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[supermanspen]

child handling for the childless nurse

My current job has me working with children, which is kind of a weird shock after years in environments where a “young” patient is 40 years old.  Here’s my impressions so far:

Birth - 1 year: Essentially a small cute animal.  Handle accordingly; gently and affectionately, but relying heavily on the caregivers and with no real expectation of cooperation.

Age 1 - 2: Hates you.  Hates you so much.  You can smile, you can coo, you can attempt to soothe; they hate you anyway, because you’re a stranger and you’re scary and you’re touching them.  There’s no winning this so just get it over with as quickly and non-traumatically as possible.

Age 3 - 5: Nervous around medical things, but possible to soothe.  Easily upset, but also easily distracted from the thing that upset them.  Smartphone cartoons and “who wants a sticker?!!?!?” are key management techniques.

Age 6 - 10: Really cool, actually.  I did not realize kids were this cool.  Around this age they tend to be fairly outgoing, and super curious and eager to learn.  Absolutely do not babytalk; instead, flatter them with how grown-up they are, teach them some Fun Gross Medical Facts, and introduce potentially frightening experiences with “hey, you want to see something really cool?”

Age 11 - 14: Extremely variable.  Can be very childish or very mature, or rapidly switch from one mode to the other.  At this point you can almost treat them as an adult, just… a really sensitive and unpredictable adult.  Do not, under any circumstances, offer stickers.  (But they might grab one out of the bin anyway.)

Age 15 - 18: Basically an adult with severely limited life experience.  Treat as an adult who needs a little extra education with their care.  Keep parents out of the room as much as possible, unless the kid wants them there.  At this point you can go ahead and offer stickers again, because they’ll probably think it’s funny.  And they’ll want one.  Deep down, everyone wants a sticker.

[supermanspen]

Being a writer your brain is either

A) STUFFED TO BURSTING with ideas you have no clue what to do with or how to make them make sense

or

B) It's a black hole that devours every inkling of creativity in your cells and you are just hoping it'll consume you too

THERE IS NO IN BETWEEN

[supermanspen]

Many think that your power is the strongest in all the lands. “An ever changing and growing power” they say. Your power is called “legacy” and it’s effects are based on what your opponent thinks it does.

[supermanspen]

There’s this fic on AO3 that, according to my history page, I have visited 176 times.  Which means I alone am responsible for 176 hits on that fic.  I commented on some of the chapters, but only a few, because I feel like a stalker when I comment every week.  I gave it kudos, but I can only give it one, even though it’s one of my favorites.

So just remember, when you’re looking at that hit count and wondering why you don’t have that same number of kudos (divided by the number of chapters, because each one of those also counts as a hit), it might be because some people out there love your fic.  They read it when they’re feeling down.  They open it in the waiting room at the doctors office, or in the lonesome dark of night.  They turn to it in celebration when they did something right.  They open it over and over so they can send the link to their friends, or just to revisit the characters that they love.  They checked it ten times in one day, hoping that you had updated.

A disparity between hits and kudos does not mean that your readers didn’t like your fic, or that they were too lazy to hit the kudos button.  It means that some of them came back, and there’s nothing that makes me happier about my writing than that.

[supermanspen]

[supermanspen]

my favourite thing is when enemies to lovers are getting heated…and their faces end up really close… and they’re making solid eye contact…and then one of them is just like… *gaze drops to lips*

[supermanspen]

[supermanspen]

writing fanfiction is just. i’m being so creative and original. i’m plagiarizing everyone by accident. i’m a genius. i’m cringe. i’m too angsty. i’m too cheesy. this is not in character. it doesn’t matter that it’s not in character because these are my characters now. i love my hobby. this is the worst possible use of my time. i’m seeking validation. i’m projecting my own personal problems onto this story and i’m barely hiding it. i know so many words and i’m using all of them wrong. im on tumblr posting about it instead of writing it.

[supermanspen]

[supermanspen]

An old and homely grandmother accidentally summons a demon. She mistakes him for her gothic-phase teenage grandson and takes care of him. The demon decides to stay at his new home.

[supermanspen]

Ao3 writers are the strongest Avengers

[supermanspen]

Making characters swear in fanfiction is such an interesting phenomenon when the ratings for the source material prevent any swearing from happening in canon. Like you’ve probably got a decent overall sense of the characters’ general speech patterns from how they canonically talk, but you still have to judge for yourself whether they’d swear and how often and what specific words they’d use. I can’t quite articulate why that’s interesting but it is.

[supermanspen]

look, I know it’s ~problematic~ for all kinds of reasons but I do kind of love when there’s a character with few or no scruples who outsources their moral compass to someone else

it’s sort of the equivalent of when a cat jumps up somewhere they shouldn’t be and you just pick them up and move them off it, only with murder or whatever. 

character a looking at character b like “okay is this a situation where I can do a murder” and character b like. “no. we’ve gone over this.”

I just find it very funny

[supermanspen]

Hurt/comfort writers see a character and be like “I want to see them fall so far but I also want them to land on something soft”

[supermanspen]

You’ve heard of sicko mode what about THICCO Mode

[supermanspen]

✍🐛 writer worm has made her way to your dash!! may she bring you inspiration, motivation, and lots of cheering while you write!! 💛

[supermanspen]

Is it true that aspiring writers should first write for themselves?

Aspiring writers should write. I don't think it matters much who they're writing for as long as they're writing. And if they do that, then pretty soon they stop aspiring and just become writers.