Previously, we spent a ton of time in Trigger Warning with Jake getting into fights with everyone at his liberal arts school because he’s just too gosh darn conservative to live in peace in these maddening times. But now, almost halfway through the book, the promised attack on the school is finally happening. And, as the back of the book promises us, there’s only one man who can save “these special snowflakes in the not-so-liberal art of war”.
So, naturally, neither of these two chapters have Jake in them.
Trigger Warning: Chapter 23
Okay, technically this chapter kicks off where we last left Jake, meeting up with romantic interest/criminology professor Natalie in the library. This happens before the attack starts though, so you still have to wait until Ariel’s post before you find out how Jake reacts to any of this. (Sorry, Ariel.)
In the meantime, may I interest you in Jake… reacting to things we’ve seen him react to a billion times already? Such as, seeing a brown person:
spotted a familiar face and recognized the kid who had given him the unedited video, Pierce Conners. Pierce was sitting with a group of students, one of whom was a young Middle Eastern guy.
Jake knew a lot of people would say it was racist of him, but
And then Jake says something racist. Boring. Seen it. How about… talking to a woman?
Jake started to pull her chair out for her, then stopped and said, “Wait a minute. I’m not supposed to do anything polite like that, am I?”
“Holding a woman’s chair for her is a patriarchal microaggression . . . but I’ll let it slide. This time.” Natalie’s smile and the twinkle in her eyes took any sting out of the words.
So aside from the fact that this is pretty close to impossible to visualize (imagine someone saying “patriarchal microaggression” with a twinkle in their eyes… really try to picture this…), this is also nothing we haven’t seen before. Jake can’t go anywhere or do anything without finding something to take offense at how someone else could take offense at it, continuing to lead an utterly exhausting-sounding life.
He looked intently at Natalie. “You and I have never actually talked politics, you know.”
“I know,” she said.
This is patently false, but go on.
“And I’d just as soon keep it that way.”
“That’s all right. I don’t mind liberals, as long as they’re fair and honest. I just haven’t run into many who fit that description.”
“I never said I was a liberal . . . or a conservative.”
Jake held up his hands and said, “All right, point taken. And you’re right. The last thing I want to do is turn into one of those people who filter everything though an ideological lens.“
Boooooooooriiiiiiiiing. Let’s skip past Jake now. This book needs to start killing people already.
Matthias Foster came out of the men’s room on the first floor […] No one had glanced twice at him.
Matthias Foster tells the reader that his men and firearms are situated in key, strategic locations throughout campus, and the focal point of his plan will be at the library. Astute readers will note that, hey, Jake is at the library! Sorry, you gotta wait two more chapters to see how the main character fits into the central conflict of the story.
We also, intriguingly, get a glimpse into the villain’s backstory:
he actually had been a student at Kelton, not all that long ago. He had earned an academic scholarship, a full ride. He’d arrived on campus full of ambition and anticipation, ready to not only further his education but to make a difference in the world as well. Kelton was populated by those who shared his progressive ideals, his zeal to change the world for the better, his loathing for everything old and reactionary.
It hadn’t taken him long, however, to realize that they loathed him, too, because he was poor. Their commitment to diversity and equality didn’t extend to boys from squalid little oil-field towns like the one Foster came from, no matter how smart they were. With his passion for learning and disdain for sports and hard work and his “liberal notions,” he had never fit in, back in his hometown. It should have been different at Kelton, but although the reasons were different, most of the people there seemed to despise him, as well. […] The world was filled with assholes, no matter where you went, and there were only two things that really made any difference to them: money and power.
I have a feeling that this is gonna be one of those stories where the villain has a number of speeches about his cause and worldview, so I’m not gonna go too deep into analyzing his motivations right now before we learn more. Especially since a good villain’s motivations, I’d argue, are grounded in something true, sound like they make sense, but ultimately have come to a flawed conclusion, so going into this is gonna be a whole thing. And also there’s a lot to unpack about college and wealth and class in America and its role in the systems of gatekeeping cultural-political capital that’s… really just sort of a lot to go into right now. As you might have thought to yourself when you read “gatekeeping cultural-political capital”.
But some early impressions: I do want to point out that the villain’s issues with liberals seems to be more so about neoliberalism, effectively centrism (kinda sorta more in line with someone who’d say something like “I never said I was liberal… or conservative”, for instance), and a political ideology hindered by a central contradiction between its opposing goals of social liberalism and fiscal conser… va.. tiv… hang on a fucking moment
Foster gets a text from one of his henchmen about “Chief McRainey going into shed! Will stop him!”, which prompts Foster to respond “Eliminate at all costs!” and then tell us that he should have “enough contingencies that it shouldn’t matter”, which kind of sounds like maybe it’s not an “at all costs” situation? And then Foster tells us that Nevins didn’t respond to his text (which was basically in response “brb killing a dude”, which I can’t say I have much personal experience with but I don’t think I’d feel particularly strongly deserves a response?)
Other than that, it’s go time.
As he stepped off the escalator at the bottom, he pulled the Glock free, pointed it at the ceiling, and triggered two shots. […]
“Everyone do as you’re told!” he shouted loud enough for his voice to carry across the entire lower floor. “Otherwise we’re all going to die!”
Sorry, but I haven’t filled my quota yet: so much for the tolerant left!
Trigger Warning: Chapter 24
This chapter kicks off with Cal Granderson, the cop who wildly escalated a parking ticket situation a few chapters back, being in the library, thinking glumly about how he was totally in the right to pull his stun gun on that guy who parked wrong, when The Shit Pops Off, and then he gets taken out by one of Foster’s henchmen. Bye, Cal Granderson. He died (I think?) as he lived: in this book, apparently.
Meanwhile, our good black friend Pierce Conners, the black man who posted the unedited video of Jake’s last act of self-defense and is also black, is bracing himself for the end.
Pierce Conners bolted to his feet when he heard the shots. […] He supposed that after all the horrible mass shootings of the past few years, anybody who spent time at a school or anywhere else large crowds gathered had to feel a little shiver of apprehension now and then.
Trigger Warning, apparently: “And that’s why everyone who doesn’t support the second amendment is a libtard cuck.”
In case you were wondering how long it took Trigger Warning to go from that point about the likelihood of dying in a school shooting in modern America and its toll on the American psyche to funny funny jokes, the answer is three (3) paragraphs.
Jenny was one of the screamers. Clark lunged toward her, wrapped his arms around her, and cried, “I’ll protect you!”
She screamed again, started hitting at him, and yelled, “Get off of me!”
Pierce also takes some time during this nascent school shooting to crack some jokes about how Margery (described in her first appearance a few chapters back as “chunky”) is fat.
Margery dived to the floor and tried to crawl under the table between the chairs and sofas. It wasn’t big enough to conceal all of her, but it would provide some cover, which was better than nothing, Pierce supposed.
And don’t forget about Islamophobia during these trying times. Trigger Warning sure hasn’t, as it can’t decide whether the brown character reacts like a coward or a xenophobically stereotyped zealot and decides, oh gosh, um, how about, ok, um, how about, well, argh, um, this is sooo hard, ok, I’m made up my mind, ok, um, no for real, well, hm, well, why not both?
Fareed was on his feet, too, looking around frantically like Pierce was. In the past, he had talked about how he wished he could strike back at the Great Satan, America, for the glory of Islam and the Prophet, but right now he just looked scared. […]
Margery tugged at Pierce’s ankle and urged, “Come on!”
Pierce looked over at Fareed, who glared defiantly and said, “I grovel to no American!”
Trigger Warning shows its entire ass.
The gunman was white, fairly young, and average-looking. Nothing about him shouted “mass shooter.”
Trigger Warning: “The black man looked at the white man and thought, gosh, what an atypical mass shooter.”
Pierce observes that there are actually several gunmen, their goal isn’t mass murder, but they are very much willing to kill for whatever it is they are trying to do, because the only person who gets shot after the first warning shots is one who tries to escape.
So it remains to be seen how this book somehow manages to go more off the rails from this point on.
I’m sure that Jake, whose wealthy grandfather has saved his ass several times just over the course of this book, will be completely sympathetic to Foster’s motivations here because the white working class.
“Nothing about him shouted ‘mass shooter'” is, I think, my favorite line so far. It’s a brilliant way to show, not tell just how blindly ideological this book really is.
RIGHT? It’s a masterclass in Missing The Point
I’m dying to know what the narrative DOES consider a “typical” mass shooter.
having read and cut out the worst of the book’s islamophobia for these summaries, I would posit most of you probably already know
“Triggered two shots” is a weird enough way of phrasing that (as opposed to “fired”, which is the only word I can think of that wouldn’t be weird in that sentence) that it almost feels like some kind of self-conscious…something. Like a really oblique “lol triggered” joke. But maybe I’m reading too much into it and it’s just clunky writing.
I feel like this book is filled with clunky writing that inadvertently laughs at itself or proves a point opposite to what the book tries to be. Like the “nothing about him shouts mass shooter” mentioned above.