More on Johnstone's Trigger Warning

Over the past few days, I've found out that almost everyone except me knows about this book -- it's famous among 20-30 year olds on social media, apparently. Nearly everyone is mocking it, which makes me wonder again whether this bizarre novel is meant to be parody.

At the moment, I don't think so. J.A. isn't throwing the shade I'd expect someone writing parody to throw. It's a painfully earnest book, in fact, in which all the Good Guys are Straight-arrow Republicans, and all the Bad Guys are shrieking progressives.

But maybe the parody gets revealed later? We'll see.

Chapter 5 through 10:

These chapters are heavily padded. The only plot-related events that occur are that Jake gets hit on by a Criminal Justice professor, Dr. Natalie Burke, who apparently has no problem dating a student, and one -- furthermore -- that she is trying to recruit for her department.

(A) Professors don't date students, not if they want to keep their jobs, for obvious reasons -- there's a power differential, and if this student ends up in your class, as Burke is apparently hoping Jake will, how fair will your grading practices be?

(B) Any professor who isn't a creep doesn't want to date a student. They're students! We're in a specific kind of relationship with them, and that relationship is damaged if we start thinking about them as potential sex partners.

But of course J.A. isn't seeing Burke as an actual person, with a profession, and ethics, and a job. She's just there to be the Endangered Sexy Bit that Jake can protect when danger arrives.

There is also yet another extensive, heavily detailed fight scene. For reasons that are never explained, the bad guys who are planning to pull off a big heist keep coming around and starting fights with Jake. This makes no plot-related sense, but it does allow J.A. to include such incisive bits of social commentary as these:

The hooded men hadn’t been lurking here in the shadows, waiting for him, just so they could beat him up. They meant to kill him. Just because he hadn’t eagerly swallowed and regurgitated their line of political bull. “Wrongthink” was a capital offense in their minds.  

“Are you really that stupid?" [Jake demands of one of the Bad Guys he has just beaten up] "You think a real fascist, a real Nazi, would let you live right now? I’ve been listening to you idiots for years now, yammering about how any politician you don’t like is literally Hitler. 

When all along it’s been your side that’s been acting like the brownshirts and going after anybody who doesn’t agree with you!

"....Punching Nazis feels great," [Jake continues -- seriously, this rant goes on for like six pages -- I'm cutting 99% of it] "only you’re the Nazis....

"...if the other side was as bad as you believe it is, if we wanted death camps, then by God, we’d have death camps by now!" 

At that point, Jake concludes and strides away, leaving the Bad Guy sobbing on the ground behind him.

That's one problem (one of many) in this book. The Bad Guys are sometimes a Scary Evil (actual NAZIS!!) and sometimes ineffectual losers, "Pajama Boys," who are just lucky the Conservatives don't round them up and put them in death camps. (Remind me again -- which side is the Nazi side in this story?)

Oh, and at the end of Chapter 7, after Jake admires his bruises in the mirror (what a man!) we find out about the book he was reading in Chapter One -- that socialist drivel he wanted to throw across the room in disgust. It's his economic textbook.

Now I'm not saying economists can't be liberals. But despite what MAGA Americans seem to think, there are a lot of conservatives on campuses in America, and a sizable chunk of them are economics professors. Also, no matter what department you're in, 'drivel' is not your usual choice for textbooks.

But we've already noticed that J.A. ain't ever been to college, so.

Chapter 8 is more of Burke hitting on Jake -- some of the most painful flirting I've ever read, by the way, though I'm sure J.A. thinks this is very sexy.

Also, we're told that Burke is wearing a dress today, because she's on her way to a departmental faculty meeting. Oh my God.

(I can't even tell you how many times I said, out loud, while I was reading this, "OH MY GOD." But the notion that faculty meetings are something professors dress up for? OH MY GOD.)

Anyway, Jake is on his way to a meeting with the university president, to discuss how he keeps beating people up. Kidding. Just the one time he beat people up. The president doesn't know about the other times.

I'm dubious about this as well. It would be the Dean of Students he met with, probably. But okay, let's assume Jake takes special handling, because of his rich granddaddy. (Except we're told EVERYONE here is rich, so why is Jake a special case? Everyone keeps saying he is, and then right after that we get told how rich and spoiled all the other students are, like that makes them different from Jake, somehow.)

ANYWAY. The college professor has photographs of Democratic politicians all over his wall, but no white men. Just people of color and women. (Me: "OH MY GOD.")

College President says this:

“I find your attitude and actions repellent and reprehensible, young man. Kelton College is sup- posed to be a haven of learning for all students, regardless of ethnicity, national origin, gender, lifestyle, or philosophy. We value diversity and a welcoming inclusivity. This entire campus is a safe space, if you will. And then you . . .” Pelletier looked like he wanted to spit. “You come in here with your far-right, nationalist, patriarchal, sexist, bigoted, supremacist leanings and make our entire student body and faculty extremely uncomfortable.” 

("OH MY GOD.")

I could say a lot of things here, but I'll just keep it simple: College presidents don't talk like that. Not to students, not to anyone, and certainly not to the grandsons of men who have donated literal millions to their college.

Oh, also there are something like 30 lawsuits being filed against the college and against Jake. Why? Yeah, that's not clear. I guess because rich people and their lawyers are eeevil?

Don't worry about these lawsuits. Jake's grandfather bribes and threatens (physically threatens, if I'm understanding J.A.) everyone into dropping the lawsuits. So, you know, some rich men and their lawyers aren't evil. Because bribes and threats are cool if you're using them against liberals.

Pelletier also castigates Jake for speaking up in praise of Ronald Reagan in his history class, disparaging Keynesian economics in his economics class, and saying that "all lives matter" in a conversation with another student. All of these, according to Pelletier, are violations of the Code of Conduct, so he could expel Jake for them. ("OH MY GOD.")

Pelletier wants Jake to drop out. Jake says no. More gratuitous bullshit, and we're on to Chapter Ten, where the Main Villain finally shows up.

He's shooting guns, which is interesting. I thought only manly conservatives liked guns. I thought these progressive snowflakes were too soft and whiny to own guns. I guess we need an exception, so Jake can be justified in all the guns HE has.

The Bad Guy is named Matthais Foster. In this chapter he uncovers an FBI spy in his conspiracy, and executes him, in front of like six witnesses. I mean, they're also all in the conspiracy, but even so, that seems kind of weak-headed for a Big Bad Villain.

So we're like a quarter of the way into this book and nothing much has happened except J.A. spouting MAGA propaganda.

It's getting a bit tedious, to be truthful.

Maybe something will happen in the next few chapters.

Reading William Johnstone's Trigger Warnings

So over at Camestros Felapton's blog, a comment was made on the post discussing the Dragon Awards, suggesting that the Sad Puppies would be likely to nominate books like the 'YA' novel Trigger Warnings, by William Johnstone.

The novel is available for free on my Amazon Kindle, so I thought I'd give all y'all a treat and do a read of it.

I'm not sure how far into it I'm going to last though. This book isn't actually by William Johnstone, who apparently wrote some nice Westerns before he died. (Westerns are one of the few genres I don't read much, though I can recommend a couple of them if anyone is interested.) It's by his niece, J. A. Johnstone. And holy hell is it terrible.

Chapters One through Four

Our hero, Jake Rivers, is hanging out in his dorm room -- a single, apparently -- with the windows open, sighing with annoyance over some terrible book he's reading. I assume he's being forced to read it for class. Maybe we'll find out more about this book later, because right now Jake hears a woman "cry out." Not cry out for help, mind you. The snowflake women at this liberal arts college would never think of asking for help, even when someone is beating them up.

Jake goes down to see if he can help, because that's the kind of guy he is. As he passes through the lobby of his dorm, he hears a group of students talking about such topics as privilege and microaggressions. Jake, while unimpressed, notes that he has no friends on this campus.

Outside, he stops a man (in a man bun) from slapping his girlfriend around, by slapping manbun guy around, basically. The battered girlfriend, instead of being grateful, shrieks at him for perpetuating Toxic Masculinity (yes, this is how J. A. Johnstone thinks this scene would go) and then all the kids from the lobby come out and also start shrieking at poor Jake. The battered girlfriend attacks Jake, "hissing and spitting."

You know how bitches be.

THEN Jake gets attacked by a bunch of students in black hoods who stream out of the bushes, wielding pipes and bicycle chains, screaming at him for being a fascist. When Jake beats up all ten or fifteen of them, the students from the lobby also start yelling that he's a fascist. Also a Nazi.

Oh, also one of the students in a black hood is a woman, and when Jake knocks her down, she starts screaming rape.

Women, amirite?

Jake has several solemn thoughts about other people in black hoods he has known, like the ones he fought in Iraq, who he watched (why did he just watch? Given he's such a bad-ass) "spouting Arabic" while they "sawed the head off" a Western journalist with a big knife. Also newsreels he remembers (because he was born in 1933) of men in black uniforms goosestepping off to

on their way to wipe out anyone who didn’t think exactly the same way they did. They had disarmed the citizenry, taken over all the newspapers and radio and colleges and univ- ersities and made it a crime punishable by death to say or even think anything they disagreed with . . . 

You know. Like those Leftists in America today. Get it? Get it?

Jake ends up in the office of the Campus Chief of Police, who is on his side, but what can he do, he says, what with today's media? He shows Jake a story, no doubt from Rachel Maddow, with the headline FAR RIGHT EXTREMIST ATTACKS COLLEGE STUDENTS.

Jake says he's not far-right. Okay, bub.

Then we get a flashback: Jake's first months on campus. We find out he is a decorated war hero. We find out he finished his undergraduate degree almost entirely before he was even a high school senior. Then he got in trouble, for doing boys-will-be-boys stuff, and ended up having to join the army, where he finished his undergraduate degree.

Now his grandfather wants him to get his masters degree. Apparently his grandfather is a billionaire, and owns most of this liberal arts college outside of Austin, "the finest academic institution in the country," as Granddad says, while shooting guns with Jake. (Jake is of course a better shot than even Granddad, because of course he is.) So Jake should go there.

Jake's daddy is a rich lawyer, and Jake hates him, for reasons I guess will be made clearer later.

But let's jump back a bit. Jake is here on campus to get his master's degree. But he's living in a dorm with undergraduates. And even though his masters is in Biology, he is compelled to take classes in English and political science and gender studies. These are all ridiculous classes, like "Feminist Critique of Christianity" and "LGBTQIAPKTales: A Seminar" and "The Toxic American Political Axis: Republicans, Nazis, and Fascists."

Okay. So first off, no masters student will be living in a dorm. And if one is living in a dorm, they'll be the RA, not just another student. And no masters student in biology is going to have classes like these on their curriculum.

That is not how the academy works.

Also, these course titles. Sweet Jesus. Someone has apparently never sat her ass down in a college classroom ever, never mind "the finest" college in the nation.

Which explains why this book is so silly -- someone spent her childhood being homeschooled, I suspect, or sent to one of those ACE 'schools,' and has mistaken MAGA American propaganda for reality.

Jake visits his adviser, a white guy who identifies as a black guy, and is lectured to about speech codes and told that this college doesn't usually take veterans, because a 'military background' doesn't prepare a student for the rigorous curriculum and stringent personal behavior standards required here.

Yeah, see, as someone who is an actual adviser, though not a strawman adviser, this ain't how it works, bucko. Universities love veterans. One, because for the most part they have been prepared for the rigors of the academic system. (As one of my best students, a Marine, said, university life is a snap after the Core.)

And second, veterans benefits. Not only do these benefits pay their tuition, they pay for all sorts of other things as well. No defaults, either -- also, fewer of them fail to graduate. Universities love students like this.

But this doesn't fit with J.A. Johnstone's propaganda. Of course Leftists hate veterans -- after all, didn't we spit on all those returning Vietnam soldiers? -- and so of course universities, which contain nothing but lunatic leftists, hate veterans too.

Besides giving Jake an eight page speech code which (among other things) forbids any mention of the First or Second Amendment (since mentioning these are microagressions), his adviser also gives him a thick booklet containing the university's rules for sexual conduct.

“This sets out the proper steps that are required to be taken before any sort of sexual contact to ensure that all such contacts are consensual,” [The adviser explains.] 

“No means no, eh?”  

“Exactly.” 

“So yes means yes.” 

“No, yes also means no because of our heteropatriarchal, phallocentric culture.” 

There's more very hilarious comments about LGBTA students, and then Jake explains why he's living on campus -- because he wants the "full college experience." This is odd, given he has previously he'd made it clear he was here to get his degree, not to "experience" things. Also, he doesn't really seem the sort to want to "experience" new things. Also, why is his adviser advising him about housing issues? That's not what we do.

But obviously he needs to be in a dorm for plot reasons, and someone must have pointed out to J.A. that graduate students don't live in dorms, so she wedged this mini-scene in here.

And that takes us to the end of chapter four. More later, if I can stand it.

Because I Know You Need to Waste Time

...just as much as I do, here's a lovely way to waste time.

Image-to-Image

The Edges2cats is especially fun.

My cats: