Title: First Contact
Author: Animus of Masada
Rating: T
Genre: Sci-fi
Status: WIP
Fandom: Mass Effect
Summary:An asari exploration vessel discovers Earth in the 2030's...and the first contact scenario has incredible implications for both species. What does humanity look like through alien eyes? Where do they go from here?

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7278544/1/First_Contact

This is one of the best. It doesn't have any familiar faces just yet but I liked what I read. It is an AU as you can guess. I had my eye on it for some time since it passed 20k I decided to post it here.

It starts with Mars landing ship detecting a Citadel exploration ship.

I especially liked this part which is really hilarious;

Spoiler

"What are we even going to say? 'Hello'?"
"It's not like they could understand what we're saying," Keigo countered. "Or, if they've been observing us for a long time, they can, in which case they already know what's going on. Either way, it's not like it matters what we say."
"Oh? And what do you have in mind?"
"Maybe, 'look, baby, this whole silent stalker thing is really creeping me out.'"
She stared at him, dumbfounded, for several moments. "Sure. Why the hell not. And if it doesn't result in war, then maybe it will be the most hilarious thing in the history books."
"That's what I'm going for."

I can actually see someone doing that. hopefully it won't jump to shark in the future.

 

Just read it through and enjoyed it immensely. There are some problems with it (anachronic order and the preponderance of essay-style segments), but overall First Contact was done pretty well, and with a good bit of humour along the way.

4/5

 

Pretty good. The writing is solid, the dialogue believable and the humor is actually funny. Only problem I got with it is, like Aekiel mentioned, that the timeline jumps around after the first couple of chapters.

4/5

 

The anachronistic timeline didn't bother me too much. The story has a lot of rough edges.

3/5

 

Decent, and mixes in some good scenes. Still, not more than decent. And that quality decreases with the shortness of the chapters and increase in stupid quotes. 3/5, with the possibility for better.

 

Entertaining AU, but something is off about the writing. And while I can appreciate the author's essay style Asarian view of humans, it comes off a bit as a human circle jerk.

3.5/5 with room for improvement.

 

Yeah, have to agree with this. Latest chapters have all just been some huge wank over how good humanity is, with little in the way of plot. Seriously, those 'reports' aren't even trying to be objective. They just focus on all the good parts and casually disregard all the bad parts of humanity.

 

I agree. You'd think people paranoid over another Rachni War would focus on the bad parts.

"Yeah, ok, sure they're ok with animals but holy shit look at all the _______" or something.

 

Oh c'mon guys in mass effect almost all of Batarians are slavers and no one so much as blinks at that. Hell Krogan is still around isn't it. After them we probably would look like bunch of pussies.

What ever we do can't be as bad as that. I mean it is not like humanity is only species who has flaws. It goes without saying. But idea is first contact is early so flaws could be worked out. And it is not like they are entirely absent.

 

Appealed to me at first, but I've gradually been turned off by the direction it's moving in. First, there's the author's stated intent to make humanity much less important than it was in ME1. That bothers me, because half the charm of the backstory of the first game was that humans were marginalized enough to make them the underdogs, but powerful enough to make you feel like we as a species matter in the grand scheme of things, even if it isn't as much as other species.

Also, while I generally like outside perspective first-contact stories that explore the differences between humans and aliens, this is the kind that I don't like, where all the focus is on how much nicer and more tolerant and culturally enlightened toward aliens we are. It's a terrible misrepresentation of who we are as a race, imo, and is coincidentally the reason why I can't fucking stand Star Trek (which plays to the same hopelessly naive, holier-than-thou attitude).

In this kind of story, I like to read about humans as we are: with many, many horrifying flaws, but also with genuine, meaningful virtues (not stupid bullshit like how we are so nice to non-sapient animals, and how we think everything is fucking cute for Christ's sake!)

TL;DR: Not saying I want a full on "HYOOMANZ ARE TEH BADAZZ!!1!11" clusterfuck like the thread my sig comes from, but I'd like the story to feel like it was actually talking about us, and not some alien race that happens to call itself "human".

3/5 for being well written, despite the areas where I felt the plot was lacking.