#lab advice

[ferritins]

IN A STITCH, IN A PINCH | J. TODD

SUMMARY: you’ve developed something of a friendship with the Outlaws, but you’re not quite sure about what the irascible Red Hood thinks of you.

WARNINGS: graphic description of burn injury, oblique reference to canonical parental drug dependency, reader is a meta.

NOTES: bringing back an old work! Re: the burns treatment depicted here - my area of study was clinical microbiology, not emergency medicine; everything I know about burns is relegated to opportunistic Staphylococcus aureus infection and how Gram negative skin flora influence wound healing. Take none of what you see in this fic as medical advice; if you do have a severe burn, call 999 and get your arse to an A&E ASAP.

After an extraterrestrial incident in your city that ended with something to the tune of 5 and a half million dollars worth of property damage and you knitting Arsenal's torn-open back together in a moment of adrenaline-fuelled insanity, you've developed something of a friendship with the Outlaws.

What that really means is that you periodically come off your shift at the hospital to find 2 mercenaries and an alien princess divesting your fridge of it's contents, and get wheedled into using your meta abilities to heal wounds that would otherwise take them out of play for a good few months.

You're under no illusions. You're aware that a healer is a useful contact to have, that should the situation necessitate it they'll take the few scant inches you can give and run a mile with them.

However, you're also aware that being a meta is a risk and that it pays to be liked and valued by dangerous people.

It's a friendship of convenience, but a friendship nonetheless.

Kori picks you up bodily and spins you in a tight circle until you're giggly and dizzy when confess her favourite shirts of yours are always freshly washed, just in case.

Roy gives you a vulgar wink when you order his shirt off to take a look at where his back scarred over, but faithfully applies the Vitamin E cream you give him for the scarring, trusting you to ease his discomfort, and sneaks bottles of your favourite elderflower cordial and the tins of Zambuk you can never find in the US for you to find when he leaves.

The only one you can't quite puzzle out your relationship with is Jason. He's taciturn, stands watch faithfully as Roy and Kori pull you into friendly hugs and dizzy spins, pepper playful kisses on your cheek and rub their knuckles into your hair. He rolls his eyes at his teammates' antics, huffs through his nose at your fussing.

Sometimes though, he'll call you sweetheart in a low rasp as he bumps you away from the sink to take over doing the dishes.

Sometimes, you think you catch him watching you with something unnameable and warm in his eyes.

You're not expecting your front door to fly open and damn near off the hinges late on Saturday evening — just as you're fresh out of the shower and only just into your pyjama shirt & shorts, might you add — but your alarm and annoyance die on your tongue when you see Roy and Kori's grim faces and the way that Jason sways despite both of their considerable strength holding him up.

You smell the odd, sour-smoke char of burned flesh as they pass you to ease Jason down oh so gently onto your sofa, and your gut goes cold with fear. The burn, once you get his shirt cut open, is not as extensive as you'd feared, but it's still something from a horror scene.

It's a third degree burn, skin mulberry-red, weeping and blistered in a long arc that curls up from his right hip to just under his right pectoral.

"Bloody hell." You breathe, horrified.

You run to your room, digging out your first aid kit, and drop to your knees by the couch as you tear it open.

Roy snorts, bitter as cyanide. "Yeah, that's a fairly accurate summary of the situation, sweets. The only reason he's still alive is because he dodged and got a glancing blow from the energy beam instead of a direct hit."

You look up from Jason's side.

"I'll need you and Kori to get some things." You say, hands shaking at the prospect of the task in front of you. "I can reduce the severity of the burn to a first degree, maybe, but it–"

"What do you need?" Kori snaps, terse. You reel off a list - topical antiseptic, light bandages, a banana bag & an IV kit, amoxicillin - and then look to Roy.

"I need you to get him to take some co-codamol. It'll kick in in about 10 minutes given his enhanced metabolism, but I can't do anything until he's got painkillers in him."

Roy's brows tighten further.

"Jason doesn't do opiates."

"Roy, if this was anybody else he'd be hooked up to IV morphine! If I start working on him without him having painkillers, he'll go into shock which could kill him." You exclaim.

You make low, soothing sounds when Jason tenses at the shouting, only to groan at the fresh wave of agony in his side.

The sound of Jason's pain seems to be decisive enough for Roy, who moves round the couch and grabs the box of effervescent tablets, dissolving two in water and coaxing Jason into drinking it down.

When the glass is empty, Roy is back to his feet, quick as lightning. He strides to the door, shepherding Kori out of your apartment.

"We'll be back with everything you need in half an hour, tops. Please, help him."

Jason comes out of the shrieking adrenaline of agony to the sound of your voice, and a slight cotton fuzz in his head.

Narcotics, then, but a fairly low dose for him to still retain this degree of alertness. Feeling the encroaching spectre of that terrible pain just barely held at bay, finds he's grateful for the medication.

He goes to prop himself up on his elbows, only to strike a line of phosphorus-white flare of pain down his side that has him hissing breath through gritted teeth.

Above him, you make a startled sound, press a hand to his sternum to keep him down. His eyes catch yours, and he sees the relieved sag of your spine and shoulders at the alertness in his eyes.

"Thank fuck you didn't go into shock." You sigh. "Stay still, I've just about got this down to a second degree burn. I've just got your hip."

You snap off your nitrile gloves and lean forward, cupping his face in your hands. "Don't make a habit of this. You'll kill us off with stress if you keep on nearly-dying."

As if on cue, the front door opens and Roy and Kori come into the living room, pharmacy bags clutched tightly in their grips and fragile hope in their eyes.

When they see Jason's alert eyes, the slow knit of skin and sub-dermal tissue and hear his sheepish grumbling in, response to you, their smiles are like sunlight.

Healing the burn is slow going, taking a full five evenings after your shifts.

Roy and Kori are intent on Jason staying the full course of treatment — settled by a, literally, on account of Kori, flaming row when he asks for his helmet and body armour —and though your entreaties are quieter, they're no less insistent.

It serves him right, probably, but it's driving him to distraction.

Specifically, the feeling of your hands over his skin is driving him to distraction.

He's not sure whether it's mercy or the sweetest of torture when you approach him, eyes darting down his body in a way that's half-assessing, half appraising before the heat-shock of your touch makes contact, pieces his skin back together.

(The thing is, Jason's attuned to everything about you, has been ever since you pulled Roy's flayed skin back shut whilst the city was still smoking behind you, totally unafraid in scrub trousers and a hoodie.

He's got it bad, and it's not exactly subtle.

Roy and Kori haven't missed that, or the way he reacts to you, judging by the raised eyebrows and teasing smirks as they lean up against the wall and watch you work.

He hopes the glare he levels at them over the top of your head communicates exactly what he'll do to them if they open their mouths.

It all comes to a head on Monday evening, when you come home from your OR shift, duck into the shower and then come into the living room in a too-large grey t-shirt and deliciously short sleep pants.

Jason's heart stops for a second. He lets his eyes flit despairingly over to Roy and Kori as you prep your kit, watches their unrepentant grins with a burning resentment towards them.

Having you this close to him, worry-soft and lit like a Rembrant from the lamp on the side table without being able to touch you is the closest thing to hell there is. You're close enough that he can smell the overlapping, inoffensive fragrances of your facial skincare products, see the faint pearlescent sheen of the residue of some serum on the apples of your cheeks, the tip of your nose, the soft line of your jaw.

Your nitrile-gloved hand settles gently on the raw new skin just above his hip and he jumps, his own broad hand flying up defensively to catch your wrist and still your movement. It's a mistake he regrets immediately.

The skin of your wrist is still tacky-soft with still-settling moisturiser, hair curling damp where the spray of your shower caught it. Jason's mind spins an unbidden reel of your hands, smoothing lotion over the plush expanse of your thighs, the line of your neck and the gentle swell of your décolletage, the curve of your hip.

He presses his eyes shut tightly.

He feels feral, the hungry bones of him blown open and exposed like the hull of a shipwreck. He wants to worry marks the shape of his mouth into your thighs, your neck, across your collarbones. He wants your knees bracketing his hips, the weight of you on top of him.

God, he wants–

"Are you okay? You're not in too much pain, are you?" He hears you ask.

He knows he's in far too deep when the thought of tasting the way the words roll off your tongue flits across his mind.

"Sorry." He croaks, releasing your hand. "Instinct."

(Roy turns to Kori with a snort, murmuring low so you can't hear.

"He's been watching like he wants to eat them alive since the first time we met and it's a miracle he's got enough blood north of his waistband to be capable of speech, but sure. Instinct.")

[abyssalzones]

What's your comic writing process like? I'm starting to get into making my own comics and I really admire your work!!! Any advice?

Ah, intrepid traveler, you've done well to journey to this secluded mountaintop spire, in search of the answers you seek. I indeed can provide such forbidden comicmancy knowledge... at the cost of your mortal soul...

coughs. anyway, I'm going to warn you immediately that what works for me does not work for everyone else, and in my experience the way I do things can prove very slow and discouraging for anyone who is more interested in the actual "drawing the damn comic" part of the process. I only do it this way because I enjoy weaving a narrative web that feels not only fully contained but re-readable, but my projects are often so long and my memory so shitty that I can't just keep all of it in my head! It would spill all over the place and make a really embarrassing mess of brain-juice. Not ideal.

but as for my own process, uhh... I suppose a comic would be fitting, right?

a little choppy but you get the idea.

as for turning words into art, I've been experimenting with figuring out the best way to do that for a little while now. Originally what I was doing for something like Ad Astra Per Aspera was to take my "script" and sketch it out on paper very loosely, before transposing that onto my canvas and working from there:

...but, I've found that can make it kind of difficult to space everything around on your standard page-size, and the thing I'm having the most problems with currently seems to be finding the sweet spot of panel-size proportions. So, I've taken to printing out standard thumbnail templates (you can just find these on google) and sketching very tiny panels in those, which seems to give me a slightly better sense of scale... (mild chapter 5 spoilers, sorry ad astra fans)

but I have yet to totally pull through on this, so who knows, maybe I'll try something else in the future!

As for advice, this is probably most applicable to me, but as a disabled artist I have a very hard time managing my workload without literally working myself into injury. I don't think I talked about this publicly but when I was working on that ten year anniversary comic I was literally drawing every single day for 3 solid months. Sometimes, in my case, I really can't bring myself to stop once I've latched onto an idea, and sometimes I find the most rewarding thing I can do with my time is to draw- but I seriously cannot overstate: Do not fucking do this.

You will fuck up your wrist, your back, your neck, your eyes, and probably your mental health. It's a well-known fact that mangaka have a lower life expectancy than the average japanese person due to the intense workload imposed on them by deadlines and personal expectations. Comics are a very demanding artform, and even though I'm not on any sort of mandated schedule there are times where I've toiled away at something when I likely should have been exercising or taking vision-breaks. Therefore the best advice I can give you is to chill the hell out.

Namely, find parts of the process you can be lazy about, and embrace the laziness! You don't like digitally sketching? Don't do it! Skip it, or maybe find a way to traditionally sketch things out in advance like I do. Hate lineart? Don't fucking do it. You really don't feel like wasting your time writing 72k words of comic scripts? ...then, don't be like me. skip that part. I'm a flawed human being and what works for me might not work for you.

The second most important piece of advice I could give is to read comics. Of all kinds. The reason for this is pretty self explanatory: In order to figure out your own comic-making style, you should first pick out bits and pieces from the artist's buffet to add to your plate. Manga, graphic novels, american comics, european comics, weird niche little webcomics, funny papers, anything and everything. This advice rings true of pretty much any art form, but I find it to be essential to honing comic-making skills because so many things you feel will just come intuitively often don't. and that's okay! nobody is born knowing how to leave space for speech bubbles or shape their panels in a way that imitates stretches of time. The best way to figure out stuff like this, in my experience, is to study the "masters", and then after becoming well accustomed to the basics, figure out what rules you want to bend or break to create your own style.

I consider myself to be in equal parts a writer and an artist, which lends itself well to making narrative comics, but maybe you're a bit more of an artist and want to focus on panel-by-panel visual storytelling. Or, conversely, maybe your talents lean closer towards writing, and the art itself is more of a secondary skill. Regardless of your unique blend of talents you can and should make a comic, you should just also be aware of your strengths and try to hone in on those- there will always be opportunities to build up skills you lack, but focusing on what you do best will always lead you in the right direction.

Anyway, that being said, here are some recommendations in no particular order:

Monster, Naoki Urasawa (!!)

Bone, Jeff Smith

Witch Hat Atelier, Kamome Shirahama

The first IDW run of Transformers comics (namely More Than Meets the Eye and Lost Light)

Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (!!)

Through the Woods, Emily Carroll (really any Emily Carroll comics)

Kill Six Billion Demons (webcomic) (!!)

Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo

The Third Person, Emma Grove

Tintin, Hergé (can be super racist please be wary)

Dungeon Meshi, Ryoko Kui

Calvin & Hobbes, Bill Watterson

Maus, Art Spiegelman

Cucumber Quest (webcomic)

Jellyfish Princess, Akiko Higashimura

Golden Kamuy, Satoru Noda (!!)

Note that I did not grow up with manga so I am seriously behind on a lot of extremely influential japanese comics such as Dragon Ball, One Piece, basically any of the original Shonen Jump comics, but they're widely considered building blocks of the genre so if you love the artform I think you should give them a try! Same goes for classic non-shonen manga genres like various Shoujo, Josei, Yuri, Gekiga, ETC.

same as above applies to a lot of classic DC and Marvel works, I unfortunately am just not a big fan of superhero comics... but I'm sure there's good stuff in there. a couple of my mutuals talk about booster gold and the blue beetle all the time so I'm assuming there has to be something worthwhile.

...and many, many, many more that I'm forgetting! I noticed as I made this list that, to my knowledge, hardly any of these are made by black or just non-japanese-mangaka BIPOC artists, which makes me sad about the gaps in my own comic collection. Therefore, anyone is welcome to add their own recommendations in the replies!

now go forth, and combine images with text!!!!!!!!!!!

[antiquepearlss]

Together Kiera, Catalina, and Varian have a body count.

[lepusrufus]

While Moira ever admitting to not being able to do anything is a little ooc, I think it's infinitely funnier for her to get hella annoyed at people taking one look at the Doctor title that came with her PhD and assume she can do anything medicine or science related like

"Oh yeah sure I brainwashed Widowmaker right after finishing my course in The mind of depressed housewives with murder tendencies sure do I look like a fucking psychologist to you?" "No I can't perform open heart surgery on you unfortunately you'll just have to deal with it." "The fuck do you expect me to do about those symptoms I don't know sounds like either flu or terminal cancer here would you like to flip a coin?" "Well no I can't tell why your blood pressure has been fatally high for two days, I can however tell you the likelihood of your child being born with green eyes though." "What do you mean your cells are dying agai- actually Gabe yeah that's something I may be able to solve sure take a seat."

[is-the-snake-video-cute]

I'm writing a story, and the main characters dad works at a venom lab. Any tips on writing?

Sure! You have options - he might work similar hours to a standard 9-5, or, if he's on the animal care team, he might be at the lab most frequently in the afternoons and weekends.

Here are some common characteristics I've noticed in my colleagues that you might be able to work in!

Obviously, big snake lovers! The variety of snakes we see at a lab means he's also probably going to be really good at identifying venomous snakes.

He probably has pet snakes! Literally all of my colleagues have pet snakes. More than a few keep pictures of them in their wallets.

The emphasis on safety in the lab often bleeds over to personal lives. When safety plans are drilled into you so thoroughly, you tend to also have safety plans for common household emergencies and be really strict about doing things the right way.

We often have any tendency to panic trained out of us. When there's an emergency, we're taught to freeze and assess the situation (because anything else can be deadly with hot snakes!). This can actually be pretty funny at times - a few days ago we had a mop fall over and make a godawful racket in our kitchen at the lab and we're still laughing about it because, at the noise, everyone in there went dead still.

[riverkingmarley]

People who haven’t read worm have no idea what they are missing out on. They think they get it because they read up to leviathan and know the broad strokes. Fools!

Things I didn’t know/ didn’t understand the gravity of despite being far more spoiled than the average worm fanfic reader:

Rachel’s interlude (I can tell who got this far in the book based on how Rachel is written in fanfic. If you aren’t obsessed with Rachel you simply didn’t read it).

Mannequin and crawlers statues

Bonesaw swearing in blastos interlude.

Arc 16 from the moment taylor gets teleported onward. (I almost got in trouble at work because I couldn’t put it down).

Arc 17

Trickster betraying everyone for Noelle.

The triumvirate clones

Noelles death

Cody in the behmoth fight.

Taylor’s attack on bohemoth.

Alec’s statue

“My life, always in the hands of greater powers.”

All the great Sophia stuff post s9000

Brian, the character (dlc only) :(

Alec, the character (seriously there is so much great Alec stuff even after behemoth. I’ve never seen it brought up outside the premier Alec enjoyer of wormblr)

Aisha, the character

When lab rat calls taylor an angel

Scion getting more violent

The simurgh stuff

The Las Vegas group

Lung being funny

The very sudden khepri decision

Contessa vs eden

Marquis vs Taylor

Taylor vs dragon (this part went crazy)

Taylor vs everyone post scion’s death

A thousand more, I read some of these parts over 6 months ago and they are unforgettable. How are you not reading worm right now.

[ikareur]

Hi Fishblr people, I need help

So I wanted to ask for advice. I have two goldfish(?) that I may or may not have rescued from my uni because they were used for an experiment. Every other fish used in the experiment died, with only the two survivors. They are Brobbles and Yoimiya. I knew my neighbour had fish, I tried to ask if they wanted these two but they already had six full-grown fancy goldfish (I don't know what kind) and could not take them. So the responsibility kinda fell to me. I bought a tank. I know 20 gallons is the minimum, but I was forced to take this 30x25x30cm tank (it's a 5-gallon, I think?), and I know it's been stressing both of them. It's way too small, I know. Brobbles is really aggressive and territorial and nips and chases Yoimiya and I feel bad for Yoimiya because her(?) tail is cut short. I really was hoping to get that 20-gallon tank because I knew this would happen, but unfortunately, I couldn't. Is there any way I can lessen the stress? Make Brobbles less aggressive or anything? Yoimiya is struggling with Ich I believe and I've already bought a heater (it's shipping for a few days) and added in a teaspoon of no-additive rock salt (could've been aquarium salts but from what I saw, rock salt was fine as long as there aren't any additives), changed the water and added a few drops of methylene blue to it too. I know I probably shouldn't have taken them in being so underprepared, but I thought them being stuck in a water bottle left to die and seeping into chemicals was probably not the life they deserved. I just felt bad for them, and now I really truly do want them to feel better. Please be nice to me, I'm really a beginner. I just want these little fish to know life better than being stuck in a lab and suffocating in chemicals.

[cookiefate]

Cookiefate for September 20th:

"You will soon emerge victorious from the maze you've been traveling in."

The lab rat that completes the task is still a lab rat.

[jstor]

"Prevent Ether Peroxide Formation" — seems like good advice?

Undated poster from the Images from the History of Medicine (National Library of Medicine) collection on JSTOR. Open access collection!

Creative Commons: Public Domain Mark

[midnight-rice]

I think I confused my coworker who came in at 11:30 AM on a Sunday to find me alone crying my eyes out over my ninth onion and quietly singing a spontaneous parody of Hey There Delilah about snow in Alabama and cooking fried rice in a wok

[hylianengineer]

Any tips for vetting an internship company if you’re interested in lab work?

I’ll have an especially hard time if they want me to easily fit in

Well, I've never done an internship, so I don't have much useful advice on that front I'm afraid. I picked my lab (as an undergrad researcher) because I had a class with the professor and thought his work was cool - it was honestly sheer luck I wound up working with such awesome people. For labs in general, if visiting is an option that might help you get an idea of the culture and expectations. I know prospective grad students often do that, but I don't know how it might work for internships, or for settings outside of academia.

I will also note that in my experience, science people are weird. Just in general. I feel very at home around my lab full of ecologists, geologists, and soil and water scientists, and I've always been the kind of person who feels out of place with 'normal' people. I do think I lucked out on that front, because one of our PIs is a female first gen college graduate who's like... VERY pro-social justice and diversity and stuff. A couple years ago she and most of the lab members at the time co-authored a paper about inclusion in our field. Most scientists I've met have been really fun, goofy, delightful, open-minded people, but various forms of bigotry are still alive and well in science - I think environmental science has less of it than many fields, for example one of my coworkers did her undergrad degree in physics and faced some really horrific sexism. The only advice I can give you is to try and meet the people you might be working with, and maybe try googling them, in case they happen to be the sort of people who write papers about inclusivity in science. Some people also use social media for science communication, and that might give you some indicators of their personalities/openness to diversity.

[sukimas]

tossing the world's most garbage essay that still fits the requirements onto the desk of the new first year grad student and forcing them to grade it

[is-the-snake-video-cute]

Hi! How do venom labs usually get their snakes (like, do they breed them, or do they get rescues, or...?), and what's the usual process for new venom lab snakes? (Asking partially out of curiosity, and partially for writing related reasons 👀)

Most snakes at all the venom labs I've ever worked with have been rescues. Some of them are captive-bred by zoo breeding programs, but most are either wild snakes that are unreleasable for some reason or surrenders. It's honestly shocking how many snakes at every venom lab were surrendered by owners who bought a hot snake without being prepared for it and decided to give up the snake after they had a close call and almost got bitten. There are a surprising number of hot snakes in the pet trade, and a lot of them end up at labs. I'd say probably 60% of snakes at labs are captive-bred.

When a new snake arrives at the venom lab, they're quarantined to make sure they're healthy. That usually lasts about 90 days, and they get a checkup and swabs for common viruses. After the quarantine period, they usually go into rotation for venom extraction right away. They'll get an enclosure in the venom room, and they'll get a label and ID number - venom labs are highly regulated, and every single vial of venom needs to be stamped with the ID numbers of the snakes who contributed their venom. A new snake will usually be hooked out of the enclosure a few times to get them used to being on a hook before their first extraction, and they might not want to bite the funnel the first few times - the lab won't force it. They usually get the hang of things within a few weeks!

[salamencerobot]

Any tips for helping a dog get used to being in the car? He always throws up or pees, even on short drives(literally 5 min away).

We've tried walking him beforehand but that doesn't get rid of his ability to throw up. He also drools a ton

[theunaestheticstudyblr]

Warning: Discussing dissection photos and tags

If I post more dissection pics, I want to make sure I use appropriate tags for people who don't want to see that material. I have posted a couple in the past and never had issues, but I just want to make sure. It's why I don't post many dissections.

I use tags like dead animal, dissection, dead [insert animal type here], lab, tw, trigger warning, and blood (if present). Idk if these types of tags are enough or if I need more/better ones especially since I now have thousands of followers and want to make sure I'm not showing dissection photos to people who don't want to see that stuff.

I have lots of microscope photos I can post though and that I just haven't for some reason.

[chaotic-archaeologist]

hiya, i’m a senior undergrad in anthropology with pretty solid plans to pursue archaeology in the future in some way, with anice side gig as an intern with my uni’s collections (sounds much cooler than it actually is, 99.9% of the job is currently sorting rocks from surveys in the 70s into new boxes) under my belt, but i’ve always struggled with “picking” a region/time period to get really knowledgeable in bc when i lock on to one specific thing i get bored. what convinced me to switch focus from ethnographic research to archaeology was archaeological science and all the fascinating and weird ways we can learn more about cultural materials (sensing methods for excavation, chemical or sensing or scanning artifacts dor analyses, etc) and im pretty convinced i want to focus more on lab work + learning those techniques…. but considering i’m from the US it’s pretty much not a thing here. any advice on how to get experience or insight into pursuing archaeological science?

Are you sure that's not a thing here? Because I think you could definitely find the right program out there for you. Archaeology needs people who do highly specialized lab work... when we send things off for testing, we have to send those samples to someone, right?

I would begin by making connections with a couple of people who work for labs doing something you can see yourself pursuing and scheduling an interview to ask them about their careers. You can also start looking for graduate programs that have professors with strong lab/analysis work concentrations.

You may have to pick some sort of time period for your thesis and/or dissertation, but there's no reason you can't focus on the methods. Later on in your career, you can choose to apply the methods you specialize in to any number of subjects.

Last but definitely not least, talk to your professors! This is something they'll probably know at least a little bit about. And you need to be fostering those connections for when you ask for letters of recommendation anyway. Who knows, they might be able to help you with my first piece of advice by putting you in touch with somebody.

-Reid