Surprise! It’s a Trigger Warning post! I know, we’re only two chapters into The Mister and immediately took two weeks off and that’s a little jarring, but what happened was 1) Ariel moved, I started a new job, and I’m also going to move this summer, so we’re a little busy IRL, and 2) nothing interesting happened in The Mister yet anyway, so tbh it’s not like you’re gonna forget what’s happened so far.
The Mister resumes next week! In the meantime, here’s a surprise Trigger Warning chapter!
Previously, the student body and administration’s latest effort to get Jake to leave their liberal arts school involved a random kid trying to start a fight with him. Jake did not escalate the fight (for once), but is waiting for his big speech about how he’s acting in self-defense to go viral. Also, a black guy was nice to Jake about it, which is how we know that Jake’s totally not even a racist like everyone says.
Trigger Warning: Chapter 17
Sure enough, as soon as Jake gets back to his dorm, he gets an email from the school president telling him to meet at his office the next morning, and sees that video of the scene is already all over social media.
One was titled Neo-Nazi Rant, and another emblazoned the words Far-Right Extremist Goes on Rampage. One was simply called Bigot.
Somewhat surprisingly, most of the videos didn’t appear to have been edited much, if at all. It was like the posters were so sure of their fundamental infallibility that they hadn’t even bothered. They knew that if they pointed at something and cried, “Bigot!” their followers would believe them unquestioningly.
This is a pretty interesting argument from a book that was written for no other reason than to point at “the left” and cry “actually bigots!” and just assume it doesn’t have to do any more ideological work for its audience than that.
Speaking of things that the book just hopes are going to make sense inherently somehow, ready for more flirting between Jake and his college professor love interest who’s been enamored with him from day one?
when he opened the door the sight that greeted his eyes was pleasant and most welcome. Dr. Natalie Burke stood there wearing a simple green dress that she managed to make look elegant.
“I saw the latest video,” she said, “and thought you might want some sympathetic company.” […]
“Your company is pretty much the only thing I like about this place anymore. But you have to realized that you’re risking your career by getting involved with me.”
“Are we involved, Jake?”
“I don’t know. It seems like we might be getting there.”
She moved closer to him and rested the fingers of her right hand on his left forearm as she said, “I think so, too.”
“You know how the administration feels about me. You don’t want that stain rubbing off on you. You don’t have tenure, do you? […] Why make it worse by associating with me?” […]
“Maybe I think you’re worth associating with. […] the professionally outraged will just find something else to be offended and upset about. You know that, Jake. The way they move the goalposts, nobody can ever win with them.”
I like how their entire relationship is basically a weird, hyperpolitical version of that person who thinks they have a ton in common with their new Tinder match because they like Harry Potter and Always Sunny and going on adventures too. Actually, wait. I guess that’s not fair. That’s two more things than Jake and Natalie have ever talked about.
They go on an impromptu dinner date at a local steakhouse. Trigger Warning writes a billion words about how Jake has never gotten lost, for some reason.
They took his pickup, with Natalie giving him directions to the steakhouse. Not that he really needed them. He knew he could have relied on his innate sense of direction to find the place. But he had never been one of those guys who resented it when he had to rely on someone else’s directions. Some men got bent out of shape by that, especially when it was a woman telling them where to go . . . so to speak. Jake, however, seldom got lost, so it had never really been an issue.
Actually, he wasn’t sure he had ever been lost
“Jake isn’t one of those bad, stereotypical men the left get all upset about who get all bent out of shape taking directions for a woman because his manly manliness or whatever just always knows where to go! Even though he totally does and his manly manliness does always know where to go.”
Source: http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=4523
You’d think this would be a good time for the book to flesh out Jake and Natalie’s relationship, but they mostly just keep talking about mad they are about the libs. For example, they can’t even talk about potatoes without making it about conservative persecution.
“people mistake having simple tastes for having no taste,” Natalie went on. “They don’t understand that there’s always a reason certain things are always popular, like a good steak and baked potato. When they’re prepared properly, they’re always good. In an uncertain world, dependability means a lot.”
It’s a potato.
They go for a walk after dinner. They hold hands. They kiss. They complain about political correctness. Normal date stuff.
When the kiss ended, as it finally had to, Jake said quietly, “I’m sorry I didn’t ask your permission to do that.”
“Don’t be,” she replied without hesitation. “Look, let’s forget about all those ridiculous, politically correct guidelines. There comes a time between a man and a woman when none of that garbage matters.”
“Which is why we’re going to stop and talk about how angry we are about it at this exact moment.”
He started to say something about how she was being awfully heterocentric there, with her comment about a man and a woman, but then he realized she was right. He shoved everything else out of his mind and let human instinct guide him […] There were some things bureaucracies just couldn’t make rules against, and what he was feeling now was one of them. Let the petty little tyrants try to regulate human emotions all they wanted to.
Said the straight dude.
If you enjoyed today’s post, please consider buying the BBGT writers a cup of coffee? That’d be swell of you!
Lol yeah people consensually kissing is totally what those laws are aimed at
BuT iSnT iT fUnNy
This book is so fill-in-the-blank about being Mad at the Libs — I feel like it’d be pretty easy to write our own version.
Anyone got a good verb?
“I like how their entire relationship is basically a weird, hyperpolitical version of that person who thinks they have a ton in common with their new Tinder match because they like Harry Potter and Always Sunny and going on adventures too.”
The war flashbacks you gave me with that sentence are severe.
We’re all just looking for someone who likes staying in as much as they like going out
I’m surprised we didn’t get a rant about how tenure allows bad actors to flourish and puts undue stress on those trying to obtain it, but since tenure overwhelmingly favors old white dudes, I answered my own question.
i am never going to be a steak fan (but then i’m not straight and am pretty far-left by this author’s standards, so…..) baked potatoes are awesome, though.