Lady Luck

I think, Jennie, that you have to remember that on a normal Thursday, most of the people here have the ability to do something instead of just sitting at home feeling helpless. The only people who can do anything right now are doing.

The rest of us are relegated to worrying.

From:

You know, there are more direct ways to request that while in your presence I have the consideration to turn from the sattelite news.

From:

Well, we can worry and go on with the rest of our lives. I get it, it was bad, thank you. I understand. I'm not happy either, but meanwhile I have this whole life that I need to attend to.

From:

it's not even that, it's just I have been hearing about this all week and it's like we've been kneecaped. When we HAVEN'T.

From:

No one is stopping you from doing so or requiring that you care in the least.

Actually, you could organize something to help distract everyone from our basic helplessness. I'm sure that people would be grateful.

From:

Please, for the love of God, yes.

From:

x-rahne.livejournal.com

I beg your pardon.

I realize you may not be directly affected, but my "daily life" includes a number of colleagues who are now dead, hospitalized, recently out of the hospital, etc., and currently involves a great deal of reprioritizing work that the dead people cannot do, explaining to other people that this doesn't mean we're giving up altogether, and going to funerals.

The claim of responsibility for the attacks was issued yesterday.

Killed? No. Dented? I don't know. I feel I've been kicked in the teeth and want to take somebody's foot off, but that's not a productive response at the moment.

At any rate, while I must admit that after a full week of dwelling on the subject I'm rather tired of it myself, I think it's hardly been long enough to expect the news and its implications to have been exhausted as a topic of conversation.

From:

Perhaps another post? Something asking the students to help?

From:

Rahne, I'm sorry about your coworkers, and I'm sorry about what you're going through, but nothing else has been talked about ALL WEEK. I'm about ready to go ask Clarice to punch Shiro again because I frankly feel we all the tension breaker.

I mean, when you guys were in Prague it wasn't this friggin bad.

I believe it when they say they haven't hurt you. But when I hear for the 10th time form the 20th person, methinks you guys are protesting too much.

From:

x-rahne.livejournal.com

Occasionally people here talk about something serious and important. I'm sorry if you find this distasteful.

From my perspective, reading over the comments made regarding Prague after the fact, that was considerably worse.

And who the bloody hell said this didn't hurt?

From:

We have been helping. Several of us have been at the red cross offices after class all week. But you can only stuff fliers for so long before you realize that you ain't doing a damn thing, and you are so sick to death of the unending trauma that you just want something GOOD to happen before you snap.

From:

I was thinking something more like organizing a game night.

From:

Oh honey, I talk about serious and important things. But I also talk about fun things to remind myself that life is a nice place and to give me a reason why I like to protect it, thankyouverymuch.

Uh, you, Angelo, Nathan. "They've hurt us but they haven't killed us" repeated add nasuseum by the studentage and faculty. I didn't say that it didn't hurt, but we're all pretty much useless around here and constantly hearing about how fricking useless we all are doesn't help that.

From:

please. I'm starting to turn into one of those people I don't like.

From:

Well, hop to. You don't need my permission or help. I'm very busy making pieces of glass smaller.

From:

x-rahne.livejournal.com

Evidently you have very little tolerance for it. You may talk about whatever you please for all of me, but trying to forget and say the subject is played out simply because it is, literally, yesterday's news....

And evidently you cannot keep your own complaints straight. You claimed not five minutes ago that someone was maintaining we were not even dented, were not even hurt, and making condescending remarks about how you'd believe it if we said so but thought we were protesting too much.

Perhaps if you feel nauseated you should go and see the doctors. It seems to be contagious, because you are certainly making me sick.

From:

It's late, I could get in trouble if I tried to start a game of full-contact quidditch with a bouncy ball and a tennis racket.

Tomorrow then. Good thing Mr. Marko's still gone.

From:

To think that there'd be a time when I was glad Bobby was busy working and didn't have time to read the journals.

Just ignore her, Rahne.

From:

Jen, perhaps you could benefit from a small time-out.

From:

Yesterday's news? The bombing was a week ago. Angelo was on the news. We all saw it. Just because some assholes claimed responsibility yesterday, doesn't mean no one has been talking about it for a week solid.

You know what? You're on the inside, you're biased. You're there, fighting the good fight, why the rest of us get to twiddle our thumbs and get told "it's being taken care of."

My intentions got missed. I said "hurt" when I meant "destroyed". I am tired. I apologize for my mistake.

Meanwhile, I have to go to bed because the world keeps spinning, and I have a History test tomorrow. Call me shallow, but the terrorists want our daily lives disrupted, and they sure as hell are not going to disrupt mine.

From:

I'm being a good girl and going to bed. See, this is me logging off right now.

From:

I am proud, as no limbs have yet been lost by one or several of the parties involved. Under the circumstances I feel this is a result that should be promoted as much as is possible.

From:

x-skin.livejournal.com

Fuck off, Jennie. You have no idea what you're talking about.

You think Rahne's biased because she was on the inside? I was on the inside of the building, in case you've forgotten?

So who the hell gives you the right to tell me I'm not allowed to talk about it because you don't want to read it? And the who the hell said you know a fucking thing about what we're feeling? No, we're not going to let this kill any more of us than it already did.

Yes, we are dented. Yes, we are hurt. And we're not going to stop talking about any of this until we want to.

Sorry, princess.

From:

x-skin.livejournal.com

And while I'm at it. My daily life for the next few months is going to be full of reminders of what happened, while we try and recover from it, because Elpis is my daily life.

You get to go on and forget about it. Good for you. I don't. So excuse me for not getting over it after a week.

Now I'm done.

From:

x-pete.livejournal.com

You're right.

I'm not taking the piss or anything, you're absolutely right. It's extremely important, in the face of a shitstorm like this to take time to look out the window, to enjoy the world, and to remind ourselves *why* we do the the things we do.

For myself, well one of the more personal motivations for the job I do is that I would like the world to be a better place for those I care about. They're the things I look to when I want to stop and enjoy the world, and remind myself why I spend so much time doing shitty jobs.

One of the people closest to the top of the list of people I care about is lying doped up in a hospital bed a few doors down from where I'm working. Another of them is having to use both hands to hold the organisation he's poured himself into together all while having lost friends and colleagues. So it's a little hard to look up and see the rest of the world, because when I look at it, it looks like it's been hit by a fucking bomb.

Anyone claiming we haven't been hurt or dented is just plain fucked in the head.

To put it another way: how would you have felt if , when Mr St Croix was at his unfortunate worst in a hospital bed, someone had stopped by to tell you to cheer up and smell the roses, because your being down all the time, because y'know, shit like this happens all the time, and your being worried and stressed to fuck was just depressing, and any anyway his being hospitalised didn't constitute "denting" us.

Yeah.

Now shut the fuck up.

From:

x-jeangrey.livejournal.com

Jennie, sweetie, I do know what you mean - it's been hard for us here at home to remember that there are other things going on when we're worried about what's happened, particularly when there's nothing we can do about it. And yes, it leads to a lot of discussion, and news going over and not a lot else, because there's not a lot else we can do, that hasn't already been done dozens of times.

I think your and Lorna's suggestion of a game night, or possibly one of our famous bad movie nights may be in order this weekend. If you would like, come to my office this afternoon and I can get a major pizza order in in time for Tony at the shop not to start crying at me again.

You've put your finger on the pulse of something which has been brewing here at the mansion all week, from what I've picked up. The problem with the journal medium is that it's not confined just to the school anymore. I know you didn't mean any offense to Rahne or Angelo or Pete. We're all tired and stressed, and so things get said which aren't always meant in the way they get taken. Like I said, come see me and we'll talk.

From:

x-viento.livejournal.com

Apparently persons don't enjoy being told they are balls of cycling angst.

From:

x-legion.livejournal.com

Same offer from me, Jennie.

From:

As a small but vital point, I am known as Mr. Laverne. Though my father assures me I am indeed his son in all but name, what remains is, well, the name. The Marius St. Croixes number in two. One of them significantly less illustrious than either myself or my grandfather.

Strange my name should be invoked in this context, for in point of fact while I was as you say "at my unfortunate worst in a hospital bed" I was tendered a similar speech. There were rather less emphasis on roses and rather more on the department grasping that the worst had not befallen me and not being what I believe is technically known as "angst-ridden twat". As I was at that point looking at what was now the third of my ever-worsening near-death experiences thanks to the genetic scattershot that was the glory of my own mutation one can imagine I did not, in fact, appreciate these sentiments.

However, they were not wrong.

The drive one finds precipitated by imminent doom acts as a brilliant focuser. In fact, I became so very focused upon battling that force that had me in its nonexistant mercies I embarked upon that which was without doubt the most disastrous summer holiday on personal record. The results do not bear retelling in such a forum, but suffice it to say happy fluffy puppies featured nowhere in them.

Certainly no one can dictate the feelings of another, nor how deeply mired in a situation one has been forced. It is rather a characteristic of perspective that it depends highly upon, well, perspective. Which -- if an observation may be made by a callow youth who has enjoyed the tunnel-vision understandable when one is every day waking up to find their bits failing, changing or completely dropping off due the whim of nature -- might find occasional compromise.

Now I return to my corner and assume the blanks can be filled with "Shut up, Marius," as is so often the appropriate response when I run off about that which I know not of. The precedent is certainly ample.

From:

x-pete.livejournal.com

My apologies, squire, didn't mean to get your name wrong.

And like I said, yeah, she is right about the need to take stock and remember the good things. I genuinely wasn't taking the piss.

But as you know yourself, there's a time and place, and there are ways of doing it.

Talking about how that people are saying "they didn't dent us" and that the affected "should pick up and move on" when my girlfriend (among others) is still in a hospital bed is not the way to do it.

From:

No worries. It is a common mistake. It is a compliment to my lifelong pursuit of the flawless imitation of legitimacy.

Indeed, Jen is Fierce. And, of important note, at that time of night also remarkably incoherent. It was difficult to decipher through all the Hate, but I believe what she meant was that in the grand scheme of things this is hardly the end. I do not know if there was half this much upset when a city was destroyed, as that event overlapped with a particularly pronounced bit of self-involvement on my part, but that was at least as bad. Possibly worse, as it was a terrorist attack on a major urban centre rather than the offices of a sympathetic NGO. I find it preciously naive to believe publicised acts of genetic supremecy will not spawn more riots, but those have come and shall again.

Of course, I might have a rather unreasonable view of this as the first fieldtrip I ever undertook with the school in 2005 was to Seattle.

As amusing as the public catfight might have under other circumstances been I can't say I'm disagreeing on the time and the place. But I do take her point. Those of us who lack the personal investment -- in what is I'm sure is shocking in light of the fact that most of the school's population is comprised of those below the age of 18 and by nature of our status shut out of all direct influence in global and domestic affairs, we are a bit worn trying to care about that which we do not care about, if you gather my meaning.

So clearly there is one solution. The student body must be collected and delicately isolated into a series of small, carefully stored boxes. It shall eliminate the need for both enforced political awareness and the necessity of effecting numerous school regulations to keep us safe from the intentions of various mobs and marauding psychobaths. How can we do anything but gain?

From:

x-cable.livejournal.com

Actually, Jennie, if I can make a suggestion... when I get back, come and talk to me? If this is frustrating you, it might actually help to see just what Elpis, at least, has done to respond. We've got projects delayed, yeah, but not cancelled. We've held the line on other things, and come next week, we'll be able to start moving things forward again.

What you've seen is just what happens when people have stopped to take a breather and it's all come crashing down on them. I don't know what I'd do in a position where I wasn't able to respond like I have been doing - probably be even more frustrated than you. But the frustration catches up with us, too. It's just a different kind.

From:

If I'm reading her properly, showing her more about what is going on will make her even more shrill and irritating.

From:

x-cable.livejournal.com

Look, all I know is that having to sit around and just watch the news, plus hear stuff second-hand from Tel Aviv, would have been driving me sixty different kinds of utterly bugshit insane (even without the personal connection), so I can sympathize. With the sentiment, if not her choice of words.

Looking back, I suppose I could have asked for some help for Rahne and Bobby and Juliette from the older students who might have wanted to feel like they were doing something more active... but then, that would have felt like disrupting their lives, too, and I don't know, I just haven't been thinking as clearly as I should this week, I suppose.

From:

xp_daytripper

So clearly there is one solution. The student body must be collected and delicately isolated into a series of small, carefully stored boxes. It shall eliminate the need for both enforced political awareness and the necessity of effecting numerous school regulations to keep us safe from the intentions of various mobs and marauding psychobaths. How can we do anything but gain?

Best bloody idea I've heard since the plastic bubble for Nate was first brought up (Just joking, Nate. You know me - laugh or I have to cry).

From:

x-gambit.livejournal.com

The student body must be collected and delicately isolated into a series of small, carefully stored boxes.

Make you easier to keep track of, in any case.

Also, I really do not want to know about psychobaths. What, Sabertooth attack you with one of those squeeky rubber duckies and a loofah?

From:

The staff, for reasons unfathomable, have not yet resorted to ankle bracelets or any sort of overt tracking devices other than those that may be inconspicuously inserted into generally-issued mobile phones.

For the students, that is.

I felt I should be the first to voice the serious concerns my generation hold regarding the threat posed to mutant/human international relations by the fanatical pumice stone of purity. The backlash from such acts of terrorism is quite damaging to those of us living in facility of publically avowed mutants, and of course there would be those untidy little grey flakes.

From:

x-legion.livejournal.com

Terry's right. Like you said, everyone's going through the same things right now. The difference here is that Elpis was directly impacted. You, by nature, can all become directly involved. You can take action, seize control. So could most of the staff, in various ways.

The students are on the outside. Coming into volunteer groups sponsored by others can work, but some of them want to be more proactive. To help in a way that doesn't depend on the sufferance of what others will set up for them, and what they've been allowed to do. Some day, ideally, they'll graduate and move on to live their own lives outside the school. They want to start learning how to handle things for themselves. I know you're trying to give them a voice in the existing structure (and for some it'll even help), it's just that in some regards this is a no-win situation. Either way you go, some people will feel it's not enough.

Student-run organizations like HeliX, though . . .

From:

All right, so having a few more hours sleep and Bobby talking a bit of sense to me. No, I don't know why he's the one with the level head given all this but I'm just going to claim redheaded temper.

I think the whole point here is...just because it's traumatic for some people doesn't mean that it needs to be, should or must be for the rest of the mansion. You're upset, Rahne, Bobby and Angelo are upset. Amanda and Pete are upset. I'm upset.

But many of the students don't know Domino, Angelo is clearly okay and overworking is just what Elpis does. Why on earth should they be forced to care or help or anything? If they want to lead their lives like nothing else is happening, that's what they should do.

From:

x-cable.livejournal.com

... I'm thinking at this point, Jennie doesn't really need to have this discussion continuing in her journal.

From: