Title: Uplifted
Author: DarkDanny
Rating: T
Genre: Drama/Sci-Fi
Pairing: Tali/Shepard, but mostly OC/OC
Chapters: 17
Words: 101,359
Updated: 08-25-12
Published: 06-13-12
Status: Complete
Summary: Desperate for an end to the exile, now in its forty seventh year, the quarian Admiralty Board decides on one last audacious plan to help them destroy the geth. However, January 1942 in occupied Russia might not be the best place for first contact with humanity...

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12574777/1/Uplifted

Updated, thanks for the heads up - Zombie

TV Tropes Page for the Series: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/Uplifted

I discovered this fic by accident some time ago, and wound up pretty impressed by it. I immediately thought about folks here. It's the first in a series of alternate histories chronicling Humanity from 1942 to the events of Mass Effect canon.
Basically a first contact story told from a Nazi perspective, I think the author did a great job of showing how people acted in the 1940's and how even within the Nazi party things were not black and white. As stated on the TV Tropes page for this story, it features some of the most flawed characters ever to grace the fandom.

I get that some people will not like the idea of the Quarians uplifting the Germans, but it is well written and the characters are believable, if not always likeable. Though the first book does not address the Holocaust, later ones do.
I am curious as to what you guys think.

 

I enjoyed this well enough, though it's a tad under Library quality, I would say. The author has a Nazi and quarian fetish and somewhere they got tangled up and became a fic. 3/5.

 

As a professional historian, I find the work to be interesting and a good depiction of the attitudes, despite a few inaccuracies. I wouldn't say that he has Nazi fetish, but he does tend to overplay the Quarians a bit. One think that took me a bit to realize is that he really does separate the author opinion from the character opinion though the series. Many characters within the story have a distorted view of the regime they are living in, and this includes the POV chars. No one is really objective in this story and it works to its advantage. Though at times it was shaking to see the world through the eyes of true believers so to speak. Personally, though, I think the trilogy should be taken as one extended book, as I think it really improves in Uplifted Intervention.
I'd say its the most original fic I've read in a while.
It has my vote for the library, with 4/5.

 

This is quite interesting.
I'm really impressed by the attitudes the author gave the characters. They are straight out of the 1940s. Some people might be turned off by the constant racism and homophobia that is displayed by the characters though.

None of the characters are really good guys by current standards. Not the Prussian junkers, not the Quarians and certainly not the SS guys. Even the Allies seem quite ruthless - mostly because we see Commandos who were quite brutal and ruthless. You can only hope that these seriously flawed characters can avoid making everything worse than our timeline.

Spoiler

Which I think they failed at. In one of the interludes they stated that Japan lost 70% of its population in Operation Downfall. That means something close to 50 million deaths in Japan alone. That seams a bit too high to me, even for a worst case scenario though.

The author does need a beta. He said that he had a couple of bad experiences with betas, but still. In it's current state there are a lot typos in the story and wrong words used that sounded similar or maybe ones that auto-correct wrongly chose.
Anyway, it was always clear what he was trying to say, so I didn't mind too much.

I'm not sure if this story is from the spacebattles forum, but if not, those guys could learn something from it. It still has a lot of the attention to detail, the ranks, the weapons, the tanks and divisions, but it focuses on its characters. They are very memorable. All the main characters are unique. Some of the secondary and side characters sort of follow templates like "Prussian Junker", "fanatical SS guy" or "grizzled Commando", but I guess that's unavoidable with the sheer number of characters.

I don't know to what extent it is just a case of perspective and unreliable narrators, but the Russians don't look very good in that story. Same thing for a couple of other nationalities. If you are very patriotic and get angry if your 'side' is portrayed in a negative way in a story - better don't read it if you're from ... well probably anywhere but Germany/Anglosphere.

I'm not a big fan of the future stuff and don't know if I will continue with the story after the WW2 part is over. It sort of spoiled of who will win and who will survive in the interludes. Yeah, some characters are still 'open', but many have already been confirmed to survive. I also think it's a bit silly that all of Hoch's descendants seem to be the same kind of asshole character that he was.

Anyway, despite its shortcomings it is an interesting read and I would give it a 4/5. (If the setting wasn't that interesting I would likely only give it a 3/5)

 

The human characters were great. This story was great and it's concept was wonderfully executed. But I feel that the Quarians felt too human, maybe that was the author intention. Joch is awesome, but I dislike Hanala a bit, she is too "human" in an alien way. Confusing eh? But that's how I felt. While does not hava a Nazi fetish, he does seem to have a Quarian one. I disliked his young Shepard. A mild to strong case of Gary Stu and Tali felt pathetic. The whole 2100s storyline was bad for me.

But it's a great story, even if it get's tiring fairly quickly. A 4/5 for the human parts, specially Hoch, and a 3/5 for the rest. So a 3,5 up to 4 because of it's great idea and how well it was executed.

 

The author deleted the series to do "a total overhaul in spelling, grammar, loose ends, general edginess, excessive cursing and angst." He then re-uploaded it.

This is the new link:
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12574777/1/Uplifted