It's casualties, not causalities. They mean very different things.

I would have paid WAY more attention to my XO if they'd been Amadeus Redcloud. Like, Damn.

Wow, this story is excellently written. Looking forward to your next update.

You're in my author's alert, and back when this story was first published, I checked it out briefly and realized I couldn't understand anything, as I was about as unfamiliar with mass effect as can be and I was a bit less used to reading in English, though it would have been good enough to follow a story with elements I was familiar with, it wasn't good enough to understand and appreciate this one.

So I tried to read for a while, maybe half a chapter, and then gave up and pretty much forgot all about it.

Fastforward to now: I was in the middle of my second playthrough of ME1 when I remembered this fanfiction (though "remembered" in this case means "pretty sure i've tried reading one mass effect fanfiction before, also pretty sure it was with a female shepard with a colonist background" and literally nothing else) and after a bit of struggle to find it, I'm finally able to read and appreciate it!

First of all, I'm so happy to see a sort of fix-it for Nihlus because after a playing through the prologue a few times I just really wanted a dialogue option that goes "dont fucking go alone on eden prime you'll get killed you idiot" in the game. It was really interesting to see how it changed the Eden Prime mission, especially with regards to Saren and his betrayal (as there was no "the turian killed your turian friend" thing in this story, unlike the game).

I'm a sucker for good, interesting worldbuilding, and you really delivered. I'm only familiar with the first game, so I don't know how much is canon exactly and how much was extrapolated, as I seem to remember you often do in your fanfictions (one of the reasons I'm interested in what you write, in general, even when I'm not in the fandom), but it all feels really detailed and believable and I'll probably reread this story a few times if only for the worldbuilding.

Also really love Shepard and her characterization and how her backstory (colonist, ruthless, if i'm not mistaken) influenced her, and how she's curious about alien stuff, and her insights on things, and I know I'm not very good at explaining things but I really love it, all right?

Not sure if I can say I'm looking forward to the next chapter, as it doesn't seem like it's been updated recently, but I would like to say I really enjoyed reading it so far and even if it's all I'll ever get to read of this story, I'm really happy it's there and I that can read it.

Loved reading this story! You have such a good way of writing with detail, and with the detail rich universe of ME it merged beautifully.
Im sad to see that there is no recent update, and hope that you decide to pick up the story again someday!

Read some of your Naruto stuff and saw that you wrote a ME story as well! Always cool to see shared fandoms. I had a feeling you would have a cool female Shepard voice and I’m glad to have been right! I like all of your different nuances in each female lead.

I see that it hasn’t been updated in over 5 years but I’ll enjoy what’s been posted to be sure. Off to chapter 2 . .!

Love this - hope you have time to continue it! :-) The pacing is nice and your characterisation is excellent - true to the characters and distinct from one another.

KYH was great this week and I want more, so I'm checking your other stuff and this is pretty excellent, and has me wanting to replay ME. Love your Shepherd. She's fascinating like most of your protags. This really feels like Mass Effect 1, a Shepherd interested in aliens to such a degree is a great way to build the universe and I love it, and it really enhances the ME universe for me.

Not sure if you're still working on this but I'm following it regardless. Thanks for writing something so great.

At some point while reading I felt like I needed to have a bag of confetti, just so I could toss it in glee every time you filled a plot hole, acquired Shepard appropriate reinforcements/gear, battered away false logic, respected military regs, or cleverly presented the pits and perks of interspecies interaction. You are one boss of an author. Do you have a Patreon, I wonder? I've read several of your other works, and it all just feels like it deserves to be paid for.

I pretty much devoured this fic. I love all the details and the politics and the lovely humor Shepard has and how she is curious like an asari undergrad. The extra personnel was such a great idea. More than three def sounds better. Lovely work and thank you so much for sharing. Your Shepard is pretty great. I am so excited to see what you have in store.

It's wonderful to see this updated, I had begun to think it abandoned.

I like the way that you are depicting turians as their own race and not simply plated humans with a few nifty biological quirks. The emphasis on psychology and culture has definitely caught my interest as well.

The fact that you've pulled in a number of new OCs doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would, they've integrated fluidly so far and the way Shepard has utilized them thus far makes far more sense than a team of three mowing everything down.

All in all this has been a wonderful read and I look forward to more.

It's always a treat to read the work of an author I enjoy. Even if I am an unreliable reviewer, I promise I always appreciate your efforts. I do love how you delve into worlds at unconventional angles. Though, I can't wait until you get to ME 2, as the characters-particularly of Thane-are my favorites in the series. Thank you for sharing!

I'm so excited to see this update! And I'm really impressed by the detail and realism you put into crafting the landing/assault/entry sequence. I'm sure your military beta was a big help with that as well. Personally I also really like the dialogue Shepard uses to give orders. It's not full of jargon but it also isn't relying on cheesy one-liners. I'm really excited to see where things go next, especially with character dynamics. Will we get to hear more about what the Turians and Wrex think about human military tactics and personnel? I'm assuming they'd be at least textbook-familiar with things, but that's very different from getting to marvel/wince at people when you get to watch them do the crazy things in person.

SQUEEEEE! I've been waiting for this forever! You've made my day today, this story is just FANTASTIC. I can't even wrap my head around all the research you had to do in order to write this.

After going through several revisions in my head, here's what I've got for you:

You need to adjust the balance between characterization, world-building, and description. Your diction is great, your prose confident and strong, but I feel empty, having read through 10 chapters to be introduced to a character that I don't really care about. I've come to know intimately the viewpoint of Shepard the professional, and while I can respect _her_, I must confess to the difficulty I am having at seeing Shepard as a person. I mean, _sure_ she needs to eat and sleep like the rest of us, but beyond a few tidbits of dry humor, there's basically nothing.

At the same time, however, much of the momentum you have going for her comes from that very same hard-line professionalism. As such, I cannot consider it a good idea for you to try and humanize Shepard any more than what you have.

Before I can dismiss characterization, however, I must pay attention to why it irks me so. Looking back on the chapters, I can clearly see that the majority of character interaction is tied up in dialogue, and the dialogue is almost exclusively used for worldbuilding. I'd make the suggestion of adjusting dialogue, but you do such an excellent job at building up the world around the characters, and using the dialogue to this end is a remarkably beautiful solution to introducing details. So without an alternate suggestion in hand, I must leave the current setup as-is.

And without an alternative avenue, I must also leave characterization alone altogether.

So what, then, keeps me invested while also leaving me more and more empty with each chapter? To answer that I turned to my memories of other genres. A good detective fic will tickle the mind with descriptions and personal behaviors while also commenting on the dreary realities of life. A good adventure piece normally tends so heavily towards the fantastical that it is not at all uncommon to see novelizations that would fit well in the category. But I see that you have tagged this story as both drama and romance. I can name 3 fics that I know of that are tagged for drama, of which 2 are also tagged as romance pieces. Of Kittens and Broken Things by Recidiva does a _masterful_ job at characterization. Reading it, I am so immersed in the characters that there's nothing left for worldbuilding. I get to see the world of Mass Effect through the eyes of Lal Shepard, Thane Krios, and Garrus Vakarian. Here I am treated to a screenplay that spends almost all of its time building up the world. I feel that I am more a fly on the wall here than in the very shoes of each character over there. The other dual-tagged fic, Changeling by Dandy in the Aspic, involves a Shenko romance between two stupid people (which is generally the way of drama fics, this thing about "people being stupid"). Over there the POV switches between Shepard and Alenko and does an excellent job of building up a profile for the reader of who each character is. The third fic, which is pure drama, is Stretch Marks by 4mation-is-1derful. It concentrates on Shepard's first time looking into a mirror post-resurrection. Over its course, I came to know intimately its Shepard's sense of _wrong body_.

In contrast to all of this, you use the characters to build up your world. You aren't wrong to do this, and I must hasten to repeat that the way you implemented it was beautifully elegant, but I came here expecting a _lot_ more characterization than what I got. And I found it... disappointing. I also find that disappointment difficult to reconcile with the excellent writing that I've seen so far. Perhaps it is enough, then, to say that while you've used a familiar setup to do different things, I'm not so sure that different works here.