Subject: Yeah. This sounds *really* bad... (plus more thoughts)
Author:
Posted on: 2012-01-12 20:51:00 UTC

Yeah.

Granted, most mass accelerator rounds are actually smaller than 8mm, and since mass accelerator rounds use mass effect fields to speed them up beyond other physical means (to the point that a paint chip could be just as lethal as a nuclear weapon at sufficient velocity), well, that could handwave that. But given that hypersonic speeds are also being fired from the Starcraft variation of gaussian tech, I'm not sure that we'd be in business there...

And then there's the whole fact that the Terrans can perfectly understand what the aliens are saying if the Zerg don't speak and the Protoss automatically translate. If that's true, then the Terrans shouldn't be able to understand any of the aliens there. The fact that not all species speak the same language in the ME-verse is actually a minor plot point in the Thane romance, since the only reason 'siha' comes through as Thane's term of endearment for Shepard is because Shepard's translator glitches out on the term and is unable to translate it effectively. Also, you'll hear various quarian phrases filter through the translators at times, and there's supposedly a point in the first game's Bring Down The Sky DLC where the batarians are supposedly speaking in their own language to each other. This kind of instant translation for people without ME-verse translators is actually a very common error that's made in most crossover fanfiction with the ME-verse, but it's worse with fics like this that involve other sci-fi continua with sprawling alien stuffs.

As for everything else...

...Yeah, all this sounds bad enough that I think it could-- and should-- be taken to the sporking block. If the author handwaved the technology of an entire species, then there's something wrong with this story entirely. I mean, this author is committing tons of crimes against the tech of both continua, even going so far as to completely break canon with the whole Xel'Naga being behind ME-verse tech bit.

And you know, the crazy thing is that this author actually does the reverse of what a lot of other Mass Effect crossovers with another sci-fi continua tend to do: in most crossovers of this nature, it's actually the ME-verse that has the inferior technology. So I'm half beginning to think that this is a stealth parody of that tendency in ME crossover fiction.

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