Hero Has Returned - Chapter 12

This reminds me of bad Worm (web novel) fanfiction. Everything is tragic and people make bad decisions based on bad information, like in the original story – but they also act like idiots because the authors hadn’t put enough thought in the story.

This whole plotline on “government” (and they obviously are a bunch of rebels, not government; by definition, government _rules_ – so currently Heroes are government, disfunctional as it is) here serves to show that MC is not authentic and isn’t smart. If his goal was to enlist these guys to provide support, acting as a prisoner is the last thing he should have done. It’s entering negotiations from the position of weakness – letting your opponent decide when and how it happens, but also such symbolic things like how you look (tied and pathetic) and how they treat you (with insults and enough disrespect to openly threaten into cooperation). On the “government” side, this level of underestimation is approaching brain-dead territory, and such treatment will absolutely make a possible ally into a betrayer in the future. Which doesn’t mean much for our world’s government officials, since they always are in position of strength, and can do whatever they want with you before the eyes of the whole world despite bad press (see Snowden and Assange cases). But in this world, with heroes on the rampage? It looks almost like a suicidal incompetence, throwing away the irreplaceable human resource in chase of posturing, threatening walking WMD in compliance and so on.

Don’t even get me started on this “play” – provoking WMD with a chance to explode in your face and start their own rampage because of your actions? Just… Beyond words.

This is overall bad decision galore, and the fact that nobody acknowledges it in the story implies that, well, author is not the brightest bulb.