Title: steadfast tin soldier
Author: twigcollins
Rating: T
Genre: Drama/Tragedy
Status: WIP
Fandom: Overwatch
Pairings: N/A
Summary: Soldier 76 comes in from the cold.
Link: ao3

There's a lot of summaries that definitely don't do the stories justice, and ao3 authors are notoriously pretty criminal in that regard. In this case, in a good way.

Writing something that feels human is hard as fuck even when you're dealing with a normal setting. When you're dealing with a cartoon explosion, Blizzard-written setting like Overwatch, it's even harder - and yet, twigcollins not only does it perfectly, but seemingly effortlessly.

The story is a character piece revolving around the character of Soldier 76 and the flawed, desperate man that is Jack Morrison, as he leads a governmental paramilitary organization founded around objectively childish ideals and tries desperately nurse it into reality, even as he grows disillusioned with it. The perspective leaps between post-Overwatch and the lead up to the fall.

There are parts that are emotionally charged enough to be legitimately hard to read. The quality of the character examination and interactions are top notch. There aren't a lot of fics on the web that I come back and reread, and this is one of the honored few.

It's 5/5 for me. It hasn't been updated since last year, but the author has written other stuff as recently as October. It's worth your time.

 

I'm going to give this a 4.5/5, rounded down to 4. The writing is well done, the characters very human, and it takes the desiccated corpse that is the 'plot' of Overwatch and turns it into something real.

I have only two complaints about it: one, that it moves from being a story told in a fair balance of present and past to focusing more on the past, and two, that it hasn't been updated for like 16 months after ending on a pretty big moment, even if that moment wasn't a cliff hanger. That's literally all I can think of to complain about. The rest was great.

 

One of my favorite Overwatch fics, which does a lot with the barebone hints of a plot Overwatch gives; alongside that fic where S76 becomes Hana's dad, might be the best fic in the fandom. Broadly speaking, I agree with the 4.5/5 rating, but for this fandom? I'm rounding up to 5.

 

Its pretty fucking sweet, I read it in one sitting and was disappointed there wasn't more

Very much a character piece and less of a plot heavy story, but very interesting none the less.

5/5