ah. stigmata.

I wanted to write a review of one of my absolute favorite fics that I've ever read. I might keep coming back and adding to this post as I remember more things to write, so...sorry. I'd also like to continue doing these book reviews, so I'll see if this format (some questions about the fic) works well. The questions are things that are important to me in a fic, and like I said, I may add more. Only time will tell!

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Title/Author: The Hundred Year Playlist (read on AO3) by girlbookwrm (dreamwidth, tumblr)
Rating: T/M (the works are standalone, and one out of seven is rated M)
Words: 300k
Hit Count: 58772 (each story's hit counts, added together) (this may not seem like a lot, but buddy. It deserves all the hits in the world.)
Podfic Available: Yes, but only of the first story in the series
Story Summary: Steve and Bucky, start to finish.
My Summary: This fic follows our baby boys from 1924 to 2016 (? I think? It's pre IW) with large amounts of fantastically written pining and sadness.

Will it make you laugh? Will it make you cry?
Hell yes to both. As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm trying to hold off rereading it because I'm going to have to as soon as I start formatting it for print, but as far as I can remember, it has a lovely mix of terribly wonderful humor and wonderfully terrible angst. I was reading the third work in the series, The Terror of Knowing, before I had to go to work, and I was so emotionally choked up that the whole day I was foggy and out of it. My friend thought something bad had happened and I was mourning. It was that painful, guys.

Is it historically accurate?
Yes! It is very well researched and uses the fantastic source of mandarou's Til The End of the Timeline as well as many others.

Are the characters true to form? 
Hell yes! A lovely Brooklyn Bucky and Foul Mouthed Steve are present, and they're so well done that I saw and heard the dialogue in my head like a movie.

Is it canon compliant?
Yes, for the most part. At the end there's some divergence due to the nature of the fic.

Anything else?
This is the fic that did several things to me. First, it's the fic that made me ship Stucky, Kind of a big thing that might be hard to pinpoint to one work specifically, but I can say with all honesty and complete certainty that this is the fic that made me switch from "I like Gen Stucky, I don't like people butchering a good bromance, Stucky is kind of a squick for me," to "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. This is my life now, isn't it." This is also the fic that really cemented in my mind how Bucky Barnes and The Winter Soldier are the same person. Let me explain—before, I got the idea of it (he went from Bucky to brainwashed, and then back to Bucky), but I never really got the concept of his character being both people. This fic took me by the hand, sat me down at the classroom desk, smashed my heart to pieces, and told me I aced the test.

xx