Words from On High

[Ryan Gabriel]

((This is the thread for Ryan's long-running blog, dating back to when he was in high school, which often has outing photos, rants, and general messages to the mutant and human communities alike. And yes, it's on the web in general, not just on XUNet. Though it IS cross-linked to XUNet so that anyone on the school's BB can easily comment on it.))

[Ryan Gabriel]

4/13/22

Seriously?

Woke up this morning to find this lovely editorial linked to me. And since I've read it, one word keeps coming back into my head.

Seriously?

Now, I'm not going to try to say that any Xavier's Institute isn't anything but a hot topic, and probably something that desperate politicians can use to get cheap support by using it as some kind of empty campaign platform. But seriously, from the sound of this, you'd think that we're the source of every problem in London from labor shortages to global warming.

Let me set a few minds at ease here. First of all, the university had nothing to do with the 'vampires' that showed up last fall, except to serve as a convenient and desperate target for them. Anyone who bothered looking into it would find that by the time we arrived, they were already ingrained in the mutant community, and indeed there were people who were abducted and twisted into joining them before the school was even constructed. Did they start showing their hand when we opened? It certainly seems that way. Probably because, as a very local institution that trains gifted people to root out threats, particularly metahuman threats, to the population at large (both mutant and human, people), we posed a threat to their operations. This seems particularly likely, since within a couple weeks, we'd shut down their operations, which had been going on for at least months.

You're welcome, by the way, Mr. Lynn.

Also baffling is this claim that we had something to do with the Sentinels earlier this year, since all the evidence shows that the sentinels were also being built well before the school was. And let's not forget the second half of that story, by the way. Seventy corrupted Sentinels were, apparently, hijacked by an organization based in Britain and compromised so that they did not defend Genosha, but came directly here to attack mutants. Did that have anything to do with the school? I suppose it's possible that they were sent to wherever we were, but I find that unlikely given that at the same time, almost four hundred Sentinels were sent from here to wipe out Genosha. So yes, that certainly looks like our fault.

We aren't some weird plot against the people of London. We aren't fanatics out looking for a fight. We're a bunch of college kids who can do something about the problems around us, and so we do do something about them. We're here to help. If we weren't, do you think for a second that any of us wouldn't be more comfortable at a regular college, where the biggest thing we have to worry about is passing our next exam, not whether our friends will come back alive at the end of the day? We aren't trying to step on any toes. Honestly, I can't speak for anyone else, but what have I gotten for all my trouble this year? A few broken bones, my wings amputated, and a designer virus created by a biotech company in London to kill mutants that almost did me in. Do you think that we're doing this for fun, Mr. Lynn?

What would have happened to London if we hadn't been on hand when those collector robots started showing up? How many people would have been abducted and assimilated by those 'vampires' if we hadn't been on hand to flush them out and stop them? What would have happened to the world if we hadn't been on hand when Dr. Tomorrow started breaking down reality?

We don't want thanks, Mr. Lynn.

Honestly, we can get by without them.

It would be nice, however, to stop being made into scapegoats for the problems we solve. That'd help make this a little more worth it.

And maybe a cheese basket, too. I've always liked cheese baskets.

-S-