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ysabetwordsmithThis story belongs to the series Love Is For Children which includes "Love Is for Children," "Hairpins," "Blended," "Am I Not," "Eggshells," "Dolls and Guys,""Saudades," "Querencia," "Turnabout Is Fair Play," "Touching Moments," "Splash," "Coming Around," "Birthday Girl," "No Winter Lasts Forever," "Hide and Seek," "Kernel Error," "Happy Hour," "Green Eggs and Hulk," and "kintsukuroi."
Fandom: The Avengers
Characters: Phil Coulson, Nick Fury
Medium: Fiction
Warnings: Minor character death. Bullying. Fighting. Suicide attempt (minor character).
Summary: This is the story of how a little boy named Flip grows up to save the world a lot.
Notes: Hurt/comfort. Family. Fluff and angst. Accidents. Emotional whump. Disability. Sibling relationship. Nonsexual love. Parentification. Manipulation. Coping skills. Asking for help and getting it. Hope. Protection. Caregiving. Competence. Toys and games. Comic books. Fixing things. Martial arts. Gentleness. Trust. Role models. Military. BAMF Phil Coulson.
Begin with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25, Part 26, Part 27, Part 28. Skip to Part 31, Part 32, Part 33, Part 34.
"Little and Broken, but Still Good" Part 29
The test missions are exciting. Agent Fury sends Phil to sneak into enemy camps and steal intel or sabotage their equipment. Twice Phil gets in and out with never a whisper of suspicion. The third time, a guard spots him, and Agent Fury has to rescue him with a gun that looks like a cigarette lighter.
An old man named Dugan laughs at Phil on the way home. Fury shakes his head at both of them. Phil swears he can do better. Dugan bets him a beer if he can.
A month later, Phil takes out an ammo cache with a bomb made from a bag of flour. Dugan pays up with the best German beer Phil has ever had. Agent Fury finalizes the transfer.
SHIELD turns out to be everything Phil dreamed, and more. It is no more than a shadow, but it shelters everyone beneath it like the shade of a tree on a baking summer day. The base where Phil works has a brisk military air about it. The equipment is bleeding-edge best. He falls in love with the quality of pistols available, and takes to carrying one at his side and a smaller backup in an ankle holster.
There are drawbacks, of course. Phil takes one look at the paperwork and nearly despairs. It is worse than disorganized; it is ill-conceived to begin with, obviously designed by people who had no idea what they really needed to know or how to put it on paper so that it would make sense. Phil takes five of the worst forms and reconfigures them into something that actually works. Then he goes to Agent Fury and says, "Your entire recordkeeping system is a disaster. I need to fix this."
Fury calls Director Carter, talks for a few minutes, and sends off Phil's folder of forms. The next day, Phil gets an assignment to overhaul SHIELD paperwork for improved efficiency. He cracks his knuckles and begins working. At Clearance Level 1, he can't see most of the content, but he can do his job with the blank forms. It takes all day to absorb enough of the information to create a complete outline of a functional system, with coherent categories broken down into a tree of logical subcategories. He spends the next few days figuring out which are the most vital and most common forms, so he can improve those first. Actually updating all of the forms will take months, but at least Phil knows where to start.
The missions that take him away from the base prove as challenging as Agent Fury promised. Once, SHIELD loans Phil to MI5 because they need an agent without a British accent to foil a plot against the Queen. Another time, Phil has to use all his computer skills to keep someone from launching a nuclear missile at Russia. He doesn't like Russia much, but he likes living in a world that does not glow in the dark.
Where do people GET these insane ideas? Phil wonders as he locks down the entire installation and calls for pickup.
* * *
Notes:
Dum Dum Dugan came from the Howling Commandos to SHIELD.
Flour bombs rely on a dust explosion and even in small amounts can be quite spectacular.
Poorly designed paperwork wastes time, money, and energy; plus it means you don't have all the information you need in a readily accessible form. Studies reveal the qualities of bad and good paperwork. Know how to design good forms.
Saving the world is often necessary to prevent lunatics from destroying it. A fundamental rule is, "Don't saw off the branch you're standing on."
[To be continued in Part 30 ... ]
Fandom: The Avengers
Characters: Phil Coulson, Nick Fury
Medium: Fiction
Warnings: Minor character death. Bullying. Fighting. Suicide attempt (minor character).
Summary: This is the story of how a little boy named Flip grows up to save the world a lot.
Notes: Hurt/comfort. Family. Fluff and angst. Accidents. Emotional whump. Disability. Sibling relationship. Nonsexual love. Parentification. Manipulation. Coping skills. Asking for help and getting it. Hope. Protection. Caregiving. Competence. Toys and games. Comic books. Fixing things. Martial arts. Gentleness. Trust. Role models. Military. BAMF Phil Coulson.
Begin with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25, Part 26, Part 27, Part 28. Skip to Part 31, Part 32, Part 33, Part 34.
"Little and Broken, but Still Good" Part 29
The test missions are exciting. Agent Fury sends Phil to sneak into enemy camps and steal intel or sabotage their equipment. Twice Phil gets in and out with never a whisper of suspicion. The third time, a guard spots him, and Agent Fury has to rescue him with a gun that looks like a cigarette lighter.
An old man named Dugan laughs at Phil on the way home. Fury shakes his head at both of them. Phil swears he can do better. Dugan bets him a beer if he can.
A month later, Phil takes out an ammo cache with a bomb made from a bag of flour. Dugan pays up with the best German beer Phil has ever had. Agent Fury finalizes the transfer.
SHIELD turns out to be everything Phil dreamed, and more. It is no more than a shadow, but it shelters everyone beneath it like the shade of a tree on a baking summer day. The base where Phil works has a brisk military air about it. The equipment is bleeding-edge best. He falls in love with the quality of pistols available, and takes to carrying one at his side and a smaller backup in an ankle holster.
There are drawbacks, of course. Phil takes one look at the paperwork and nearly despairs. It is worse than disorganized; it is ill-conceived to begin with, obviously designed by people who had no idea what they really needed to know or how to put it on paper so that it would make sense. Phil takes five of the worst forms and reconfigures them into something that actually works. Then he goes to Agent Fury and says, "Your entire recordkeeping system is a disaster. I need to fix this."
Fury calls Director Carter, talks for a few minutes, and sends off Phil's folder of forms. The next day, Phil gets an assignment to overhaul SHIELD paperwork for improved efficiency. He cracks his knuckles and begins working. At Clearance Level 1, he can't see most of the content, but he can do his job with the blank forms. It takes all day to absorb enough of the information to create a complete outline of a functional system, with coherent categories broken down into a tree of logical subcategories. He spends the next few days figuring out which are the most vital and most common forms, so he can improve those first. Actually updating all of the forms will take months, but at least Phil knows where to start.
The missions that take him away from the base prove as challenging as Agent Fury promised. Once, SHIELD loans Phil to MI5 because they need an agent without a British accent to foil a plot against the Queen. Another time, Phil has to use all his computer skills to keep someone from launching a nuclear missile at Russia. He doesn't like Russia much, but he likes living in a world that does not glow in the dark.
Where do people GET these insane ideas? Phil wonders as he locks down the entire installation and calls for pickup.
* * *
Notes:
Dum Dum Dugan came from the Howling Commandos to SHIELD.
Flour bombs rely on a dust explosion and even in small amounts can be quite spectacular.
Poorly designed paperwork wastes time, money, and energy; plus it means you don't have all the information you need in a readily accessible form. Studies reveal the qualities of bad and good paperwork. Know how to design good forms.
Saving the world is often necessary to prevent lunatics from destroying it. A fundamental rule is, "Don't saw off the branch you're standing on."
[To be continued in Part 30 ... ]
(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-08 09:06 am (UTC).
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Highlight to read:
SHIELD turns out to be everything Phil dreamed, and more. It is no more than a shadow, but it shelters everyone beneath it like the shade of a tree on a baking summer day.
This line is absolutely, gut-wrenchlingly heartbreaking, knowing what we know now. :(
Yes...
Date: 2014-08-08 09:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-08 10:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-08 10:37 am (UTC)Thank you!
Date: 2014-08-08 07:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-08 12:35 pm (UTC)Yay!
Date: 2014-08-13 08:20 am (UTC)I'm glad that worked for you. I figure he knows the whole system because he wrote or rewrote most of it.
>> This really gives a huge insight into his avaenger wrangling skills. <<
Yes, and you just know he had to invent a bunch of new forms for them too.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-08 01:25 pm (UTC)Thank you!
Date: 2014-08-13 08:19 am (UTC)Clearance Level 1
Date: 2014-08-08 01:55 pm (UTC)HAH. I needed that this morning.
Re: Clearance Level 1
Date: 2014-08-08 07:15 pm (UTC)Because he knows how much damage it's doing. Phil would've hit the first bad form, frowned, and filled it out. Hit the second, made a few notes. Hit the third, sat back and thought. Shuffled through everything, calculated the scope of trouble caused by a world-saving organization not being able to process data accurately, and ... "OH SHIT."
Phil probably saved the world more times in the first few months he spent fixing SHIELD's damn paperwork than all the times since, just nobody recognizes the distal source of salvation.
>> HAH. I needed that this morning. <<
Yay!
Re: Clearance Level 1
Date: 2014-08-08 10:41 pm (UTC)Re: Clearance Level 1
Date: 2014-08-08 10:56 pm (UTC)I think one of Phil's secret superpowers is being For Want Of A Nail Man. He does these tiny little things that make it possible for other people to finish saving the day.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-08 03:03 pm (UTC)• but least Phil knows
-> at least
Fixed!
Date: 2014-08-28 08:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-08 10:38 pm (UTC)I'm surprised he doesn't recognize Dugan from the comics, though?
Yes...
Date: 2014-08-08 10:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-09 06:14 am (UTC)This is beautiful.
Thank you!
Date: 2014-08-09 06:16 am (UTC)I think it's really important for heroes to minimize collateral damage, and understand that some things -- such as not sawing off the branch you're standing on -- are more important than beating down your enemies.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-11 02:39 pm (UTC)The link on good form design looks really useful, too. Thanks.
Yay!
Date: 2014-08-12 03:30 am (UTC)It's funny, because it's such an incongrous item to use as a weapon. But at the same time, this is exactly the kind of thing that makes Agent Coulson so formidable -- to him, everything is a potential weapon.
>> The link on good form design looks really useful, too. Thanks. <<
I'm glad I could help. So much is lost to bad paperwork.
Re: Yay!
Date: 2014-08-14 12:46 am (UTC)Make sure you've more good hands than bad.
Re: Yay!
Date: 2014-08-14 01:00 am (UTC)This comment may be heavy & upsetting, feel free to choose not to read it or come back another time.
Date: 2015-12-02 01:43 pm (UTC).
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Currently in a nonsocial headspace the past few days (Tony wants to reply elsewhere but can't yet) but need to mention this while we're here. Apologies if tone is cold, triggered and struggling to feel anything.
Feedback we are currently able to give:
"Saving the world is often necessary to prevent lunatics from destroying it." (in the author notes section)
PLEASE NOTE. These people are not lunatics, they are violent assholes. Mental illness is not a requirement for wanting to destroy the world nor does it cause someone to try to destroy the world, the conscious and very autonomous decision to try to destroy the world is what causes someone to do so, whether they have a mental health condition or not. Implying that mental health is causally related to violence does very real harm to people with mental illnesses and provides undeserved excuses for violent behaviour. It is also ableist.
"Where do people GET these insane ideas? Phil wonders" (in reference to terrorism)
Also ableist, harmful, and innaccurate. These ideas are not insane, they are dangerous. Insane does not equal dangerous, dangerous does not equal insane. We would like to request that authors please stop contributing to society's perception of us as a threat to be neutralised rather than real people who need support.
We concede that this is the thought of a character and not the author, and it may be a part of that character's characterisation that he is ableist in this way. HOWEVER please therefore include this in the warnings (just including the words "Ableism" or "Ableist character" will suffice) otherwise you are implying that either you support this character's viewpoint because you do not believe it to be ableism (since you have not marked it as such), or that you are happy to allow your character to harm those of us with mental health difficulties and do not consider such things to deserve warnings.
Not marking ableism as such has the additional effect of allowing your other readers to continue assuming that the ableist concepts presented are accurate and that there is nothing wrong with them. It allows readers to take your work as a support of and permission for their ableist notions.
A good substitute for words like 'insane' and 'crazy' in places like this is 'ridiculous', as it also emphasises extremity and lack of sound reasoning which are usually the meanings people actually intend when they use those particular slurs. We also recommend reflecting on what it is you actually want to get across (that something is unacceptable? that it's dangerous? that it makes no sense? that you disagree with it? a combination of these? other things?) and choosing words that actually say that rather than using disabled people as a shortcut and therefore saying that we are unacceptable, dangerous, or whatever your meaning is. Thesaurus use can be very effective here once you know what it is you're actually saying.
((Edit: We are also aware that it is likely that you are simply unaware of the ableist nature of these things which is perfectly understandable and we do not intend to imply that you are deliberately doing any of the things we mention above. We are fairly certain that you do not intend harm and would prefer not to do such things if you had the choice, which is why we are letting you know. We believe you to be a good person and respect you, hence this comment.))
We appreciated your note of caution to Tony and have indeed been exercising such, but cannot choose to keep ourselves safe from things that are not mentioned in the warnings. Unless we choose not to read at all on the off-chance that such things might be there. We do still take responsibility for our current triggered state though, as our safety is our own responsibility not yours and we were aware that you have demonstrated some lack of awareness of ableism particularly in the mental/cognition/neurology areas (Note: this is not your fault and you are still a good person) and undertook to read your works anyway.
We approve very much of your writing andd want to give more positive feedback but currently incapable. Thank you for these stories, we are appreciating them hugely. Overall, your writing makes the world a better place for us. You are doing a good thing.
-general beasties (currently incapable of seperating out our individual identities & voices)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-12-02 05:15 pm (UTC)...Yeah we don't feel like we have the right to complain and we're scared we said things badly or our tone was all wrong or whatever else. We get this thing where the possibility that someone might disagree with us makes us assume we're wrong and shouldn't speak in the first place because apparently our brain thinks other people are always more right than we are. *glares at it* Bullshit. Disagreement's healthy! Diversity, people, it works! Anyway. Yeah.
But while I'm here, I loved seeing your Phil growing into the person we see in the films and your later stories! This is an excellent piece of writing. As they all are! I just read your Happy Hour and aw man, the feels. Is it just me or am I adorable? *cheeky face* But seriously though, I love you for giving Happy a story of his own. He's amazing and honestly I'm not sure there'd ever have been an Iron Man without him, at least in my own world. I don't think I'd have made it that far. And you're really good at writing us! Your visions of all of us show really great observation, perception, extrapolation and characterization skills in my opinion. And a deep understanding of person and human nature, obviously. I know it's part of your job qualifications as a writer but that doesn't mean it's not awesome. *grins* So yeah. BY the way, you're awesome. :P
-Tony