#i WILL finsih it! even if i don't manage to do it tonight

[procrastinatorproject]

Picard Positivity: Dr Agnes P Jurati

I'm still working on the essay I meant to finish for Agnes's positivity day. I'm closer than I've ever come before, so this might actually happen!

In the meantime, however, I'm going to engage in a little bit of shameless self-promotion.

I loved Agnes from the moment we first saw her on screen. She's an academic, she's a quirky nerd, I really like her sense of humour, and she keeps laughing and finding moments of joy and connection even when she is in the depths of despair. I cannot tell you how much love I have for her, and it only got deeper as the season went on.

Despite her occasional nervousness and awkwardness, Dr Agnes P Jurati is actually incredibly strong, in her own way, and is a character who will Get Shit Done. I feel like that is a side of her that doesn't often get showcased, including by myself, and one of my goals for the next time I have the brainspace for more consistent writing is to give Agnes some stories in which she can really shine. I'm very curious to see what they do with her in season 2, I think there could be some very fascinating developments ahead.

But for now, here are a few of my takes on different aspects of Agnes Jurati, cyberneticist of my heart.

I wrote the majority of this one in one evening, when I was in a really bad place myself, thinking about trauma and dealing with regrets. One of the dynamics I absolutely adore in Picard fanfiction and that always helps me in these situations, is Emil (Sirena's EMH) acting as therapist for people, especially Agnes. Probably my absolute favourite fic in that context is Hisselpenny's Applied Ethics for Theoretical Cyberneticists, which inspired the story above.

Corset of Thorns a bit of a deep dive into Agnes's relationship with Bruce Maddox and her coming to terms with the fact that it was a really bad, no good idea. It's by far the angstiest and probably one of the most... poetic? things I've ever written. Please do take the content warnings seriously.

But even if you're not in the mood for angst, the notes at the end of the fic have a little rec list for Agnes-fic that I cannot praise highly enough, so go check that out if you're looking for something to read today!

I've been in academia for a good portion of my life now, and I like to think about academia in a Star Trek context (hence my wrighting a full-blown in-universe anthropological article that I will one day finish...). At one point last year, it occurred to me that the fact that Agnes more or less states she has never been off world has some interesting implications for her academic career and how academic conferences work in the Star Trek universe.

I come down pretty hard on the canon in this one, but I still like the bits of worldbuilding this fic, which started its life as a tumblr post, includes.

As a final offering, I have another bit of meta, this time about Agnes's relationship with Cris Rios. When a friend asked me if I could explain why I think their relationship works, I ended up writing an essay that I thought other people might enjoy as well, so I decided to share it.

The title is a reference to Your Light on Me, one of @regionalpancake's gorgeous drabbles from her Downtime collection, which explores the same themes I do just much more poetically and succinctly. And after I finished writing, I realized @smhalltheurlsaretaken had written a fic that essentially made the same argument I make here, except in beautiful prose in Love Comes Softly. (Which the multi-talented @thelaithlyworm turned into brilliant Podfic.)