I feel like I ought to qualify this a little. That was absolutely true of the original Vocaloid Variations; it may or may not be true of every VV story. That's still the general idea--much like The Federation Lives Forever, these are slice-of-life stories that aren't built around a central conflict, like Our Witches at War or most of the main-line stories--but I don't want to say it'll never happen at any point in the series. I don't know that, I haven't gotten to every point in the series yet. :)

As an aside, when I named the original story, I didn't take into account the probability that it would spawn a subseries with the same name as its supertitle. I probably should have given the first story a subtitle to head off the inevitable confusion. May yet go back and do that at some point.

>Also, the variety in the Vulcans in UF is most agreeable; another good
>addition to the cast there in T'Jo.

Joe was kind of a thought experiment. Since I set up Rin and Gumi's situation in The Mother of Invention, the idea of their mechanic has been in the back of my head, a shadowy figure who fixed up the Chrysler for them years ago and maintains it when they stop by. By the end of that story, when the road trip was a set plan, I knew said mechanic was going to be in Flagstaff.* Who or what he, she, or it was wasn't immediately clear, but the arid environment and the out-in-the-sticks-ness of the place suggested a few things.

Once I'd decided she was going to be a Vulcan, I had to think about what sort of Vulcan she was going to be, and it occurred to me: We've seen Vulcans who cleave to the Way of Surak, who struggle with it, who abandoned it, and who never received it, but to the best of my recollection, we haven't seen one who has a mellower take on it. Sort of a Reform Surakian, if you will. Spock and Saavik come close, but they have the wild-card factor that they're both half-breeds with (at this point mostly resolved, but formative) outsider complexes.

Joe is different; she grew up steeped in the Way and believes in it wholeheartedly, but her take on it isn't quite mainstream. She believes that Surak's injunction to control emotion isn't meant to be taken as a literal order to jettison them. To her, that is in itself illogical. They're there for a reason; to reject them outright is to assert that evolution erred in selecting for them, which is a priori preposterous. What ego it reveals in the Master's later apostles that they presume to gainsay 10 million years of biology!

Instead, she takes a different path. She's calm, collected, and logical-minded, but not so crushingly literal-minded as the most vexing of her countrymen can be. She's undemonstrative, yes, but that has as much to do with her personally insular nature as with anything to do with Surak's teachings. Most importantly, she doesn't constantly torture herself over her inability to completely, robotically suppress all trace of emotion. Instead, she simply... abides. She is what she must be; she does the best she can with what she has. To expect more of oneself is illogical. Selah.

It probably goes without saying that Ambassador Soval doesn't get this perspective at all and thinks she's just another apostate nut, like those Charismatic wackos.

(Her husband doesn't really get it either, but he is at least open-minded enough that he hasn't divorced her. :)

--G.
* This is because, when my father and I drove 66 out to California in 1996, we stopped off in Flagstaff to get the oil changed in the car.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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