Randomness

[Linda]

Alelou, the title of my Koss story is "The Commission" and it is on Triaxian Silk and Fanfiction.net. On Fanfiction.net my pen name is Bineshii. You can find it on Triaxian Silk in the Archive section which is by author under Linda. I hope you like it! I'd love to see someone else do a Koss story with sympathy for him.

[Alelou]

Thank you. Very interesting story. I think we have similar impressions of Koss, although you were MUCH more ambitious in giving him a richly plotted story of loss and redemption. Mine is not nearly that ambitious and I suppose at its heart it's really more about T'Pol than about Koss, despite the POV. I'll be interested to see what you think once it's up.

[Linda]

Oh, yes please write your story, Alelou! And don't be concerned about the scope of it or the length! Just write it according to your own ideas and feelings! I am thrilled to have someone in the same camp! UH, it may be of some comfort when together we are roasted side-by-side by the Koss haters!

[Asso]

Yes! Linda is right.
It's wonderful we can see the many sides of the characters in the way they are felt by the writers.

[dark_rain]

Got a busy couple of months coming up, but had an awesome day today. I'm invollved in sounding for local bands etc and we were doing a setup in a small hall today from 1pm to 5pm. This is our gear list

3x d.2-750 FOHHN (german made) amps (750watts on each channel)
4x FOHHN all range speakers (for the above)
1x 1000watt generic amp (for monitor speakers/foldback)
4x Yamaha 12" general/low end speakers (for the above)
2x quad 18" subs driven by
2x 1450watt sub-bass amps (using crossovers)
1x Soundcraft LX7i desk
1x copy of M.U.S.E's H.A.A.R.P
1x Rock band

If those numbers mean nothing to you, then let me describe how it sounded...

WHOA!

I have never ever experienced sound like that before, even at other open-air concerts. DUDE **speechless**

[HopefulRomantic]

Oh, yes please write your story, Alelou! And don't be concerned about the scope of it or the length! Just write it according to your own ideas and feelings! I am thrilled to have someone in the same camp! UH, it may be of some comfort when together we are roasted side-by-side by the Koss haters!

Count me in with you ladies regarding Koss--I never hated him either. I had a Koss story in the works a while back...the notes got buried under stacks of RL, tho. Good to hear y'all are stickin' up for him.

[justTripn]

I loved "The Commission" even though I dont' like Koss. And I think those who would have burned you at the stake for Koss-sympathy have moved on. It's a new age of freedom and tolerance in Trip 'n T'Pol fandom,. . . that is if you're still here, you're a diehard writer and it's best to let any remaining writers follow their muse.

[dark_rain]

I never really hated Koss either. For me he was just a guy pushed into something (by his parents) at the wrong place and the wrong time.

[Alelou]

Well, I'll submit it. No idea when it will get posted, though I'll probably put it up in a few days at fanfic.net either way.

I think I did take a shot at defending Koss not long after I joined the conversation here on the boards and I do recall being distinctly in the minority (I think Linda chimed in to support me then too).

Not sure you'd say this story is truly a defense of Koss, though. Well, you can judge for yourself soon enough...

[Asso]

I never really hated Koss either. For me he was just a guy pushed into something (by his parents) at the wrong place and the wrong time.

Every man (and every woman) is answerable for his own acting.

[CX]

I hate to break up the "Koss wasn't such a bad guy" party, but do I really have to remind anyone that he knowingly blackmailed T'Pol into marriage? Or what do you think the deal with T'Les losing her job so Koss's father could conveniently get it back for her was all about? Or how about the spiel about how Koss supposedly wanted T'Pol to be happy? T'Pol was making it very plain that being with him wouldn't make her happy. I'm sorry, but Koss is still a manipulative bastard in my book.

[Alelou]

My answer to that would be just read the story. It's up now.

[JadziaKathryn]

I hate to break up the "Koss wasn't such a bad guy" party, but do I really have to remind anyone that he knowingly blackmailed T'Pol into marriage? Or what do you think the deal with T'Les losing her job so Koss's father could conveniently get it back for her was all about? Or how about the spiel about how Koss supposedly wanted T'Pol to be happy? T'Pol was making it very plain that being with him wouldn't make her happy. I'm sorry, but Koss is still a manipulative bastard in my book.

All this is quite reasonable. The trouble for me was to reconcile this with the man who voluntarily released T'Pol from that sham marriage. This has coalesced into something rather different from Alelou's take (an enjoyable read, btw) that will be coming once it's polished.

[blacknblue]

(Duplicate from comments section)

Argh.

I hate Koss. I will get that out of the way up front. But I will admit that maybe Vulcan culture, which supposedly emphasizes group loyalty over individual choice, is part of my problem. That being said, Koss knowingly went along with a dishonorable manipulation. Even if he could have justified manipulating T'Pol and T'Les, how could he have justified manipulating Trip? Didn't Surak say something about "Do not cause others pain?" Yet Koss, knowing full well how things were between T'Pol and Trip, still went ahead with the blackmail. Remember in the episode Home how he told T'Pol, "Call your champion T'Pol, I will do what I must."

I have no sympathy for a man who deliberately hurts others unless it is in self-defense. In this case, Koss was not doing it in self-defense. He was doing it in hope of gain. Either gain for himself, or gain for his family. Either way, his actions were dishonorable.

But your story is certainly in complete compliance with canon. It fits the onscreen Vulcan arc perfectly. And it paints T'Pau in the kind of ruthless light that would allow her to deliberately permit Kirk to be manipulated and (she thought at the time) killed in order to preserve the life of her own kinsman in the TOS episode Amok Time.

Well written. My compliments.

[CX]

I'm not convinced that Koss had good intentions when he released T'Pol either. All that really proves is that he wasn't as big of a dick as he could have been, that's all. T'Les was dead, so any leverage he had on keeping a compliant wife was gone, V'Las was arrested and no longer in power, so if his family had any underhanded dealings with him, their support base was gone, and T'Pol was now associated with the Sirannites, so it might look bad to him and his family to be associated with her, and she actually took him up on his offer to skip the year-long live-in thing, so she was an absent wife, and it was obvious that this was the case in both body and mind. So unless he wanted to keep her in sham marriage just to spite her and to be a controlling freak, there was no reason to keep her as a wife when he could probably find someone else who would be more willing.