateral on somebody else's debt. It was about exerting your personal honour against and above the failings of your family.

5956987

I kept wondering where the budget to make that massive biodome disaster simulator came from, and the type 0 robots.

In chapter 97, it is stated that UA can apparently build both very cheap, very professionally and very fast: as the school transformed into a boarding school model, they built two dozen fully finished building in three days flat: he new dorm complex, with a building per class.

5957087 I was mostly referring to Ochako here. She wants to get a hero license so she can... go into construction. Why not architecture or a trade school? It feels like she isn't where she needs to be, and that her talents and efforts would be best applied at a different school. While she would be good at disaster relief, it doesn't pay well and her first priority is making money. That begs the question, "Why a hero license?"

Still, I'd think he'd avoid the more dangerous stuff at first. No guns or frag grenades until he's competent enough to use them properly.

We could just state that it's the "Near Future" with no specific date in mind except that it's close enough to mostly look like the present yet far enough ahead to have all the cool stuff we might need.

Just started on the manga, and wow that is badly translated. I'm glad the anime had someone more competent for the subs.

5960028

I was mostly referring to Ochako here. She wants to get a hero license so she can... go into construction. Why not architecture or a trade school? It feels like she isn't where she needs to be, and that her talents and efforts would be best applied at a different school. While she would be good at disaster relief, it doesn't pay well and her first priority is making money. That begs the question, "Why a hero license?"

I know what you are getting at. And it is explained somewhere between chapters 80 and 100: despite pretty much everybody having powers, it is illegal to do stuff with them unless you are licensed.
And really: Ochako is fifteen, and Yuuei is a high school. She'll graduate at eighteen, certified to be a human construction crane, and if she wants to go beyond, she'll be at the perfect age to enrol into a university and seek an architecture or engineering degree. On the other hand, Ochako's objectives aren't actually stated to currently be about going to into the family business, but to make money and retire her folks. As stated, she's likely to seek the highest paying hero job.

5960028
I think I should have explained from a sociological point of view : while we westerners wouldn't accept the idea of having to study extra subjects through three years of high school just to be able to use our third arm, the idea would likely fly in Japan. Do remember that, in Japan, "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down". We wouldn't accept something more intrusive than the equivalent to driving lessons, and then those of us that actually want to be heroes would go through police academy or so. Here in this Japanese story, on the other hand, if so happens that policemen have powers, yet don't use them because they aren't certified to use them. If we want to call that a mistake, we would then need to uproot the whole scenario out of Japan.

5960028

She wants to get a hero license so she can... go into construction.

Reading between the lines on the hero preliminary license arc, chapters 98 to 121, I'm coming to some rather nasty conclusions:

1) People cannot legally use their quirks unless they are certified as heroes. This is an extremely artificial bottleneck.
2) And then, even if you study to be a hero, you find that the licencing process is another extremely narrow bottleneck (probably as nasty as 1/50 of hero aspirants)
3) Then, even if you got your license, you cannot knock doors to seek an apprenticeship: you are supposed to use your contacts. And how will you get experience unless you have gone through apprenticeships?

In my humble opinion, this adds up to:
A) Somebody not wanting the Average Joe to be consciously aware that everybody has powers, thus shouldn't live in awe of heroes or in terror of villains.
B) Somebody is placing hurdles on the way out of hero academies, with the intention of keeping low the amount of active heroes.
C) As plenty of people will have studied to be heroes but only a few will achieve certification, some people will just go back to society and live in frustration with their useless weapons, but some others will seek employment outside the law, and somebody will be hiring.
D) And as the number of villains is always greater than the number of heroes, the cycle becomes perpetuated.

What do you think?

5960245
5961726
5966532 I knew something was off! I think we just found our central conflict. Such a thing would stand out like a glaring sign to R!Izuku, and getting that restriction torn down (along with whatever is behind it), would usher in a new industrial revolution, which would have a far greater lasting impact than any single hero, even hero number 1.

Sorry about the delayed response I was out of town for a few days.

5966726
Okay, I just found an author note regarding the legal issue:
On Chapter 80.5, page 12, it states that using quirks in public is "against the rules", except in self defence. It also states that reflexive use of your quirk is a minor misdemeanour, illegal but generally forgivable. The author gives the example of Mrs. Midoriya dropping her phone and attracting it up rather than leaning down; I can invert the author's example and say that, while most people would look the other way, some anal retentive cop could still give her a hard time for doing so.
In previous chapters, we also learned that quirks are like muscles: you need to exercise them in order to develop them. Inverting the example, any real athlete will tell you to "Use it or lose it", and a geriatrician will tell you "sit your grandpa on a wheelchair and he will never stand up again": lack of use causes degeneration, and advanced degeneration eventually leads to the resource not being there even if you need it.
Reading between the lines, and remembering that the boys were about to be punished for detaining Stain ("The Hero Killer"), we also find that the legal use of quirks is written around French Common Law ("everything is forbidden except what is stated as allowed"), rather than British Common Law ("everything is allowed except what is stated as forbidden").

Adding these to our previous assumptions, we can safely conclude that the public is actively being held back. And call this pure speculation, but I don't think the public is being held back with their best interest in mind.

5967191 Holy shit. When I started this thread I had no idea we'd stumble onto something this big. One of Rationality's core ideals is progress, and this flies directly against that. Izuku's arc could be realizing not that quirk's are a bad thing, but that society as a whole is prevented from using them, most likely because someone benefits from the frustration caused by that block. Plus, a quirkless championing the general use of quirks makes for some delicious irony.

5967203
BTW, do you mind if I send to a PM?
While I do want to keep the general discussion in the open, there's something else I want to discuss.

5967413 Not at all.

5967191 Part of what makes this interesting is that this universe has no Cyclopes or Rogues: no people unable to control their quirks. All quirks manifest at an early age, and are usually under full control before puberty. If some quirks were uncontrollable this law might make more sense, but as it is it has no reason to exist beyond active obstruction.

5967804

this universe has no Cyclopes or Rogues: no people unable to control their quirks.

Well... I am not in complete agreement there. While there are no people who lack voluntary control of their quirk, there seem to be enough whose personalities have been shaped by their quirks:
+ Kacchan, while he does have conviction to be a hero, seems to have all the patience and stability of nitroglycerin... which happens to be what he sweats.
+ Nedzu-sensei apparently goes bananas when he's allowed to flaunt his superhuman intelligence.
+ Hatsumi apparently can't stop inventing. (Her quirk is listed as Zoom, but I'm calling that a plot hole)
+ Himiko's quirk depends on her drinking blood. And she just so happens to be a slasher.
+ Moonfish. The cannibalistic gimp happens to have extendable teeth. Or the guy with extendable teeth happened to like extending them against opposition.
+ Ragdoll (of the Pussycats). Her power is clairvoyance and massive (100X) multitasking. She is apparently unable to remain aware of her own body, thus her hugely exaggerated physical expressions, that indeed make her look like a rag doll.
+ Cementoss looks to me like the prototype of "as much personality as a rock".
+ Muscular, the crazy with the muscle fibre augmentation quirk, happens to like duking it out.
+ And of course, the slime villain, whose first attack seemed to be more of a flaunt of his intangibility than an actual crime. If I had a power like his and wanted to commit crimes, I would slip into stores after hours, not walk right in during business hours.

As to the law: I imagine it came into existence almost as soon as quirks rose from "extremely rare" to "rare", and actually became obsolete by the time powers became "uncommon", but that criminal elements lobby to keep it in the books ever since.

5967885 That's true, but they still have full control of their quirks. This says nothing about how smart they are though. Rogue runs the risk of killing anyone she touches whether she wants to or not, and I haven't seen any quirks that are both always on and super dangerous. Kacchan could level city blocks if he felt like it, and only his fine control prevents him from being a safety hazard. For all that he's super impulsive his control is really good, or he'd have done a lot more collateral damage by now.

When the law appeared makes sense, although I suspect that the U.S. and other Western nations don't have a similar law, or a more relaxed version. Just imagine the protest marches.

5967885 Idea! They should go to America for a field trip! Or have an American tourist drop by at some point.

5973287

That's true, but they still have full control of their quirks. This says nothing about how smart they are though. Rogue runs the risk of killing anyone she touches whether she wants to or not, and I haven't seen any quirks that are both always on and super dangerous.

Point. It is even remarked by a doctor that Midoriya's quirk is extremely rare on being self-destructive, and the doctor then mutters that quirk-related self injuries are characteristic of children who have just gotten their powers.

When the law appeared makes sense, although I suspect that the U.S. and other Western nations don't have a similar law, or a more relaxed version. Just imagine the protest marches.

Actually, considering US history and their incredible resilience to change, I would see the following happening:
A) As soon as the parahuman phenomenon raises from "isolated curiosities" to "one in every kindergarten", I would see Bible-totting Yanks marching in Washington, demanding the "Devil-spawns" be rounded up. Liberals would counter-protest and hopefully stop any really draconian laws being passed (on a federal level). The thing would grind into a halt at the federal level, but then states would exercise autonomy: New York, Michigan and California would study the phenomenon and eventually put an X-Xavier classroom in every school (where they are taught control and no-usage of weaponisable powers); preachers inside the Bible Belt and Mormon Corridor would whip people into frenzies, and as such pressure their governments either into turning blind eyes or actively cooperating, and while the Mormon Church organises people to sell them their "Devil touched" children to be raised like monks, the Deep South would start seeing "witch children" being spirited away from their homes and being tossed into bonfires. This would continue for a generation, or until there were enough quirked children to have one in every home.
B) While the quiet genocide continues in the most conservative communities, quirked children in liberal and swing states, and in big cities elsewhere, would grow up and eventually organise into militias, and quietly march into the Deep South and organise either railroads of quirked children in danger, or massive punishments for communities where journalists have found mass graves, burning stakes or similar. At this point, I imagine the federal government whips up the guts to start policing the Deep South for human rights violations. At this point, however, the law remains restrictive.
C) At some point, the NRA decides that offensive quirks should be counted into Second Amendment rights. As usual, the Deep South would follow into whatever the NRA says, and liberals would suddenly find themselves blindsided and be unable to get things into "reasonable restrictions".

Idea! They should go to America for a field trip! Or have an American tourist drop by at some point.

A) Class B has a Yank student: a tiny and shy blond girl with long spiralling horns growing straight up from her head. And she's apparently barely chewing the language.
B) Do remember that the Japanese do have a proper word for saying "foreigner", but they settle on the word "gaijin", which is a pejorative word meaning "Outsider". Or that Japan is as reluctant an ally to the US as Mexico, with both countries having long memories of past military humiliation, and both having the same love-hate at a societal level. If anything, better have Midoriya's dad drop in for a vacation, or have regular chat conversations with Izuku. Chapter 99.5, page 8, clearly stated that he works abroad. Or something else, like Izuku having somebody like the trashman in the Dilbert Comics: some very wise character that listens to the main character and offers council, but never jumps the fence to become involved. Come to think of this, this could be Mr. Midoriya, if Izuku has something like Sunday-night chat conversations with him.
C)

And do remember that All Mighty is already a walking Yank stereotype, even if he's a full blooded Japanese.

5973750 That prediction seems more accurate than I would like to believe. The Conservative backlash probably wouldn’t be that bad, but it would be bad, and Liberals getting blindsided seems to be a running theme.

We could have both. Izuku could maybe end up tutoring the girl on her Japanese through a random encounter, and talk with his Dad on a regular basis. Now that I think about it, while his Dad should know most of the important stuff and have good advice, he shouldn’t have a vital role in creating the climax. Apparently that would imply Izuku was in a way destined to become a hero and right the wrongs in the story, which is not what we’re going for. I’ll need to read up on Japanese culture to make it worthwhile, though.

Finally, it turns out fimfiction is making the transition to general fanfiction, which solves the question of where I’m going to put this, and removes any excuse I have for not writing it beyond having other projects in progress.

5976267

That prediction seems more accurate than I would like to believe. The Conservative backlash probably wouldn’t be that bad, but it would be bad, and Liberals getting blindsided seems to be a running theme.

Well, the US has a very unique and quite horrid interpretation of the word “freedom”: while pretty much the entire world defines “freedom” as “free from”, the US defines it as “free to”. The typical example is gun-related laws: while most of the people in the world define “gun freedom” as “free from easily accesible guns”, the US defines it as “free to have guns”. This leads, of course, to this:



And here Mexico is an outlier in two different ways:
(A) Mexico is currently in the middle of a low-intensity civil war.
(B) Mexico only has one weapon store in the country, which only sells 5,000 weapons a year, and then only small calibre handguns and single-shot rifles. On the other hand, the Mexican Army is removing from the cartels a little over 15,000 per year, mostly large calibre handguns and “grandfathered” repeating rifles, most of which were legally bought in the US.

Or hey: health and education are basic rights! But the US has the only constitution in the Western Hemisphere that puts personal freedom above human rights, so while we hear stories every week about parents in Europe being arrested for letting their kids worsen rather than seeking a hospital, and we see “underdeveloped” countries like Mexico and Chile making it punishable to not send your kids to a school with a government approved syllabus, we also see Yanks who aren’t even detained after letting their children die from perfectly curable diseases, and near-illiterate Yank preachers who get to vote on school syllabus.

True liberals, or at least true liberal manoeuvres, get trampled in the US due to the fact that Communism is by definition liberal, and thus the word became dirty in the US. Even if Soviet-communism was actually an ultra-liberal and ultra-corrupt shade that nobody wants to be. If you want to look at successful liberal economies, look at Canada and Germany. And Chile, too, considering that, despite their love for stabbing each others, are almost thriving in one of the crappiest hellscapes on the planet.

Besides, I meant Massachusetts, not Michigan. Although I guess progressiveness permeates the region anyway. Besides, what I really can’t understand is:
A) Why the US takes “progressive” to be a synonym of “liberal”. Or is it that every conservative Yank harbours a secret desire to go Amish?
B) Why the US seems to be the only Western country without a liberal party. Because really, the Democratic Party is at most centre-leaning conservative by world standards.

Heck! I would be called liberal in the US, but really I am a moderate conservative by world standards!

We could have both. Izuku could maybe end up tutoring the girl on her Japanese through a random encounter, and talk with his Dad on a regular basis. Now that I think about it, while his Dad should know most of the important stuff and have good advice, he shouldn’t have a vital role in creating the climax. Apparently that would imply Izuku was in a way destined to become a hero and right the wrongs in the story, which is not what we’re going for. I’ll need to read up on Japanese culture to make it worthwhile, though.

A) The girl could be useful to the story, but better invert her paper: I, as a former international student, will tell you that (a.1.) once you are in a full cultural immersion, you don’t need extra help to learn the local language, and (a.2) at least until you actually master the language, finding somebody who reminds you about home is like a breath of fresh air. Here we could give Midoriya an interesting background: say that the Midoriya family had immigrated into the States when Izuku was a kid, and they were there for a few years until his mum got tired and returned with him back to Japan. This way, both of them can have selfish rather than purely altruistic motivations to hand out together: she gets to hand out with somebody who actually understands Americana (rather than the ridiculous All Mighty), and thus she can get the freedom to bitch a little against the Japs; he first amuses himself by dusting up his ability to speak like a Yank, then gets a sympathetic ear about his complaints about Japanese attitudes and the unfairness of the current state of Japanese parahuman law. Also, imagining that she’ll be returning home in a few years, while he wants to remain in Japan, should be nearly enough to prevent romance from happening.

B) Yeah: the father would work best if he’s a distant confidante: one that Izuku gets to talk to about everything, but can’t offer anything other than opinions and encouragement. And the occasional mail-ordered gift, I guess.

C) The more you learn about Japan, the less you admire them. Just look up terms like “hikikomori”, “otaku”, “blood type personality”, or think of the concept of a 100-hour work week.
+ The hikikomori is a young man that couldn’t cope with the incredible pressures of modern Japanese life and withdrew into his room, often for decades at a time.

+ While we think that “otaku” is a cute word to call a fan of Japanese media, the real otaku is a dude who is at school or has a job, but substitutes social contact for some obsession (manga, Tolkien, anime, scale model planes, Game of Thrones, porn, ultra-realistic female mannequins, historical reenactment, some actress; you name it).

+ “Blood type personality” is how Japanese are racist to each other in a country that is 98% ethnically uniform: some physician in the late 19th century studied 11 of his relatives, and determined that people with A and O blood types are hard-working (although O’s can be rebellious), AB’s are easy to distract, and B’s are downright flighty. This has led to a century and change of job discrimination against people with the B blood type.
+ And then, of course, the fact that the Japanese who don’t go crazy from stress do so by partying hard whenever they can. As such, it is perfectly normal to dress up, dress weird or cross dress on Sunday, or to get absolutely hammered whenever you touch alcohol.

This documentary is just 11 minutes, and gives the gist...

This other documentary is in three fifteen-minute parts (and the credits in two minutes), and is a little more extensive. It is also a little old (some fifteen to twenty years), but still quite relevant:

And of course, let us never forget of what is a proper Japanese econoline crunch:

Finally, it turns out fimfiction is making the transition to general fanfiction, which solves the question of where I’m going to put this, and removes any excuse I have for not writing it beyond having other projects in progress.

Is it? I just checked the site blog from Knighty, and it doesn’t say anything of that. Furthermore, on the submission contents guidelines:

Don’t Post (content):
[...]
5. Stories that are not related to My Little Pony. Your story must be related to the MLP universe at the time of submission, or else it will be rejected.

Nevertheless, you could certainly write for fanfiction.net, and perhaps mirror it somewhere else. While the brony fandom became pretty much centred between here and Equestria Daily, fanfiction.net has been The Website for fanfiction in general, ever since fanfiction stopped living in mailing lists and moved to the web.
I would know: my fanfiction.net account is old enough to drink.