Mineta is expelled (or at least dropped from the hero course) for sexual harassment.

Class A vs B happens earlier and Shinsou joins the hero course the day after the “test” to fill the vacancy left by Mineta

Yaoyorozu gets a better costume. For example: the cloak is part of it from the start and her leotard can close all the way. The book would also strap her side not her back so she can sit down. Or just give her a different costume entirely.

Better hero names for Ashido, Jirou, Aoyama, Todoroki, and Hagakure. Ashido especially. Pinky is not better than Alien Queen.

Midnight does not make inappropriate comments about the students. She is a teacher she should not be making such remarks. Trying to make that a “joke” was a poor writing decision.

Bakugou being chained to the podium at the Sports Festival was so messed up. They could’ve had him storm off instead or blow up the medal to showcase his bad behavior without making the teachers look like psychos. I wish someone would’ve at least pointed how wrong it was. Especially since it made Bakugou a target of kidnapping.

After Bakugou punches Midoriya in the final exam he faces punishment from the school. Attacking your allies/coworkers would be unacceptable for a pro hero and Bakugou should face some kind of penalty for that (ex: detention, anger management, a mark on his record). He stays in UA’s hero course, but is held accountable for his bad behavior. It helps progress his redemption arc.

After the summer camp attack and All Might’s retirement, a few of the Class 1A and 1B hero students leave UA for other hero schools. It would demonstrate how UA is losing trust. A student could also drop out of hero studies entirely due to being confronted with the dangerous reality of a career in heroics.

If a student switched hero schools, Class 1A could run into a former classmate at the provisional license exam (ex: Satou or Ojirou). Being forced to fight each other would make for good drama.

Female hero students get more attention and fight scenes. Ex: Nejire, Uraraka and Asui are not sidelined during the Yakuza base raid.

There is more than 1 female OFA user. I’d suggest changing the smokescreen guy because he looks like emo Best Jeanist. There could’ve been a much better design. Like a woman with purple hair to match the purple smoke. That way at least 2/9 OFA users are women.

Touya and Keigo met as kids, which would explain how Dabi was able to find out who Hawks was despite the HPSC’s efforts to bury his past.

More spaced out time line or more time skips, so that Class A would be in their 3rd year during the final war. That way they would be 17-18 and the adult pro heroes wouldn’t seem as useless in comparison.

Midnight’s death is different. She isn’t killed offscreen by random villains. Instead she dies protecting her students from a fearsome villain.

In the MLA raid a student from Class 1A dies (Sato or Koda would be a good candidate since they’re background characters). It would have an emotional impact on the class and teachers, as well as demonstrate how messed up it was that the HPSC sent 2nd year students to fight the MLA.

After Dabi exposes Endeavor there are a variety of reactions from the pro heroes and students. Some hate Endeavor, some tolerate him, some support him. A mixed bag of reactions is more realistic. Also those who are close to Shouto lean more towards hating Endeavor (ex: Aizawa and Class A).

Shouto’s custody is also transferred to Fuyumi after the reveal due to safety concerns by UA teachers.

However the criminal courts refuse to touch Endeavor and it further demonstrates hero and law enforcement corruption. It’s a parallel to the real world and how cops get away with domestic violence. It shows why so many people are starting to be sympathetic to the League of Villain’s cause and reignites Stain’s message.

Honestly I’d prefer Endeavor never get a “redemption” or “atonement” arc at all. But it’s such a big part of the second half of the series that it would be hard to remove. A corrupt hero like Endeavor becoming the new #1 hero should’ve showcased the flaws of the hero system and caused a revamp, not maintained the status quo.

Hawks has an actual reaction to finding out Endeavor was an abusive father just like Thief Takami. It could delve into Hawks’ own feelings about how the HPSC basically did to Hawks what Endeavor did to Shouto. Whether it’s condemning it or thinking it’s “normal” because of the HPSC’s grooming.

Aoyama does not become a hero after the “traitor” reveal. He never wanted to be a hero because of how scary the profession was. He only joined the UA hero course because of AFO’s threats. Instead he transfers to the business course and eventually becomes Hagakure’s manager.

Aizawa does not lose an eye. He already lost a leg the man has been through enough. Losing an eye also overshadows the scar he got from protecting his students at the USJ.

Miruko does not lose as many limbs. In canon she lost both her arms, her right leg, and half an ear. The poor woman was treated like Swiss cheese. Miruko being so brutalized feels sexist to me. Instead she only loses one arm in the Nomu lab raid and uses a prosthetic arm in the final war arc.

Gran Torino dies because it was ridiculous that he was still alive after everything. It also gives Midoriya further mental anguish and motivation to defeat the villains.

Bakugou does not get his heart impaled because it makes no sense for him to be able to continue fighting after that. Much less be able to defeat AFO.

Maybe Best Jeanist throws himself in front of Bakugou and gets injured instead. Jeanist and Edgeshot are UA school friends so it makes more sense that Edgehsot would be willing to “sacrifice” his wellbeing for Jeanist than a teenager he doesn’t know. It would also explain why Bakugou is the one fighting AFO and not the top 10 heroes.

All For One steals Endeavor’s quirk instead of Hawks’ quirk. It would be karmic for Endeavor since he abused his family in pursuit of the perfect quirk. It would also serve as a better explanation of why Shouto did all the work in stopping Dabi.

Hawks does not become the HPSC president. His quirk was damaged by Dabi but still usable. His feathers grow back much slower which limits his hero work hours. This allows him to have the “free time” he desires and helps him escape the organization that bought and groomed him.

In Hawks’ free time he helps establish and run a villain rehabilitation program. Maybe he names it “Second Chances” in honor of Twice.

The HPSC’s child soldier program would be exposed during the war. So would their orders to send the 2nd year students to fight in the MLA raid. It’s also revealed that they helped cover up Endeavor’s abuse. After that the HPSC would be disbanded and replaced with a new organization to oversee heroes. Perhaps a counsel with diverse members instead.

The Hero Rankings are discarded after the war. They promoted competition among heroes who should have been working together. It also led to heroes prioritizing popularity over saving lives. So a teamwork approach is emphasized in the future. There is also more focus on hero work than celebrity status / popularity.

New laws are passed that better protect people against quirk discrimination (mutation quirks, “scary” quirks, being quirkless). There are also stricter child abuse laws and a ban on quirk marriages.

Uraraka’s quirk counselling program gets nation wide support and is implemented in all schools. There is an additional program for civilian support gear. Also restrictions on public quirk use are lessened and people can get quirk use licenses for non hero related jobs.

Aizawa adopts Eri instead of Mandalay. Aizawa served as a source of safety to Eri thanks to his erasure quirk. He was very gentle towards her and already played the unofficial role of a father figure. If Mandalay could be an active hero and care for Eri then so could Aizawa. Additionally, Aizawa adopting Eri would serve as a more hopeful and thematic resolution for both of them after all the loss in the war. Worst comes to worst, Aizawa could retire from active hero duty and only be a UA teacher so he has more time for Eri. Even if Aizawa wasn’t able to care for Eri, it would make more sense for Ragdoll to adopt Eri than Mandalay since Ragdoll was retired.

Rei divorces Enji and lives separately from him. She gets lots of alimony.

Touya does not die a slow death in a tube. He is sent to a psychiatric ward instead of a prison and slowly heals both physically and mentally. His family visits him regularly. Touya is also a part of Hawks’ villain rehabilitation program. In the 8 years later epilogue Shouto reveals that Touya is doing well and will be released soon.

Toga also survives. Either A) it’s revealed she faked her death or B) she is entered into Hawks’ rehabilitation program. There’s no way Toga died from blood loss after all the ridiculous injuries that the heroes survived in canon.

Shigaraki has a better death scene with more agency. Maybe he even turns against AFO and dies to save his friends. Shigaraki and Midoriya fighting AFO together would have been epic.

After things have settled down, Midoriya holds a funeral for Tenko/Tomura and gets special exceptions made for the League of Villains to attend.

So the HPSC needs more heroes, so it makes sense to allow first years to take the exam - at least in theory. In the world of MHA, you have plently of first year age teens that have the training and experience to take the exam and pass.

No one in 1A fits that description.

Todoroki was poorly trained by his father to the point where even the ice he uses isn't well utilized for hero work (an ice barrage to end a fight, but causes substantial damage to the surrounding area and can catch fleeing civilians in it).

Iida, maybe, by virtue of being from a family of career heroes with access to that kind of training. Yaoyorozu not really - because I think training to enter UA and training for the exam are vastly different.

1A as a whole had no proper training in the few months they were at school. Every major training session was interrupted by villains or consisted of Aizawa throwing them down a cliff or under an abandoned mall with no guidance beyond "don't die." All Might isn't a reliable teacher either simply because he's inexperienced teaching others by virtue of being a solo hero with zero sidekicks (he should not have been the heroics teacher alone).

AND - those that failed should not have been allowed to take a course and retake the exam so quickly. The goal is to bolster the pro hero ranks with capable people. Review why these people failed and make them wait a full year with multiple courses and so on. A three month or so course isn't enough when Todoroki failed for being unable to work with others and Bakugo failed because he had no regard for civilian lives.

The fact that he failed for something so egregious and could just retake it like nothing happened pisses me off. Dude heard people crying for help and told them to shut up and rescue themselves. And did that in a hyper-realistic exam that people could and likely did get injured during.

Someone like that should not be given any form of hero license, he should've been expelled off the bat for failing like that. Seriously, that isn't a moment of character growth, it's legit acting like that's a "minor" issue - but had it not been a controlled environment with professionals playing the roles of civilians and villains, people would be dead and it would be Bakugo's fault.

It's one thing if Todoroki got the chance to retake it simply because he failed for reasons that can be worked through easily as only he and the other hero would've died had it been real. But Bakugo's lack of regard for life isn't easily fixed, especially not in a handful of months with a course.

That entire arc should've seen only a handful of them passing the exam - or better yet, only Izuku for narrative purposes. Even Iida and Yaoyorozu who took the exam serious also treated like an exam where Izuku treated it like it was the real deal after realizing that it wasn't "just an exam." Maybe also all of 1B if only to highlight that Aizawa isn't a good teacher.

*Tensei does offer Koichi the option to get licensed under his mentorship and he seems to legally work in the US. It's unclear how common/official these are though. (ty @bee-writes-whorror for the info!)

Characters constantly question whether teenagers should be on an active battlefield, but never question 15 year olds being trained for a military career in the first place. Irl, training minors is a controversial practice; in main series Bnha, it's treated like the only option. Bnha is a shōnen, but it already breaks convention by criticising its premise to begin with. Even after Kamino, the options aren't "get people from more demographics into heroics" but "select existing trainees for better soft skills."

My suspension of disbelief can weather some shōnen genre tropes but I like thinking about logistics. So here's a little world building exercise on why Bnha society might focus on child soldiers specifically:

Institutions like UA or the HPSC appear to have infinite funding but they most likely don't. I think they push people into Heroics as young as possible to get the most use out of them. The Heroics field physically destroys you. Half of the Top Ten from the Hero Billboard either die or become severely disabled within a year. The younger a person the less likely they're to break a bone. They are more physically resilient, heal faster and heal better. Recovery girl is the only main series healing hero and she is permanently employed at UA. The HPSC recruits literal 6 year olds. 15 feels like a hard negotiated limit on what the public deems acceptable.

They want to get (young) people with powerful quirks under their thumb and into Heroics before they have a chance to grow critical of the system or even complete their K-12 education. 15-18 are some of the most important years of individual and ideological development. People that age often look for a way to define and differentiate themselves. It's the perfect timeslot to foster the idea that they are special and above the rest of the populace; that they know what's right or wrong and that they deserve the status to enforce it.

According to the in-world quirk singularity theory, quirks become stronger with every successive generation. People didn't believe Ujiko 60 years ago, but they can't deny the observable effects. Children (almost) always prevail over their parents in physical quirk fights. The kids regularly beat adult villains with little training.* Shoto and Katsuki have to work with a class of pre-schoolers so powerful their teachers are helpless against them. Many villains are in their early twenties or teenagers themselves, so heroes need to be as young as possible.

At first, he thought it was only because everything in him screamed fake. His smile, his attitude, his cockiness. Maybe he was able to fool everyone, but Dabi was an expert in the whole faux-semblant thing. Lying was second nature to him, printed in his bone marrow, running in his blood. So, it was so obvious that Hawks was the epitome of fakeness.

At first, he just didn’t really care. So what ? The man’s a liar. But, which hero was not?

Then, one day, the bastard approached him. And, for an unknown reason, it struck Dabi’s nerves. Did the hero really think he was this dumb? That he couldn’t see through all his shit?

Then they started texting. Location to meet, insults, fake information -some weren’t lies, he didn’t know why he let slip real information. But it never backfired. So he continued.-, The hero would in return, give him more reasons to hate the hero commission. Nothing too valuable, never. They would exchange fake pick up lines too. Just for the fun of it.

There again, the same freaking word -fake-.

Sometimes, Dabi felt a glimpse of truth between two texts, between two stupid jokes. Sometimes, when they stayed a little longer than what was necessary, in a warehouse Dabi chose -Hawks always let him pick the place-, his facade would break a little. His smile would tear a little. He would let the arsonist see the exhaustion on his face.

Why would, the number 2 hero, lie this much ? Why was he faking arrogance, false-confidence ? Why, WHY, all of those weren’t real?

He was wealthy (at least he guessed), pretty (handsome, hot. Dabi never liked that line of thought. He could never stop anyway.), smart (he would NEVER say it to his face.)

Then, he understood that it was not the whole fake-thing that intrigued him anymore. It became more than that.

It was all the things he would let slipped.

When he finally let the bird meet the rest of the League, he thought « that’s it, he’s going to tell everything to the commission. We’re fucked. I fucked everything, again. »

Months go by. Nothing happen. They were still all safe, wanted, sure, but safe.

Turns out, Hawks had a lot of bird habits he hid very well. Those, he would never have guessed. His wings, when he was not trying to keep them still, would show everything he was feeling. Pride? They would extend. Tired ? They would cover him. Sadness? They’d lowered a little. Sometimes, when he was discovering something new -Games mostly, TV shows, food (and wtf ? Did the man even had a childhood?)- they’d puffed a little bit. His golden eyes would finally have some kind of lights that was missing, (disappearing the moments he would receive a text or a call. ) When he was leaving the hideout, it was always with his mask on. With the « I’m perfect and I know it », that Dabi realized, was also very fake. The hero didn’t know that he really was perfect and Dabi did not understand how could he not.

Nobody ever mentioned it. The whole bird thing. The late patrol. The absence of day off. They were, he thought, all amazed by seeing a hero spend time with them. (Wasting time on them). It felt like discovering that the hero could, had a true personality after all.

He’d let Toga bite him, stab him, drink his blood. She could do so many things with it. He did it anyway. Spinner and him would share heteromorph discrimination. Who knew Hawks couldn’t handle cold very well? Now the league knew. The media definitely did not.

Kurogiri was always keeping an eye on him. Like some sort of mother. As if he was not already taking care of them all.

The last straw, was when Hawks came back at the front door, hesitating to come inside.

If Dabi hadn’t gone out for a smoke break, he wondered if the hero would have entered at all.

The man was trembling, bleeding. Wings nearly visible. Pretty eyes covered with dark circles. And he fell.

Just like that. He fell on Dabi’s arms.

He never said anything about it. Let the black hair man leading him to his bed. No cocky remark. No fake smile. Just pure emptiness. It was, for the first time, the real Hawks. An empty man. He said things that didn’t make sense. At least, for the villain. Talked about drugs. Being starved. Exhausted (and maybe this one was kinda obvious). Something about not knowing why he was not dead yet. Didn’t know where else to go. (Where were his heroes’ friend ?).

That was when Dabi realized. THAT was what intrigued him the most about the man. Why was he and the hero so much alike? Why did he feel like looking into a mirror?

He knew that, in another universe, they would have been on the same side.

But why?

Oh boy, Dabi was intrigued, and was ready to discover everything to know about Hawks.

———

Should I start writing a hotwings FanFiction?

English isn’t my first language (ah) so I’m scared. They inspire me so much tho.

Anyway, I’m supposed to be studying for my finals. But, I really wanted to write this. Try something new.

HAIII I HAVE MORE

& YES THIS IS BASED OFF OF THAT ROBLOX FACE TREND I SAW ON TT

Author note: This is now being expanded into a full ecosystem for minimalist bureaucratic horror. You are welcome to use For the Safety of the Public entries as a resource for your fics. I just ask that you please link back to the document and credit. This will go up on AO3 eventually. And, of course, thank you to @autumnmobile12, who sparked the process with her own brilliance.

[NPSC ARCHIVE]

FILE ID: Y23-MHRA-001

CLEARANCE: INTERNAL COUNCIL ONLY

DATE: June 15, Y.23

Hawks is Lady Nagant’s replacement, meaning all the people she would’ve been sent to assassinate he took care of. Corrupt heroes who needed to be silenced, political enemies, criminals with ideas to dangerous like the league and the mla, he was sent to kill them. Hawks is an assassin and a spy with a background reminiscent of Black Widow. That’s traumatizing enough and I wish I could find more fics that address that rather than him being overworked and pushed to be perfect to the point of mutilation.

Cause like— Hawks isn’t a perfect golden boy? Where did people get that idea? That would be like All Might or Best Jeanist. Hawks is super socially awkward and covers it up with bravado and ends up coming off as rude. In terms of social experience he’s at the same place as Shouto if he never went to UA. He has no idea what he’s doing, he’s just winging it and everyone ignores it because he flashes a pretty smile. He’s like completely tactless.

I don’t think the commission even intended for him to be so high ranking, he’s just too damn good at his job and too pretty for his own good. He was supposed to be an assassin and an infiltrator and being so high profile is not conducive to that.