 Hello! Once again, I am covering something years after it stopped being relevant. See, uh, last time I did this was probably with the Onision trilogy, and this time I'm doing it with Trigger Warning. A lot of you have probably heard of this book before. Trigger Warning came out several years ago, and it got somewhat popular. You know, YouTubers made fun of it, people reviewed it, and pointed out how terrible it was. It's basically this terrible thriller book about this Republican dude on a college campus who hates all of his classmates because they dare to feel differently than him about politics, and then a terrorist attack happens, and he saves all of them by just being the coolest, toughest guy around. And there's actually similar books like this, stuff like True Allegiance by Ben Shapiro, or The Way of the Shadow Wolves by Steven Seagal are both similar books that I have talked about on this channel. And for a long time people have asked me to review it and make fun of it, and I kind of wanted to, but at the same time, like others have already done it, they've covered just about everything in there, there's just not much I can add to the conversation. You know, I try not to review books that others have talked about, at least not in super, in-depth, uh, depth. Geez, I don't know how to talk, I'm sorry. I do this, and I still don't know how to talk to audiences properly, but whatever. The point is there's a lot of terrible books out there, and I don't want to just do the same ones others have already done, especially if I'm not adding anything new to the conversation. And that's also why I never really reviewed Onision's books, but just like the Onision trilogy I decided, you know what, let's do a rewrite, you know? So I'm gonna take Trigger Warning, which I just read through recently for reasons I'm still unsure of, and I'm just going to do a hypothetical rewrite of it and find a way to make it not suck. And just like with the Onision trilogy, I'm not going to be changing this unnecessarily, you know? I'm going to be changing it into a better version of the book the author tried to write, rather than just turning it into something that I would write, because, you know, if you just go in and you change a whole bunch of stuff to the point where it's a completely different book, then that's not really editing or rewriting that's just coming up with something completely different. And just like with the Onion trilogy, there are political ideas in here that I don't agree with. Like the Onion trilogy was specifically about like gun control and stuff, and I mentioned in that video, if you haven't seen it, that yeah, I disagreed with it, but the way to change it is not to change it to, again, something I would say it would be to try and make it better. So like try and strengthen the arguments that he was making, and like I would disagree with them if I came across them in the wild, but it's not that big a deal. Other people are allowed to write things I disagree with. And trigger warning is much much more political. So basically I'm approaching this from the perspective of someone who is more conservative than I am. But the thing is the reason the books that the book got clowned on so much when it came out is because it's just unhinged and it doesn't exist in reality. You know, for example, there's a character in trigger warning who is white, but he identifies as African-American, and the main character acts like that's stupid, because it is. But he also, the book treats it as if this is a super common thing that a lot of people do. And it's not like three people have done it, and they're all thought of as crazy assholes that no one really likes. And the point is the political beliefs in trigger warning are just not based in reality. And so with stuff like that, it just makes it look stupid and makes it look ridiculous. So in order to strengthen the argument, you have to, I guess, moderate it. If I had to put it simply, I would just say, this is written from the perspective of someone who is conservative, but they still exist in reality. They are not completely untethered from reality, and they have not lost their minds. Like at several points while reading this, I was thinking, okay, how would I strengthen this? And I just imagined like, what would my dad say about this? And whatever he would say, I would say, okay, that's like a somewhat reasonable thing. I might not agree with it, but there it is. So before we really get started and get into the actual story, just a few small details that will be throughout the whole book that will be changed. Number one, like I mentioned, the politics will just be based in actual reality. You know, so you won't have people identifying as African-American. You won't have random anti-fascists popping out and attacking people for saying the wrong words or something. Like just, there will be stuff in there, but it won't be completely unhinged and completely outside the realm of what happens in the real world. Number two, there will be just better grammar and prose, you know, because this was self-published, which led to it having several, several, several grammatical and spelling errors. Like on the back cover when it's talking about how the main character Jake needs an education. It says Jake's needs an education and it's just, oh my god, it's obnoxious. And also the prose itself is just not very good. It's sometimes hard to tell what's going on or it's just overly wordy, just things like that. So get rid of all that throughout. And number three, we will have a map of the campus where most of the book takes place in the book itself because I don't know why, but at the very beginning there's a very detailed description of where all the buildings and halls are and it doesn't really come back. Not only in this am I changing it so it'll actually matter a bit more, but we'll have an actual map there so it's just easier for people to understand, you know. And I can't imagine it would cost that much money to commission a map of a college campus. It's not like it could be that complicated, but you know, it's a small detail and I feel it would help a lot. And yeah, so those are the three big things, just keep in mind throughout. So if I don't mention them, just assume that that was something I would change. And we're about to get started. I'm not going to do a super in-depth summary, so like watch another YouTuber's video if you're curious and you want to know all the details and there will be spoilers ahead from here on out. So if that's, let's get going. So in the original story, we start off with our main character, Jake Rivers. He's in his college dorm room. He's reading a book. He's annoyed by something in the book. Doesn't actually say what annoys him, but you know, he's annoyed by something in it. And then he just goes out for a walk and he sees a couple fighting and the man starts getting violence with his girlfriend. So Jake steps in to stop it, gets into a brief fight, and then a bunch of anti-fascists pop out of nowhere and attack him because the author thinks that's just what happens. And then he gets arrested. So yeah, like I said, right off the bat this thing is just freaking unhinged. So we're gonna change it to instead, we'll start it off with Jake having a nightmare. Like it'll be flashbacks to his time in the war before he went to college. And then he'll wake up and he'll go on a walk to try and clear his head and see if he can, you know, get calm down enough to go back to sleep. And then something will happen. Maybe it could still be a domestic violence incident. Maybe someone could just annoy him. But whatever the case is, he'll get into another fight and he'll win because Jake is a former special forces operator. He's still pretty young. He's only 24 during the events of the book, but he was a former special forces operator who was in combat. You know, he's fought people, he's killed people before. And the thing is the reason he's having a nightmare is because it's very clear in the original book that Jake is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. And the fact that he has it is never really acknowledged by the book. Like, you know, he has all these horrifying flashbacks to his time in the war and all the nasty shit he saw. And he also has random violent outbursts at people, which are sometimes justified, but a lot of times not. And again, that is also a symptom of PTSD. Like, people tend to think of it as just being like, oh, you're afraid of fireworks. And, you know, again, you get triggered by seeing stimuli that remind you of your whatever traumatic event happened. But again, like just the title of the book is kind of making fun of that. And it also later makes fun of other people after they experienced terrorist attack who are traumatized by, it's like, look, it's terrible is the point I'm getting at. And it's not really acknowledged that Jake has PTSD, whereas here it'll just acknowledge, yes, this is a problem he's dealing with. So right off the bat, he is a deeper character, a more complicated character, and we can start to kind of see like where his arc will take him. And this would have a chance to show off some action, because again, Jake could get into a fight with somebody. Hey, if you really wanted to have fun with it, have him get into a fight with two or three dudes and he still wins. So it could show have a little action scene, get the readers interested. It could show off how cool and badass Jake is before you go into his backstory. And it would also introduce the political differences he has with most of the other students at this college. See, in the original book, Jake kind of has an arc, but it's basically just him deciding he doesn't actually want to go to school there. And then at the end he just leaves and goes off to be like a government agent or something. I don't know. It's sequel bait, but I don't think they ever actually wrote the sequel, so it's sequel bait for no one. Whereas in this, his arc is going to be more based around how does he deal with his lingering PTSD from the war, and also how does he deal with being surrounded by people whose politics he very strongly disagrees with. So after he's arrested, he winds up getting off because they'll determine, okay, he didn't start the fight, he's fine, those other guys attacked him. And like, okay, maybe we can throw in a rant or two from him about how, oh, everyone at the school is a snowflake and they hate everyone who disagrees. Something like that, you know, just again, make sure we introduce that his political views are unpopular, but also try to avoid making it seem like he's throwing a tantrum because that's what most of the original book is. But after getting arrested, even though he didn't really do anything wrong, the people there decide to tell him, hey, go to some counseling because you clearly have some issues, like maybe we could say he's had other violent outbursts before, and they're saying, okay, you're clearly suffering from your time in the war, so we're not going to punish you for that, but you do need to see some counseling. They'll be like counseling on campus somewhere for people who have PTSD, and he might be kind of reluctant at first, but eventually he decides, okay, fine, I'll do it. And then, like, he'll go to counseling and he'll meet up with other people and he might kind of make friends with them. But that and him studying at school will probably be like the bulk of the book up until the attack begins. See, you don't want to start the attack off right away. Like, you do want to spend some time developing the characters and getting us to care about them and getting us to know them. And the original book does that. It doesn't do it very well, but it does that. And like, the main thing it does is just Jake forming a relationship with one of the professors at the school named Natalie. And then she like betrays him later. And I don't know, like, that's kind of the excuse it uses to give out his backstory and try to give him some emotional depth. It doesn't work very well. Whereas here, he could be, you know, talking about his problems and his experiences with everyone, which would again give us an excuse to show his backstory, whether it's showing it in flashbacks or just him talking about it. And then he would also sort of connect with these other people. And at first, he might not like them. He might think, Oh, they haven't been to war before. What do they know about PTSD? But then they're experiencing other really nasty things, like maybe they've been sexually assaulted or maybe they got robbed at some point or they saw someone else die or they got attacked by a wild animal or, you know, something like that. Because all these things can also cause PTSD. And he'll slowly start to realize, Okay, other people have suffered as well. In the original story, Jake's backstory is pretty simple. Like it's basically just he went to war, and then he came back and he wasn't exactly sure what to do with himself. But his grandpa is a billionaire who also went to this college. And his grandpa just tells him, Hey, just go there, get a degree. And then you can do something with your life. And then Jake decides, Okay, fine. And he goes there and decides to get a master's degree in biology. And then very quickly learns he hates everyone there because all college students are obnoxious snowflakes or whatever. And I don't know, I didn't like that very much because number one, what in what world is a billionaire's grandson actually seeing combat? That's not, that's just not fucking happening in the real world. It's just not. And number two, it just makes him seem like kind of a spoiled kid. Because, you know, his grandpa like pays off the people that he beats up so that he doesn't get in legal trouble. And he's paying for his education and paying for everything. And he could also just pay for him to go to a different school. So if Jake really hates it that much, he could just go somewhere else. And, you know, things like that it's, it's weird. So I would say in this one still have it be like he joined the military went to war, and then after he left, he just is going to school on the GI bill. And so because of that, he can't, you know, fail out of school or anything. But it also is kind of difficult to switch colleges. At least I think it is when you're on the GI bill that like, I don't know, whatever the excuse you use, just he doesn't particularly like it here, but he just decides to stay. Now one thing to keep in mind is that while Jake will disagree with other students on things like gun control and everything, he will still be able to keep a level head about it. And he'll just kind of shrug it off. So like, okay, whatever, they disagree with me. It kind of annoys me sometimes. But whatever, it's not a big deal. So again, it makes it seem like he's not throwing a tantrum because like you're, you're in your 20s, dude, get, get over it. It's not that big a deal. But the main thing that will really annoy him will be the concept of safe spaces and trigger warnings being used a bit too often here. And again, he will understand how other people have gone through traumatic experiences and don't want to be reminded of them just like he has. But the main thing that's going to annoy him is that he's going to think like, guys, you can't avoid these forever in the real world. Like you can't make the whole world into a place that won't trigger you. Like you're going to have to learn to deal with that stress eventually. And he might not be the best at articulating that. We could probably throw in a scene where he just yells at the rest of the students about how they're obnoxious snowflakes and he hates them. But the point will be that that's where he disagrees with them on. In the original story, he also meets this other student named Pierce. He is a black guy. He's a fairly liberal dude. So he and Jake disagree on most things and then Pierce helps him out at one point by like filming a fight he's in and proving that he didn't start it. But then in the rest of the book, he's kind of just there. He doesn't really do anything. Whereas in this, I would say he and Pierce meet each other either in the counseling or like in a study group or something. And they actually become friends like they get along. So he and Pierce, again, they disagree politically, but they managed to set it aside and they just study and they get along, you know? Like I know it might seem strange to some of you out there, but this sort of thing does happen in the real world occasionally. Like people don't always agree, but they do find ways to get along. It obviously depends on what you disagree with and how strongly you disagree with them. But that is a real thing. Like people do become friends with those across the aisle. And keep in mind, in the original book, they have like a really half-assed moment where they try to say that Jake just doesn't really care about political differences and they just need to work together to survive. But he never really comes together with anyone across the aisle. So it just, again, it feels really half-assed and it doesn't work. Whereas if we establish from the beginning that these differences, while they can be annoying and while they can be, well, they can be pretty big and pretty bad. If we establish from the beginning that people can still get along and reach across the aisle with this sort of thing, then that eventual message will be much, much stronger. Another student that's in Pierce's study group that Jake meets is a guy named Fareed, who is, of course, Middle Eastern, and Jake just immediately is racist towards him in the book and it's not great. Like he has this, there's this line in the book where it's like Jake knew people would say it was racist of him. But whenever he saw someone like that, he was uncomfortable and like, yeah, no, that's pretty racist. And like, it's racist, but the book never just comes right out and says like, yeah, okay, that's not a cool thing for Jake to be doing. Like it just sort of moves right on past it. Whereas in this version, we could have something similar. Like, again, he meets Fareed and is immediately distrustful and nervous around him, which is, like, given his experiences that's understandable, it's not an excuse. It's just an explanation for why it happens. And so the book could treat it like it's an actual character flaw. And maybe he can work with it, you know, maybe he overcomes it by the end. Maybe he's a hero in spite of that flaw. But it's not just going to be glossed over and then finished. Meanwhile, we will see a few little hints that Mathias Foster, who is the leader of the terrorists, is preparing for his attack. And then the original book, they honestly spent way, way too much time following this dude, to the point where the audience knows just a lot of his plans before it starts. Whereas in this, I would say, like, give little hints at what he's doing. And hell, maybe don't even have any chapters following him at all. Maybe Jake just sees this guy walk around and is like, oh, that's kind of weird. Like, why are they digging over there? They aren't planting bombs, right? Nah, they're not planting bombs. You know, something like that. So we get hints at it, but they don't spend a whole lot of time on it. So we're being introduced to the villain. We're having tension builds. So we know that when the attack eventually comes, it's probably going to be pretty bad. But we're not giving everything away right off the start. And we're not just taking way too long to get to the point. Because that is one problem with the original book is it takes like halfway through before you get to the actual attack. And then finally, the attack happens. And this will start off kind of similar to the way it is in the original book, like just Matthias Foster and a bunch of his followers just plant bombs, and they have a bunch of firearms, and they just take everyone on campus hostage, and they block everything off so the police are surrounding them. And you know, it's just, it's a siege situation. And they tell everyone, okay, wire us $100 million, otherwise we start killing hostages. And it'll be kind of similar in the rewrite, like Jake will be at the library only this time he'll be there with his study group, like his friends Pierce and Fareed and all the others, as opposed to being there with Natalie, who I don't know, we might just cut her out of this book entirely because she was dominant. I didn't like her inclusion. It didn't really work. But yeah, the terrorists will come and Jake will be in the library with the others. And he will hide away, like he'll manage to hide in the bathroom or something. And so everyone else gets marched off and taken to whatever location the terrorists are holding the hostages at. But Jake manages to escape. However, when Jake realizes what's going on, and then he peeks out from his hiding spot, and then tries to run off, he runs into one of the terrorists who is like a straggler behind everyone. And he fights him briefly, and he manages to kill him, and he takes his gun. And at this point, Jake is going to reach across roads. He could run away. Like he has a path to the exit clear. He can just run off and save himself and wait for the police and everyone else to take care of the situation. But he just can't bring himself to do that. Like he knows that people he likes, like Pierce and even people that he doesn't like or people who annoy him, are all being held hostage by maniacs with a lot of weapons. And he just cannot bring himself to leave them. You know, he can't bring himself to leave helpless people behind when he has the opportunity to save them. So even though he's flashing back to his time in the war, even though he does not want to be involved in violence like that anymore, even though he knows the consequences for failure because he has killed people, he's seen his friends die, he just can't bring himself to leave them alone. So he decides to go rescue them. There's a similar scene in the original book. It comes a little bit later, but there's just a moment where Jake has the opportunity to run off and he doesn't take it. He decides to stay there and fight the terrorists from the inside. And in the original book, it's meant as more of like a cool triumphant moment where it's showing, yeah, Jake's a badass. He's going to do this. Whereas in the rewrite, it'll be like a moment where he realizes, okay, he kind of overcomes his PTSD in a way, like not completely obviously, because it just, it doesn't work that way in real life. But he overcomes his fears and he decides, no matter what the risk to me might be, I can't just leave these people alone. So it becomes a more of a powerful moment, you know, like a more of a powerful moment for him and more of a powerful moment for, again, just coming across the aisle politically and realizing like, okay, even if I disagree with them, they don't deserve to be murdered. And from there, the story will progress pretty similarly to how the original book did. You know, Jake will move from place to place slowly taking out terrorists one at a time, figuring out exactly what the villains plan is, and just trying to communicate with and help the police on the outside as well while he's going through all this. And like there's a weird subplot, or not not having subplot, but a weird mention in the original book about how Jake has a bunch of guns in his dorm room, even though he's not supposed to have them there. But then those never come back like he never uses them or anything. So I would say in this, we would have to have a point where he actually sneaks to his room and gets the guns and then uses them, because otherwise what was the point of having them in there, you know, and I don't know, it's like it's kind of stupid that he felt the need to hide firearms in his room. But again, he has PTSD, they sometimes do dumb shit in order to feel secure in their surroundings. And in the original book, it also took place mostly in the school's library, which meant there was really only one environment and it was kind of weird that he was able to stay hidden that whole time because like most libraries are really wide open spaces. Whereas in this, again, the whole campus is hostage, so he'll just move from building to building, like he'll start off in the library and then maybe he'll go to the dorm room and fight some dudes and then like the engineering building fights some dudes, the cafeteria, you know, there's a lot of different buildings on college campuses. And again, that's why we put the map in here at the beginning. And a lot of you are probably thinking like this is just diehard, like that's a criticism that's been leveled at the original book is that it's basically just a crappier version of diehard. But a lot of things are just variations on the diehard formula, you know, like terrorists or bad guys of some sort, take over a location and take the people they're hostage and then one or maybe a small group of people have to slowly take out the terrorists and save everyone, you know, like under siege is just diehard on a ship. Caledon's storyline and rhythm of war is just diehard in a magical tower. Passenger 57 is just diehard on a plane. Air Force One is also just diehard on a plane. Like, you know, a lot of other stories have done this and there's still a lot of fun. So it's fine. Like the main difference here will be that the terrorists are going to actually be terrorists because in the original book, it's kind of weird. Like Matthias Foster and his goons all have some political complaints, but that's not really their motivation. They just kidnap these people to hold them hostage for ransom money. And that's apparently all they're doing. Whereas in this, we'll have them have explicit motivations. Like they'll take all these students hostage and they might still demand ransom money, but they'll have an actual plan to use that money or they'll demand to have some of their fellow terrorists released from prison or they'll demand to have a law change or something like that. You know, like things terrorists actually do when they have hostages and their ideology, maybe they can still be radical leftists the way they were in the original book that's not, you know, too outside the realm of possibility. I don't think it really matters because, you know, we'll have moments where characters are going like, hey, whether we agree with them or not, it's still not okay to take hostages and to kill people. So they could be radical leftists. They could be radical right-wing extremists. They could just, it doesn't really matter. I don't think. But, you know, again, approaching this from the perspective of someone who is more conservative than I am, sure, we can do that. There's a moment in the original book where Fareed kind of betrays them to the terrorists and it's, it doesn't make a lot of sense. It's a little distasteful because it's, again, like Jake being correct to be racist. So instead of this, we'll have a moment where it'll seem like Fareed betrays them, but he was actually not doing it and Jake was wrong and he just kind of jumped to conclusions. You know, again, like we need at least one or two moments where Jake realizes, okay, you know, maybe I was wrong and maybe I shouldn't have felt that way. But we could also have other characters feeling similarly. So again, like people are realizing like, okay, I'm not right all the time. Sometimes other people have a point. And eventually Jake will free some of his friends and free the hostages and then he'll work with Pierce and maybe one or two others in order to defeat the bad guys and save the day. And we will end with him getting a job offer from the government, you know, like in the original book at the very end, like his uncle came back from the dead and he was known as the rig warrior. And basically he's funded by the government to just go around and fight bad guys wherever he wants. It's, it's really stupid and doesn't make a lot of sense. Whereas in this, it'll still be, you know, sequel bait, it'll still be him getting a job offer, but it'll be a job offer from like the FBI or someone, you know, someone saying like, Hey, do you want to work on our counterterrorism task force? You know, like, because that would actually make sense. And maybe he'll take it. Maybe he won't. Maybe he'll just say I'll think about it and come back later because the important part is it's sequel bait because we want to end this in such a way where it's a complete story, but it's still open for more adventures in the future if it sells well, which the original did not. And whether he takes it or not, Jake decides that he does not want to be a biology major anymore. He wants to study psychology because I don't think he had a real reason for wanting to study biology in the original book. Like it didn't say why he had a passion for it or anything. It was just something that was there. And so we'll have it. So he's still studying it in the original book, but then at the end he decides he wants to study psychology because not only is he dealing with his own problems with PTSD, but he also sees all the trauma and everything that these other students have gone through after, you know, witnessing several of their peers be murdered and having the threat of being killed by terrorists for a while. And so he decides, you know what, I want to help people with that. So like, he might decide he wants to be a psychiatrist and help them directly, or maybe he just wants to do larger scale research in order to find ways to help them. Whatever the case is, that's how his arc will end here. He decides he wants to help people who have post-traumatic stress disorder so that they don't go through the same problems he has gone through. And we'll end it with him and Pierce both being psych majors and again, just, you know, being friends, being at college, studying together, things like that. And on kind of a lighter note. And that was, that was it. That was the ending of my rewrite of trigger warning. And I will say that this does not turn the book into a masterpiece, but it does turn it from crappy sensationalist drivel, which is really just trying to be loud and exploitative in order to get attention for itself, into a decent action romp, you know, because the original book was just like way too infested with politics, which again didn't just straight up didn't make sense most of the time. And in this one, again, we'll pull it back a little and there'll be more, I don't know, decoration, flavoring, whatever you want to call it, to support the actual story, which is just, hey, terrorists are coming, I don't care what you people think, let's get the fuck out of here. This also turns the characters into deeper versions of themselves that they were before. And it just makes them less, well, less dickish to be frank. Like, oh, everyone in the original book was an asshole. But the thing is, the people who disagreed with Jake politically were assholes because they disagreed with him politically. And then Jake and other people who did agree with him politically were also assholes, but the book just kind of pretended they weren't. So it's just, it's just, it's really a miserable experience to get through. So, you know, having characters just generally be nicer and get along with each other a little bit more. So, and then when they finally come together and work together to defeat this bigger threat, which is affecting both of them, it again becomes a little bit more of a powerful message than it was in the original book. And it just, it'd be less miserable to get through. And again, there's possibility for sequels here. So if it sells well, then Jake can go off and be a counterterrorism expert, or maybe he can just accidentally get stuck in another hostage situation and have to fight his way out. Like whatever the case is, it's open for sequels. And yeah, I don't have a whole lot else to add here. You know, Trigger Warning is just not a good book. And I don't think that my hypothetical rewrite of it would be perfect, but it's an improvement. Goodbye. And of course, everyone else whose names you see here. If you want to get your name put on here, consider becoming a patron. And if you don't feel like doing that, you can also like be a channel member or just like the video and subscribe, you know, share it around, help, help more people see my genius. I'm not appreciated enough. Anyways, see you later. Bye.