Trigger Warning Chapters 38-39: Who Let The Dogs Out

Previously, a random man entered the story, showing up at the FBI/campus police pissing content out of nowhere to tell them not to even worry about the terrorists and the hostage situation. He’s got this.

This is presumably still mostly the story of Jake Rivers, a far-right MAGA chud who goes to a liberal arts school (irony!) and is very big and is also the only man for the job of taking the campus back from the same terrorists that this brand new character is about to do despite Jake already being here and being very big his story.

Trigger Warning: Chapter 38

Six men had taken over the administration building. Carlos was in charge of them. He was pleased that Matthias Foster had entrusted him with such an important job.

This pride will be the second-last feeling Carlos ever has, because soon he will be dead.

When he heard a footstep behind him, he didn’t get in any hurry to turn and look, because he assumed it was one of the other men coming to ask him a question.
When he did turn his head, he caught just a glimpse of an old man in casual clothes standing there. Carlos didn’t remember seeing him among the prisoners before, but he couldn’t be anybody else.

So the tone of my summary today has been a little glib, but I’m being 100% serious when I say that this completely redundant character – fucking named Dog – showing up out of nowhere to do the same thing the protagonist is already doing – just more mysteriously – is my favorite.

Nobody that age ought to be so fast and strong—
That was the last thing Carlos thought, because the next instant his spine snapped and he blacked out. He would die within seconds.

What is he doing here? What purpose does he serve in this story? Is he bigger than Jake? I humbly suggest these questions merely scrape the surface of single, deeper question. Reader, it is time we ponder the eternal question of our age…

It had all happened so fast none of the other terrorists had noticed what was going on.

…who let the Dog out?

He got his own gun halfway up before a pair of rounds shattered his skull, cored through his brain, and blew the back of his head off.

It’s hard to explain how delightfully overwritten Dog’s abilities are. I’m okay with that, because they so deliciously speak for themselves.

The slugs exploded the hearts of his targets.

…and captured the hearts of a nation!

The bullet shattered the man’s spine and dropped him so fast he never had a chance to pull the trigger on his own gun.

How good is Dog? His bullets move faster than his foes’ bullets. That’s how fucking good Dog is.

In a little less than a minute, the terrorists in the administration building had been wiped out and the hostages were free. […]
“Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“Just call me Dog,” the man said.

The chapter skips ahead to the FBI/campus police getting news that the administration building has been cleared, the terrorists are dead, and the hostages are saved. Graham hears the name “Dog” and infodumps the most batshit character backstory imaginable, which is saying a lot for this book.

“Wait a minute,” Vega snapped. “That means something to you.”
“A long time ago—and I’m talking about going back thirty years or more—when I was just starting out in the bureau, we used to hear rumors about a guy who went by the code name Dog. Nobody knew who he was or if he even really existed. But the stories about him said that he was some sort of freelance troubleshooter who answered only to the president. […] Sometimes the government would point him in a certain direction and turn him loose […] but most of the time he found his own cases.”

Granted, this backstory about an independent, gunslinging vigilante who both works for his country and for himself doesn’t not make sense given Trigger Warning‘s libertarian-ass fever dream of a moral compass. Still, though, batshit.

The chapter ends as Graham and the others receive work that yet another building has been cleared of terrorists and had its hostages freed! Kinda boring to go back to a Jake chapter after this, huh?

Trigger Warning: Chapter 39

Yep, honestly, Jake is pretty fucking boring after the book introduced another character who’s better at what he’s doing in his own story. And also… how do I say this… less irritating.

“C’mon, folks,” he told Montambault and the other people here on the third floor. Pointing upward with a thumb, he went on, “I want you to head on up to four. There’s a kid named Pierce Conners up there who’s working with me, and he’s forted up with the people who were working on that floor. You can join them. […] Some of you guys, gather up guns and ammunition from the men I killed.”
Nobody moved to accomplish that grisly chore. Jake glared at them and managed to hold in the caustic comments he wanted to make about snowflakes and pajama boys.

Yeah, sorry not sorry, Jake. This is Dog’s book now. Does anyone care about Jake’s story? We’ve been reading almost 330 pages of zero character growth. 85% of the way through a book where the main character learns nothing but just gets to be proven right again and again. Fucking yawn. Not even his love interest getting shot can make me care about him at this point.

Btw Natalie gets shot in this chapter.

Natalie and one of Matthias’s men go into the stairwell and encounter Jake, the other dude accidentally shoots Natalie, Jake kills him, Natalie is dramatically on the brink of death. Meanwhile, Dog is doing something much more interesting somewhere else that we don’t get to witness.

“You’re gonna be okay, Natalie. Lucy. Whichever.”
“Not . . . Lucy. That was . . . Matthias’s . . . idea. I’m . . . Natalie . . .”

Glad this huge mystery got cleared up. You know who else has mystery surrounding their name, but didn’t get shot, because he’s better than this book? Fucking Dog, that’s who. Dog is the new hero our blog needs, the natural evolution of Plot Puppy: Totally-Takes-Over-The-Plot Dog.

Jake brings Natalie to Pierce and Dr. Montambault and the other survivors.

“Guess he . . . didn’t really trust me . . . after all. I told him I’d come after you . . . kill you . . . but I was lying to him. Just wanted to tell you . . . how sorry I am . . . about lying to you. But not all of it . . . was a lie . . .”
[Jake] didn’t want to get into any of that now.

Yeah, same.

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