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oh your math is much better than mine! plus, 1300 is far more manageable for the isf rather than my estimate lol

and oops youre right, the exam we see would be the second one in the year. I think i got it mixed up with a fic i read that specified that there was still another chance within the year, but yup in canon the other is in june!

homeroom teacher eri:

as you can probably tell, the isf has gotten stuck in my brain. random thoughts for you now.

i was thinking of how the actual format of the isf would work, and i feel like the first thing to figure that out would be to figure out approximately how many students are in each year, and possibly the number of hero schools that would take part.

fortunately, the provisional license exam is an event that includes every hero school in japan, along with some helpful numbers! there are 1540 examinees at 1-a's location, and three locations in all. assuming that the students were split evenly, that makes about 4620 students taking the exam at that time.

given that there are two exams a year and that this is the first in this academic year, the vast majority of this number is likely made up of second-year students taking this test for the first time. however, we know that there are first years who are taking it ahead of time, and very likely third-years who failed the first two times. so that means that the approximate number of hero students a year is likely less than the 4620 found from the exam, but its hard to gauge about how many students could fit in each of those excluded categories. im just going to round down and say that the likely amount of second year heriocs students in the country is around 4000!

although, thats for second years. given the intense nature of heroics, there are likely dropouts typically occuring in the first year, so my guess is that the first years isf has more students than the second- or third-years. and i believe you mentioned that non-heroics students have the option to join, likely for the chance of a transfer, which pumps the first year number even higher!

so, in conclusion, my guess for the amount of students taking part in the first-year isf would be at minimum 4000, possibly getting up to the 5000s. would that be a good estimate?

We can make a few more inferences. For one thing, the one we see is the second one in that year (June and September, this is the September exam). We also know that only one class per school is at each site, so we can presume that no Hero School has more than three classes. UA only has two.

We also know that the pass rate used to be 50%. We also know that it's mostly second and third years, as you mentioned. However, we can infer based on the text on Midoriya's license that you can take the test without being a Hero School Student provided you have a sponsor.

I think that 50% number is what we should focus on. Because this is the September test, this could be, at most, the fourth time a Third Year is taking this exam. For the sake of sanity I'll be evenly applying the 50% statistic to every class in attendance.

So unless my logic fucked up somewhere, if we ignore anyone beyond the second and third years, the math comes out to:

2X + (2X/2) + (X/4) + (X/8) = 4620, where X is the size of a single, second-year class across all schools.

(Two classes on their first attempt, two classes on their second, one class on their third, and one class on their fourth attempt)

Now we can take that number and reduce it by, at minimum, 41. We also inferred that some of these are people who didn't get licensed in school but are doing so later on in life. For fun, I'll say that's 289 people (which is how many people would fail this exam within their school career. The real number would be different, but this is a decent estimate.)

That means the real equation is 2X + (2X/2) + (X/4) + (X/8) = 4290, or a grand total of 1,271 Hero students per year across Japan

I'll round that to 1,300 Hero Students per year across Japan. Approximately. (side note, this means there are somewhere between 22-33 Hero Schools in Japan, depending on how many classes they have)

And I haven't even factored in dropouts! God help me if I try to figure out how to factor in dropouts!

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honestly, inasa hitting todoroki with the "youre just like your father" does make a lot more sense in an arc where he is. well. acting like his father,

homeroom teacher eri:

i just realized. this au doesnt have all might teaching at ua, so its unlikely anyone will draw connections between him and midoriya other than "oh your both strong" type comments, and thats pretty loose. which means that theres a chance that todoroki wont challenge midoriya. does he get his "its your power" moment? or does he get his sense knocked into him some other way?

WAIT. the isf has all the other schools. inasa is gonna be there. somethings gonna happen either way,

Yeah since All Might is teaching Midoriya out of class, there is much less of an obvious connection between them. Todoroki therefore wouldn't even notice Midoriya until the character development sets in.

Speaking of which.

Yoarashi showing up when Todoroki is at his worst to call him out on it might be good for him.

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This Tetsutetsu dialogue is so much better at setting up Kendo's parallel with Momo than that whole beauty pageant and commercial nonsense. Why is this initially built up as some catty girl rivalry, especially when it doesn't make sense with either of their personalities. This is a fight between two hero course leaders that could have been 75% improved by scrapping the random misogyny.

The crux of their parallel is this: Momo might be a genius with more theoretical knowledge and strategist potential, but Kendo is a level-headed thinker who can make sound decisions in the heat of the moment. Momo gives the vibe of a hyper-competent technocrat while Kendo is a charismatic down to earth type.

Kendo achieved what Momo initially wanted in her class - Kendo is the class president of Class 1B. She has an easygoing charisma that makes her the role model and leader for her class. Momo has a leadership role in Class 1A as vice president but was never seriously considered for the top of the ticket. Momo missed the opportunity to have that kind of leadership role in Class 1A because pre-Sports Festival Momo thought she would make it to the top through demonstrating her individual superiority over building relationships with her peers. She became more of a team player after the Sports Festival, but she lost self-confidence. This lack of self-confidence prevented her from stepping into a leadership role in dire moments in the first half of the story.

The narrative could have gone farther with this parallel. Take their respective roles in the Forest Training Arc/Kamino for example. Kendo defeated Mustard and saved everyone in the forest from the poison gas cloud. But Momo provided the gas masks that allowed Kendo and Tetsutetsu to win that fight and she put a tracker on the noumu. The Forest Training Arc could have been highlighted more to demonstrate that Kendo is the type of leader that rallies the troops to go into battle with her while Momo is the type to consider the logistics and contingency plans.

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I think im getting your point and i agree lol, i do think that a power system can be pretty helpful when telling a story and enjoyable while im in the audience. i suppose that the power systems i take issue with have an overlap with those "oh those superpowers are so unrealistic" type of person, as the systems i mentioned that detract from the author/audience trust are typically the ones where the author have a similar attitude of "oh im so much smarter than anyone else in the genre," or are even preemptively trying to fend off those types!

Im not as well versed in comic history specifically, but i think that the trend of moving from looser/vaguer power systems where anything goes to a more defined and structured system has made its way through a lot of media, like the idea of soft or hard magic in fantasy settings. It generally feels like a whole lot of newer projects want to be seen as more logical/sensible/realistic rather than just letting things happen.

(this isnt to say that i dont like structured power/magic systems, because I definitely do, lol. theres a reason i like mha along with stuff like certain hard scifi and spec bio/evo. I just also think that theres a charm to those anything that can happen will happen settings.)

(anyways, now that im thinking about it, a whole lot of superhero stuff tends to fall on the intersection between a science and magic system. idk for sure where the "structuring" trend started, but makes a lot of sense why its so obvious in this genre.)

I think it's a natural evolution of storytelling. Defining a power system, no matter how soft or how loose, prevents Deus Ex Machina and overall helps the narrative and characters breathe.

Think about fairy tales. The heroes of fairy tales almost never solve problems using magic so they never establish any rules for it, unless a curse comes with an escape clause and even then that's all we're told.

But in a story where magic or powers solves most problems, the audience needs to know how that works or it could be replaced by the protagonist pulling out a never-before-mentioned gun and shooting the main antagonist without changing anything.

The audience doesn't need to know how electricity works, but they should know what happens when a character flips a lightswitch

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oh yeah, i get that its often to reign in possible deus ex machinas, or at least to tell the audience that no, something like that cant/wont happen. like i said, i do enjoy many defined power systems, but i do think that some of those systems are used as more of a replacement for the audience trusting that the author wont go off the rails, or for the author trusting the audience to have some sort of suspension of disbelief. like sure, if the author doesnt explain or introduce every possible weapon, the never-before-mentioned instawin gun could be possible, but if ive been enjoying the work so far then i think i could trust that the author won't do something like that, yknow?

Im not as well versed in comic history specifically, but i think that the trend of moving from looser/vaguer power systems where anything goes to a more defined and structured system has made its way through a lot of media, like the idea of soft or hard magic in fantasy settings. It generally feels like a whole lot of newer projects want to be seen as more logical/sensible/realistic rather than just letting things happen.

(this isnt to say that i dont like structured power/magic systems, because I definitely do, lol. theres a reason i like mha along with stuff like certain hard scifi and spec bio/evo. I just also think that theres a charm to those anything that can happen will happen settings.)

(anyways, now that im thinking about it, a whole lot of superhero stuff tends to fall on the intersection between a science and magic system. idk for sure where the "structuring" trend started, but makes a lot of sense why its so obvious in this genre.)

I think it's a natural evolution of storytelling. Defining a power system, no matter how soft or how loose, prevents Deus Ex Machina and overall helps the narrative and characters breathe.

Think about fairy tales. The heroes of fairy tales almost never solve problems using magic so they never establish any rules for it, unless a curse comes with an escape clause and even then that's all we're told.

But in a story where magic or powers solves most problems, the audience needs to know how that works or it could be replaced by the protagonist pulling out a never-before-mentioned gun and shooting the main antagonist without changing anything.

The audience doesn't need to know how electricity works, but they should know what happens when a character flips a lightswitch

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Chapter 3 of What Happens in Class B, Stays in Class B is up! It's battle trials time!

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The next chapter of What Happens in Class B, Stays in Class B is up! Chapter 2 of part 2 of my demon monoma au!

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huh. i suppose my questions still stand for if he did get into a situation where copy was forcibly activated, though.

although that might be a point against the theory that mutations are uncomfortable/painful/impossible for him to copy under normal circumstances, if monoma had both classes worth of quirks in the room with him and still chose to use tape. or maybe theres something else about that scene that i dont know about that pushed him to using it,

Anyways since ive been thinking about monomas quirk. I find it kinda intresting how little we actually know for sure of its limits regarding what it can copy or how it interacts with more complex quirks. Like yeah part of that is because he is a side character and he didnt get enough screentime to really necessitate those explanations, but i can only remember a total of seven quirks that he actually used in the main series off the top of my head - which sounds like a lot but all but two of them were rather simple emitters with little/no physical changes so theres not much data on how copy interacts with just about anything else. The most explanation there is is him talking about blank quirks when he meets eri - but even then interpretations of that scene range from “he can copy them but cant make that much use of them due to having no fuel but there might be ways around it” to “monoma physically cannot copy these quirks.”

Honestly the minimal explanations on copy itself compared to the wild possibilities due to the fact that the quirk system is so varied is probably part of why monoma lives rent free in my head lol. Theres simply a lot to think about. Hope you dont mind this random ramble lol

Apparently in the Light Novel he copies a Mutation Quirk, though if I recall correctly that was part of an incident involving something so spicy it forcibly activated Quirks which, uh. That seems like it'd have some Implications so I don't know how canon that was.

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oh? it was forcibly activated? thats interesting, i wonder if it forced him to both copy then manifest the quirk or if maybe monoma already had the quirk copied but inactive for whatever reason. honestly any sort of unintentional quirk activation is interesting, especially if the quirk usually requires more direction/thought. Wonder what would happen if he had multiple quirks that could have been activated - would it choose at random or attempt to manifest most/all of them at once? i can definitely see what you mean by Implications, lol.

now im kinda tempted to dredge up every possible moment of copy being used to try to piece together possible rules/limits to it,,

Anyways since ive been thinking about monomas quirk. I find it kinda intresting how little we actually know for sure of its limits regarding what it can copy or how it interacts with more complex quirks. Like yeah part of that is because he is a side character and he didnt get enough screentime to really necessitate those explanations, but i can only remember a total of seven quirks that he actually used in the main series off the top of my head - which sounds like a lot but all but two of them were rather simple emitters with little/no physical changes so theres not much data on how copy interacts with just about anything else. The most explanation there is is him talking about blank quirks when he meets eri - but even then interpretations of that scene range from “he can copy them but cant make that much use of them due to having no fuel but there might be ways around it” to “monoma physically cannot copy these quirks.”

Honestly the minimal explanations on copy itself compared to the wild possibilities due to the fact that the quirk system is so varied is probably part of why monoma lives rent free in my head lol. Theres simply a lot to think about. Hope you dont mind this random ramble lol

Apparently in the Light Novel he copies a Mutation Quirk, though if I recall correctly that was part of an incident involving something so spicy it forcibly activated Quirks which, uh. That seems like it'd have some Implications so I don't know how canon that was.

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very true lol. id also say that the opponents he goes up against also fit into "making him look stronger than he is because hes in a favorable situation 90% of the time." i.e., going up against all might in the exams or afo in the final war. both of those situations had him going against characters who were considered some of the most powerful in and out of universe and then winning, so some people just take it as "this kid (and his quirk) is directly on the level of these insane powerhouses." However, as you said, both situations were direct open area combat where he didn't have to give much attention to his surroundings/collateral damage didnt matter - so even though on the surface it appears to be the hardest fight hes ever been in... its still playing to his strengths without challenging his weaknesses.

tbh id probably buy into the idea that bakugou is supposed to be a natural fighting genius a lot more if his battles actually put him at the disadvantage and made him strategize beyond "make big boom, if that fails, make bigger boom."

“Bakugou's skill is the thing that makes it seem better than it is.”

Plus, the majority of situations 1-A finds themselves in tend to be open area combat, where Bakugou doesn’t have to really worry about the weaknesses of his Quirk. The story didn’t put him into very many situations where the limitations of Explosion is highlighted, aside from the Battle Trials (mentioning how strong explosions can damage the building) and the Summer Camp attack (where he could have started even more fires). That’s not even mentioning the limited Rescue applications compared to Todoroki’s (who has arguably just as much firepower) and Uraraka’s Quirks.

There was also the Sludge Villain Incident, where he did actively make the situation worse.

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Chapter 1 of Part 2 of my demon monoma au is posted!!! >:)

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yeagh,,, people just cant really comprehend that sometimes there are themes other than romance. Maybe its just me being aromantic but yeah id love more books with zero romance

holding off judgement on the final chapter is pretty reasonable imo. i was trying to find more info on the chapter in the maintag when it was first leaked but kept retreating because i was reminded of why i avoided it.

and yeah. from what i can tell the loudest negative takes are people acting like their ships not being endgame is a horrible sin of storytelling. Not going to get more into the worse ones ive seen bc i dont think you want that in your asks rn lol.

One of these days I'm gonna have to write a young adult novel with no romance just to fuck with some people.

Mad respect to Metaphor ReFantazio not having romance options

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saw a post and had a thought

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huh. is there any other evidence that the leaks are fake other than character model inconsistency? bc like,,, small details like scars can get messed up all the time. I'm sure if someone dug through the whole manga they'd find plenty of mistakes. It's natural, and some of the "inconsistencies" might just be intended as a part of the aged-up design.

Ive tried to look at a little more of the leaks (and then ran away from the maintag after being reminded of the reasons i avoided it) and my loose opinion of what ive seen so far... It doesn't seem horrible? like yeah i still have my issues with the ending but at least now i get to see midoriya hanging out with his friends after looking so lonely in the last chapter, so that's one thing fixed. Past that I think it works well enough as a bonus post-epilogue chapter, barring anything major i may have missed.

it also seems like the main Problem is shipping bullshit but I probably should have seen that coming a mile away

but yeah i agree as long as our boy is happy! (and my other favs seem to be doin pretty good for themselves too :D ) I'll probably hold off on Total Judgement until there's confirmation, but as of right now I'm leaning towards the leak being real.

The whole leaks possibly being fake thing is so wild to me bc like. I could understand a smaller leak being faked, but this looks like its a significant amount of, if not the whole, chapter. Who would go through that much work for a fake leak??? Why would they want to do that?????? I didnt really go looking for the whole thing yet, but whats even so bad about it that its got so many people coping?????

but no matter what is true, monoma's earrings will always be canon to me lol

yeah the whole thing has been kind of wild lmao. i can understand why some people might think it's a fake leak, given some of the inconsistencies in character models that have been pointed out on twitter (mainly regarding the lack of scars in some panels), but i think a large part of it is just that people are just trying to cope with the ending because they Did Not Like It. and,,, yeah i can see why ig. but i lived through the absolute bombshell that was the s4 finale of the umbrella academy, and nothing will ever be worse than that, so Oh Well. as long as Monoma is happy i could not be bothered <3

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oopsies the link didn't go through at all lol

anyways here have class b having a very normal night :)

Happy Halloween!!!!!

I may have written a lil something monoma related :)

(not sure if the links gonna go through the ask, but lets hope lol)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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I will have a pinned post. Soon. I promise.