5977094 American Law is based on English Common law, vs. French Common Law: English Common law says, “You may do anything expect that which is forbidden,” and “Innocent until proven guilty,” while French says, “You may do nothing expect that which is allowed,” and “Guilty until proven innocent.” Frankly, the rest of the world sounds like a stifling place to live when you put it like that, which is why I’m so strongly in favor of fixing the U.S. instead of migrating. There’s a reason we’ve attracted so many immigrants over the years.

Your chart of global homicide rates left out all the nations that make a regular habit of killing their citizens, either through incompetence or executions. Sure, the U.S. may have to deal with 9,000 gun homicides per year (which in a nation of 300 million is still tiny), and we’re in 4th place behind Mexico, Russia, and Brazil of all places, but we’ve never had a famine or government sanctioned slaughter of its own people. Even the Great Depression didn’t manage that, so our system must be pretty sturdy.

You’re confusing the word Right with Privilege. A right is anything that comes from you, while a privilege is anything that comes from someone else. If you want a right to education or health care, that means enslaving a doctor or a teacher and making them help you. You can’t get around that, no matter how much legalize or red tape you dress it up in. Health care takes doctors and medicine and hospitals and specialized equipment, which all cost money, and education takes teachers and books and schools, all of which also cost money. If you’re not footing the bill, someone else is, and you’re effectively stealing their money, which they made for themselves and have a true Right to keep. If it’s a government mandated tax, then the government is the one doing the stealing, but you’re the one who hired them to do it, so don’t pretend it’s different.

If we ever make a teacher or doctor A.I., something you can earn through your own labor that doesn’t need other people, that will change, but until then having a Right to education and health care means you have a Right to force other people to do what you want. That’s called slavery, and we banned it over a century ago.

Socialism is communism, and Liberals are communists: they don’t call themselves that because Communism has a well earned reputation as one of the worst governments of all time, but they are. While the USSR was still kicking, they sent their propaganda agents all over the world to turn people to their side: we did the same with ours. They succeeded, both groups. Russia is now a fairly capitalist society, and China, while still officially communist, is becoming more capitalist by the day. The U.S., on the other hand, is becoming more and more communist. They might call it socialism, but that’s so they don’t have to say the “C” word.

Your first question can be summed up in two words: government intervention. Exactly how the government intervenes may vary, but both require a big, powerful government to do the “people’s will.” The problem is governments don’t care about the people’s will, they care about the people who put them in office and keep them in office. I’ve read all about how government power structures work, and any government that ignores the few people who keep it in power in favor of the general public is going to get replaced really fast. Here’s a simplified rundown if you haven’t seen it yet.

Governments, by their very nature, cannot do just the people’s will without putting themselves at risk. They can’t be trusted, because any that are trustworthy are doomed to fall to another that isn’t. You must be loyal to your keys above all else, or you will get overthrown, period. It’s hard coded into how humans organize, so you can’t get rid of it, and must work around it.

Second, the U.S. has two Liberal parties, not zero. Both want to be as Liberal as the rest of the globe, but their voters (some of the keys) won’t stand for it, so they have to pretend they’re more conservative than they actually are. Case in point: Trump. Both parties tried to push more liberal candidates, and Trump stomped them both. Now the U.S. government (our court) has a president they don’t want, but the people did. That’s where a good chunk of the sparks this year are coming from.

In case it isn’t obvious, I’m a Libertarian, which means I don’t really fall on the normal political spectrum at all, except maybe as a Super-Extreme-Supporter-of-Personal-Freedom. Small, defense, law enforcement, and international trade focused government, with the states and private sector handling everything else.

Now, back to the story.

Your point about the transfer student is very good. I’ll do that instead.

I’d heard about 100 hour work weeks from Gaijin Goomba, so I guess I’ll have to rewatch his videos.

Blood type discrimination? Really? Well, that shoots a whole bunch of anthropology racism theories in the head. I’m going to have to look that up.

It was a thread, now missing, where a moderator stated that they got rid of the character pictures to make way for switching to general fiction. It’s not happening right away, but it is coming, and when it does I’ll happily put this story here.

The thing is, I have a fanfiction account too, but I don’t use it anymore because anything I post here gets a lot more attention. This site is better, period, so the chance to post a non-pony story is really nice.

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American Law is based on English Common law, vs. French Common Law: English Common law says, “You may do anything expect that which is forbidden,” and “Innocent until proven guilty,” while French says, “You may do nothing expect that which is allowed,” and “Guilty until proven innocent.” Frankly, the rest of the world sounds like a stifling place to live when you put it like that, which is why I’m so strongly in favor of fixing the U.S. instead of migrating.

And if you still wanted to migrate to a country with British Common Law, you could go to any country in the Western Hemisphere (other than Haiti and I believe Saint Kitts and this tiny island between Canada and Greenland that is still a French colony), Britain, anywhere in the old British Empire (1/4 of the Earth’s land surface), Japan, and then you would need to browse through European law to see which nations work under which principles.

And don’t forget Mexican Common Law, too: “Among the People, and among the Nations, the respect to the others’ rights equals peace.”
Plain-spoken, it means that your rights take precedence over your freedoms. And one way or another, you’ll find it echoed in every American constitution, except the Yankee, which hasn’t been rewritten in three centuries.

 There’s a reason we’ve attracted so many immigrants over the years.

Because, after displacing or exterminating the Indians, you where left with a vast surface about the size of Australia and a lot more fertile?
Because you made sure that every second heir in Europe knew they could have cheap or free land?
Because you published pamphlets depicting roaring fires and full bellies, and nailed them to the walls in places of Europe which were experiencing harsh winters and low wages?
Because early Hollywood depicted the US as a land of richness?
Or because you actually opened your Southern border during WW2, and attracted a quarter million latinos to temporary, long term jobs?

Your chart of global homicide rates left out all the nations that make a regular habit of killing their citizens, either through incompetence or executions. Sure, the U.S. may have to deal with 9,000 gun homicides per year (which in a nation of 300 million is still tiny), and we’re in 4th place behind Mexico, Russia, and Brazil of all places, 

Those charts are of the First World, which by some definitions may or may not include Mexico, Russia and Brazil.
But fine: do you really want to compare the US to South America, where secondary roads are still ruled by highwaymen? Or central America, where people still fear the next coup and sleep with AK’s under the mattress? But hey: I’m pretty sure your homicide rates are light compared to Sub Saharan Africa, or piracy-havens like Thailand and the Philippines. But do you really want to make those comparisons?
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/12/07/458815891/the-u-s-is-a-world-leader-in-gun-deaths
There you go: the US has less gun-related violence, per capita, than Uganda, than Albania, than Nicaragua, than Iraq and than the Philippines. If I was a Yank, I wouldn’t be too proud that I am in an abyss compared to my peers, and need to compare myself with the bottom of the barrel in order not to look too bad. Or that some of my cities compare with countries that are actively at war.

but we’ve never had a famine or government sanctioned slaughter of its own people. Even the Great Depression didn’t manage that, so our system must be pretty sturdy.

“USD$25 for an Indian’s scalp” and “niggers hanging off trees”. And later, forced labour in jails.
And then, Mr. Smedley Butler was hard at work during the Great Depression. And I imagine you know what he has to say about how the US economy propped itself against every country they could bully.
Which then comes to the following: if you reduce your defence expenditure in 90%, abolishing the Marines and Army and everything not long-range in the Navy, you would still have far more than enough to defeat absolutely any enemy, anywhere, and not even have to land a single troop on enemy soil. The Afghanistan War could have been over inside a single week: wake up Kabul and three more cities to nuclear near misses, then demand Osama and elections. If they don’t reply inside a week, you send four nukes on target and call it a day: for the rest of times, terrorists the world over would be terrified to even consider attacking you again; and an entire war was won for less than the cost of a single B2.

You’re confusing the word Right with Privilege. A right is anything that comes from you, while a privilege is anything that comes from someone else. If you want a right to education or health care, that means enslaving a doctor or a teacher and making them help you. You can’t get around that, no matter how much legalize or red tape you dress it up in.

I’m not actually sure what you are saying here. As to a healthcare example, ask a Cannuck, as their seem to be doing quite fine. Me, as a corn-man (and I just don’t know why Yanks call us Beaners, when we identify ourselves with corn), can tell you about public education:
Mexico’s latest constitution stated in 1917 that “quality, scientific-based” education was to be “secular, free and compulsory”. But the country was poor and just recovering from a mayor civil war, and it took us 10 years to convoque and organise our best intellectuals, and them to get the ball going for both the Public Education Secretariat, to organise and regulate basic education, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, to regulate higher education. While the secretariat went immediately to create a nationwide syllabus, the first public, free schools only appeared in mayor cities, only a few, and only up to third year being compulsory. It took then most of the twentieth century to widen the network of free schools to make sure every child has a free “Primaria” (grades 1-6) within walking distance, and that every child registered to be in age receives a full set of books per year (even in the embassies), and in their own language (Spanish, Braille and some 53 indigenous languages and dialects). And then the network of free “Secundarias” (grades 7-9) closed around 2005, letting the government declare it mandatory. And around 2014 or so, the Mexican government decided to turn its attention to quality beyond the books and teaching degrees, and decided to create a certifying agency that has to certify every teacher, every five years, and revokes the teaching accreditation of any teacher that doesn’t do the exam, and only allows schools to hire teachers with a valid license. And with some luck, high school will be universal, and thus be declared mandatory, by 2027, to celebrate the centenary of the first public primary school. Of course, Chile is a much smaller country with a higher GDP, so they are two steps ahead: high school isn’t only mandatory, but also happens to be enforced.

So how it’s done? With guts and patience.

Socialism is communism, and Liberals are communists: they don’t call themselves that because Communism has a well earned reputation as one of the worst governments of all time, but they are.

Well, if you equate liberal with Communism, I will equate conservative with Nazism. Isn’t nazism the epitome of ultra-left?
Or better tell you to never step a foot on such dangerously-communistic countries such as Canada, Mexico, all of Western Europe, California...
Although Mexico may not be such a good example: while we remained carefully neutral during the Cold War, we did help Castro take power out of pure passive-aggressiveness against the States.

Governments, by their very nature, cannot do just the people’s will without putting themselves at risk. 

, but it still beats anarchy. With not enough police, highwaymen take over the countryside. With no government, warlords take over territory.

And at that I find China to me commendable: the current Premier has had his own family members executed on charges of corruption.

Both parties tried to push more liberal candidates,

While I could believe that to apply to Bernie Sanders, I wouldn’t call The Witch Of Rotdam, Marco Rubio or any of the others to be liberals, at all.

In case it isn’t obvious, I’m a Libertarian, which means I don’t really fall on the normal political spectrum at all, except maybe as a Super-Extreme-Supporter-of-Personal-Freedom. Small, defense, law enforcement, and international trade focused government, with the states and private sector handling everything else.

Don’t forget education: democracy in education is a mother with a bowl of veggies, and a tableful of kids saying they don’t want any. Similarly with healthcare, which has led to medicines that aren’t actually priced for reasonable profit over outrageous development costs, but are priced to see how much cash can people bleed.

Here’s the girl:

http://bokunoheroacademia.wikia.com/wiki/Pony_Tsunotori
As she scarcely happens to be a character, I guess you can shape her personality anyway you want. She’s supposedly timid, but that could be facade to mask her insecurities regarding her recent immigration and weak linguistics. Her powers are apparently bullish or equestrian in nature, although she looks like a faun to me.

It was a thread, now missing, where a moderator stated that they got rid of the character pictures to make way for switching to general fiction. It’s not happening right away, but it is coming, and when it does I’ll happily put this story here.

The thing is, I have a fanfiction account too, but I don’t use it anymore because anything I post here gets a lot more attention. This site is better, period, so the chance to post a non-pony story is really nice.

I would insist that you mirror to several sites, rather than just one. While we bronies concentrated here, and Worm-fans went en-masse to SpaceBattles, the My Hero Academia fan base seems to have gone to fanfiction.net, with over 1100 fics so far.

5977863 You are free to do anything that doesn’t violate the rights of others? We said that first, and all you guys copied us. I support it too, so we don’t need to argue about it.

Because, after displacing or exterminating the Indians, you where left with a vast surface about the size of Australia and a lot more fertile? 
Because you made sure that every second heir in Europe knew they could have cheap or free land?
Because you published pamphlets depicting roaring fires and full bellies, and nailed them to the walls in places of Europe which were experiencing harsh winters and low wages?
Because early Hollywood depicted the US as a land of richness?
Or because you actually opened your Southern border during WW2, and attracted a quarter million latinos to temporary, long term jobs?

All of the above, plus making good on those promises. Propaganda can only carry a nation so far, so if the peace and prosperity promised wasn't real we wouldn’t have grown anywhere near as much as we did. Example: Did you know The Grapes of Wrath was banned in the USSR? It was because they didn’t want their subjects to realize that even America’s poorest of poor could own a car.
Second example: a quote from an anonymous immigrant goes, “I want to live where the poor are fat and the beggars have shoes.”
Third example: have you ever the movie The Russians are Coming? My dad once showed it to a bunch of a Russians, and afterwords they said our country must really be free, because if such a film was made in Russia the producers would have ‘vanished.’

Also, most of the Native Americans died to European plagues long before the Europeans themselves showed up. The U.S. killed a lot of natives, no question about that, but their death count is nothing compared to smallpox alone, and it was only one of many.

This actually segments into the next section. Indians weren’t U.S. citizens, same with slaves at the time. Every country on earth has a massive body count of people that aren’t a part of it, so if you want to learn which country is really the best, you need to count the number of their own citizens that they’ve killed, on purpose and by accident: the people they’re supposed to be protecting. On that front, the U.S. is one of the best.

U.S. Army spending is out of control, partially because we’re paying for most of our allies on top of ourselves. I would happily take a 90% cut, but good luck getting that through Congress.

Rights vs. privilege is one of those gaps of understanding, like authoritarian vs. quantitative reasoning. I have a very specific definition of a right, and it doesn't include a large amount of stuff commonly considered rights. For me, a right can include nothing that relies on another person, which means that I have life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. That’s it.

Having a right to internet access sounds awesome, but the internet wasn’t even invented 100 years ago. Were our ancestors being denied one of their basic rights because they didn’t have something that didn’t exist yet? If civilization fell and health care and education ceased to exist, are the survivors being denied a right to something that no one can provide?

Another part of my issues with health care and education come from the fact that the U.S. versions are terrible, and every single piece of government intervention has only made them worse. No Child Left Behind and Obamacare were utter disasters, to name just two, so I think giving our government even more control when they have such a terrible track record is a bad idea. We need a new system, preferably one that wields the internet to maximum effect.

Communism is about state control. It isn’t evil in and of itself, but all the nations that tried to use it quickly turned into dictatorships, and if you watched the video you’ll understand exactly why that went poorly. Communist is a bad word because the USSR was America’s enemy, not because the concept itself is evil. Monasteries are communist, and they function just fine because everyone wants to be there and agreed to those rules. A nation can’t run like that, though, not a big one anyway, which is why the only communist nation I’ve ever heard of succeeding was some tiny group in South America.

I said just the people’s interest. If the people are the keys to power, or represent most of them, then the leaders are beholden to them, and not just their court. That’s why Democracies and Republics work, while Dictatorships don’t. I’m paraphrasing from the dictator’s handbook here: A dictatorship can function by stealing from the poor to reward the rich, while a democracy must make successful policies. Stealing 100 dollars total from a hundred people to pay a single key supporter works a lot better than stealing fifty to pay fifty. In the latter scenario, anything you do that can sufficiently benefit half is also likely to benefit everyone.

It is better than anarchy, especially since those warlords you mentioned are just small scale dictatorships, with all the problems that implies.

The last election was full of “go along, get along” candidates selected by the GOP and Democratic parties. Bernie actually would have won an honest primary, but the Party wanted Clinton and they hung themselves to get her. It was the most blatant voter fraud I have ever seen, and mirrored the video I linked perfectly. The GOP wanted Bush, but Trump stole the show, and the Republicans have been slowly falling apart ever since. Both of those candidates would have continued where Obama left off, with more government regulation, more laws, more taxes, and more spending. If they weren’t liberals, then they were definitely leaning that way.

As a result, Trump has the entire U.S. government fighting against him every step of the way, so it’s something of a miracle that he’s managed to do what he has. The real tell, though, is the spending bill, pushed by a united congress, that contains a larger pork barrel than anything Obama rolled out. The real fun begins next year, when those same congressmen have to explain themselves to their voter base, who are not at all happy.

Personally, I’ve usually enjoyed learning, but then again I was home schooled and had an unusual upbringing. The states could handle education instead of the federal level, which would be a better choice because you’d have 50 competing systems instead of one size fits all. We’d probably get a lot of optimization as everyone scrambled for the best tricks to pull in more citizens.

My Dad works at a drug testing company, and he once told me about a drug they’d developed and sold for 1/10th of the previous treatment cost, when they could easily have charge half and pocketed the difference. Drug creation is one of those rough businesses where you get called out no matter what you do.

Story:

OhmyGod she’s adorable! Are you sure we can’t make her the love interest?

Part of the reason I’m nervous about mirroring to multiple sites is because I have a tendency to reread my stories and make minor edits along the way. Keeping all the copies up to date becomes harder with each additional site, and not all of them are as edit friendly as Fimfic.

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Ok, now it’s done.

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You are free to do anything that doesn’t violate the rights of others? We said that first, and all you guys copied us. I support it too, so we don’t need to argue about it.

Your Founding Fathers probably said it, but I don’t think you have ever put that in effect. If so, then how comes that the KKK has far more freedom to oppress than the oppressed have a right to not be oppressed?
In Mexico, the Amish have the freedom to profess whatever religion they want; however, Amish parents don’t have the freedom to hold their children out from school. As a result, Amish towns in Northern Mexico are indistinguible from any surrounding beef & dairy producing town, with the same yellow RF tags on every cow’s ear, and the same over-the-top pickup trucks in every ranch. The only distinguishable features are, in fact, the prevalence of blue eyed blondes, and the lack of alcohol.
Or then compare results of the focus points, applied to natural disasters: When Katrina was underway to New Orleans, the authorities invited the residents of the most at-risk zones to evacuate, but this people had the freedom to ignore the warning. When Wilma, the strongest hurricane ever recorded (until 2015) in the Atlantic, was making its way to Cancun, the authorities considered that the residents of the at-risk zones had their basic right to remain alive, and had the Army and Navy enforce the mandatory evacuations. Results: Katrina left almost 2000 dead; Wilma killed 8 in Mexico and spent itself down to a tropical storm, then crossed the Gulf of Mexico and regained power (back to a pitiful Category 1), and went to kill 61 in the US, mostly Florida.

All of the above, plus making good on those promises. Propaganda can only carry a nation so far, so if the peace and prosperity promised wasn't real we wouldn’t have grown anywhere near as much as we did. 

And that’s a perfectly good point.

U.S. Army spending is out of control, partially because we’re paying for most of our allies on top of ourselves. I would happily take a 90% cut, but good luck getting that through Congress.

I personally believe that it wouldn’t be a problem about the expenditure cut being approved, but about surviving the military coup that would follow. Which is precisely why your Founding Fathers didn’t want a standing army.

Having a right to internet access sounds awesome, but the internet wasn’t even invented 100 years ago. Were our ancestors being denied one of their basic rights because they didn’t have something that didn’t exist yet? If civilization fell and health care and education ceased to exist, are the survivors being denied a right to something that no one can provide?

Kind of funny that you mention the right to internet access: the Mexican constitution received a reform to the 6th article in 2013, which came to include “the right to access to informational technologies such as broadband and internet”. Which has been done so far by abolishing the roaming and long distance charges (which hadn’t made sense for a good decade), the regulation of network sharing between cellphone providers, and by slowly proliferating public wifi hot spots around schools and public parks.

Personally, I’ve usually enjoyed learning, but then again I was home schooled and had an unusual upbringing. The states could handle education instead of the federal level, which would be a better choice because you’d have 50 competing systems instead of one size fits all. We’d probably get a lot of optimization as everyone scrambled for the best tricks to pull in more citizens.

Let’s agree to disagree there, because what you propose is the very reason why Mexico just reformed the Federal Institute of Elections into the National Institute of Elections, which then merged into itself every state electoral institute. And why? Because it meant duplication of efforts, staff, et al, which ultimately lead to inefficiency and money wasting. Furthermore, in the case of education, that also means that rather than being capable of getting the best experts together, the different ministries, secretariats or whatever have to compete for them, which doesn’t only drop the overall quality, but also allows for self-important idiots to slip through the cracks and position themselves as decision-makers.

Here also comes a great example of how Yankee education is currently flagging: plenty of Yanks complain about how Silicon Valley is turning into Little India due to tech sector companies recruiting straight out from universities in India and the Philippines. What plenty of Yanks don’t realice is that US immigration law states that these companies cannot apply for the work visas unless they are offering these employees with wage & benefit packages equal or greater than the average Yank is receiving for that same job. So, if these foreigners are more expensive (and a lot more bothersome) to hire, then why aren’t these companies hiring Yanks? Simple: because few Yanks are coming out of university sufficiently well prepared to actually take those jobs.

And I did watch the video. It didn’t say anything that I don’t know: oligarchy works!

OhmyGod she’s adorable! Are you sure we can’t make her the love interest?

Well; I believe that it would help the story along if both Izuku and her consciously try to abstain from becoming an item, but that’s just my opinion. Furthermore, whether they do or don’t look that way at each other, her presence alone might help to create pressure on Ochako (and possibly Tsuyu) to pursue Izuku more aggressively. Read into the author notes of the doc file I sent you.
Besides: harem comedies are hilarious.

Part of the reason I’m nervous about mirroring to multiple sites is because I have a tendency to reread my stories and make minor edits along the way. Keeping all the copies up to date becomes harder with each additional site, and not all of them are as edit friendly as Fimfic.

Well, while I don’t apply it to fiction-writing, I do have a way with file versions:
1) I keep a master copy either in HDD or a thumb drive, and a master backup on the opposite, and then proliferate copies carefully labelled as say “FaPaO Chapter 2 (v.1.2).doc” or “Resume-IARMC-abridged-2017-06-07.doc”
2) Subsequent versions either get a version number or a newer date. And I never perform changes on the copies, but rather on the original (so I can then generate newer copies).
3) To update the copies, I then check the versions, then delete older files and substitute the newer.
All in all, copy-paste is faster and easier than actually manually updating each site.

Ok, now it’s done.

Sorry: what’s done?

5978687 The KKK was our worst impulses getting the best of us. They’re mostly gone now.

Katrina was a clusterfuck for a lot more reasons than just the warnings being ignored, but people could ignore those warnings because it’s part of what means to be a U.S. citizen. When you’re truly free, your life is in your own hands, to be handled or mishandled as you see fit. Being free means you’re allowed to be stupid, and if you aren’t allowed to be stupid you aren’t actually free. You can’t have one without the other, and trying to change that about the U.S. would make it no longer be the U.S.

The U.S. was actually supposed to have a mass civilian militia for defense instead of a standing army for offense, so now that we have both they’re tripping over each other.

You didn’t answer my real question: Can you have a Right to something that doesn’t exist or might stop existing? For me, the answer’s no.

We’ve had all the best experts in the country in one place for several decades, and not only are our schools as bad as ever, but their cost has exploded. Competition works better than anything else we try, which is why private schools have a better reputation than public. Also, I would have suffered in public school and thrived outside of it, so I’m naturally opposed to making it mandatory when it’s really not the best choice for all.

Works was the wrong word. Small coalition governments (few keys) are under systematic pressure to hurt their subjects to benefit their keys, while Large coalition governments (many keys) are under pressure to listen to their citizens because they are keys as well. You can have a small coalition in a democracy, that’s how China runs and it’s happened in the U.S. too, as well as a large coalition in a monarchy, see the U.K. and Japan. Calling something a democracy or dictatorship is about as effective as hanging a sign saying Cold on your refrigerator. You have to count coalition members.

Pardon my insistence, I bought and read the book that video was based on, and it was much more detailed.

Story:

I can write that. Izuku will want to avoid copying his parents’s marriage, but the attraction will probably be really strong. Also, I have a baseline personality for her now. She’s the kind of person who would love this song and be able to sing it: she likes fairies, nature spirits, music, singing, and has mountain goat climbing powers.

I used to use a similar system when I posted to fanfiction.net, and switched away when Fimfic proved so accessible. I can go back to it easily enough.

I accidentally hit post comment before my last reply was done, so I made a quick edit saying as much in case you came by to read it, finished typing, then posted a second comment to alert you I was finished.

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I can write that. Izuku will want to avoid copying his parents’s marriage, but the attraction will probably be really strong.

I suddenly had a horrifying image pass through my mind: what will happen to Izuku and Ranma once the other 12 males in the class suddenly realice that five of the seven females in the class, plus one from outside, are all competing for only these two quiet and unassuming boys?
Well, for one thing, I imagine Jirou will suddenly get very popular, and Ukyo might too, and Aoyama might jump out of the closet, but our two boys will otherwise find the need for a police escort...

Also, I have a baseline personality for her now. She’s the kind of person who would love this song and be able to sing it: she likes fairies, nature spirits, music, singing, and has mountain goat climbing powers.

I suddenly had this horrible brainfart: she’s a huge fan of the Legend of Zelda, her room is like a shrine divided between Tolkien and Zelda, her hero costume is basically Rule-63 Link (Legend of Zelda), she’s milking her hero tuition to the max just to get functional cosplay props, and she’ll dress up as Zelda (or Lorothiel) if there is ever a formal dance or so:



And of course, her costume would include a pouch with a blue ocarina. She may know no magic, but she knows how to play it.
And never forget that her quirk does include strength enhancements, so she should be quite capable with a sword as tall as she is:

I imagine she would also try for other medieval weapons, but without a lot of success: those horns are really tall, so she would hit herself if she was to wield a quarterstaff, or really any weapon that passes over one’s own head on occasion (like an axe-chop with a sword or glaive). Perhaps for weapons, she could have a crown-shaped helmet and two bucklers: she wields her horns like swords, and the helmet acts like a cross-guard. And she compliments the package with a really long sword, one meant for horizontal swings, if she’s called specifically for combat.

The KKK was our worst impulses getting the best of us. They’re mostly gone now.

And that’s great, but I would still be worried to think that the legal foundation that allowed them to exist remains there.
Here’s the first paragraph of the sixth article of the Mexican Constitution:
“Article 6th: The expression of ideas will not be object of any judicial or administrative inquisition, unless they attack morality, private life, the rights of others, call for illegal acts or disturbs public order. The right of reply will be exercised under the terms laid down by the law. The right to information will be guaranteed by the State.” With the possible exception of morality (after a fashion), the KKK did everything else, and so do the current Neo-nazi groups.

Being free means you’re allowed to be stupid, and if you aren’t allowed to be stupid you aren’t actually free.

Lets better agree to disagree there, because a ton of the world doesn’t agree with your definition of freedom.

You didn’t answer my real question: Can you have a Right to something that doesn’t exist or might stop existing? For me, the answer’s no.

When you become a citizen to a state (or a subject to monarchy), you give up some freedoms in exchange of the state giving you warranty over your rights. You don’t need to stand on your property with a shotgun at hand, because you have a piece of paper stating your ownership. You can’t go out and hunt down somebody who you suspect performed a crime against you, because that’s what police is for. You don’t need to bury your money in your backyard, because there are banks, and you have a contract with a bank that you can have enforced if needed. You have the responsibility to pay taxes, but the government then has the responsibility to give you services: law enforcement, firefighters, roads, et al. And as we go down the line, a good state will try to include new services that it believes will create incremental improvements in its citizens’ quality of life, or seen negatively, are necessary to prevent the country from losing competitiveness in an ever-expanding world. And such, of course, include that competitive people need glass windows on their homes, decent-quality roads under their cars, subways under city streets, news outlets, running water, electricity, and yes: high speed internet access and third-generation (or better) cellphone networks, which are one and the same and quite universal in smaller countries, but in larger countries like the US and Mexico, are still quite separate and quite patchy.
And of course that advanced societal services can collapse, but for that to happen, the society itself needs to have collapsed. One thing is to be prepared for emergencies, but another is to just be a prepper waiting for doomsday. In Cancun, after Wilma, I didn’t have running water for three days, didn’t have electricity for a week, didn’t have classes in my university for about ten days (and in fact almost lost the semestre), and didn’t have internet access for two weeks. And in my neighbourhood, we also didn’t have supermarkets for like a week, so at my home, we went through most of our emergency food. Meh.

5978965 I imagine they’ll try something exactly once, and Izuku and Ramna will mop the floor with them, then Iida will chew them out. That’ll settle that pretty quickly.

Zelda is brilliant, though maybe not that extreme. Just have her be a big fan of old school video games, and that one top her favorites list. I must ask, though, where did you find those first five pictures? I happen to be a big fan of that particular artist’s work, and he has some... unique tastes.

I’ve also been thinking through how they’ll run into each other, and afterschool clubs. If she’s really timid, then Izuku will have to go to her, and have reason to go to her. Maybe he doesn’t like how Japan treats foreigners, and decides to change that by changing how he himself reacts to them, and picks her because her eye shape obviously isn’t native to Japan.

If that article really started getting taken seriously, Left Wing radicals would be the first to go. You know, the guys who have been rioting on and off for the past eight months? Not to mention everyone who threw a fit when the election results came in. The KKK and Neo-Nazi’s have maybe 10,000 members between them, if that, compared to the millions of their prime, and if they tried to practice what they preach the law would come down on them like a sack of bricks. They’ve got no fangs, are slowly shrinking, and don’t deserve the attention they would get from becoming outlawed.

That’s why we’re the U.S.

Anyway, my stuff about coalition sizes drifted away from the original question, so I’ll bring it back around. Communist nations failed because they were built as small coalition governments, which was a recipe for disaster from the outset. A successful communist nation would have to also be a large coalition, but large coalition governments thrive on competing policies, so there would have to be an alternative to communism to compete against. However, that wouldn’t be a truly communist nation, but something else entirely. Also, Communism doesn’t seem to be happy unless the country it resides in is entirely communist, which means small coalition, which rolls right around to problem one.

If you can think of a way for a fully communist nation to also be a large coalition government, please tell me, because I can’t. Unless we can, we’re probably best off marking a good Communist nation as a pipe dream about as likely as a good king (possible, but rare), put it on a shelf next to all the other failed experiments, and try something new. Personally, I’m curious what a nation built around Mark 2 voting systems would look like.

You said a lot of stuff I already agree with, but I can’t find an answer to my question in there. Do you have a right to something that doesn’t exist, yes or no? If, for example, in the future everyone has a spaceship and it’s considered a right to own one, can you start claiming that right in the present?

5978965 Now that I think about it, I don’t think Izuku is going to have a bunch of female admirers. He’ll probably have two to three: Tsunotori and Tsuyu and/or Ochako. Honestly, I think Iida would be the biggest heartthrob of the group, between his maturity, quirk, earnestness, and no small amount of wealth.

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I imagine they’ll try something exactly once, and Izuku and Ramna will mop the floor with them, then Iida will chew them out. That’ll settle that pretty quickly.

Well... if this version of Ranma compared to his ancestor Ranma Saotome, he and Ukyo would be capable of fighting off the entire class and make it look easy. Thing is, this Ranma didn’t go on a ten-year training trip with a madman teaching him by brute force. If he and Ukyo consider themselves deserving heirs to their school, they might be able to fight off any combination of three or four boys not including Kaminari, Todoroki or Tokoyami (who all have ranged powers that prey on their own’s power weaknesses), but not a well organised attack, let alone an ambush.
And Rational!Izuku wouldn’t have any of his baseline power ups. Physically, he’s squishy.
And of course there wouldn’t be a second attack: all the involved would be suspended and have stains added to their school records. Which is why I imagine the attack would never take place as such, but rather the victims would find themselves in the middle of a bullying campaign.
Como to think about it, lets keep the boys in the dark, or for the girls to solve the two situations before the class at large gets that something’s going on.

I must ask, though, where did you find those first five pictures? I happen to be a big fan of that particular artist’s work, and he has some... unique tastes.

http://tran4of3.deviantart.com/
You know: I hadn’t actually gone checking that artist’s work, but you raised my curiosity. As such, I just saw a few things that I cannot unsee, and call you an evil man.

But you know what?
Better tell me of a possible problem with having a girlfriend with a 20 metre tongue.

I’ve also been thinking through how they’ll run into each other, and afterschool clubs. If she’s really timid, then Izuku will have to go to her, and have reason to go to her. Maybe he doesn’t like how Japan treats foreigners, and decides to change that by changing how he himself reacts to them, and picks her because her eye shape obviously isn’t native to Japan.

If we want to make her a typical Yankee girl, then lets imagine her not as being timid (as in a personality trait), but as appearing timid due to currently feeling highly insecure, and feeling insecure due to being conscious that her Intermediate Japanese has her sounding like a Bliss Ninny. And also missing her friends, and feeling homesick.
I insist that the best way for Izuku to bump into her would be if he overhears her speaking in English. She could be in a cubicle in the reading rooms of the school’s library, muttering to herself or phoning a friend back home; or could be sitting on a bench, whining at her Daddy (on the phone) that the Jap girls are far too concerned about being ladylike, have as much personality as white rice, as much force of will as wet noodles, and that the boys are all either total dweebs, total robots or totally on steroids, with not a single guy or gal to chill with. Either way, Izuku waits until she hangs up, then intentionally invades her personal space and greets her like an old buddy, in Yankee teenagers’ slang. She opens up like a book, they chat and laugh for a while, and he then walks her home. She kisses his cheek in good night and slips in, and Izuku turns back and begins walking home, feeling embarrassed at blushing from such an innocent gesture. Meanwhile, she’s on the other side of the door, blushing as well, and berating herself for having kissed a boy that she’s only known for an hour.

If I remember correctly from my grandpa’s teachings (who happened to be an avid student of Marx and a despiser of both Stalin and Mao, just like most of his generation of Mexican artists), the only way for Communism to work is for the economy to have moved into “post-scarcity”, and the government itself has moved into a meritocracy (and one as automated as possible to prevent corruption): everybody’s basic needs are met, but people who don’t want to work sleep in communal bedding, wear burlap and eat tasteless algae soup. People at this point have stopped working for a living, and now work in the pursuit of privilege: if you are a kid growing up in the communal beds, you are told that if you work hard at school, the state will reward your effort. You do, and your personal clothing upgrades to cotton, your bed is moved to a private room, and your personal food upgrades to rice, beans and chicken, and you get a tiny allowance that you can use on the stores. Thing is, if you then decide to settle for this level and enter work on a factory, this will be your max; if, on the other hand, you opt for college and then finish it, you’ll move up and perhaps have a room with a view, an occasional hamburger lunch and an allowance modest but enough to buy pretty clothes. And then you either rise on the ranks with your college degree, or go to university and you get a room with a private bathroom, and your allowance grows up to the point where your constant restaurant visits let you forget what algae soup ever tastes like. And of course, while the upper governance might take place under democratic principles (councils and congresses were representatives reach decisions by voting), the common citizen never gets to vote.
And that’s the working of utopic communism. Unfortunately, our world is at least a century away from post-scarcity, and maybe more considering how badly we are buggering up the environment, so the only examples of this perfect world would be pointing at Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, or at Isaac Asimov’s “The Caves of Steel”. On this last one, by the way, New York city has evolved into an arcology, and most residents never even see the sky in their entire lives.

You said a lot of stuff I already agree with, but I can’t find an answer to my question in there. Do you have a right to something that doesn’t exist, yes or no? If, for example, in the future everyone has a spaceship and it’s considered a right to own one, can you start claiming that right in the present?

Then I’ll reverse your question: can you point me at a bottle of happiness, or sell me a kilogram of future? The fact that something might be intangible doesn’t make it unreal. Quite the opposite: what can a libertarian tell me about the private sector, unburdened by health, safety and environmental regulation, would do about the right of the people living downstream toward having a clean river? The answer is that the private sector wouldn’t care if the people downstream are dying, as long as the factories are making a profit. The private sector may even not care about their own employees, and rather calculate their survival as employees rather than their lives as retirees. Sounds like the Industrial Revolution, doesn’t it? Or like the contemporary cruise industry...

So tell me: if you were a factory worker, do you have the right to a healthy work environment, safety equipment and a reasonable shift, or are your rights limited to being paid X per hour? Just remember that the wrong choice will not likely see you alive to meet your grandchildren.

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Now that I think about it, I don’t think Izuku is going to have a bunch of female admirers. He’ll probably have two to three: Tsunotori and Tsuyu and/or Ochako. Honestly, I think Iida would be the biggest heartthrob of the group, between his maturity, quirk, earnestness, and no small amount of wealth.

Iida is totally anally retentive! He’s a piece of ass, like Shoji, but both of them fail at being approachable. Quite frankly, the guy with the bunny and the guy that bakes cakes are both far more likely to attract attention, for exactly the cakes and the bunny. Nevertheless, Ranma will likely attract the most attention, being the most available, the most approachable and the most prescreened.

5980141 That society sounds decent, but I’d have to take to a look at the guts to see if it was really possible, even with post scarcity. Humans have a nasty talent for rigging progression systems and tilting stuff in their favor, after all, so I get the feeling that political dissenters would quickly find themselves at the bottom of the pile.

No, you wouldn’t have a right to all those things directly, but you would have the right to form a union, make your protests known, and arrange a new deal with management. That’s why we have freedom of speech. When you got hired you entered into a contract with the company that said you would do X work for Y pay in Z conditions. If you aren’t satisfied with that anymore, or feel you were cheated or tricked, then you have every right in the world to try to update the contract or go somewhere else. That’s exactly what happened to the old industrial factories, btw, although the strikers did get the police and private security called on them a few times.

The trick is, company owners have a right to try to keep their businesses profitable, so anything to protect the workers must not get in the way of that. If it did, the company would go out of business and everyone would be out of a job. This does not cover extortion, though, so workers are free to demand as much pay and work safety as they can get without sinking the ship.

That’s the problem with minimum wage these days. A living wage is more than most small companies can afford to pay without going bankrupt, so union and federal minimum wage increases force them to choose between going out of business, running with fewer staff, and finding a cheaper alternative. Hence the rise of automation. Large companies can take that hit, though, and get most of the media attention, so all the smaller guys get lost in the background.

story:

Keep the boys oblivious? Ok, as long as the girls aren’t making any overt moves. Once that happens R!Midoriya will spot it right away or get a nagging feeling he’s missing something that he won’t ignore, and all bets are off. His slowly dawning comprehension as he’s researching flirting techniques might well be the pinnacle of comedy if done right.

Hey, I told you he had unique tastes. I just didn’t say those tastes included mind control and transformations. Fun fact, what you saw was the tame stuff. He keeps his real shit on his personal website.

That picture with the tongue... yikes. Tsuyu might end being the most sought after girl in the class after that little tidbit gets spread around. By both genders.

5980150 Really? I didn’t get the impression at all. He’s intense and highly lawful, but honest and genuine in a way that’s very rare, and physically he’s much more adult looking than the rest of his class. He also has the three H’s that are considered desirable in Japan: high status, high salary, and high height. With that in mind, he’ll be the most attractive to students outside the hero course, and Ramna will be the most attractive to students inside it.

That meeting you just wrote was a perfect outline. I’m going to steal most of it. I’m not the most familiar with modern slang, though, so you’ll have to double check anything I use. Now, which part of the U.S. is she from? New York has different greeting patterns than both the deep south and the west coast. I know, she’s from Nevada, either Las Vegas or upstate, with the key being she grew up mountain climbing with those goat hooves of hers, so she’d get the most mileage out of a mountainous region. That means she’d be mostly valley girl with a touch of southerner. Maybe she’s the daughter of a prestigious lawyer in charge of handling quirk cases, so part of her arc could include seeing how the way Japan does it is not a good idea and the U.S. should try something else.

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Really? I didn’t get the impression at all. He’s intense and highly lawful, but honest and genuine in a way that’s very rare, and physically he’s much more adult looking than the rest of his class. He also has the three H’s that are considered desirable in Japan: high status, high salary, and high height. With that in mind, he’ll be the most attractive to students outside the hero course, and Ramna will be the most attractive to students inside it.

Iida’s factors would see him perfect anywhere, not only in Japan, as far as being presented to a girl’s parents. And in a country like Japan, which relies very heavily on matchmaking services, he will have an advantageous marriage, either to a heiress to a good business or to a girl with a compatible quirk, and because she finds him off-putting, they will sleep in separate bedrooms, probably stop fucking him altogether as soon as she has given him enough heirs, and he will have a personal geisha in a nearby teahouse. Basically, the typical life of a Japanese big earner.
This anime even gives a great example of this: Endeavour basically bought his wife just for her genes, and never bothered trying to be a good husband, let alone a good father.

Quoting from the .doc I sent you: For a girl to be attracted to a boy, the boy requires: (A) being good looking (showing signs of good health and good genes) and having an approachable personality, (B) having resources to make a living on (money, contacts, athletic ability, being a leader, etc), and (C) being pre-screened (as in, some other female on her circle having expressed interest in him).
Translated into English: If you read the surveys on what women want on a man’s personality, the first answer is, invariably, “for him to be funny/ for him to make me laugh.”
So, while Iida might have a promising future and is a piece of eye-candy, his personality makes us wonder if his family’s money doesn’t come from them eating coal and shitting diamond. Thus, he will likely hover near the bottom as far as personality is concerned, just above Mineta (the perv), Shoji (the non-entity) and Kacchan (the future wife beater), and will marry through a matchmaker unless he gets picked up by a gold digger. The rest of the boys stack the following way, in my opinion:
+ The top ranking is Koda and Sato (both are like Teddy bears), Shoto (who exudes bad boy vibes and will attract girls with Daddy issues), Aoyama (who is the least masculine boy in class, thus nonthreatening, thus will attract the same girls that chase after boy bands), and Midoriya (who is smart, brave, hard-working, not excessively masculine and might be considered “adorably awkward” in social settings). And, in this story, Ranma (who is handsome, has quite a quirk, and was considered so nonthreatening that the girls had him labelled as a fellow girl for a while).
+ The rest of the boys don’t have anything too strong either going for or against them at this point.

Although, who knows: considering that Momo is a rich heiress herself, and if the girl has a good relationship with her own father, she might find Iida attractive out of pure Elektra complex. If she has Daddy issues, which I consider much more likely on the face of her being so socially awkward, I imagine she will seek a big Teddy bear, like Koda (Rabbit-boy) or Sato (the pastry chef). And Ranma would have advantages over either boy: he’s got a more versatile quirk, so he’ll never want for work; he is so nonthreatening that the girls had him labelled as a fellow girl for a while; and he is much more physically available, as he’s the only boy that hangs out with the girls.

Maybe she’s the daughter of a prestigious lawyer in charge of handling quirk cases, so part of her arc could include seeing how the way Japan does it is not a good idea and the U.S. should try something else.

I don’t think he could be a lawyer: due to having to certify at multiple levels (national, state and local), and having to re-test under local law before being re-certified, lawyers tend to have a very hard time for moving long distances, and don’t move temporarily. The only work for a Yankee lawyer in Japan would be at the US Embassy in Tokyo, dealing with treaty negotiations and such.
However, if you want him to be basically a lawyer, and to come from Nevada, he could be a travelling auditor for Tesla Renewable Energy Solutions, sent from the Gigafactory (Tesla Corp HQ) to supervise the company’s Japanese interests. Let’s say that he’s beginning a temporary, long-term assignment (3-5 years), after which he wants to return States-side.
Now comes the question as to whether Pony has two parents or not. If she doesn’t, it is likely she’s being left alone for weeks at a time; she would latch hard on Izuku either way, but if she’s coming home to an empty apartment, she’ll be much more desperate for companionship, and she will definitely be the girlfriend.

That picture with the tongue... yikes. Tsuyu might end being the most sought aftergirlin the class after that little tidbit gets spread around.

She would likely be scary to kiss, unless you happen to be the type who enjoys erotic asphyxiation. Although she might also be quite popular with bisexuals of either gender, as kissing her can count as a deep-throat.
Although, who knows: what if she’s straight, and likes being dominant with her lovers, so she likes penetrating them from above while she’s being penetrated from below?
One way or another, frenching with her would be an acquired taste to me. She’s a sweetheart, and I would primarily enjoy cuddling with her.

The trick is, company owners have a right to try to keep their businesses profitable, so anything to protect the workers must not get in the way of that. If it did, the company would go out of business and everyone would be out of a job. This does not cover extortion, though, so workers are free to demand as much pay and work safety as they can get without sinking the ship.

But then, even if nobody cares about the environment, can the company get away with dumping its chemicals into the river? Because downstream, there are a couple of farms and ranches, and the chemicals will both kill the crops and the livestock. And you know what happens when there is no industrial waste regulation: the companies will decide that they can hire lawyers, then wear down the opposition, rather than “waste money” on waste handling.

And here’s a good quote from a man I admire a lot:

5980554 I see a bit of myself in Iida, and that means he’s a dork. He has a stick up his rear, but he tries to do the right thing in every situation, and he’d be a knight in shining armor if that was still a thing. He’s Lawful Good to a fault, so the best partner for him would be someone who can get him to loosen up, while in turn he’d make an excellent anchor for a wilder personality. I guess what I’m thinking is that Iida stands a good chance of attracting a manic pixie dream girl, or someone similar: a free spirit who latches onto him for wealth or physical attractiveness at first, then brings out the best in him by helping him unwind. If you’re familiar with Star vs. the Forces of Evil, he’s Marco. His ideal partner would be a Star Butterfly.

Ochako is also friends with him, which means he must not be totally repulsive. He’ll probably have a rough time when he starts dating, but will learn quickly and never make the same mistake twice. The idea of him ending up in that sort of marriage is pretty likely, but I’d consider it a bad ending for him. He could be so much more than just another heir with the right partner.

However, if you want him to be basically a lawyer, and to come from Nevada, he could be a travelling auditor for Tesla Renewable Energy Solutions, sent from the Gigafactory (Tesla Corp HQ) to supervise the company’s Japanese interests. Let’s say that he’s beginning a temporary, long-term assignment (3-5 years), after which he wants to return States-side.
Now comes the question as to whether Pony has two parents or not. If she doesn’t, it is likely she’s being left alone for weeks at a time; she would latch hard on Izuku either way, but if she’s coming home to an empty apartment, she’ll be much more desperate for companionship, and she will definitely be the girlfriend.

While my first impulse is to say she has two, when I check the odds they land heavily on divorce. Her mom probably really didn’t want to leave the U.S., making the move the final straw on an already straining relationship. They might have had a nasty custody battle too, one the father won only by being so well employed. When Pony enters the scene, she’s probably miserable and will jump at any chance for human interaction. Midoriya’s real challenge here would be to resist his impulses to take advantage of that. Learning Rationality means learning no small amount of cognitive science and persuasion (since a persuader is a rationalist’s dark mirror), and Pony would be a really easy target.

She would likely be scary to kiss, unless you happen to be the type who enjoys erotic asphyxiation. Although she might also be quite popular with bisexuals of either gender, as kissing her can count as a deep-throat.
Although, who knows: what if she’s straight, and likes being dominant with her lovers, so she likes penetrating them from above while she’s being penetrated from below?

Think of her oral skills, dude. She’s basically got a tentacle in her mouth, and you know how Japan loves its tentacles. That dominance idea definitely sounds fitting, though. If it ever comes up (and I doubt it), that’ll be her thing.

I’d say no, since such an act would go under vandalism: the destruction of property that is not your own. You may own that chunk of river, but you don’t own the whole thing, so any pollution that escapes your property is your fault, and you have to pay to fix it. Add in a few a law firms who specialize in that kind of prosecution and the situation is well handled.

5980578

Ochako is also friends with him, which means he must not be totally repulsive.

Well, not repulsive as a friend or study partner (especially as we know Ochako to have a pretty intense streak herself), but totally unsuitable as a boyfriend.
Although... if we have pretty much decided that Izuku is taken, and these three are making their little dynamic trio... could it happen that Ochako one day gives him an impulsive kiss during a particularly torturous battle, when he says something inspiring after everybody else had lost hope?

Midoriya’s real challenge here would be to resist his impulses to take advantage of that. Learning Rationality means learning no small amount of cognitive science and persuasion (since a persuader is a rationalist’s dark mirror), and Pony would be a really easy target.

For a 15 year old boy with zero life experience and his first girlfriend, I believe we would be giving Izuku far too much credit that he manages to pull back the first time the girl jumps on his lips. Furthermore, he wouldn’t even consider that he’s taking advantage of her until his dad points it out.
I can tell you that I would have failed such a test, even three years later. Even with another type of “pulling back”.
I say the two get in a really good snogging, or a few, and then Izuku has his weekly chat with his dad, and his dad tells him to back off, explaining everything to him. Izuku feels horrible, but his dad reassures him that he isn’t at fault, and to speak with the girl that they have to promise each other to keep their hands off each other’s body until much further down their relationship. He adds that if their reach 18 and are still going strong, he will fly back to Japan so they can have a omiai (the usual middle step in the Japanese matchmaking process: a formal introduction including the potential couple and the direct families, usually resulting in an engagement or a refusal), and will gift the couple with a hospital-sized box of condoms. He even tells Izuku that he knows his boy will get tongue-tied, so better print out the chat-log and let the girl read through it. Monday morning he finds her before classes and gives her the printout, and makes her promise that she’ll read through it over the course of the day. Comes the last bell and she meets him, acting quite shyly, and asks him if they can have a study date at his home, with his mum watching. He accents, and they then have a study date where they study something other than each other’s throat.

Something else I thought about backstories:
+ Considering that her father gave her a Japanese surname (even if it translates rather Amerindian-sounding), it can be easily guessed that he’s the kid of a Japanese family that immigrated to the States, and he was old enough to know the language quite well. This assignment is a boon for him.
+ Unless the woman was a total waste, the divorce cannot be too recent: a travelling auditor wouldn’t have time to care for a child, and the courts would know it. It’ll be probably easier if he widowed, and took the assignment trying to forget, without thinking about the fact that Pony would be left alone at home, in a foreign land were she didn’t know anybody, for extensive periods of time. This doesn’t necessarily mark him as a bad father (he was in pain), but he’s not getting my vote as father of the year, either.

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Had forgotten about this:

Think of her oral skills, dude. She’s basically got a tentacle in her mouth, and you know how Japan loves its tentacles. That dominance idea definitely sounds fitting, though. If it ever comes up (and I doubt it), that’ll be her thing.

Well, if we consider it through, with Izuku not available, but Ranma interested, Ranma could take it as a challenge:
First, Ranma gives himself a tracheotomy, and forms a second, non-functioning stomach.
Second, once Tsuyu begins pushing in, he actually swallows and then actively sucks it in.

Although, then there’s the fact that Ukyo isn’t only present, but also a more-or-less obligated partner. I guess that’s fodder for some further thought, but less than urgent considering that the lot are 15. There won’t be any fucking until the lot is 17 or more... unless there’s a war around the corner.

Ah! Here’s a manoeuvre that every shapeshifting hero should master:
How to extract a grape out of a child’s windpipe!

5980779 That sounds like something both of them would do, and Ochako’s permanent sweetness and determination probably could get him to unwind a little.

I actually wasn’t speaking about taking advantage in the physical sense, though your scenario is quite accurate and I’m going to use it. I meant that a couple of well placed words could chain Pony to Midoriya even more strongly than actual metal. Preying on fear masked as sympathy to keep her from reaching out to anyone besides him, a couple of arousal tricks to make her want to jump him even when she knows she shouldn’t, giving out affection at just the right rate to keep her wanting more, the list goes on, and most of them are subtle enough to slip past the standard abuse checks. I’ve actually been in such a position and actively gone against this impulse, so I know it’s not only possible, but probable for Midoriya to have that temptation placed in front of him.

You see, your free will has external overrides, buttons that a skilled manipulator will know how to press. Once you’re aware of those buttons, you can block them, but the ignorant are vulnerable. Midoriya will know most of those buttons by the time he gets to school, even if he’s not a master of pushing and blocking them yet. Pony will face Midoriya with a choice between two ways to wield his skills: he can program, or he can hack.

Hackers are persuaders, and they care about biases only to the degree that they can exploit them. A hacker will use those bugs to manipulate himself and those around him to his advantage, and won’t try to fix them. A programmer is a rationalist, someone who wants to know about the bugs for the express purpose of patching, marking, and overriding them. He plugs the holes instead of using them. They use the same skills to opposite ends, operating as two sides of a single coin. Midoriya will have to face the temptation to hack instead of program, because hacking is a whole lot easier. Scott Adams is a hacker, and if you skim his persuasion blogs you’ll begin to see it’s very similar to rationality.

Widowed then. Maybe killed in a quirk mugging on her way home from work, so the father has an additional reason to move to a country where that’s less likely to happen. That way, Pony will have a reason to support banning public quirk use, which will give her turnaround some weight.

5980829 Considering the source material, that might very well be the case. A superhero war, anyway. Like you found out, there’s many more disgruntled people with destructive quirks than heroes, so we might be facing some sort of urban brawl at a later date.

I think you should focus on their relationship in the side story. Midoriya probably isn’t going to be privy to the finer details.

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I actually wasn’t speaking about taking advantage in the physical sense, though your scenario is quite accurate and I’m going to use it.

Well, I couldn’t even think of Izuku as being such an arsehole as to intentionally take advantage of a girl like that. He has every conviction of being a hero, and doing so would run completely counter to it.

Widowed then. Maybe killed in a quirk mugging on her way home from work, so the father has an additional reason to move to a country where that’s less likely to happen. That way, Pony will have a reason to support banning public quirk use, which will give her turnaround some weight.

Better leave the mum’s cause of death blank, or accidental, because here it wouldn’t have made sense for Pony to be at Yuuei Academy: the father could have easily enrolled her into a normal high school, rather than allowed her to test into one most famous for its hero program. He could have arranged their housing to be in the middle of nowhere, rather than within walking distance of Yuuei. Heck! Considering that he isn’t at home most of the time, and that he’s making top dollars, he could have enrolled her in some elite for-ladies boarding school!

5981297 The temptation will cross his mind, but he’ll push it away almost immediately. He does need to be aware that his knowledge can be abused though, and Pony can provide a constant reminder.

Maybe her dad is a comic book geek, and thinks the idea of his daughter being a superhero is the most awesome thing ever. Pony herself would be less enthusiastic.

5980927

I actually wasn’t speaking about taking advantage in the physical sense, though your scenario is quite accurate and I’m going to use it.

Let me try to sketch out the chat between Izuku and his dad:

Little Brainiac has opened the chat room
Hip Dad has joined the chat
Hip Dad said: Hey champ, how was your week?
Little Brainiac said: Hey dad! It was awesome!
Hip Dad said: Le me guess: still hanging out with that Pony girl?
Little Brainiac said: Oh, yeah!
Hip Dad said: And are you still “just friends”, or is she your girlfriend?
Little Brainiac said: Dad!
Hip Dad said: Please, son; I’m curious.
Little Brainiac said: Well... she kissed me last Tuesday... and we’ve been kissing a lot ever since...
Hip Dad said: Oh, man; I was afraid of this...
Hip Dad said: Please, son: I wish so much I could be with you right this moment, but alas, I’m not. Now please promise me that you’ll hear me out for the next fifteen minutes or so, and will not interrupt me.
Little Brainiac said: ... okay, Dad.
Hip Dad said: Okay, son; here it goes:
Hip Dad said: Last week, you told me that when you stumbled upon her, she was almost crying on the phone, telling a friend in America that she missed her home, her neighbourhood, her mom, and that Japan was absolutely horrible...
Hip Dad said: That she was absolutely miserable because the “Japs” were all keeping her at arm’s length, and everything was so different, and her dad was always travelling around the country,
Hip Dad said: And that she was feeling so stupid because her Japanese is so bad that she sounded like some complete bimbo.
Hip Dad said: And some of her classmates were even making fun of her for that.
Hip Dad said: And then, my dear son came out of nowhere and tried your best to make her feel a lot less homesick:
Hip Dad said: You tossed your arm around her waist like you had known her all your life, then dusted up your very well acquired Brooklyn accent to tell her something like “What’s up, bud? I heard the Japs are giving you a hard time!”
Hip Dad said: It took her a couple seconds to react, but she tossed her arm on your shoulder and told you something on badly imitated Deep South whines, and you two almost fell over laughing.
Hip Dad said: An hour later, you walked her home.
Hip Dad said: And you two began hanging out together every day after classes.
Hip Dad said: You didn’t tell me, but I’m sure it was happening: that very first day, she at least gave you a kiss, or caressed your cheek or hand,
Hip Dad said: and you were already holding hands and such by last Sunday, when we had our last chat.
Hip Dad said: I just extracted from you that you two had your first real kiss last Tuesday.
Hip Dad said: And I bet my paycheck you two haven’t been having innocent, closed-mouth kisses, but more like she’s trying to eat your face.
Hip Dad said: Am I right?
Hip Dad said: Answer, please. I’m worried.
Little Brainiac said: Yes, dad. She’s kind off all over me.
Hip Dad said: Okay, Izuku, please keep listening.
Hip Dad said: This isn’t not your fault, and this is not her fault, but you are both abusing each other.
Hip Dad said: She was uprooted from everything she knew, tossed to sink or swim into a completely alien environment, and neither could she communicate properly with people, nor people where even trying to meet her halfway.
Hip Dad said: By acting like an American kid to her, and acting like you were already the best of friends, you basically tossed her a lifeline as thick as her arm.
Hip Dad said: Which I am very proud of you for doing.
Hip Dad said: Thing is, I’m pretty sure that you are her only lifeline so far, so she’s now diving head-first into you,
Hip Dad said: and because you became her everything, she’s giving her everything.
Hip Dad said: So please, Izuku: first thing tomorrow morning, I want you to speak with her,
Hip Dad said: and doontdf
Hip Dad said: NO!
Hip Dad said: DON’T SPEAK WITH HER!
Hip Dad said: If you stumble for words or something, she’ll feel rejected, she’ll run, and next thing you’ll know of her will be about her having ran away, or that she jumped into the subway or something equally horrible!
Hip Dad said: Gimme a minute to think, son...
Hip Dad said: Okay, I’ve got it!
Hip Dad said: So Izuku, PLEASE make me this promise:
Hip Dad said: Please promise me that you will NOT try to speak with her,
Hip Dad said: you will rather print this chat as soon as we are over tonight,
Hip Dad said: you will give her the chat-log first thing tomorrow morning,
Hip Dad said: and you will give her no more than a little kiss tomorrow morning, and will make her promise to read through it before meeting you after classes.
Hip Dad said: So, promise me, son.
Little Brainiac said: Totally, dad: I promise!
Hip Dad said: Okay,
Hip Dad said: Pony, sweet girl:
Hip Dad said: My name is Hikaru Midoriya, and I am Izuku’s dad. I hope I will meet you one day.
Hip Dad said: And I promise you this, dear Pony:
Hip Dad said: If my son and you are still going strong three years from now, I will travel myself to Japan so I can preside an engagement ceremony between the two of you, and will gift the two of you with a hospital sized box of condoms.
Hip Dad said: But meanwhile, you two need to slow down!
Hip Dad said: I know I raised a good son, and I know he will let his lady friend set the speed.
Hip Dad said: So I ask you to put the speed in “tenderness” before the two of you hurt each other horribly:
Hip Dad said: Walk hand in hand, and hold each other’s waist when you are on a bench.
Hip Dad said: Share furtive little kisses when you say hello, and when nobody’s watching, and some deeper ones when you want to reward each other.
Hip Dad said: Curl up on his lap when you are sad or depressed, and press his head against your heart when he’s the one who’s mopping.
Hip Dad said: Poke each other, and find where each other is ticklish! And then know to back off, because ticking each other is something that friends can do with friends.
Hip Dad said: Cuddle together to watch a movie. Feed each other the popcorn, and take turns between horror and romance movies.
Hip Dad said: Do the two of you have enough respect for each other to have a sleepover as friends, rather than a rendezvous as lovers? Could the two of you put two bedrolls in the living room, then play party games and laugh until 3:30 AM and you two then give each other a little kiss before separating to your respective bedrolls?
Hip Dad said: Could the two of you play Twister as innocently as if you were playing Jenga?
Hip Dad said: Challenge him to play video games! I certainly know he isn’t very good at them!
Hip Dad said: I hear that you have mountain goat powers and enhanced strength, so take him out camping! I certainly know he isn’t very good at it!
Hip Dad said: Have him carry your bags when you go to the mall, and be sure to reward him with snacks and silence when he wants to watch baseball.
Hip Dad said: Have fights with each other! Every couple does! But make sure to have held each other tenderly before you go to sleep that night.
Hip Dad said: Be each others’ dear friend before being lovers.
Hip Dad said: And be aware and accept that you two are each others’ first boy and first girl,
Hip Dad said: and that being friends is far more important than being a couple.
Hip Dad said: .
Hip Dad said: Just one more thing: please ask Izuku for my phone number and email.
Hip Dad said: I happen to go to bed at 11 PM sharp, Eastern. That happens to be Noon over there, which coincides which your lunch hour. So please: if you want to speak with somebody, just give me a call.
Hip Dad said: .
Hip Dad said: .
Hip Dad said: .
Hip Dad said: I think that should be enough, Izuku.
Hip Dad said: Please send me a text a soon as you have seen the girl in the morning,
Hip Dad said: And keep making me as proud as usual.

Hip Dad has left the chat.

I know I’m making up a ton of backstory and other facts, but what should actually matter would be the message from Izuku’s dad to Pony.

5981687

and Pony can provide a constant reminder.

Once Pony has studied a little on Rationality herself, they’ll be each others’. And they will be aware of how badly they could have fucked each other up.
BTW: we may need to make “Pony” a nickname. The more I repeat the name, the lousier it sounds.

Maybe her dad is a comic book geek, and thinks the idea of his daughter being a superhero is the most awesome thing ever. Pony herself would be less enthusiastic.

Many things could work, but I believe this sounds excessive. Especially on the fact that we could extrapolate from our previous conclusions about the state of parahuman law in the States, and speculate that Heroes in the US simply wear police, fireman and paramedic uniforms, rather than spandex “clown suits”.
Although... it could be interesting if, simply due to rarity, Japanese heroes are a league above quirk-using police elsewhere.

5982612 That's good, that's really good, and it sets up an interesting subplot for Midoriya. Essentially, he wants to do a little more than what is safe, but knows that it's not safe, so, under the excuse that he's just trying to help, he introduces her to all his female friends, especially Ochako, essentially giving her more anchors than just himself, or at least trying to. The causal chain of 'more friends=more stable=happier=less reliant on Midoriya=more sexy fun times can be safely had' is fairly complex, and it would be quite easy for Midoriya to block that final link out of his mind. The endpoint point of this will be the realization that he did it for more kisses, not (just) out of the goodness of his heart, and the phrase, "Oh, so that's what it feels like to push an unwanted thought out of my head!"

Side note: Given his mixed blood, when Midoriya hits puberty he's probably going to get a lot taller and a lot bulkier than most of his classmates, especially if his dad is a 200 pound 6'4" viking.

Pony as a nickname... a Japanization of and wordplay on Peony, or Paion, the first being a Greek medicinal flower and the second being the physician of the gods.

Pony should also be 14, not 16, because I doubt Midoriya would be able to attract anyone older than him.

Although... it could be interesting if, simply due to rarity, Japanese heroes are a league above quirk-using police elsewhere.

That would explain why she's going to a fancy hero school in particular, instead of someplace more normal. Japan could be the Superhero capital of the world, with their supers being a big tourist attraction, and the money that attraction brings in being one of the strongest support beams holding up the quirk ban.

5982695

That's good, that's really good, and it sets up an interesting subplot for Midoriya. Essentially, he wants to do a little more than what is safe, but knows that it's not safe, so, under the excuse that he's just trying to help, he introduces her to all his female friends, especially Ochako, essentially giving her more anchors than just himself, or at least trying to. The causal chain of 'more friends=more stable=happier=less reliant on Midoriya=more sexy fun times can be safely had' is fairly complex, and it would be quite easy for Midoriya to block that final link out of his mind. The endpoint point of this will be the realization that he did it for more kisses, not (just) out of the goodness of his heart, and the phrase, "Oh, so that's what it feels like to push an unwanted thought out of my head!"

Well, I really couldn't fault the kid for making an effort there: it only benefits him by having benefited her directly, and a small, horrible part of him will feel blueballed every moment they are spending time together:
Every time they have a study date, she will feel the urge to pull her on his lap.
Every time she kisses him, he will remember her previous attempts at sucking out his tonsils.
Every time they hold each other on a bench, he will remember the time she put his hands on her boobs.
Every time they cuddle to watch a flick, he will remember that she would have welcomed his hand roaming.
Every time they actually have a sleepover, he will remember that they could be having a rendezvous.
Every time they play Twister, they will both notice, and will both studiously ignore his erection. And once he actually learns to control them, she will curl up on his lap and sigh in happiness, promptly making him have another.
And of course, every time his minds roams, she will notice his little hesitations, labelling him a saint, making her hold him tighter and slowly but surely studying his every knock and cranny, his every strength and weakness, his every virtue and defect, and adding them to her mental model of what a boyfriend a man should be. He will become her male role model! Give them six months to a year, and even if they ever have a break up, possibly because of how badly they have friend-zoned each other, she will forever look for him in other men.

And you know what will be the worst? That once she studies Rationality with him, she will understand what she's been modelling herself to become his perfect wife, and rather than backing off, she will both begin actively shaping herself (things like learning to cook his favourite food, and trying to become interested in whatever sport he watches), and will begin all sort of subtle manipulations to make him meet her halfway (like reminding him of important dates, or carefully pointing at him things that she would like as presents, or picking through his wardrobe and then beginning to buy clothes for him (which is something that people usually need to marry before doing)).

Side note: Given his mixed blood, when Midoriya hits puberty he's probably going to get a lot taller and a lot bulkier than most of his classmates, especially if his dad is a 200 pound 6'4" viking.

Actually, that "norse" word was just Hikaru Midoriya hitting his keyboard.

Pony should also be 14, not 16, because I doubt Midoriya would be able to attract anyone older than him.

Two things there:
1) Due to the way she latched on him for much needed emotional support, he could have very well been short, fat and crater-faced, and as long as he was clean-washed, well dressed and not sleazy, she would have still found him to be an Adonis. Furthermore, he's mature for his age, so Pony will not realise that for a while.
2) Due to the time-shift between the Japanese and Western educational systems (we start at school in August and September; they do in February or March), Pony is likely losing a semestre. And due to that, statistics say that she's six months older than Izuku.
And no, it does't translate backwards: while we did say that the Midoriya family spent a few years States-side, his parents could have sought an overseas-Japanese school for him. Just like Pony was likely offered, but she evidently asked for the UA.

That would explain why she's going to a fancy hero school in particular, instead of someplace more normal. Japan could be the Superhero capital of the world, with their supers being a big tourist attraction, and the money that attraction brings in being one of the strongest support beams holding up the quirk ban.

Like young Japanese wrestlers doing seasons in the Mexican wrestling ring!

5982695
Well. As of now, I believe we have finished the conceptual planning, but I believe we would then need to begin addressing arc issues.
For the first arc, we would need a different sequence of events if we want Kacchan to be attacked by the slime villain. In canon:
1) The villain escapes after robbing a store.
2) The villain tries to possess Izuku, and he's saved by All Mighty. All Mighty captures the villain in a bottle. (And how awfully convenient that All Mighty appeared out of nowhere.)
3) Izuku distracts All Mighty, and the later looses the bottled villain.
4) Kacchan finds the bottled villain and releases him.
5) The villain rampages with Kacchan's power, while trying to engulf him.
6) Because nobody else was doing anything (except the water-manipulator, who had his hands full trying to control the blazes) Izuku jumps forward in desperation.
7) All Mighty feels inspired and saves Izuku (and Kacchan).
As it stands, the situation was both created and solved by Izuku's impulsiveness. Now, while R!Izuku might have still jumped forward to save Kacchan, he wouldn't be likely to make All Mighty loose the bottle in the first place.
So... how about if it was Kacchan inside the tunnel? Or All Mighty lands badly (his random long-distance jumps should be responsible for plenty of near misses with both people and vehicles, not to say the occasional caved-in roof or broken-through tree) and looses the bottle, and then nobody will be there to pull Kacchan out of the slime?
Another change promoted by the different events would be that Kacchan would still actively bully Izuku: in canon, he only stopped because he was impressed when Izuku jumped in to save him from the slimeball. What would happen if, for example, Kacchan actively attacked Izuku during the admission exam? ... Nope: there were cameras everywhere. Neither would pass the exam.

I say that Kacchan gets jumped by the villain in the tunnel, then the villain goes on a rampage. All Mighty is still looking elsewhere, and only the other heroes are in position to watch helpless until Izuku jumps in, gets batted away, but manages to get the heroes back in gear and they all dog-pile the villain. Both kids pass through the hospital, Izuku with broken bones, Kacchan just for observation.
Or we could have the alternative of the same as before, but the heroes can't get their shit together before the villain completes his possession. The villain then spends some time (a few days, I guess) in a hospital-prison, while the authorities find out how to extract Kacchan. The boy is then turned to psych counselling, and reaches Yuuei Academia being very insecure, possibly even latching on ideas like those of Kaminari (sidekick job) and Uraraka (non-combat applications of a hero license).

To the second story arc, the entrance exam:
Due to Chapter 112, page 2, we know that the entrance exam in canon went in three parts: written examination, interview and practical test.
I say it has to happen over three days, simply due to logistics for personal interviews being absolutely crazy.
While almost none of what I'm writing here should be mentioned in the story, it is important to get timelines straight.
First day: 9-5 on a two three-hour exams, with two one-hour breaks after them. At 5, the students get a chit saying at what time will they have a 15-minute interview.
Second day: while each student may only spend a half hour or less in campus, the teachers will still likely do a solid 9-5 just counting the regular interviews, then all the optional second interviews are conducted between 6 and 8, and the thirds 8-9.
Third day: blocks of students (not outnumbering the number of camera drones, and not more than doubling or tripling the number of available judges) are asked to come at a given hour and have their 10-minute practical tests, then the panel of judges has the rest of the hour to rewatch the session and deliberate on each student that would be getting rescue points, and on each student that would be disqualified. As the judging for both rescue points and disqualifications is performed on groups of six judges, the maximum possible mark is 60.

Third story arc, the first day fitness test:
I think that what we already discussed should suffice.

Here we may need to add a mini-arc, dealing with program-specific classroom education. Say: make it last a week or two, like Rowling did in Harry Potter One between the entrance feast and the flight lessons?

(Canonical) Fourth story arc, All Mighty's combat exercise:
How does a Deku with no quirk get through this, while giving a good show?

5983019 Exactly. Even when he's being selfish, it's in the most heroic way possible. You can't hate him for it, but he still stumbles.

I hadn't even thought about what Pony's going to turn into. As a full western girl, she's much more culturally aligned with Rationality, so if anything she might take to it even better than Midoriya. I'll add that once they both know a bunch of techniques, they'll start using them on each other as a sort of competition/practice: the one who crumples first has to do whatever the other says. Maybe they'll join the debate club too.

The wiki article states she's 16, but if there's such a big gap between countries then maybe 15 instead?

5986474 When the Slime Villain attacks Midoriya is not yet Rational. That attack is the catalyst that causes his father to give him the book early, instead of on his 14th birthday as originally intended, so he won't have had a chance to read it yet. Therefore, events will proceed as in canon until the moment Midoriya is asking about his chances of being a hero. All Might, in desperation to protect his secret identity, will make a poorly aimed jump that lands him stuck in a tree and turned back into his civilian self. He'll be completely out of the picture, and won't hear Midoriya's plea or see his courage, preventing the offer that rubbed me the wrong way and kicked off this entire thread.

Skip forward to the second attack. All the heroes present want to help, but don't have suitable quirks or training save the fire hose guy. Miss Giant, for example, can't fit into the market alley, otherwise she would have taken care of it by herself. Izuku throws his backpack like last time, but keeps his distance and searches for a suitable weapon instead of just running in blind. He then proceeds to loot a bunch of local stores for materials, or use my original plan where he goads the slime villain into attacking him while standing in front of a water hydrant, then dodging, causing the hydrant to burst and spray water everywhere, followed by Midoyira using a large flat object to aim the flow at the villain, causing him to dissolve under the pressure. This allows Kacchan to break free, which frees up the other heroes, who rush in and finish the job.

Midoriya gets scolded just like canon, but this time he's annoyed by it because he knows he beat the villain. He fought without a quirk and won, leading to the realization that he doesn't need a quirk, only his wits. That mindset, along with telling his Mom about it, lead to an unscheduled chat with his father, and the giving of the book. The next ten months are a montage of Midoriya reading every piece of rationalist fiction and nonfiction he can get his hands on inter spaced with cleaning the same beach as before as community service for the damage he caused fighting the slime villain, only using his mind to figure out the most efficient way to move each piece of garbage instead of raw strength. Rolling a tire instead of carrying it, for example.

Kacchan, meanwhile, understands that the praise he got isn't deserved, so he's mad at Midoriya for stealing his 'victory,' but also is starting to respect him a little.

Three days makes perfect sense. We'll mention it in an establishing paragraph during the arc.

That miniarc should also be when we introduce Pony, most likely at the end of a school day so they have time to bond.

He's got flashbangs at that point doesn't he? He'll just toss one into the room and secure the nuke while his opponents are still shaking the sparks out of their eyes. Beating two people with powerful quirks so easily will make quite the impression.

Normally when you make a protagonist stronger you also have to make his opposition proportionally stronger as well, but in this case Midoriya is, if anything, weaker, so we don't have to change anyone else to maintain the tension.

5986532

Exactly. Even when he's being selfish, it's in the most heroic way possible. You can't hate him for it, but he still stumbles.

As a full western girl, she's much more culturally aligned with Rationality, so if anything she might take to it even better than Midoriya.

Well, he does hail from a country that still struggles at times to remember that they no longer have a nobility, but her, while coming from a moderately liberal state, also happens to come from the only Western country where atheists can be considered an oppressed minority.
Therefore, I'll call them even.

The wiki article states she's 16, but if there's such a big gap between countries then maybe 15 instead?

I went and checked both of their wiki articles. He's stated as 15 years old as to the entrance exam, and his birthday is July 15. Pony is 16 and her birthday is April 21. Now, whether her age is stated as to the beginning of the school year or to her introduction as a background character (Chapter 26 page 20, during the Sports Festival Arc), she's either 4 or 16 months older than Midoriya.

That attack is the catalyst that causes his father to give him the book early, instead of on his 14th birthday as originally intended,

Just adjust his age here. He was already 14 when attacked.
The fire hydrant idea sounds awesome, and far more feasible than the tinkering idea. Now we just need to know whether hydrants in Japan are like in the States (on the floor) or like in Mexico (on the walls of buildings deemed large enough to require their own hydrant). I imagine it'll be the first, considering that Japan likes to build in wood, like the States.

inter spaced with cleaning the same beach as before as community service for the damage he caused fighting the slime villain,

I doubt he would be assigned to do that, bu it could be interesting if Izuku had been assigned to sweep streets on weekends, then saw the beach and convinced his community worker to shift him to heavier cleaning tasks, such as cleaning that beach. His social worker takes it as a challenge, and tells him that he'll bring his pick up every Sunday night, and if there isn't enough scrap to fill it up, he will put a demerit on Izuku's file, but if there is, he'll sell the scrap and pass Izuku the money, minus petrol.
Of course, this means the kid won't be anywhere as fit, but still quite fit for his age.

That miniarc should also be when we introduce Pony, most likely at the end of a school day so they have time to bond.

And at the end of the first week or beginning of the second, at the earliest, so she will have had time to despair about her fellow students.

He's got flashbangs at that point doesn't he? He'll just toss one into the room and secure the nuke while his opponents are still shaking the sparks out of their eyes. Beating two people with powerful quirks so easily will make quite the impression.

I think we had mentioned those, plus smoke cannisters, thermite bricks and a mistaken delivery of NOx canisters. Although I don't remember if we said something about it not being convenient if he was to go against Kacchan.

Normally when you make a protagonist stronger you also have to make his opposition proportionally stronger as well, but in this case Midoriya is, if anything, weaker, so we don't have to change anyone else to maintain the tension.

5986848 If Atheists are oppressed around here, I've never seen it, but I meant that since Rationality was born from a Christian society and has Christian cultural moors (minus everything related to God), as opposed to a Buddhist society, Pony would find it much more closely aligned with how she already thought than Midoriya would.

Four months older, then. That's close enough.

I just looked them up, and Japanese fire hydrants look like taller, skinnier versions of American ones, which would make them easier to break. Perfect.

That could work instead, although I'm not sure what he would do with the money. Midoriya was never going to be as fit as canon, not without having the goal of inheriting One For All, so as long as he's fairly strong he should be fine.

The end of the first week, in particular when she realizes she's going to have to face spending the entire weekend alone in her apartment in a strange country, or going out wandering that country by herself. That could make her speak more loudly than usual, allowing Midoriya to overhear.

Well, I'd also added him having anti-flashbang filters over his eyes and ears built into his mask, so he can toss one into a room and charge in immediately, distracting his opponents from the grenade until it has a chance to go off.

Like I said, this series is unusually easy to adapt into a rationalist story. I barely have to change a thing.

5986942

If Atheists are oppressed around here, I've never seen it, 

From a truly secular perspective, such as that of most First World countries, it is glaring and damning enough to see Yankee atheists needing to form self-defensive pro-atheistic and/or pro-secular organisations like the Satanic Temple, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. In a normal country, educational standards go up, and 12-15 years later the polls will show a marked decrease of religiosity among young adults. Repeat enough times and keep up your educational standards, and you end up with very atheistic countries like Norway (39%) Japan (30-39%, with another 30% declaring themselves non-religious), the Czech Republic (30-39%), France (20%), Australia (10-19%), and Iceland (10-19%).
I'm not counting China, though, as the country has a history of anti-religious prosecution.
Here's another poll, with slightly different results, of the greatest non-religious populations in the world (regarding absolute number of atheists and agnostics, but disregarding percentages).

As to the situation in the US...
+ " increasing acceptance of religious diversity does not extend to the nonreligious,"
+ 2007 poll: Americans would prefer any of the following to an atheist president: Catholic (95%) , Jewish (94%), black (92%), female (88%), Hispanic (87%), Mormon (72%), three-times married (67%), 72 years old (57%), or homosexual (55%). The atheist candidate would only get 45%.
+ "In one of the six trials, participants found a description of an untrustworthy person to be more representative of atheists than of Christians, Muslims, gay men, feminists, or Jewish people. Only rapists were distrusted to a similar degree."
+ "40 percent of Americans disapprove of non-religion and 27 percent of Americans say that atheists “don’t share my morals or values.”
+ And, of course, some newswatch: From today: Mike Pence to Speak at Event Run By Pastor Who Approves Of Hitler, And Who Wants Atheists To Leave the U.S. Sounds to me like the capitulation of Small-Hands Trump will leave us with worse.
+ And, of course, atheists cannot join the Boy Scouts of America, and are tossed out if found out.

I just looked them up, and Japanese fire hydrants look like taller, skinnier versions of American ones, which would make them easier to break. Perfect.

... and it also only has four bolts bolting it to the water main below. Was it actually designed to shear easily or something?
With the hydrant being like that, I would even imagine a different scenario: rather than charging forward, Izuku finds a heavy sledgehammer, then runs halfway to the villain and gives the sledge a spin against the hydrant. He probably doesn't quite get the hydrant off, but the villain does retreat away from the spouting water, and the gorilla man notices, picks up the fallen sledge and does the job properly.

By the way, this is what I call a hydrant:

That could work instead, although I'm not sure what he would do with the money.

Have him buy a bicycle or something! No kid would refuse a little income, especially in a country where schools can prohibit their students from having part time jobs!
Besides, the bicycle opens another possibility: a little after getting his first kiss from Pony, or after his dad makes them slow down, he buys a rear rack for his bicycle and offers to get her home from school on it.

She is flattered by the romantic gesture, but then reminds Izuku that her power includes some generous athletic enhancements, and demonstrates either by asking him to mount up and challenges him to race her (hooves versus wheels), or she picks him up on one shoulder, the bicycle on the other, and then sprints all the way to his home. Either way, having a bicycle, Izuku may have better chances of keeping up with his girl.

Furthermore: what kind of Japanese high school doesn't have a massive bike rack? Canon plot hole!

5987850 Hmm. It looks like they're mostly not trusted, rather than attacked, and I actually think I know why. My Dad used to be a Y2K consultant, and he wrote a bunch of lectures on the subject for a local church. This is a small section of one that I think illustrates the gap. He's talking to an atheist friend of his who went into full survival mode when the guy found out what the Y2K bug could do, and bought enough supplies to feed entire families for a year.

When I went out to see him last winter, there was an awkward moment when he explained that if things get really bad next year, he had let his friends know they could retreat to his place, but -- ahem -- I wasn't invited. The reason, he explained, is that I'm a Christian. That means I believe in God, and that means I'm insane. He could never be sure when my God might tell me to shoot him in the back and take all his food.

I was really at a loss for words. How could I explain what an absurd idea that was? After all, the Christian is the one with a fixed code of conduct, literally graven in stone. What does the atheist have? Some sort of greatest-good-for-the-greatest-number calculation? If I violate a divine commandment and shoot him in the back, I'm facing the fires of Hell. If he shoots me, what does he face? A momentary pang of conscience? Even forgetting which is crazier, to believe in Jesus or to hide guns in every room just in case you're attacked at breakfast, if either of us had a reason to worry about the other's ethics, I should be worried about him.

After some thought, I finally said that if God ever told me to shoot him in the back, I would refuse. My God would never say such a thing, so I would know it was a deception. He thought that over, but still didn't extend an invitation.

Based on this interaction, I'm pretty sure the mistrust is mutual.

... and it also only has four bolts bolting it to the water main below. Was it actually designed to shear easily or something?
With the hydrant being like that, I would even imagine a different scenario: rather than charging forward, Izuku finds a heavy sledgehammer, then runs halfway to the villain and gives the sledge a spin against the hydrant. He probably doesn't quite get the hydrant off, but the villain does retreat away from the spouting water, and the gorilla man notices, picks up the fallen sledge and does the job properly.

One of the things I was worried about with this plan was whether Mr. Slime would be strong enough to break the hydrant in the first place, but if it'll shear easily that's not a problem. Maybe the Slime Villain only gets it halfway loose, and Midoriya has to find a sledgehammer and finish the job? He could probably find a big wrench anywhere he could find a hammer though, and opening the hydrant the way it's supposed to be opened would be a lot easier. The trick is that he has to mostly win under his own power. That's the key ingredient.

By the way, this is what I call a hydrant:

There's one of those on a building not far here. I don't think it works, though.

The bike is good idea, but the concept of Midoriya getting demerits for doing a bad job didn't sit right with me. I think a more realistic approach would be that the day doesn't count if he doesn't haul in enough garbage.

The Pony scene is cute, it's in now. I'll also have some comments about the missing bike racks.

5987990

One of the things I was worried about with this plan was whether Mr. Slime would be strong enough to break the hydrant in the first place, but if it'll shear easily that's not a problem. Maybe the Slime Villain only gets it halfway loose, and Midoriya has to find a sledgehammer and finish the job? He could probably find a big wrench anywhere he could find a hammer though, and opening the hydrant the way it's supposed to be opened would be a lot easier. The trick is that he has to mostly win under his own power. That's the key ingredient.

How about this?
He gets the idea to use water. He then finds a hurriedly evacuated construction site, and gets there either a metre-long monkey wrench, or finds that a Bobcat was left on. (Thankfully, Bobcats are extremely easy to drive.) With the wrench, he tries unsuccessfully to unscrew the top screw (the valve), but then provokes the villain into charging him and he brazes himself for impact against the wrench, resulting in him probably getting a bruised liver (literally), and the villain pretty much explodes from within. If he gets the Bobcat, he first stumbles a little inside the construction site (and causes property damage) before he manages to get into the street, and he then mows down the extinguisher, and then jumps out of the vehicle and uses a shovel to try and direct the flow. The burly hero gets the idea and punches away another hydrant, and between the two they subdue the villain.

There's one of those on a building not far here. I don't think it works, though.

If you can see it, it has to be functional. No ifs or buts. Non-functional emergency installations would be as non-kosher as eating a pork burger with cheese on Passover, and the author of such atrocities will get crucified.
That's extremely important in a country like Mexico: due to our construction techniques being very much based on cement (brick and mortar, cement block and mortar, rock and mortar, ferrocrete, armoured concrete, et al), a residential fire is usually contained to a single room, or expands quite slowly due to having to expand through doorways, and as such fire trucks rarely require more water than its own stores. If a building would be more flammable (floors supported by wood beams rather than a cement plate, for example), or larger than what a single firetruck could deal with, then the construction permit will require extinguishers, an outside hydrant, and for commercial purposes, internal sprinklers.

The bike is good idea, but the concept of Midoriya getting demerits for doing a bad job didn't sit right with me. I think a more realistic approach would be that the day doesn't count if he doesn't haul in enough garbage.

Who knows. Bureaucrats can be miserable if they believe you are wasting their time. Could have been a toothless threat, too.

The Pony scene is cute, it's in now.

However, does she race him, or does she pick him up?

I'll also have some comments about the missing bike racks.

Well, the entrance to Yuuei is a raised plaza. Could it be that it's raised over a bike garage?

With that example of the preper, I can see it from two simultaneous angles:
+ For one thing, he was a preper, and the vast majority of prepers can be regarded as missing a few screws. They do have methods to their madness, even if their every decision might be coloured by severe or extreme paranoia.
+ While I cannot quite justify that dude's attitude (I believe that to be religious, rather than insane, you need to be somewhere in a slide-ruler between ignorance and self-delusion), I believe I can follow his syllogistic chain:
1. He had been distrusted all his life for being an atheist.
2. For being distrusted, he didn't trust back.
3. Prepers train for long-term survival, and in such a situation you don't want people you cannot fully trust. You don't want weaknesses in your collective armour.
4. He was surrounding himself with people he could trust, and didn't believe that a Christian could be trusted once push came to shove.

Besides, I'm entirely sure that your dad could have found plenty of Christian preper groups that wouldn't take atheists, for very similar syllogism chains; therefore, the entire point is moot.

If God is make-believe then all of the ethics that come with cultural Christianity are nothing more than sentimentalism.

...And good that we don't actually live under Christian morality, but under a morality that has developed over the last 500 years in spite of Christianity. If the Church had its say, the Western World would have never risen from the Middle Ages, never mind little things like that battering your wife wouldn't only be acceptable, but indeed your obligation.

it looks suspiciously like they threw out God and then bent over backwards to justify all his rules.

And would it actually be bad to do so? My grandfather, an altar boy as a kid but an atheist by the time he got his degree, married a Catholic woman, who raised their four children into Catholics, yet they all were agnostics by the time they married. And my mother, agnostic and leaning to atheistic, let my grandma raise me Catholic and put me through 12 years of Catholic schools, and I was agnostic at the most by the time I got my high school diploma (2000), and properly atheistic by the time I even entered University (2005).
For one thing, my grandfather was probably the most saintly person I have ever gotten to know, never taking a single vice, never speaking a dirty word, getting up every morning and doing his 9 to 5 until my mum and uncles forced him to retire (around age 86, by the way), and even being known to gift his umbrella to random strangers. He left the world better than he received it, always being a blessing rather than a blight on society.
Then, my mother: she's a professional dancer as far as she's concerned (and has a huge resume for proof), but she raised me from her Master's degree on orthodontics, has put tons of money from her own pocket to be able to teach to disadvantaged youths, and has recently retired to administer her modest real state investments. And she also married a very Catholic man who apparently became quite abusive of her by the time she was pregnant. She then did something as sinful as leaving him and not looking back. Some years later, he got an annulment, remarried with a fool who didn't care if he wanted to stray, had 4 more legitimate sons (plus an unknown number of bastards), and rejoiced on being an abusive boss until he went too far and was beaten to dead by his own personnel. My mother is a blessing, while my father was a blight.
And me: by the time I was in middle school I actually wanted to enter Seminar, but my mum suggested that I started studying world religions, and that got me to agnosticism by the time I would have been applying. I got my degree in 2011, went to work for the tourism industry in Cancun, and I just left Cancun because I felt that I wasn't progressing toward my life goals, the most important of which is doing something significant for the betterment of humanity (which I'm not revealing until I can publish my thesis). I might not have accomplished myself so far, but I know that my volunteering and my blood donations have helped far more people than a million hours of prayer.

And why would an atheist donate blood or volunteer? Well, because I don't believe in any other heaven or hell than what we have right here. Or you tell me: will my community get better because I sat down and prayed, or because I went out there and picked up some garbage? Will an old lady get across the street safely because I sent her my best wishes, or because I took a moment to make sure she did?
Heck! I even took a diploma as a science populariser with the express purpose of prowling the web for pseudoscience and antiscience and attacking it. And I hardly ever care to convince the people who I'm discussing against, but I care, very much, to not allow them to go unchallenged, and thus that people who witness the debate to not think that science doesn't have the answers. And gosh if I don't get horrible headaches from the million times I have had to translate university level papers to laymen terms.

And as to the ten commandments: I believe that humanity won't reach the third millennium unless we take seriously the ten commandments written on the Georgia Guidestones:

1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2. Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
3. Unite humanity with a living new language.
4. Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
8. Balance personal rights with social duties.
9. Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
10. Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.

And I just don't understand why people go bananas over the first and second:
(1) Cap fertility to two children per couple, and real fertility will actually be around 1.5-1.9, and the population will slowly fall until we've reached the goal by the 27th century at the latest. What matters in the short term isn't to exterminate people, but to cap the last century of population growth before we run out of planet:
(2) Shuffle the bloodpool before many regions on Earth get as inbred as Japan and upper Italy! Subsidise and promote international scholarships at the university level, and plenty of them will hook up with locals!

And of course, then comes the argument that "America is a Christian nation!"

So, could the two of us drop the subject of religion? This won't end well.

5988907 Sure. I actually deleted the paragraph you're responding to because it was off topic, and replaced it with the idea that the mistrust is mutual, and would still be in place no matter what the population ratios were.

And you're right, the U.S. isn't legally a Christian nation. They wanted to avoid religious power struggles, and the temptation to use the state religion against the citizens, so they cut it out completely, and both church and state are stronger than in the nations that kept them linked. Mentally, well... that's more anthropology than religion.

That idea would take too much time. His actions are spur of the moment, and Kacchan is seconds away from being overpowered. Running off, finding a construction site, pillaging it for the right tools, and lugging them back would be at least 5 minutes work. Kacchan would pass out long before he got back. However, having the burly dude punch a second hydrant to prevent the villain's escape would work. Midoriya would still get the thrill of winning under his own power, this time by also inspiring someone else to action. I get that you think my scenario is a bit unrealistic, but given everything else in that universe it's practically normal.

I don't think it's an actual hydrant. It just looks like one. It's got no visible on switch, the caps are nonexistent and the interior has mold in it. If that thing was real I'd expect it to be a bit better maintained.

She races him, then picks him up at the finish line.

A bike and auto garage. You know, self driving cars? If it's several decades in the future I'd expect that technology to be perfected by then.

5988968

That idea would take too much time. His actions are spur of the moment, and Kacchan is seconds away from being overpowered. Running off, finding a construction site, pillaging it for the right tools, and lugging them back would be at least 5 minutes work. Kacchan would pass out long before he got back. 

A) Kacchan's struggle had been ongoing for a while at that point. Several minutes at least. Wasting another wouldn't make such a difference.
B) Well, I wasn't thinking about him running off to find a construction site. I was thinking of one being conveniently in sight while he looks around (preferably in the middle distance between the heroes and the villain), him running in, looking for anything that could be used to damage a hydrant (even just a big pipe), and he picking it up and taking it against the hydrant.

I get that you think my scenario is a bit unrealistic, but given everything else in that universe it's practically normal.

I don't think it's an actual hydrant. It just looks like one. It's got no visible on switch, the caps are nonexistent and the interior has mold in it. If that thing was real I'd expect it to be a bit better maintained.

Yes, it is:
+ It does have a valve. It may be on the other side of the wall (if it's fed from an internal reservoir in the building), or under a cover somewhere on the sidewalk (if it's connected to a water main).
+ Yes, those are usually lightly vandalised (missing covers and full of garbage). And they are Y-shaped so they can be easily cleaned by blasting them from one side with a fire hose.

A bike and auto garage. You know, self driving cars? If it's several decades in the future I'd expect that technology to be perfected by then.

Self driving cars are going two ways: publicly owned transportation pods (a.k.a. taxis) and actual cars. While in large countries like ours I would expect most people would want their own, in tiny, overcrowded ones like half of Europe, or Japan, or in overcrowded cities, people would rather not have to worry about parking.
Heck! I sold mine before coming to Mexico City, and haven't missed it for a single second! Especially not when I have a cousin here who bitterly complains that she spends three hours a day, on a good day, in traffic. Meanwhile, I do the same distances in the subway in half the time.
Furthermore, these are high schoolers! I know that in the States, kids can get driving licenses at 16 while not truly being adults until they are 21, but in most of the world, people don't give something as dangerous as a car to a minor! So, while Japanese can vote at age 18, they can't drink, smoke or drive until they are 20.
It would make sense if there was a faculty parking lot, though. For the few among the faculty that would have positions that would socially force them to own cars, such as the headmaster, and various coordinators. It is apparent that All Mighty commutes on food despite owning a pick up, though.

She races him, then picks him up at the finish line.

I just got a hilarious scene in my mind: the tiny slip of a girl removes him from his bicycle, bridal-style, and he howls in embarrassment. His mother then pops out of the house, sees them, and hurriedly tells them to not come in just yet. A moment later, she comes out with a camera, asks Pony to pick Izuku up again, and the two of them then do their best to embarrass him. The following Sunday night, his dad then opens up the conversation by asking which of them will be in white in their wedding.
Thinking about it, I believe this could be made into a defining moment in their relationship: as she bounces back from her depression and budding codependence, she begins making a point in embarrassing him (like marching into his classroom just before classes start and giving him a searing kiss). (She's probably doing this from a subconscious desire of revenge, coming from the fact that she was turning herself into his slave.) And if he doesn't react in kind, and they both eventually cool their heads, his shyness would eventually become a habit of submissiveness.
And being a male submissive carries quite a stigma in Japan! Better steer clear of this, because we don't need the kid's already uphill battle to get so much steeper... or for Momo to become interested in him.

so they cut it out completely, and both church and state are stronger than in the nations that kept them linked. 

Believe me that you Yanks could definitely learn about secularism.
Here in Mexico, despite being 90% Catholics and 5% other religions:
+ We don't acknowledge that half of our Founding Fathers were Catholic priests, because even them were very much secular.
+ It is anathema for a public servant to acknowledge religion. Not even a "bless you" if someone sneezes. And while to a bureaucrat it only means staying mute (and having no religious paraphernalia) in their 9 to 5, for an elected public official it means basically declaring themselves (and their direct family) atheists for their term. (In practice, though, they'll go to small, out-of-the-way parishes, and people don't harass them for sending their kids to Catholic schools.)
+ The government doesn't officially acknowledge religious holidays. Christmas and Easter are no more than "mysterious holes" in the calendar, and the official observance of winter vacations very mysteriously lasts from before Christmas to after the night of the three wise men (January 6).
+ Neither baptism nor religious marriage count, as far as the public register is concerned. If you don't have a birth certificate you don't exist, and if you don't have a marriage license you are in free union.
+ When the Pope visits, he isn't officially acknowledged as the Pope, but as the monarch of the Vatican State. TV transmissions won't stop harping about "his holiness" being on an pontifical visit, but local audio will actually say that "Pope Francis, King of the Vatican City, is on an official visit."

5989145 Even if one is right there, it'll still take him around 5 minutes to make the trip. Also, since this is pre-Rationality Midoriya he's still as impulsive as ever. The entire point of the original scene was that he was moving to help before he'd fully processed what was happening, and we can't take that away without removing one of the best, most heroic aspects of his character.

What I've been picturing is Midoriya runs in just like canon and throws his bag, but stops short of clawing at Mr. Slime. Instead, he keeps his distance and searches for another way to help. In particular, he remembers a science experiment he and his father did during one of his rare visits involving homemade slime, and his father commenting that slime isn't slime with too much or too little water. Since all the fire already present doesn't seem to be bothering the guy by making him dehydrated, Midoriya goes in the opposite direction. Hence, he's looking for water, and spots a hydrant. By that point Mr. Slime is already about to attack him, so he's not getting away to grab the proper tools, and has to use the villain's strength against him. If we want to make it realistic just make it so Midoriya doesn't dodge every blow. Getting knocked around a bit will teach him both caution and keep him from wearing plot armor.

I took a closer look at the hydrant on the way to work this morning. It's in better condition than I first thought, and is rooted in the side of a brick building, but I still can't figure out how to turn the thing on.

A true auto would not have manual controls, and even today' autos are better drivers than most humans. It's not so much giving a teenager a driver's license and car as it is giving them a chauffeur that will take them anywhere they want at any time. A chauffeur, I might add, that doesn't blink, get sleepy or distracted, can look in every direction at once, has superhuman reaction times, always knows every traffic law to the letter, and can talk to every other car on the road millions of times faster than human speech.

That being said, I was thinking more of a taxi depot, where a whole bunch of autos line up waiting for customers to use them. The students could get a quick ride from campus to anywhere they wanted, and the school could charge for the use of their building. Both the autaxi (auto-taxi) companies and the school would win.

Such a game would turn into a competition of PDAs, and I fully approve. That's going to be so much fun.

That sounds nice, but let me make a few word swaps and see if that still applies:

Here in Mexico, despite being 90% Black and 5% other races:
+ We don't acknowledge that half of our Founding Fathers were black, because even then were very much secular.
+ It is anathema for a public servant to acknowledge race. Not even a "bless you" if someone sneezes. And while to a bureaucrat it only means staying mute (and having no racial paraphernalia) in their 9 to 5, for an elected public official it means basically declaring themselves (and their direct family) not black for their term. (In practice, though, they'll go to small, out-of-the-way parishes, and people don't harass them for sending their kids to black schools.)
+ The government doesn't officially acknowledge black holidays. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Kwanzaa are no more than "mysterious holes" in the calendar, and the official observance of winter vacations very mysteriously lasts from before Kwanzaa to after the night of M.L.K.J. (January 6). 
+ Neither tying an aranjanam (Hindu) nor religious marriage count, as far as the public register is concerned. If you don't have a birth certificate you don't exist, and if you don't have a marriage license you are in free union. 
+ When the Buddha visits, he isn't officially acknowledged as the Buddha, but as the monarch of Shang Gri La. TV transmissions won't stop harping about "his holiness" being on an pontifical visit, but local audio will actually say that "The Buddha, king of Shang Gri La, is on an official visit."

If you were saying that stuff about anything other than Christianity, it would never fly. Heck, try replacing everything with the Muslim equivilant and watch the mobs beat a way to your door.

I'm not sure what this fallacy is called, but I know it is one and I know I've come across it before.

5989170

The entire point of the original scene was that he was moving to help before he'd fully processed what was happening, and we can't take that away without removing one of the best, most heroic aspects of his character.

Totally.

So, how about this: he does his crazy forward charge, stumbles on the construction tool in the middle of the street, and ends up sprawled and stunned. The villain laughs at his stupidity and turns his back. Izuku resets, sees the tool and the hydrant and tries to work the tool on the hydrant. What follows then depends on which tool he got, though. Then the burly dude gets the opposite hydrant, and the villain gets defeated.

I took a closer look at it on the way to work this morning. It's in better condition than I first thought, and is rooted in the side of a brick building, but I still can't figure how to turn the thing on.

Might be worked from the inside. I'll go and try to find some today.

That being said, I was thinking more of a taxi depot, where a whole bunch of autos line up waiting for customers to use them. The students could get a quick ride from campus to anywhere they wanted, and the school could charge for the use of their building. Both the autaxi (auto-taxi) companies and the school would win.

That would certainly work.

Such a game would turn into a competition of PDAs, and I fully approve. That's going to be so much fun.

... Until some teacher pulls them aside and tells them to keep it quiet (Japanese society disapproves of PDA's), but it will also help the kids to slow down, again. That should do quite nicely.

+ The government doesn't officially acknowledge black holidays. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Kwanzaa are no more than "mysterious holes" in the calendar, and the official observance of winter vacations very mysteriously lasts from before Kwanzaa to after the night of M.L.K.J. (January 6). 

Do you remember the main reason why Texas left Mexico?
And of course that I don't mean that bullshit Texans spouts. Texas broke away from Mexico because Yank settlers had slaves, and Mexico did away with slavery from its very first constitution (1822-23, if I remember correctly). Texans did some "separate but equal" bullshit (renaming their slaves into indentured servants on 99-year contracts), and relations rapidly deteriorated...

Here in Mexico, despite being 90% Black and 5% other races:
+ We don't acknowledge that half of our Founding Fathers were black, because even then were very much secular.

Well, they were all eventually captured, formally excommunicated and executed, so yeah: none of them died being priests

+ When the Buddha visits, he isn't officially acknowledged as the Buddha, but as the monarch of Shang Gri La. TV transmissions won't stop harping about "his holiness" being on an pontifical visit, but local audio will actually say that "The Buddha, king of Shang Gri La, is on an official visit."

You might be referring here to the official visit by the Dalai Lama, exiled monarch of Tibet, well before I was born. Or to the official visit by the Emperor of Ethiopia after Mexico officially sided with them when Italy invaded them in 1935. Or to Fidel Castro Ruz and his miitia being trained by the Mexican Army in preparation to their invasion of Cuba.

If you were saying that stuff about anything other than Christianity, it would never fly. Heck, try replacing everything with the Muslim equivilant and watch the mobs beat a way to your door.

We actually had that just a few years ago: when gay marriage was decreed legal, most of the population just shrugged, but some Christian groups tried to appeal, block, filibuster, whatever; but none had a leg to stand on, legally. We are still hearing echoes, but nothing to take seriously...

Besides, who would ever complain for oppression? With our country being 90% Catholic, it isn't like we were oppressing a minority, at all.

I'm not sure what this fallacy is called, but I know it is one and I know I've come across it before.

"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."
Mexico was only fooled once, when the Catholic Church tried to sell Mexico to an European monarch in the 1850's. The fact that they tried to promote a far-right civil war in the 1920's is barely a footnote in our history.

By the way, a little trivia: the Castle of Chapultepec is the only modern monastical palace in the Western Hemisphere.

5989265 Why would a tool just be lying in the street? It still doesn't feel right. I think I'll write it as I've imagined it along with a few variations you've suggested, and see which one works best in practice. We're not getting anywhere else with more debating on this one.

You completely missed the point, dude. I obviously wasn't referencing anything at all except how easy your words were to twist to racist ends. If you were truly unbiased, that trick would not have worked. The list would sound just as fine with any other set of nouns. My point: just because your target is the majority does not make marginalizing them OK. Black supremacy is just as bad as white, sexism against men isn't fine because men used to hold all the power, and pretending Christianity doesn't exist while everything else gets a pass is not excusable.

This is not about history, or politics, or religion. It is a flaw in your reasoning, and a dangerous one.

5989272
About the wall mounted hydrants:
I just rode my bicycle through CU (University City, Mexico City), and saw this one:


In the second image, I tried to get the image that there are no controls behind the hydrant: nothing but the pipes.
This leads me to only two possible conclusions: either the hydrant is opened by turning the bronze ring (which does have grips for turning it), or you need to insert some special hose that then works an internal valve deep in the hydrant. Thing is, while either could explain this particular type of hydrant, neither would explain Y-shaped double hydrants.
I'll need to keep my eyes peeled for a Y-shaped hydrant that's missing its covers, to see if it the two exits really communicate with each other.

Although I then got a very different question: why was there a hydrant like a good quarter-kilometre from the nearest building? Were they planning on building nearby? Did they think it would look cute? Were they laying down the pipes and noticed they were under budget?

Why would a tool just be lying in the street?

Without All Mighty, and with the heroes paralysed, the kid needs a small miracle, on way or another. And were the tool came from? Road works? A construction right besides him?
Let's put things this way: Every step of the way, we are physically nerfing this character, to make him shine from his brains alone. In canon, the kid had the unexpected resource of All Mighty being present. Today, we are nerfing that resource down to an unpowered construction tool that our wimpy kid can barely handle. If it's a heavy sledge, he will get one hit at most, and the thing will barely leak unless the villain is a total idiot (which he apparently is); if it is a super-long monkey wrench, the kid will actually need the villain to loosen the valve. And either way, the kid will eventually need to be saved by Mr. Burly.
Kind of similar to this scene:

This is not about history, or politics, or religion. It is a flaw in your reasoning, and a dangerous one.

I was trying to be ironic. And got a little sarcastic, too, toward the end.
Furthermore, I believe the flaw is yours:
+ From the MacMillan Dictionary: Secular (adjetive): not religious, or not connected with religion.
+ From Dictionary.com Secular (adjective): (2) not pertaining to or connected with religion (opposed to sacred).
+ From the Oxford Dictionary: Secular (adjective): Not connected with spiritual or religious matters. Contrasted with sacred.
+ From WordReference Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English © 2017. Secular (adjective): (1) of or pertaining to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred; temporal. (2) not pertaining to or connected with religion (opposed to sacred).
Therefore, you are either secular, or you are not. There is no middle ground.
The Mexican government is secular.
If the Mexican government actually attacked religion, it would be a completely different matter. But freedom of religion is stated in the Mexican Constitution as follows:

Article 24.
Paragraph 1: Every person has the right to the freedom of convictions, be of ethics, of consciousness and of religion, and has the right to adopt, given the case, whichever they want. This freedom includes the right to take part, be individually or collectively, whether privately or publicly, in the ceremonies, devotions or acts of cult, as long as these don't constitute a crime or misdemeanour, according to the law. Nobody may use these public acts (of expression of this freedom) for political reasons, campaign or political propaganda.

Paragraph 2: Congress cannot dictate laws establishing or prohibiting any religion.

Paragraph 3: Public religious acts will be celebrated ordinarily inside temples. Those that extraordinarily need to happen outside of them will be regulated.

In fact, religiosity only appears thrice in the Mexican constitution:
+ In article 1, paragraph 5, it includes religion as one of a gazzillion things that people cannot be discriminated because.
+ In article 3 (the right to education), section I, it references that article 24 guarantees religious freedom, but the education provided by the State will be secular. Then, in section II (the qualities of education), subsection C: [...] and will avoid promoting any privileges based on race, religion, groups, gender, individuals[...]
+ And article 24, which I just translated in full.

Secularism, on the other hand, is only mentioned four times:
+ In article 3, it mentions that education imparted by the State must be secular.
+ In article 40, it includes secularism among the qualities of the federal government.
+ In article 115, it includes secularism among the qualities of all state governments.
+ In article 122, it includes secularism among the qualities of the internal government of Mexico City.
And we don't need to add qualifiers to secularism: the word is clear enough. No ifs; no buts.

5988968

 They wanted to avoid religious power struggles, and the temptation to use the state religion against the citizens, so they cut it out completely, and both church and state are stronger than in the nations that kept them linked.

As long as I can find things like this, the US government is not secular:

And then there's your current vice president, Mike Pence, who defines himself as "Christian, Conservative and Republican, in that order." If Trump becomes impeached, your 46th president will be a proud theocrat.

Can we drop the hot potato, please?

5990343 You're still missing the point. I'm refuting the logic behind the phrases 'men can't be abused,' and 'whites can't be prosecuted.' Everything you keep putting so much effort into sourcing isn't even tangentially related to what I'm talking about. If I had to name it, I'd call it the 'Big Kids Can't be Bullied' fallacy. It may have sprouted from discussing Church and State, but I stopped talking about that three posts ago.

More importantly, the fact that you keep deflecting onto unrelated topics is a major clue that you're flinching away from an unpleasant thought. We've all been there dude, you have the strength to face whatever is standing in your way.

Don't get me wrong, I would like to drop this. My email notifications have been nothing but a source of dread for most of the day at this point, and that's my biggest sign to stop. However, you're facing an important hurdle on your way to becoming a better rationalist, and I'm not sure I can turn away until you've tried to jump it.

That hydrant is bizarrely placed, so maybe it's because a piece of red tape states that a hydrant must exist every set amount of distance regardless of anything being built nearby? That certainly sounds like something a government would end up doing.

As for the hammer, I've got no real arguments at this point, only a feeling that your suggestions 'won't work' that has no explanation. I need to write this scene in full, with multiple variations covering everything we've suggested, and then decide what works best in practice.

Let's move on to a new scene: the attack on the disaster training arenas. You suggested mixing up who goes where?

5990358

Let's move on to a new scene: the attack on the disaster training arenas. You suggested mixing up who goes where?

In canon, Mineta, Tsuyu and Izuku worked together very well and achieved two things: neutralising the villains in their area and reaching the middle island. Thing is, the lack of any of their powers would have meant that either objective wouldn't be achieved: without either Mineta or Izuku, they wouldn't have neutralised the villains, and without Tsuyu, not only wouldn't they have bounded away, but they wouldn't have survived the initial ambush. Therefore, in our version, we either need another strong power to compensate for Izuku missing one, or we would need to send them somewhere else.
Now, my previous suggestion was for either Shoto or Momo to get lumped in with the group, and for whoever it was to land badly on the ship and have a concussion or some injury that leaves them heavily stunned and thus barely capable of using their power. Specifically, I was suggesting that Shoto, who would have just frozen the lake and called it a day under normal circumstances, just dries up the good guys and then cools the ship down to instant-freezing, and the rest make the villains, who were very much wet, jump on board and get contact frozen. With Momo, my suggestion was that she creates a depth charge so they could try to repeat the feat in canon, but on second thought, I don't think I would have wanted to manipulate a depth charge created inside the mind's eye of a concussed girl.
Thing is: how about if, rather than getting one of the group's heavy hitters, we replaced Mineta with Sero and Kaminari? Kaminari jumps into the water and electrocutes everybody, Sero and Tsuyu then spend a few minutes fishing out and restraining the unconscious villains, and the group swims to shore.

We also need to discuss the prior arc: All Mighty's combat simulation.
I think the very first thing we will need to agree onto is that a quirkless and less athletic Izuku doesn't stand a chance in an offensive manoeuvre against Kacchan. Being allowed to be defensive, Kacchan will have the ability to mount an ambush, and if in canon Izuku ended up in the hospital, here he'll end up either completely humiliated or Kacchan will try to break him and will end up suspended.

But now, if Kacchan and Izuku ended up together, rather than on opposite sides:
A) if they are heroes (thus have to go on the offensive), Kacchan will most likely charge forward, while Izuku uses the distraction to try to penetrate the defences.
B) if they are villains (thus defensive), Kacchan will likely act like in canon and mount an early ambush, while Izuku would try to fortify his position.

You're still missing the point. I'm refuting the logic behind the phrases 'men can't be abused,' and 'whites can't be prosecuted.' 

How about "When the majority imposes something on a minority, it is called oppression, but when the majority imposes something on itself, especially something in service of minorities, it is called self-restraint."
Here's a funny fact: Mexico was officially founded as Catholic in 1821, but then the Catholic Church tried to do away with the republic some thirty years later, and in retaliation the Republic became officially secular.

More importantly, the fact that you keep deflecting onto unrelated topics is a major clue that you're flinching away from an unpleasant thought. We've all been there dude, you have the strength to face whatever is standing in your way.
[...]
However, you're facing an important hurdle on your way to becoming a better rationalist, and I'm not sure I can turn away until you've tried to jump it.

Well, I don't want to alienate you.
Having been trained in science in high school (I took what your school system would call pre-med), and later getting my diploma as a science popularicer, I know how to deliver the Truth. But being an adult, and having gotten a degree in Tourism, I am literally trained to wrap up the iron fist in so many layers of velvet that my punches feel like pillows. I literally told you that to be religious you need to be ignorant and/or self-deluded, didn't I? Say, have you ever gone to a hotel's front desk, fuming in fury with a complaint, and five minutes later you walked away with a smile but without a solution? Or did you smile at the solution they produced, but a few days later you looked back and realised that they treated you like an idiot who could not work a toaster? Or did you approach the concierge for a local map, and walked away with tour reservations and theatre tickets? Those were colleagues of mine.
However, if you want me to, I could describe you my own elaborations on Karl Marx's quote regarding the drug-like nature of religion in general, and how I believe that this or that religion behaves like this or that drug when applied to this or that geographical area.
I could also compare religion to a diaper bag, or religiosity with the belief in Santa Claus, and science-deniers with toddlers tossing temper tantrums...

But I choose not to. Having a pal to spar with is far more valuable than having trampled an enemy.

5990770 I'm still not talking about religion. You managed to start on the point this time, but deflected away from it almost immediately. That's an improvement, but not a big one.

To address your counterpoint directly, if self restraint was all there was to it, I wouldn't be harping on about this. Having a specific law saying women have as much of a right to vote as men, and you face charges if you get in the way of that, is not a problem. At all.

What I'm talking about goes way beyond that. This is attacking the rights of the majority, not defending those of the minority. This is the fallacy that praises Islam as a moral paragon and condemns Christianity as evil. This is the fallacy that calls free speech a threat to Liberalism that must be destroyed. This is the fallacy that condemns people as utter monsters because they voted for a different candidate. This is the fallacy that fills an entire folder in my bookmarks with stories of extremism. This is Postmodernism at its most destructive, and, like Hydra, it will strangle everything you care for from the inside out unless it is challenged, and removed.

DON'T DEFLECT. Please.

That's not hyperbole, by the way. I honestly believe this thing is going to kill the Democratic Party if not addressed.

If you beat this fallacy, you become the shining example of what the Left should be, as opposed to what it is. You will be more clear sighted than all of your peers, and probably better suited to public office than anyone currently in the U.S. government (not that that's saying much).

If you weren't a friend, and more specifically, if you weren't a Rational friend, I would have let this go by now. Politics is the Mind Killer, and anyone who hasn't trained themselves around that wouldn't be able to even look at this straight, let alone change their mind about it. You have, which means you can, which means I must try. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't.

Thing is: how about if, rather than getting one of the group's heavy hitters, we replaced Mineta with Sero and Kaminari? Kaminari jumps into the water and electrocutes everybody, Sero and Tsuyu then spend a few minutes fishing out and restraining the unconscious villains, and the group swims to shore.

That looks like it'll work just fine, though I'm not sure how we're supposed to distribute the others when we don't know what most of the attacking villains can do. Part of why I wanted your input is because I don't have anywhere near as much information as I would like.

If everyone is paired up like in canon, that results will actually be quite straightforward. Midoriya and Ochako will float up to the roof, thereby missing Kacchan completely, then slip down the stairs. Midoriya tosses a flashbang into the nuke room, Ochako captures Iida, and Midoriya secures the nuke with little to no fanfare. Kacchan and Midoriya never even see each other, let alone fight, and that's going to drive Kacchan wild.

If we pair them up together, on the other hand, then Midoriya's power armor will come into play. Kacchan will just rush in blindly, and Midoriya will hang back and hit anything that manages to slip past his partner. This Midoriya is basically novice Batman, and on defense he'll litter the ground with booby traps while Kacchan runs off on his own.

5990901

 This is the fallacy that calls free speech a threat to Liberalism that must be destroyed.

What the fuck's wrong with that harpy! That's no liberal: she's just a mad dog!
In the immortal words of Evelyn Beatrice Hall: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it!"
Or quoting the Mexican Constitution,

Article 6, paragraphs 1 and 2:
The expression of ideas will not be subject of any judicial or administrative inquisition, unless they attack morality, private life, the rights of third parties, incite crime or perturb the public order. The right to reply will be exercised on the terms set by the law. The right to information will be guaranteed by the State.
Every person has the right to free access to plural and timely information, as well as seeking, receiving and disseminating information and ideas of any kind, by any means of expression.

[and then the article goes several pages of sections and subsections]

Article 7 (full):
It is unbreakable the freedom to disseminate opinions, information and ideas, by any means. This right cannot be restricted by indirect means, such as abusing official or private controls, making printing paper unavailable, restricting radio frequencies or devices, or [insert future-proofing] that could be used to [jam signals] or hamper the free flow of information.
No law or authority can establish prior censure, or condition the freedom of (transmission/dissemination), which isn't limited beyond the limits set in the first paragraph of Article 6. Under no circumstance can the (transmission/dissemination) (means/technologies) be taken as means of a crime.

[And Article 3, among the many, many qualities of education, includes plurality.]

And then, of course, the fact that, under Mexican legal philosophy, your rights take preference over your freedoms.

So yeah, while that girl would have the right to publish her ideas (if she found a paper willing to print them), a state-run Mexican university could demand that she formally submits her petitions, then dismiss them out of hand as unconstitutional.

DON'T DEFLECT. Please.

And I must certainly tried not to.
I quote my constitution because I consider it a masterwork, and the most important guide in my life.
Too bad, though, that Mexico significantly lags in law enforcement, and that some procedures seem designed more to hinder than to help set up new businesses.

5991205 Holy shit I got through to you. Praise be Rationality for making the impossible possible.

Yeah, that article is a symptom of the cancer that's eating Liberalism from the inside out. The Left should be a shield: a shield against hate, a shield against bigotry, a shield against our impulse to push others down to pull ourselves up. This, is not that. This is something rotten, and it scares the hell out of me that so many people have been suckered in by it.

I find myself reminded of HPMOR's Slytherin House. I just hope it's not too late.

Thank you. You just proved Rational thought is worth every once of effort and that neither of us are wasting our time. Now you understand why I wasn't willing to just drop it. This is global.

5990901

That looks like it'll work just fine, though I'm not sure how we're supposed to distribute the others when we don't know what most of the attacking villains can do. Part of why I wanted your input is because I don't have anywhere near as much information as I would like.

The attacking villains distributed themselves on the different environments based on their own strengths, and then the smoky villain took lumps of kids and distributed them randomly.
Furthermore, while the original author used a technique of omniscient narration (jumping his perspective all over the place, all the time), you could very well limit your sight to what Izuku could see, or only occasionally jump to see what somebody else is seeing. In fact, I'm writing my own scene where Ranma, Ukyo, Aoyama and Tooru are sent to the fire area and fight, but can't get out in time but to watch from afar the tail end of the fight in the central plaza.

If everyone is paired up like in canon, that results will actually be quite straightforward. Midoriya and Ochako will float up to the roof, thereby missing Kacchan completely, then slip down the stairs.

That would be hilarious. But due to the limitations of Ochako's power, also quite a dangerous gambit: her power is an all-or-nothing, which nullifies the gravity of an object, and apparently also nullifies its moment of inertia. What I'm getting at is that her power is extremely dangerous to use on living creatures outdoors: even trying to take a step will separate you from the ground, on a somewhat randomised vector, and you will only continue floating away until she cuts it off and you are sent crashing down from an unknown height. And with a sufficiently bad landing, falling as little as 2 metres can be lethal.
So: Ochako herself would refuse to use her power like that, unless she was using it one at a time, and always with a tether that could allow for control and possibly for safely returning to the ground. Does hers' or Izuku's equipment include 100 feet of paracord? If not, hers' should.

If we pair them up together, on the other hand, then Midoriya's power armor will come into play. Kacchan will just rush in blindly,

We are talking about the ultralight mobility skeleton, right?

5991225 Yeah, that could work. In fact, that makes more sense given this is a book (sort of), and not a manga.

I hadn't thought of that. Midoriya's skeleton would probably have some sort of thruster attached though, so that would allow them to steer over the edge of the roof. Makes we wonder if that universe has something along the lines of the Long Fall Boot.

Yeah, we are. I've been thinking it over, and the thing probably will have a bit of armor plating and strength enhancement hydraulics. Not a lot, not everywhere, not like iron man or the bat powersuit, but at least covering his joints and vital organs. A well tailored suit of full medieval plate allows for sprinting and gymnastics while wearing it, and that doesn't even carry it's own weight. Also, a helmet with a built in gas mask and flash-bang filters (not sure if I mentioned this already) to allow Midoriya to rush in even as tosses down crowd control.

5991205
5991211 Quick follow up. You're probably tempted to write off that article as a one time incident. I know I would be if someone in the Libertarians started spouting that crap. It's not, though, and part of understanding the problem is knowing how widespread it is. Now that we're both on the same page and agree that something has gone horribly, horribly awry, the next step is to assess the damage.

Starting at the article itself, that was published in a Harvard paper. Given that it wasn't stifled before making print and doesn't seem to have been called out in academia, we can safely assume that all of Harvard, the Ivy League, and probably most liberal arts colleges across the country, if not the world, are infected as well. This is especially concerning because our best and brightest have to spend four years stewing in that stuff.

In order to assess beyond that, though, I'm going to need to go on a slight tangent. Once you see the rot for what it is, Trump makes sense. He is nothing less than a giant middle finger raised in defiance of this meme and everything it stands for, and his mere presence in the oval office is the biggest blow ever dealt to it. The rot HATES Trump, hates him beyond all reason and logic, and anything that spews hate against him without stop is giving itself away as corrupted. That is not to say he's a good president, I give him 2-3/5 stars and really don't like his spending bill, but he is not Satan himself made manifest upon the earth.

This means you can identify the rot by hate speech. The mass media built a conspiracy between Trump and Russia out of nothing to try to get him out of office. It reports on him getting two scoops of ice cream while the rest of his entourage gets one, something so banal and pointless it's almost funny. Therefore, Mass Media is infected. Every protest or march that turns into a riot is infected. That comedian that ruined her career by taking a photo of herself holding Trump's severed head is infected.

The entire U.S. government, Democrats and Republicans alike, didn't want him elected and despise his very presence. Clinton, for example, still hasn't admitted she lost because people didn't like her. She blames her failure on everything except herself. She's severely infected, and everything she influences is infected by proxy.

Finally, I'm pretty sure the entirety of European politicians are infected as well. The Left supports globalism and freedom of religion, both noble goals worth pursuing, but the rot has twisted that to praise Islam and Sharia law, which are about as far from Liberal ideals as you can get. It binds government hands while terrorists bomb their cities and refugees overwhelm their welfare and healthcare systems, preventing anyone from even suggesting that maybe letting all these people into the country was a bad idea.

All together, this adds up to tens of millions of people, and is far bigger than the KKK or Nazi Parties at their peak.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the rot is still a tiny minority of the population. If it is, though, it's a minority made up of our leaders, our teachers, our think tanks, our reporters, our entertainers, and our bureaucrats. When a minority has that much power and that loud a voice, maybe it doesn't need numbers.

5991318

I hadn't thought of that. Midoriya's skeleton would probably have some sort of thruster attached though, so that would allow them to steer over the edge of the roof. Makes we wonder if that universe has something along the lines of the Long Fall Boot.

(A) A few weeks back, we had commented that he could perhaps have extendable, multi-copter pods on his back.
(B) According to one of her data sheets (in the manga), Ochako's boots were specifically designed for impact absorption, with her heels actually going behind her foot (not under it) and pistoning in almost a foot. Although, considering the nature of her power, she should have had little rocket thrusters to help her get close to the ground in the first place, and some rope or paracord to be used for tethering purposes. How about if she didn't request those, but the costume designers/makers included them? I am, after all, including hidden blades on the back of Tsuyu's gloves, along with a note saying that they are there for whenever she needs to choose between long hair and long life.
(C) Do consider that none of them had used their costumes previously. And while most costumes had simple to no special perks, these two would have a learning curve.

Yeah, we are. I've been thinking it over, and the thing probably will have a bit of armor plating and strength enhancement hydraulics. Not a lot, not everywhere, not like iron man or the bat powersuit, but at least covering his joints and vital organs.

Here are some military, field-going exoskeletons:

As you can see, they all concentrate on supporting the upper body while they act enhance the legs.
While the Chinese is not truly a demo, the other two are shown to take very seriously not hindering the soldier's mobility while enabling speed, endurance and carrying capacity.
Reading a bit further, I'm getting that the first one, the HULC, was a failure by being too bulky, too energy-thirsty, and by being hydraulic. The Revision apparently checked the three points, with a light battery pack running for 6 hours straight, by removing the backpack, and by going from hydraulic-actuated to hydraulic-cooled electric.
And what's up with those googles, anyway?

Here's something completely different: a competition between fully robotic suits being worn by people with completely severed spines. Of course, this devices aren't mobility enhancers, but mobility enablers:

And a company video by the first place:

And just for the heck of it, wheelchair competitions on the same obstacle course:

Also, a helmet with a built in gas mask and flash-bang filters (not sure if I mentioned this already) to allow Midoriya to rush in even as tosses down crowd control.

You had mentioned the flashbang filters, but not the mask.
How about this: he hadn't requested the mask, but requests it as soon as he returns from the first exercise?

Two other questions on the armour:
A) Will it deploy floaters when submerged, or will Izuku have to press the quick release locks?
B) Lower body enhancement and light body armour are a given for combat, but how about it having an braquial module (detachable shoulders and arms), to be used in search & rescue?

5991417

Quick follow up. You're probably tempted to write off that article as a one time incident. 

Not exactly. I have come upon such crap, but never from sources as elevated as Harvard. Say, third-rate art schools in San Francisco, Seattle and I think Boston. And then some youtube article from Prager University, which I watched for plurality sake, but dismissed it due to having previously watched their article on climate change (they were applauding Trump for getting rid of Obama's Green Energy policy, dismissing it as useless due to it apparently only stopping a global warming of 0.02 degrees, utterly failing to parse that those 0.02 degrees happens to be a single country that contributes to 15% of global warming, cutting off their contribution by 10%).
And I imagine these mad dogs are former hippies, or their disgruntled children.

if not the world,

Don't you worry about that: we all tend to see you Yanks as weird, precisely for the kinds of shit that float on your river. I could now spam you with Canadian political cartoons were they insult their politicians by calling them American-like, or including a Canadian province in the map of the US if it does something that isn't considered Canadian-like.

Or hey: let me make an effort and find some America-related political cartoons, all drawn by Canadians and Europeans:







And one very recent one:

This means you can identify the rot by hate speech. The mass media built a conspiracy between Trump and Russia out of nothing to try to get him out of office. It reports on him getting two scoops of ice cream while the rest of his entourage gets one, something so banal and pointless it's almost funny. Therefore, Mass Media is infected. Every protest or march that turns into a riot is infected. That comedian that ruined her career by taking a photo of herself holding Trump's severed head is infected.

A) About Trump and Russia: I'll hold my tongue until the investigation is finished. What is undeniable is that some Russians seem to have slices on his cake.
B) Well, his visit to Europe was a long series of little scandals, most of them about him being an arsehole. Shoving his way through a crowd of European presidents, premiers and prime ministers isn't precisely the most politically savvy move of his life.
Never mind the fact that he lost Germany as an ally, and the whole of the European Union is right now manoeuvring to forget the name of his country.

And I am afraid of his policies, too, and just how incredibly stupid he is:
+ Didn't he withdraw from the Paris Agreement because it was "too unfavourable to American interests", but that he would agree to sign another, if it was more favourable? Well, if it had been unfavourable at all, it also has the small detail of being non-binding, therefore useless unless he actually wanted to do shit with it.
+ The wall. He demonised people for earning money (at less than minimum wage, thus keeping your agriculture profitable) and then sending $22Billion per year in remittances, mostly via moneygrams. If you deport them, we aren't the ones who will starve from lack of farmhands, or see tens of thousands of small businesses go belly-up because they suddenly can't afford employees. Besides, drug trade is a mayor industry, so no matter how tall the wall is, it will not be tall enough.
+ You worry about drugs going North? Mexico wouldn't be currently at war if the drug cartels couldn't bring South some $28Billion per year between dollars and guns.
+ Frakking. Freaking frakking. And if you don't care about it leaking natural gas (both pollutant and explosive) everywhere, it is still a blatant lie that it would ever revitalise anything: it's nothing but squeezing the last dregs of old oil fields.
+ That whole mumbo-jumbo about the revitalising the coal industry. Most loss of jobs regarding mining have to do with depletion of mineral, or the industry or consumers moving on to other alternatives. And there's plenty of money, and even more jobs to be had from moving on to renewables. But he attacks renewable energies because they steal coal jobs.
+ Should I even mention handing out the EPA to one of its greatest detractors, who has pretty much promised to close it down?
+ Reinstating the Cuban embargo, quoting all the reasons why the embargo was put up in the first place, while most of them are dust in history. Never mind his demonising of the Cuban government, considering that, under Castro, Cuba became the richest poor country on Earth.
+ Should I bring up some figures about why NAFTA is very, very good for all involved, or how Mexico would be the least affected if it came crashing down? And that's because Mexico, since NAFTA, decided to start making similar agreements with half of the world, and as such can locate its goods with a lot more ease than the US can. But don't mind me: just look at pretty much anything that's made in the States and has a screen or digital display. The screen, as a component, was made in Mexico. The Trans Pacific Agreement also happened to be advantageous for everybody involved, and was basically creating an Anti-China coalition. Ever since that one fell, and Trump began smearing NAFTA, Mexico began reaching to China, and the Chinese premier very recently performed an official visit, meant to explore a China-Mexico FTA. If Mexico signs that one, we'll be able to wipe our arses with the US portion of NAFTA.
+ Have I commented already about how extremely poor was the impression he left after his recent European tour, and how the EU is currently getting ready to revoke its alliances with the US (as in, downgrading from allies to neutrals)? Because it was extremely telling the fact that Germany, your most important ally there, has officially declared that you cannot be relied upon. Then Britain almost made him persona non grata even before he was elected. If things worsen up, you will suddenly need visas.
+ Trade and money lending made you the world leader you are. Now, he wants to turn away from economic liberalism into economic conservatism (also known as: isolationism).
+ Doesn't the US have some 10 million Jews? Under that light, it might not have been to his best interest to avoid the basic civility of shaking hands with Benjamin Betanyaju.

The entire U.S. government, Democrats and Republicans alike, didn't want him elected and despise his very presence. Clinton, for example, still hasn't admitted she lost because people didn't like her. She blames her failure on everything except herself. She's severely infected, and everything she influences is infected by proxy.

If I remember correctly, she won the popular vote, but lost due to your weird district vote system. Just like Al Gore both won and lost some sixteen years ago.

Finally, I'm pretty sure the entirety of European politicians are infected as well. The Left supports globalism and freedom of religion, both noble goals worth pursuing, but the rot has twisted that to praise Islam and Sharia law, 

I haven't seen such praises, or at least nothing like that: The Right tried to demonise Islam, and the Left (as far as I've seen) went on to shield the Arab people. Love and Tolerance, because they too are people.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the rot is still a tiny minority of the population. If it is, though, it's a minority made up of our leaders, our teachers, our think tanks, our reporters, our entertainers, and our bureaucrats. When a minority has that much power and that loud a voice, maybe it doesn't need numbers.

And it all looks to me like this:

5991549 Now that I think about it, I've been picturing a more lightweight version of this:

He'll have both options. Best to make sure he always has a backup.

Why would he need it to detach for search and rescue? Holding up a piece of rubble to let people out? It's cool, for certain, but I question the practicality.

5992218 Those comics are a total scream. Especially the last one.

The Paris agreement was based around giving lots of money to China to maybe make some environment friendly policies 25-50 years from now. It was a really obvious scam, the money could be more eco-friendly spent just about anywhere else, and the stock market ticked up after the announcement, which was probably the real goal from the beginning.

Trump has been labeled as an idiot from the moment he started running for office, yet there he now sits. The day before the election the experts said his chances were less than 10%. He's managed to look like the most busy president in history without actually doing anything. He stomped all over everyone who called him stupid and incompetent, then did it again. And again. You can only see that so many times before the "he's an idiot" line starts feeling hollow. For example, just after the Paris announcement went out he suggested that he'd cover his wall in solar panels. It's obviously ridiculous from both a technical and a monetary standpoint, yet all of a sudden all those lovely windows of attack vanished like smoke and left his critics floundering. He's done this at least a half a dozen times, this is just the latest instance.

Luck doesn't carry that far. Hell, the guy turned Postmodernism against itself. Whether he's the smart guy or someone in his cabinet is, I can safely predict that acting like he's an idiot is a very bad idea. Just look at what happened to everyone else who did.

I've read about a woman making a speech supporting Sharia law at a Pride rally. That's like having a New Ager talk about pyramid power at a Rationalist convention. Does not compute.

5992401

He'll have both options. Best to make sure he always has a backup.

Sorry. I don't follow.

Now that I think about it, I've been picturing a more lightweight version of this:
[...]
Why would he need it to detach for search and rescue? Holding up a piece of rubble to let people out? It's cool, for certain, but I question the practicality.

As of now, in real life, research on powered exoskeletons is going in three different directions, with slightly different emphasis:
A) industrial exoskeletons, which focus either on diminishing wear to the user (on straining or repetitive tasks) or to give him some super strength.
B) medical/gerontological exoskeletons, focusing on restoring lost mobility.
C) military exoskeletons, which are either focusing on improving human endurance under a heavy load, or like the Revision exosuit, which rather seems to focus on general performance under a heavy armour and a light load, for six hours at a time.

To be underlined here: the only ones who are looking at full-body exosuits are the industry, and these suits would be limited to industries like construction, shipwrights or dock work.

The military isn't even looking at suits with arms, because field going military suits are meant to improve the users legs. And here's what I think might be the main reason why we won't ever see military suits with arms: commanders want the suits to be a tactical assistance, but not to become a strategic crutch.
Now consider My Hero Academia: we know from canon that our kids are frequently forced to go au natural, without any costume components that would help them, and that the only individual in the hero program who receives a special dispensation is Aoyama, who apparently cannot control his power if he isn't wearing his focusing belt (and who apparently wears the belt 24/7). And then we have that guys in Support can carry stuff they've made, but this doesn't count as a crutch because their asset isn't their physical prowess, but their mental one.
Let's put it this way: Tony Stark doesn't stand among the Avengers because he owns the Iron Man suit, but because he made it. He's squishy, unfit, irresponsible and untrained, yet he can wipe the floor with any of his teammates, which include the world's best archer, a top rated assassin, the one and only American one-man-regiment, a berserk that has slapped around both armies and gods, and another god. And for all of this, Tony Stark wouldn't be in the Hero Program at the UA.
All of this boils down to: if Izuku gets an armour that pushes him from his normal 100% to 250-500%, he'll be trampled whenever the armour runs out of juice, he can't get to his armour, or his armour gets damaged and needs repairs. On the other hand, if he gets a modest boost from his armour (120-150%), he'll appreciate it as a boost to his muscles rather than a substitute, and will be motivated to train harder.

By the way, it seems that we need to discuss contemporary armour philosophies. Remember that fully enclosing metal armour became obsolete from the moment the first flintlock made its first debut in battle. In modern times, armour tries to balance protectiveness versus encumbrance, and we are left with kevlar helmets, kevlar vests, ceramic plates covering your heart from high-power rifles, and little more than cloth or leather covering everything else. And if upgraded to riot gear, they'll wear plastic limb armour to protect from sticks and stones.
That plate armour you are showing is, if I remember correctly, from the game X-Com, where aliens shoot energy weapons rather than projectiles. As such, plate armour makes sense for such weapons, considering that they would primarily burn rather than impact. Izuku isn't in that type of a futuristic escenario, or even in a country where policemen actually asked for their stab vests, so police-level vest and helmet should be more than enough for actual protection, perhaps upgraded to riot gear considering that his exoskeleton might carry the weight.

Know something weird? I just thought that, if his costume is too elaborate, he'll get in trouble for taking too long to put it on and off, and will be forced to start wearing less than the total.

Why would he need it to detach for search and rescue? Holding up a piece of rubble to let people out? It's cool, for certain, but I question the practicality.

More like attach for search and rescue, then detach for combat. While for search and rescue the braquial components would be game-changing, he should make every effort to maintain his distance in combat. Although, thinking about it, he wouldn't necessarily need to drop the arms: have a switch on his chest that flips between civilian and military modes. When he flips to military, the arms fold and lock against his back, and the legs will have almost twice as much power available (if needed).

The Paris agreement was based around giving lots of money to China to maybe make some environment friendly policies 25-50 years from now. It was a really obvious scam, the money could be more eco-friendly spent just about anywhere else, and the stock market ticked up after the announcement, which was probably the real goal from the beginning.

I think you will need to talk me through your reasoning.

Trump has been labeled as an idiot from the moment he started running for office, yet there he now sits. The day before the election the experts said his chances were less than 10%. He's managed to look like the most busy president in history without actually doing anything. He stomped all over everyone who called him stupid and incompetent, then did it again. And again. You can only see that so many times before the "he's an idiot" line starts feeling hollow. For example, just after the Paris announcement went out he suggested that he'd cover his wall in solar panels. It's obviously ridiculous from both a technical and a monetary standpoint, yet all of a sudden all those lovely windows of attack vanished like smoke and left his critics floundering. He's done this at least a half a dozen times, this is just the latest instance.

Something very idiotic in the face of it, but very wise as far as his image is concerned, is that he keeps saying whatever people want to hear.
Furthermore, he's turned the office of the presidency of the US into a reality show. I'm not sure what to think about that.

I've read about a woman making a speech supporting Sharia law at a Pride rally. That's like having a New Ager talk about pyramid power at a Rationalist convention. Does not compute.

Or some absolutist king trying to explain his divine right to Karl Marx.
Must have been high. Or a troll trying to make the world weirder.

BTW: "Avocado hand" has been recognised as a type of injury? WTF!

5993546 The U.S. is not the biggest polluter in the world: we've actually done a fairly good job of curbing our emissions. No, that award goes to China and India. If you want to make a dent in the Climate Problem, you have to make them do something, and neither of them give two shits about the climate under normal conditions. That's what the Paris Agreement is set up for: wealthy, eco friendly countries paying poorer, less eco friendly countries to become more eco friendly, something they wouldn't do on their own.

The issue is that this money is given with too few strings attached. The due date is a couple of decades into the future, rather than right now, and government officials don't hold any interest in anything that exists outside their time in office. Also, we have no way to check that the money is in fact being spent on being eco friendly. Given we're talking about officially (if not actually) communist China, I wouldn't take a bet on them spending that money honestly.

Finally, the U.S., as the biggest and wealthiest nation in the agreement, is stuck holding the bill. A bill for a cash prize to a nation for vague, long term goals that probably will never be achieved. All the protesting is because the gravy train might stop, not because the agreement is good for the environment. That money would be far better spent funding research into fusion power or better solar panels. Also, Obama didn't actually go through the proper channels when he joined in the first place, making it unclear whether we're a part of it at all. No wonder Trump wanted out.

Once you spell it out like that, fixing it becomes obvious. Offer a much smaller payment to build a clean energy plant right now, and check in every few months until it's done. Hold the next payment in reserve until the first plant is complete, thereby preventing the money from being wasted. Some of it will still go 'missing,' but you'll end up with tangible results instead of a political promise.

Trump's a bit more than just making a good public image, otherwise he'd have more support in D.C. and from the Mass Media, and probably would have made a better impression overseas. He seems to have a knack for figuring out what people want, and then giving it to his allies while taking it away from his enemies. He might even be a Persuader, that dark mirror of a Rationalist I was talking about a while back. It would explain why he's managed to mostly stop illegal immigration and get the economy going again without laying a single brick or passing more than token laws. In fact, most of his output has been in Tweet form, which shouldn't have anywhere near the impact it does.

I just googled avocado hand. People are idiots.

Having both an emergency release and floaties is better than one or the other because it means he has a backup. Also, given Midoriya's natural creativity he's probably going to use both of them in unconventional ways.

XCOM 2, which is where that comes from, has two types of weapons: plasma and railguns. The reason that armor is helpful at all is because it's made of Alien Alloys, an unidentified extremely tough and light metal that XCOM uses for armor plating. It's their version of adamantium.

I actually believe there's a real life material that can fill that role though. It's called metallic glass, and trademarked liquidmetal. You make it by taking a large number of metals with varying atomic sizes, mixing them up so there aren't any clumps of a single material, then cooling it so fast that crystalline structures aren't able to form. The result is an extremely tough and dense alloy with an elastic strength many times higher than anything else we can create. See video:

Given than most forging techniques are built around squishing those same crystalline structures out of shape to make a metal stronger, I believe that this stuff could make the best armor of all time. I've seen a 50 cal. sniper rifle fired at a 3/8th inch steel plate in person, and the plate didn't get so much as a scratch. A good metallic glass would be able to recreate that feat while being much thinner and lighter.

The catch is twofold. First, because there's no atomic structure the melting point is very low, a mere 700 degrees Celsius when compared to the 4000+ required to melt steel. Second, the size of the object being forged is limited by how quickly it can cool. You have to make it cool at 1-2 degrees per second in order to maintain the glass-like state, which is near impossible for larger projects. That's why this stuff doesn't make anything much larger than a phone case right now.

Since this is the future, I expect that new manufacturing techniques and better alloy compositions will have mostly fixed both problems.

All of modern combat is built around the concept of a One Hit Point Wonder. If you get shot, you're out. That's why we're so focused on mobility and range. The idea that a knight on horseback isn't all powerful was the death tole of the noble and the royal being untouchable by peasants. The gun is as responsible for the U.S. existing as it does as the Cherokee tribes that influenced its final form. It created a meme (viral concept) that kicked off the French revolution. Actually, guns no longer being effective against everyone would have greatly sped up the transition to supers, which act much like the armored nobility used to.

I've fought in medieval armor since I was eight, and grew up listening to history about weapons and how it shaped our worldview. I have a full suit sitting in a tub behind me as I type. I know this subject very well.

The plate doesn't have to cover everywhere, but a helmet, a chest plate, and some jack chain (see photo) for his arms and legs would work wonders on his durability. Other than that, I've found that stamina is a bigger factor in how well I fight than raw strength. Make it so the suit doesn't make Midoriya stronger, but rather makes fighting require less effort. Being able to run for miles without getting out of breath would be much more useful than a brief burst of super speed.

5993709

I actually believe there's a real life material that can fill that role though. It's called metallic glass, and trademarked liquidmetal. You make it by taking a large number of metals with varying atomic sizes, mixing them up so there aren't any clumps of a single material, then cooling it so fast that crystalline structures aren't able to form. The result is an extremely tough and dense alloy with an elastic strength many times higher than anything else we can create. 
[...]
The catch is twofold. First, because there's no atomic structure the melting point is very low, a mere 700 degrees Celsius when compared to the 4000+ required to melt steel. Second, the size of the object being forged is limited by how quickly it can cool. You have to make it cool at 1-2 degrees per second in order to maintain the glass-like state, which is near impossible for larger projects. That's why this stuff doesn't make anything much larger than a phone case right now.

I'm going to bring up something different: cost.
Of-the-shelf components, even if they have to modified to be worn by a languid 15-year-old kid, will be far cheaper than anything custom-made. That's one of the manifold reasons why I'm insisting on looking at today's market and trying to come up with real world alternatives (feasible some 20-50 years in the future). Izuku will know that, once he's a pro, he has to be able to afford his equipment, and as such will want it of-the-shelf, and eventually customised more for function than for size. If you think the defence industry will have that available by then, fine, but I am not yet discarding ceramics. And at that, whether the armour itself is metallic or ceramic, I imagine it will be under cloth, simply to not be shiny, and thus this discussion will be a footnote.

I've fought in medieval armor since I was eight, and grew up listening to history about weapons and how it shaped our worldview. I have a full suit sitting in a tub behind me as I type. I know this subject very well.

Dude! If were can still be pen pals some five years from now, I'm so going for a visit!
Although I'll be a Jaguar Knight, thus I will stroll through metal detectors like a boss!

If you want to make a dent in the Climate Problem, you have to make them do something, and neither of them give two shits about the climate under normal conditions.

Dude: I have absolutely no idea who gave you such info, but whoever it is, is smoking something fierce.
Either that, or your data is a decade out of date.

The Guardian, January 6: China Cements Global Dominance on Renewable Energy and Technology
“At the moment China is leaving everyone behind and has a real first-mover and scale advantage, which will be exacerbated if countries such as the US, UK and Australia continue to apply the brakes to clean energy,” [ Tim Buckley, director of Ieefa ] said.
“The US is already slipping well behind China in the race to secure a larger share of the booming clean energy market. With the incoming administration talking up coal and gas, prospective domestic policy changes don’t bode well,” Buckley said.

National Geographic, May: Three Reasons to believe in China's Renewables' Boom
Every hour, China erects another wind turbine and installs enough solar panels to cover a soccer field, according to Greenpeace estimates.
[...] coal consumption, the main driver of China’s carbon emissions, fell in 2016 for the third straight year. And because China has clearly decided that cutting coal use—the fuel powers much of its heavy industry as well as providing electricity— is in its own interest, it’s a trend that’s likely to continue even as the United States, under President Trump, abandons Obama’s climate agenda.
[...]
Whatever the motivation, the consequences of China’s clean energy buildup are already clear. Wealthier nations that once used China as an excuse for their own inaction are now watching it zoom past them to become a global climate leader.
“Everybody was saying ‘China didn’t sign the Kyoto agreement,’” the 1997 climate deal, Mäkinen recalls. “So what? They did more than everybody else put together.”

New York Times, January 5: China aims to spend at least 360 Billion dollars on renewables by 2020
China would create more than 13 million jobs in the renewable energy sector by 2020, curb the growth of greenhouse gasses that contribute to global warming and reduce the amount of soot that in recent days has blanketed Beijing and other Chinese cities in a noxious cloud of smog.
China surpassed the United States a decade ago as the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses, and now discharges about twice as much. 
[...]
The investment commitment made by the Chinese, combined with Mr. Trump’s moves, means jobs that would have been created in the United States may instead go to Chinese workers.
[...]
China may meet its 2020 goals for solar installation by 2018, said Lauri Myllyvirta, a research analyst at Greenpeace, who is based in Beijing.
[...]
“My experience with China is when a numeric target gets written down, it gets implemented,” Mr. Myllyvirta said. “It doesn’t always get implemented in the way you like, but it does get implemented.”

World Resources Institute, January 5: China is leaving the US in the dust
Looking at the entire economy, not just foreign investment, China regularly outspends the United States on renewable energy. It invested more than $100 billion in clean energy in 2015, more than double U.S. investment, which spurred robust job growth. Of the 8.1 million renewable energy jobs that exist globally, 3.5 million are in China, compared to less than one million in the United States. And China’s National Energy Administration projects that new investment from 2016 to 2020 will create 13 million jobs in the renewable energy sector.
Solar panels are the mainstay of China’s clean energy sector. Five of the six largest solar module manufacturing firms globally are Chinese. Average solar panel costs in China have tumbled about 30 percent this year.
But it’s not just solar. China is also embracing more complex manufacturing like electric cars. It overtook the United States as the largest market for electric vehicles in 2015, with over 200,000 new registrations. Two Chinese firms, BYD and CATL, are challenging Tesla’s pre-eminence in the sector, and China’s Tainqi Lithium is now the world’s largest manufacturer of lithium ion, an important input for electric vehicle batteries.
[...]
The good news is that the government is aware of these problems and is working to address them. It recently set a target to limit coal at 58 percent of its energy mix by 2020, down from 64 percent in 2015, and is working to reduce wasted renewable energy (learn more about these efforts here).

Reuters, January 5: China set to plow $361 billion on renewable fuel by 2020
Last month, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country's economic planner, said in its own five-year plan, that solar power will receive 1 trillion yuan of spending, as the country seeks to boost capacity by five times. That's equivalent to about 1,000 major solar power plants, according to experts' estimates.
The spending comes as the cost of building large-scale solar plants has dropped by as much as 40 percent since 2010. China became the world's top solar generator last year.
"The government may exceed these targets because there are more investment opportunities in the sector as costs go down," said Steven Han, renewable analyst with securities firm Shenyin Wanguo.
Some 700 billion yuan will go towards wind farms, 500 billion to hydro power with tidal and geothermal getting the rest, the NDRC said.

Greenpeace: Energy Desk, September 8, 2016: Six little-known factors of China's renewable energy boom
1. Power generation from wind and solar increased more than China’s total electricity demand in 2015.
So yes, energy demand in the world’s largest economy is growing but this new data means that all new demand was covered from these sources.
[...]
2. China’s increase in power generation from wind and solar in 2015 (48 TWh) alone was twice as large as Ireland’s entire electricity demand the previous year (24 TWh).
3. Half of all wind power capacity and almost one third of all solar PV capacity installed globally in 2015 was in China.

5. The surface area of solar panels installed in China in 2015 is equal to over 10,000 football pitches. That’s more than one football pitch per hour, every hour of the year.
6 China’s targets a similar pace of wind and solar growth in its 2020 renewable energy targets.This will mean adding approximately the entire electricity demand of UK from wind and solar in just five years.
See the full dataset here.

I want to look at things this way: China is doing so well that Greenpeace is eating from their hand...

Here's a much different focus on China's objectives:

I'm gettinghttp://www.wri.org/blog/2016/04/chinas-1-2-3-punch-tackle-wasted-renewable-energy this data from cross-referencing: China's pollution-related mortality peaked at 1.1 million per year, but it is now estimated at 360,000.

The issue is that this money is given with too few strings attached. The due date is a couple of decades into the future, rather than right now, and government officials don't hold any interest in anything that exists outside their time in office. Also, we have no way to check that the money is in fact being spent on being eco friendly. Given we're talking about officially (if not actually) communist China, I wouldn't take a bet on them spending that money honestly.

I have no idea why China would bother taking your money, considering that they are investing on renewables around the world, including giving credits to establish wind farms in the US.
Are you sure that this isn't some wild Republican lie, or that the money wouldn't actually go to Third World countries?

Trump's a bit more than just making a good public image, otherwise he'd have more support in D.C. and from the Mass Media, and probably would have made a better impression overseas. He seems to have a knack for figuring out what people want, and then giving it to his allies while taking it away from his enemies. He might even be a Persuader, that dark mirror of a Rationalist I was talking about a while back. It would explain why he's managed to mostly stop illegal immigration and get the economy going again without laying a single brick or passing more than token laws. In fact, most of his output has been in Tweet form, which shouldn't have anywhere near the impact it does.

Once again, I'll hold my tongue.