All The Angels and The Saints

Fanfiction
Title:	All The Angels and The Saints
Author(s):	Speranza
Date(s):	2014-10-11
Length:	50k
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Captain America Movieverse
Relationship(s):	Steve/Bucky
External Links:	on AO3
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All The Angels and The Saints by Speranza is a Steve/Bucky fic.

Summary

In which Steve Rogers loses God and finds God and loses God, and also: Bucky.

Author's Notes

So Lim describes this as "a motherfucking 95 year epic love story of socialism! science fiction! and hard core gay fucking!" and, er, she's not wrong really. Lim was my star and compass during this whole story, and astolat made crucial interventions that saved it all in the end, but the story is dedicated to counteragent, who got me thinking about Steve and religion and the radical left and the 1930s.

Ces

I totally plotted out the socialist steve fic

damn you

Counter Agent

haha!!

well it was your idea

it wasn't my fault

i just said "I like religious stuff" and made you stand in the sun and then gave you alcohol

hardly culpable at all see

Reactions & Comments

Lately I’ve been feeling a little bit like I might have reached a kind of critical mass when it comes to the starbucks ship, and a lot of the fics (though they may be excellent) tread much the same ground and tell much the same story.

But THEN. Then I read this new piece by Speranza, and am reminded just why I love this fandom as much as I do. The very scale and scope of it is marvellous, and the Steve x Bucky x Catholicism triangle makes me weak at the knees.

I love how it explores Steve’s evolving relationship with God, and Bucky’s relationship with Steve’s relationship with God, and shows what complex, flawed characters they are…

But my favourite FAVOURITE thing is that Steve is not the paragon of virtue the world seems to treat him as - he can be ruthless, he can be vicious, he can angry and petty and unfair - and Bucky absolutely calls him on it: there’s a point early on when Bucky tells him, you’re a brutal person, Steve, and it actually made me gasp and have to put my reader down for a bit so that I didn’t cry.

This? Is not my favorite Steve/Bucky fic. It is, however, the essential Steve/Bucky fic. It takes you by the hand, from beginning to end, asking you to trust it, to let it lead you to a place where you will feel completion, where you will almost feel like you are done with this – this fandom, these characters, these stories. (Not that this actually happens, thank God – but if, in the future, I could pinpoint the moment where I have one last Steve/Bucky fic left in me to read before I move on from this fandom? I would want it to be this one).

Reading it makes you a little bit nervous, a little bit scared, the way good stories do. You’re not quite sure whether you should risk it, risk having it all unfold in a way that will destroy everything, because it spans too much, and it’s all so effortlessly linked, and it’s complex and rich and everything you might ever want – it’s like somebody reached into another universe, witnessed the lives of these boys and wrote it down for you to treasure – and it’s bound to explode all to hell at one point, right? Bound to just stop working so perfectly.

But the thing is? It doesn’t.

And I feel like this is almost the worst spoiler I could give, because allowing yourself to trust Speranza and letting yourself read on until you reach the end is an experience that is, in my opinion, intricately linked to learning to love this story the way it deserves to be. I would read a sentence, and hurt so beautifully, and marvel at the brilliance, and hope for so much, so deeply, that instead of reading on I would go back and read that part again, then go back up some more and re-read earlier parts with that new one in mind. And then I would think, ‘right, it can’t get any better than that, I’ve reached the peak’, but I would settle and keep reading anyway – and it would happen, again and again, ‘til the last sentence. And that? Is as perfect as it can get.

gorgeous and full of great period stuff, and a terrific joke about Thor and Christians that made me laugh all sneaky-like.

less effective for me after the timeline switches to present day, but maybe that's because I've read a million terrific present day stucky fics with all the things fic writers sort of arrived at by consensus so they're practically universal.

but it was gooey and had doofy jokes and it was basically about a couple of castaways who find each other again, so I was happy.

This fic was so incredibly well-written; the whole religious filigram lining all the canon events made it unique and original, the writing is amazing, the historical setting just seems so accurate; a masterpiece!

All the Angels and the Saints is really a master class of a character study. Although, of course, the contents of the fic is a headcanon, it's so well researched and sounds so accurate, and movie moments are so delicately woven in or referenced, that you can definitely believe every word - and it's such an amazing accurate character portrayal of Steve's decision making, conviction, and principles, that it FEELS true.

But the most brilliant aspect of the fic for me is how Speranza can show us both the good and the ugly of Steve, and have us understand how both can be true at once. AND, how all while she's doing this, quietly in the background, she's also painting us a quiet portrait of Bucky Barnes... both in moments that Steve understands, but also in moments that Steve doesn't.

Speranza never pulls her punches either - there's some absolutely fantastic lines in the fic, but I think my favourite is the sentences where Steve is called "brutal" - followed closely by "but now, it's Thursday, and you've had an idea" - and the fact that we can read an entire fic from Steve's point of view, understand all this thoughts, his pain, everything that is leading him to the decisions he is making - his reactions are all perfectly understandable... and at the same time, as soon as you read that word, you're like "yes, Steve is BRUTAL" and you are pained, both in sympathy to those that Steve is brutal to, and also sympathy for Steve, who for all his love and thoughtfulness, does not understand just how brutal he is... or, arguably, not at first... and when he does begin to understand, it doesn't necessarily soften the blow of that same brutality.

AND YET, you LOVE him. It's just an amazing work of having you love this character, while also having him be an imperfect character... and that's not necessarily something you see done well in fic, usually, people just make their characters nearly perfect, so OF COURSE, you love them, and any character who disagrees with your main guy is OBVIOUSLY the one with flaws and the one that is in the wrong... Speranza meanwhile, says, "here is this guy, and here are all his thoughts, and here are all his faults, and it's perfectly acceptable to love him anyway."

All the Angels and the Saints by Speranza made me throw my phone away from me for A WHILE so I could recalibrate my emotions. Lord. She always tries to get us to the happy ending but man sometimes you gotta GO THROUGH IT to get there.

ONE OF MY FAVORITE GODDAMN FICS EVER, OH MY GOD. Not purely an examination of Steve in history BUT the historical detail in this is AMAZING, you will DIE.

A truly wonderful story covering Steve Rogers’ entire life, exploring his religious upbringing, his relationships, his political ideals, and his cultural background in 1930s/40s New York. I love this characterization of Steve as a political activist in the ’40s, tying into his uncompromising brand of heroism in the Marvel movies. It’s also brilliantly romantic and miserable in its depiction of Steve and Bucky’s epic love story—a popular theme in Captain America fic.

Related Fanworks

• All The Angels and The Saints podfic by RevolutionaryJo
• False God | All the Angels and the Saints vid by Lyra_inBeleriand
• Fanbinding, ^{Archived version} by ad-astra-bindery