Line #31 FanFic/ProtocultureEffect


1	''Protoculture Effect'' by Cyclone is a ''Franchise/MassEffect'' crossover/fusion with the ''Anime/{{Robotech}}'' saga:
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3	About a century after the events of ''WesternAnimation/RobotechTheShadowChronicles'', humanity discovers the mass relay hidden in Charon and develops eezo-based technology. After the Relay War (it's a little late for First Contact, after all), the Citadel Council finds itself with an entire bloc of allied alien species to deal with, with the United Earth Alliance sitting in the middle.
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5	The story from there follows the story of Commander John Shepard, the first human Spectre, as he tracks down the rogue Spectre Saren.
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7	Can be read at [[http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/protoculture-effect-robotech-mass-effect.183795/ Spacebattles]] or [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6780828/1/Protoculture_Effect Fanfiction.net]] A spin-off, called ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9229750/1/Blue-and-Red-Stories-From-Shanxi Blue and Red: Stories from Shanxi]]'', is an in-universe documentary about the Relay War. A copy of the codex is available [[http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/protoculture-effect-codex.278289/ here]] and is periodically updated along with the story.
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10	!!Tropes:
11	* AdaptationalBadass: Having survived for reasons stated below, Jenkins gets to show off his stuff here (mostly involving [[{{BFG}} Heavy Weapons]]).
12	** The Batarians as a whole. In the games and canon, they were basically a joke race of thugs, often compared out-of-universe to North Korea in space- they talked a big game, but were technologically and militarily behind everyone else. Here, though, we get a Batarian Squadmate, and the Hegemony have managed to create a Reflex Cannon (even if a less effective version), have mecha of their own, and have begun incorporating Thanix technology into their weapons.
13	** Every race has begun doing this once the Sentinels make their appearance. The Turians begin fielding new, effective power armor, the Asari have been delving deep into their Beacon and retrieving particle weapons and Silaris Armor for commandos, the Salarians have come up with entirely new ship classes, and mecha have spread beyond those who base their technology on Protoculture.
14	* AlienBlood: [[spoiler:Shepard]] bleeds green after a head injury, revealing [[spoiler: his [[HalfHumanHybrid quarter-invid]] heritage (on his grandmother's side)]].
15	** He then uses it to make a humorous TakeThat to the asari, because the invid are ''way'' better at mix-and-matching various races than them.
16	* AllThereInTheManual: Like many Mass Effect 'fics, this one has a [[http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/protoculture-effect-codex.278289/ codex]]
17	** Sadly, the codex was taken down from Website/FanFictionDotNet, but entries are still put into the chapters of the main story.
18	* AlternateUniverse: The presence of robotechnology and the Sentinel Alliance adds quite a few major and minor background changes, such as the batarians still having an embassy on the Citadel (the Council took their side on the Skyllian Verge this time around), and the quarians having friendlier port options in Sentinel space.
19	** Also, the introduction of the Sentinel Alliance's potent robotechnology has inspired massive advances in weaponry from nearly every race. For example, the asari have learned how to make particle rifles similar to the ones Javik uses in Mass Effect 3, while the batarians have created a reflex-cannon-esque plasma gun and have unlocked weapons secrets from the Leviathan of Dis, specifically Thanix weaponry.
20	* AmicablyDivorced: After an AccidentalMarriage, Shepard and Hunter decided to break it off after four months (specifically waiting to spoil the betting pool on how long it would last).
21	* AttackOfTheFiftyFootWhatever: Hunter, Liara, Tali and Kaidan find themselves on the wrong end of a full-sized Zentraedi.
22	** Also, the veritechs (capable of turning into giant robots themselves), geth armatures, thresher maws, and (off screen) the volus (who now use mecha as part of their armed forces).
23	** In their attack on Terra Nova, the batarians have brought their own mecha.
24	* AwesomePersonnelCarrier: The Mako is even more badass with the addition of robotechnology. No, it doesn't transform (they already have ''two'' veritechs, so that would be redundant).
25	* TheBattlestar: Given how powerful Veritechs are and how central they are to human fighter combat, most warships do carry at least some of the powerful ships.
26	* BearsAreBadNews: In the Relay War, this was definitely the case for the turians, who had to fight power armor equipped Karbarrans... who resemble upright, sentient bears. It's mentioned that their handheld guns are normally considered crew-mounted weapons.
27	* BigDamnHeroes: Lampshaded; Jenkins says that Shepard was playing this role with Tali when he was picked up by the beacon.
28	* CompositeCharacter: Some of the possible background elements for Shepard in the game are given to Kaidan and Ashley. Kaidan, for example is the Sole Survivor from Akuze, while Ashley was Ruthless on Torfan.
29	* CurbStompBattle: The first fight between turian fighters and veritechs did ''not'' go well for the turians. Most battles in ''Blue and Red'' are told from both perspectives. The first fighter battle had to be all-human simply because there ''weren't'' any turian survivors left- only one survived the initial fight, but was killed later in the war.
30	-->"Don't get me wrong. They were good pilots; they knew how to fly. But when you're flying a fighter and using tactics all built on the same principles your enemy discarded as obsolete a century and a half ago, you're pretty much screwed."
31	*** It took until the Mehrkuri Fighter to be introduced for the air supremacy war to start to turn ''slightly'' in the Turian's favor- until that point, the Turians had lost over three hundred fighters, while the total human losses among fighercraft numbered at ''two.'' And those were taken out by ship-based anti-fighter lasers, not fighter combat.
32	*** Tyune Satarn even points out that despite the Mehrkuri evening the odds, Veritechs are still more heavily armed and manuverable than their turian counterparts, and despite the advantages the new fighter had, fighter combat would still favor the humans for most of the war.
33	** Surprisingly for a Mass Effect crossover, which have a tendency to stomp on the Turians in the First Contact War in order to show how "Bad Ass" the crossed faction is, this is largely averted in the story. The FCW lasted ''three years'' and ended in a stalemate, and pains are taken to make sure that everyone knows that the Sentinel Alliance is about equal to the Citadel Council in terms of technology.
34	* CuttingOffTheBranches: Subverts this for a lot of sidequests/choices or background details by having another party member take a shot at them.
35	* DeadFic: Neither story has been updated since 2015.
36	* DeusExMachina: Invoked by Corporal Dennis Nicholson in "Blue and Red," where he lists his options for what the humans could do after the Turians breached the Fold-Comm relay as "Fight to the death, surrender, or be saved by something ridiculously improbable that no one could ever predict. [[LampshadeHanging Hey, given some of the weird shit that happened in the Robotech Wars, that was a perfectly valid possibility.]]" [[spoiler: They surrendered instead.]]
37	* DocumentaryEpisode: ''Blue and Red'' is told primarily as a series of interviews between human and turian veterans of the Relay War, usually on opposite sides of the same battle(s).
38	* EarlyBirdCameo: A number of characters who appeared in later games show up here. Most notably Jacob Taylor, Kasumi Goto and [[spoiler: Legion ]].
39	* EnergyWeapon: Handheld laser weapons and laser carbines are available... but at the same time, the story notes that they can be finicky, require a lot of calibration, and that up-armoring soldiers reduces laser weapons' effectiveness, despite their ability to ignore kinetic barrier shielding.
40	** The finickiness is only in regards to a particular weapon that is still in use as a marksman rifle because it has good range and power, and amazing accuracy when properly calibrated. So when a certain turian acquires one, the following line should not come as a surprise to anyone:
41	--> '''Garrus''': "Garrus to all points. I love this rifle. That is all."
42	* [[EvenEvilHasStandards Even Robotech-Equipped Spectres Have Standards]]: While Shepard is confused by it, he allows Tali and Liara to undergo Cyclone trials so they can go on ground missions... as long as no one makes a Cyclone that works for krogan.
43	* {{Expy}}: Jane Hunter is a slightly transparent one for Fem!Shepard.
44	* FantasticRacism: Ashley has a more nuanced view of Aliens than she does in canon. She's suspicious of the Council races, like she was in canon... but she grew up in the Sentinel Alliance, which has such races as Garudans, invid, Karbarrans, Perytonians, and Tirolians. She even has Zentraedi and Praxian blood in her. So she's not prejudiced against ''all'' aliens, per se... but she does hold the Citadel Races with a measure of caution, because while they ''gained'' the respect of the other races through combat (beating the Haydonites, the Zentraedi, the Robotech Masters, and the invid), the only time the Council and the Sentinels have gone to war, the end result was inconclusive and led to somewhat of a cold war between them.
45	** On another hand, the Sentinels are, as a whole, very much not racist, as much of their strength came from working together. They even take in AI's, which allow an AI encountered in a very minor side quest in Mass Effect 1 to request asylum. Quarians, due to the similarity of their situation with how humanity once was in the Third Robotech War, also receive a lot of sympathy from them.
46	** The Sentinel Alliance doesn't like the Citadel Council, though, for their handling of the Relay War. When the conflict was only between the humans and the turians, the Citadel (in the Alliance's eyes) did nothing to try to halt the war so long as the turians were "punishing an upstart race." But as soon as the rest of the Alliance took to the field in an invasion of a turian colony, the Citadel scrambled diplomats to try to secure a peace with this new interstellar coalition of species. This unfortunately gave the Citadel the appearance of a callous and uncaring group who only started caring about the war once it behooved them to do so, instead of reigning in their attack dogs.
47	** Not helping their case is that one of their stated reasoning behind starting negotiations when the rest of the Sentinels Alliance took to the field was because since the humans were cooperating with different alien species, they could in fact, be reasoned with, instead of being ruthless barbarians like they thought we were. This was due to misidentifying humanity for old School Zentraedi due to using similar tech bases. And to add insult to injury, they never bothered to verify the accuracy of the intel from the Turian Hierarchy for themselves, who would later take it as a matter of pride to win the war and couldn't really be trusted to be objective anymore.
48	* FixFic: Used sparingly. The main difference so far is [[RedShirt Corporal Jenkins]] surviving the drone ambush in the game's first mission specifically because he's wearing a [[PoweredArmor Cyclone]] this time around.
49	* ForWantOfANail: The Sentinels didn't have much experience with mass effect technology before meeting the Citadel, which some people questioned, as the Prothean ruins on Mars are a matter of record in canon... [[spoiler: except that the ruins were, in this timeline, under Mars Base Sara, which was destroyed in the First Robotech War by Lisa Hayes, obliterating the ruins. Yes, that means [[NiceJobBreakingItHero the plans for the Crucible, too]].]]
50	** Because Tali didn't grab the same recording as in canon, what the Council and the Sentinels get is the cut scene where Nihlus gets executed by Saren. While yes, it still proves he's guilty, they have no idea about the Reapers or the Conduit- not to mention that they have no idea Benezia is a traitor until ''after'' they talk to Shiala (once she's freed from the Thorian's control).
51	* HalfHumanHybrid: Ashley Williams is known as the Butcher of Torfan in this timeline, and a very good soldier. This makes a lot more sense when you learn that she has both the blood of Zentraedi and Praxians in her veins (Zentraedi being genetically programmed for war, and Praxians being essentially a race of Space Amazons).
52	** Shepard is one-quarter invid on his grandmother's side.
53	** It's mentioned that the Zentraedi are so absorbed by humanity that many humans have at least some Zentraedi blood in them.
54	** WordOfGod is that Shepard could have children with aliens if he embraces the invid side of his heritage.
55	* HeelFaceTurn: The invid are full members of the Sentinel Alliance by the time of the story.
56	* HumansAreSpecial: Lieutenant Commander Tyune Satarn (aka [[NicknamingTheEnemy "Boney von Richthofen"]]) firmly believes this. [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]], however, in that when she says "special," she means "touched in the head."
57	* HumansAreWarriors: Humans (and eventually the rest of the Sentinel Alliance) are the first ones since the Krogan to attack Turian Space directly, and fought them to a standstill for three years.
58	* HoldingBackThePhlebotinum: Something always keeps happening that delays the adjustments and upgrades of Shepard's personal Veritech, which in turn, delays it getting deployed.
59	* HumongousMecha: This being is a ''Robotech'' crossover, the ''Normandy'' also carries a pair of veritech fighters as well as the Mako.
60	** Recent chapters have revealed that the Citadel is trying to copy various mecha. So far, the most noteworthy addition on that front are the Predator P powered armor (non-transformable turian armor made to be an answer to Cyclones), a volus military unit that relies on their own three meter tall mecha (which given the size of volus, is pretty big for them), and both turian and batarian {{Walking Tank}}s.
61	* InterspeciesRomance: "Boney von Richthofen," an extremely talented turian pilot who was among the first to shoot down a veritech, eventually settled down with a veritech pilot (This being Robotech, of course it was the pilot she had a rivalry with during the Relay War). Note that "Boney" is not her real name, but is instead a [[NicknamingTheEnemy nickname given to her by her enemies]], as a shout out to the World War One fighter ace "The Red Baron."
62	** This is a tradition that humans seem to have taken to with a gusto. Pure Zentraedi are extinct, having bred so thoroughly with humanity. Ashley is part Praxian, and has a higher than normal percentage of Zentraedi in her gene code. One of Shepard's grandparents was an Invid.
63	** Both Tali and Liara show interest in Shepard.
64	* LoopholeAbuse: The UEA clearly notes that the Treaty of Farixen's restrictions on dreadnoughts is based on mass accelerator cannon yield. It has nothing to do with the ships' actual size (of their carriers, for example) nor does it mention ''[[WaveMotionGun reflex cannons]]''. The Council lets them get away with it in exchange for getting the rest of the Sentinels to agree with certain other restrictions in the Citadel Conventions. To show that the Alliance is at least throwing the Citadel a bone, the Alliance still maintains a few dreadnoughts. Jane Hunter's mother, Hannah Hunter, is captain of one of them (the ''Kilimanjaro'').
65	* MythologyGag: Garrus recognizes the female turian heading security at a facility on one mission:
66	---> '''Garrus''': "I have reach, but... she has flexibility."
67	** Garrus finds a laser rifle which can ignore kinetic barriers, has decent power, and superb accuracy... as long as it is properly calibrated. And it needs lots of calibration.
68	** Also, Ashley punched a certain reporter.
69	** The armor that the asari use (when in service to Matriarch Benezia) is described as using "compressed diamond" as part of its armor composition, which indicates Silaris armor (one of the upgrades you could get for the ''Normandy SR-2'' in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'').
70	** Coupled with LampshadeHanging, at one point Jenkins mentions to Bhatia that he doesn't feel like either should be where they are. In the game, Jenkins was the first companion killed off, and Bhatia was never met- the fate of her corpse was the subject of a minor early side quest.
71	** The particle beam rifles that those same asari use are clearly based on Prothean particle beam rifles, such as the ones you get once you recruit Javik in ''VideoGame/MassEffect3''.
72	* NoBiochemicalBarriers: The invid have this, as Shepard jokes. Turians, on the other hand, do ''not'' have this, and as such spends part of a chapter getting his stomach pumped after eating the wrong type of food.
73	* NumberTwo: Lieutenant Commander Jane Hunter, descendant of Rick and Lisa and an old Academy friend of Shepard's.
74	* OhCrap: DoubleSubversion when the turian forces attacked a hill on Shanxi and ran into a pair of antique Tomahawk destroids (that's ''Warhammers'' to you TabletopGame/BattleTech fans, only with even ''more'' guns and missiles). First, they got scared, then they started laughing, then the destroids opened fire and the laughter quickly ended.
75	** Turian Admirals and Naval personal were feeling this way after a few squadrons of fighters, in the course of a battle, completely rewrote the book on fighter combat for the Citadel Races, slaughtered all but one Turian fighter, and heavily damaged several ships. Thankfully, this one-sidedness is alleviated once the mehrkuri fighter is brought into production.
76	** [[spoiler: The main reason why the Relay War was so bad was because the Turians went in ''heavy'' to counter a perceived threat- namely, they reacted on the assumption that they were facing the ''Zentraedi,'' who they have no experience with except for energy readings matching the ships they're fighting, and when they found the Zentraedi glassing a planet. Naturally, high command freaked out and sent in forces outfitted to take down heavy weapons platforms, which helped a lot when the humans revealed their Mecha.]]
77	** Once the Batarians reveal that they have a weapon that is comparable to a reflex cannon (which turns out to be AwesomeButImpractical, as while it can blow enemy ships to hell well enough, the firing drains the entire ship of power and is "only" one third as powerful as a real reflex cannon), the Sentinals and the UEF have a freak out because up until that moment, they were sure that ''they'' had the advantage of firepower should a conflict come up. The existence of this Batarian ship suddenly means that the firepower gap, while still in the favor of the Sentinel Alliance, suddenly got a lot smaller.
78	* OriginalCharacter: Kilika, a batarian Special Intervention Unit operative assigned to Shepard's command.
79	* PocketRocketLauncher: Wrist-mounted micro-missile launchers as a standard weapon built into Veritech "Cyclone" (swaps between a battle harness and a motorbike) PoweredArmor, and hip-mounted clip-on versions as well. Each rocket is about the size of the average thumb and explodes in a similar blast radius to assault grenades.
80	* PoorCommunicationKills: At one point in the past, the Turians found a Zentraedi fleet bombing a planet into oblivion. They then designated these aliens as an extreme threat. When the humans were found using the same technology as the Zentraedi, the Hierarchy thought they were at an extreme threat and went in ''extremely'' heavy. Humans, seeing an alien battlefleet making no attempts to communicate and going after them with everything they had, responded in kind, remembering the destruction of the four Robotech Wars. The result was a three-year-long conflict.
81	* PoweredArmor: The Citadel Council started developing armor of their own after the Cyclones show up. Garrus gets a suit so he doesn't feel underprotected. He is seen later trying to add missile launchers to it. It's unknown if he succeeded or not.
82	** Cyclones in general count as this.
83	* RightForTheWrongReasons: Slightly averted with Operation Nutcracker, an operation undertaken during the Relay War (the equivalent of the First Contact War in canon). The Sentinels discovered that a planet in turian space (Telos) had massive orbital refueling complexes and was being used as a waypoint that turian fleets could use to get to Shanxi. Operation Nutcracker involved going there and blowing up those stations to prevent fleets from hitting Shanxi. It worked... except that while, yes, the turian fleet did use Telos as a stopping point, it was so that they could discharge their FTL drives in the magnetosphere of the planet, ''not'' so that they could refuel (the complexes were just an afterthought). So while the planet was an important stopping point, it was ''not'' for the reason the Sentinels thought, and Telos continued to be used for the rest of the war.
84	* RockBeatsLaser: Surprisingly averted for a Mass Effect crossover, which have a tendency to make the Citadel much weaker. By WordOfGod, the Citadel and the Sentinels are about even, tech-wise, with both sides having advantages over the other (The Sentinels have the advantage in energy weapons and FTL, while the Citadel has a far more extensive knowledge of element zero technology, and so on).
85	** During the Battle of Shanxi, two ''extremely'' old Tomahawk Destroids are capable of routing a Turian force for precisely this reason- they were some of Mankind's first destroids, and thus wasn't designed to fight off lasers, plasma guns, or particle weapons, and thus weren't equipped with armor specialized for holding off those types of attacks. What they ''did'' have was armor developed to stop attacks from ''human'' opponents, which at the time meant bullets and other kinetic weapons... which the Turians rely on.
86	* ShipTease: Leaning heavily towards Shepard/Tali already (she's known Shepard since before the events of the game now, so they've already had time to grow on each other), and maybe Hunter/Kaidan.
87	* ShoutOut: Turians have [[Series/BabylonFive a dish called breen that is just like Swedish meatballs]]. Too bad for Garrus that ''wasn't'' breen he found in the fridge...
88	** At one point, Shepard states that "[[Franchise/{{Transformers}} Freedom is the right of all sapient beings.]]"
89	** The previously-mentioned planet [[VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic Telos]] with its massive orbital refueling complexes.
90	* SpaceColdWar: Much like ''{{FanFic/Renegade}}'', the Citadel and Sentinel Alliance don't always see eye to eye. The UEA sometimes acts as a mediator between the two, but even they sometimes engage in acts geared towards wooing certain races over to the Alliance's side.
91	** Some of the effects are already apparent: Batarians have developed a form of reflex cannon-esque weapon in addition to reverse-engineered Thanix-esque weapons gained from the Leviathan of Dis, the asari have new biotic armor as well as Prothean particle weapons, the volus have their own mecha platoons, and the major Council races have all started to adopt new ship designs and philosophies.
92	* SparedByTheAdaptation: Nirali Bhatia, Jenkins, and the AI who was siphoning money from Quasar machines in Mass Effect 1 (Shepard granted it asylum and named it Bishop).
93	* TheStationsOfTheCanon: Often averted where possible. Especially regarding when and where certain characters get introduced (ex.: both Tali and Jacob are on board the ''Normandy'' at the beginning).
94	** Interestingly, some of these events have both been averted and played straight. For example, Nirali Bhatia, a minor character whose only existence was as a minor plot point in a small sidequest in Mass Effect 1, not only survives Eden Prime, but joins up with the crew. [[spoiler: Unfortunately, she does die later in the timeline, by being ripped apart by the slaves of the Thorian.]]
95	** Another example: In canon, a turian named Tonn Actus had a set of Wrex's ancestral armor. In this story, he had it... but was forced to sell it to cover expenses. He sold it to Donovan Hock, an antagonist of Kasumi Goto, DLC squad member for Mass Effect 2.
96	* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Hunter for Fem!Shep. There was also a third friend of the two named James [[StealthPun Farmer]]. Shepard is Colonist/War Hero, Hunter is Spacer/Ruthless (as is Ashley), Farmer was Earthborn/sadly ''not'' Sole Survivor (that's Kaidan).
97	* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: Kaidan uses ''[[MacrossMissileMassacre all]]'' [[MacrossMissileMassacre of his veritech's missiles]] against a thresher maw. Somewhat justified because even in canon, they are very hard to kill and take a lot of punishment. That justification, however, is lessened because the maw could not have stood up to ''one'' of those missiles, let alone ''all'' of them. Zig-zagged, though, because Kaidan has the "Sole Survivor" background, and has some issues regarding thresher maws and how they killed off his unit.
98	* ThrowEmToTheWolves: Shepard gets Wrex's ancestral armor back by meeting Hock alone, introducing him to Wrex, then leaving to go about his business.
99	* TransformingMecha: Plenty.
100	* TronLines: The armor that Benezia wears (said to be the asari answer to Cyclones) have these.
101	* WaveMotionGun: The Sentinel Alliance uses this as a loophole in the Treaty of Farixen; the treaty's terms limiting the construction of dreadnoughts only limit firepower based on mass accelerator weapons, not on the extremely powerful reflex cannons.
102	** The batarians have recently created a reflex-cannon-esque weapon for one of their ships. The Sentinel Alliance is not pleased, even though it ''only'' has about one-third the power of one of ''their'' reflex weapons, and is a far greater power hog.
103	* WrestlerInAllOfUs: Kaidan, in a veritech, grabs a geth fighter in midair and ''piledrives'' it.

Context FanFic / ProtocultureEffect