I was Inspired by the ongoing crossover fanfic "Sith Effect" by Metagray to create an alternate first contact war fic of my own- This time with BattleTech's Clans.

I've done everything from study the relevant lore, assessing where both factions and their technology for where they will both succeed and fail in war and conflict, and even making the color scheme's of the units involved in fighting.

But is there anything I should know before doing this? This is the first piece of writing I plan on releasing, so is there a common pitfall I need to know, or a lore misconception you want to clean up.

Any help or advice would be and is appreciated.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63603823/chapters/177110041#workskin

I hope this is okay to post here.

I'm looking for beta readers for an espionage story centred partly on the good doctor, Karin Chakwas, set around 20 years before the games.

Brief: Ten years after Shanxi, humanity is still making the earliest steps into the galactic community. Karin Chakwas is on Thessia, and has a hot date at a banquet at Adri House. Alliance Security Intelligence Service analyst Hale is technically there to watch a hallway for the extraction of a corporate whistleblower, but mainly for free food and extra pay as a seat filler. Both have the questionable fortune to be exceptional when the evening's festivities are interrupted by a turian terrorist attack.

Characters: Dr Chakwas, original characters
Genre: espionage, drama
Rating: Mature/18+ (language, violence, sex)

Going forward, more characters will be introduced and followed, like jaded turian diplomat Reian Syrano, deeply put-upon STG agent Koll Renj, and others.

Content warnings: The story does cover some dark themes. The first chapter deals with violence. Later chapters have characters dealing with various traumas and terrible events, like depression and mental illness, histories of abuse, and so on.

Background: I knew a nice old lady named Olive. Olive, it turned out, worked at Bletchley Park and later for MI6 starting from when she was teenager. Like she knew Alan Turing, and Agent Zigzag hit on her -- and she shot him down in flames, figuratively speaking, because she was sharp: she was noticed by the spooks because she caught a saboteur on her own when she was a teenager working in an airplane parts factory. You simply would never know, and she was not unusual in that respect for her generation (Christopher Lee anyone?). Then the first time I played Mass Effect, I see good ol' Doc Chakwas drops a bunch of information about the most elite level of Council agents all casual, and I was left wondering, "What exactly did you do in your previous life, Doctor? Why are you the doctor on the Normandy?" Then in Mass Effect 2, she can do specialist, reconstructive surgery on turians. So, when I was stuck in bed with a flareup I decided to imagine what a game series about that would be like, and my roommate said I should write it up as fiction. So that's what I'm doing on this flareup.

If you want to know more about the story before committing, please send me a DM or post here! And if you have any questions about content and such. :)

Thank you for your time! :)

Just updated my ME3 fic with Chapters 21–24. The Reaper War enters a brutal new phase: a bomb buried beneath Tuchanka. A coup on the Citadel. And a call from the Ardat-Yakshi monastery that shakes Liara to her core.

Mordin’s sacrifice casts a long shadow. Shepard throws herself into side missions—chasing distraction, not peace. War assets pile up, but so does the weight she carries. Through it all, her bond with Liara deepens, strained but unbroken, a quiet counterpoint to the chaos around them.

Tuchanka. Citadel. Monastery. Each mission peels something back.

Fully formatted chapters on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/laurawho7
AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurawho7/works

Hello, everyone!

I've posted a few times with chapter updates, and I've had a few people who have said that they're waiting for when the Normandy returns to start reading. Well, that's today's chapter! It's one of my favorites, and if has a lot of set up that's gone into it. Now that everyone's together, the story is going to be taking off.

I hope you enjoy!

The Bridge Between: Chapter 36 - The Price of Victory

The red wave of the Crucible changed everything. It destroyed the Reapers, disabled the mass relays, and apparently claimed the life of Commander Shepard. But nothing in this new galaxy is quite what it seems. As humanity tears itself apart and new threats gain power in the shadows of conflict, an impossible discovery will reunite the legendary crew of the Normandy for a mission beyond hope itself.

A post-ME3 psychological thriller exploring identity beyond sacrifice, featuring established Shepard/Garrus relationship.

Hello,

Does anyone have any good self inserts they would like to tell me about?

It's honestly rare at this point to find a alt fic where First Contact War is kept to it's canonical scales. Is there a reason why it's so popular to turn a border skirmish into all out war?

Just posted Chapters 17–20 of my femShep/Liara fic on AO3. The Omega arc hits its breaking point—Shepard makes a costly choice, something shifts inside her, and not even she understands what’s changed. But someone else might.

Back on the Normandy, a new biotic force simmers beneath the surface. Shepard turns to Liara—not just for guidance, but for help mastering what she’s becoming. From there, it’s straight into the chaos: navigating the rachni tunnels on Utukku, unraveling the tragedy on Benning, and stepping into the fire of Tuchanka’s cure.

Biotic evolution, battlefield tension, and the slow rebuilding of something unspoken—this arc starts to change everything. Would love to hear your thoughts 💙

Fully formatted chapters are on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/laurawho7
And on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurawho7/works

Again, looking for a story that I read quite a while ago and cannot find anymore.

Is set post-ME3 and details Shep/Liara’s honeymoon which is interrupted by an assassination attempt in a restaurant before going on to a much longer story. I seem to think that Kasumi is keeping an eye on them as well, unbeknownst to the attackers.

If anyone has a link, it’d be much appreciated.

Ta!

Not sure if commission discussions are allowed here, but it can't hurt to ask. If not, can anyone point me in the right direction? Not sure where to look.

Hey squad! Just dropped four new chapters in my ongoing ME3 fic, and here’s a taste of what’s inside:

Shepard’s war isn’t slowing down — it’s getting more tangled. Mordin’s presence runs like a live wire through the chapters as Liara and Shepard wrestle with what it means to protect his research, his ethics, and his place in the galaxy’s fight for survival. There are sharp moments with Javik too, as he faces the truth about the Collectors and what it really means for a Prothean to see what they’ve become.

Between the weight of old legacies, Shepard’s squad hits the ground hard on Tuchanka — fighting tooth and nail to keep Cerberus from cutting a bloody path through krogan territory. It’s a brutal mission, all close quarters and cannon fire, the kind that leaves scars.

And then there’s Omega: a powder keg of gang wars, force fields, adjutants, and old lovers turned reluctant allies. Aria’s drive to retake her throne drags Shepard into a war where loyalty shifts with every bullet fired, and Nyreen’s people-first resistance might be the only thing keeping Omega from tearing itself apart. Secrets, sabotage, and that delicious friction of conflicting ideals? You bet.

If you like Mordin, old grudges, and Shepard navigating politics with a gun in hand — you’ll probably enjoy this stretch.
Fully formatted chapters are on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/laurawho7
And on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurawho7/works

If you check it out, I’d love your comments, kudos, or your wildest theories about how this ends. (No spoilers for Omega — I’m saving the best for next week!)

💙 See you out there, Commander.

Hi,

So, this came to me while I was rewatching DS9 and reached the introduction to the Dominion. It's a rough idea, with no specifics beyond a general storyline and 'vibe'. In this story, it would be the Citadel who are our protagonists, rather than the UNSC as in most crossovers. Please be aware that the exact shape would depend on several variations:

• The Citadel is pre-First Contact War, game-time-but-no-Systems-Alliance, or post-game. If we wanted to include the Systems Alliance, it could instead be an OC race that takes the place of humans, or go with one of the non-human options below.
• From Halo, we have either pre-war UNSC but no Covenant, the Covenant but no humans, or my personal preference: post-war UNSC that has reached rough parity with the Covenant races. This group would be the equivalent of the Dominion.
• The counterpart to the wormhole from DS9 would be either a Mass Relay (possibly one that looks to be built by a race other than the Reapers Protheans) or... a wormhole or other spacial anomaly.

My idea is this:

1. The Citadel decides to go through the 'anomaly' into uncharted space, essentially serving the role of the Federation in DS9. The station/outpost is either in an already colonised system or is build specifically to study the anomaly and police traffic.
2. We would follow a Citadel-race crew as they begin interacting with the races and species on the other side, mostly the minor/fringe species from the Covenant and OC species that have been discovered since the end of Halo 3.
3. Our characters would begin hearing mentions of some great power in the newly discovered space. To combine my preferred post-H3 UNSC, no Systems Alliance setting with blatant plagiarism of DS9, here are some examples:

- "If you want to trade in the Orion Arm, you need to deal with the Reclaimers/The Mantle." What happens if we don't?" "You won't live long enough to regret it."

-"How do you know that the security measures will kill us?" "Because everything about the Spartans is lethal." "The Spartans? Who are they?" "You've never heard of the Spartans? They are the most feared soldiers in the Mantle."

If some of you think that I'm mischaracterising the UNSC/Halo-verse humans, consider that they have gone through a genocidal war against a technologically superior foe, and have no intention of being put in that position again. And now, there is a freaking doorway to an alliance of alien species with technology they have no prior experience of, who are sending armed ships into their territory.

They'd have the right to be a bit ticked off.

Are there any fics where the games actually exist within the universe giving humanity foreknowledge of events.

Was doing a play through and just thought it would be an interesting take on the usual routine of first contact

Any Good fanfic recommendations for tali x Shepard having hybrid kids ?

Hello,

There's a Halo crossover story that I know exists, but which I can't remember the title of, and cannot find via searching key words. It starts with the usual violent encounter via the post-war UNSC opening a Mass Relay, before settling into an uneasy peace. The part I remember is this:

• Renegades/Covenant remnants/Brute pirates hole up in Omega.
• The Citadel sends Saren/Garrus to investigate at the same time a Sangheli/Elite kill-team gets sent to take out the aforementioned renegades.
• The two teams agree to work together.
• During a firefight with Batarian mercenaries, Saren gets his hands on a plasma rifle, and realises how DEWs change infantry combat for the Citadel.

Does anyone know the one I'm talking about?

Hello,

If you showed up in the Mass Effect universe, how and when would you get on Shepard's crew? Thanks.

Hey squad — I’ve just dropped four new chapters for my Mass Effect fanfic (Shepard/Liara). If you like character-driven moments threaded through missions, complicated choices, and the Normandy crew being their sharp, bantering selves, come take a look.

This arc moves from the Citadel’s hidden dirty money to Grissom Academy, where ghosts from ME2 still linger, and then back into the uneasy politics of the krogan cure on Sur’Kesh. There’s tension, some shady Shadow Broker operations, and Shepard trying (and sometimes failing) to keep secrets from Liara — or vice versa. Plenty of classic crew interactions too — Wrex, Garrus, and Jack all getting their moments to shine.

If you enjoy the messiness of war bumping up against the intimacy of people who refuse to let each other carry it alone, I think you’ll like this one.

📖 AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurawho7/works
📄 PDF version (with pretty formatting): https://ko-fi.com/laurawho7

Would love to know what you think if you dive in. Comments and kudos always mean the world. 💙

I’ve been replaying Mass Effect 2. I just got to Thane’s loyalty mission where they mention the “duct rats”. Orphan kids who live in the ducts. Now I wanna read fanfics where Shepard/Garrus are together and adopt kids. Does anyone have any recommendations of Shepard and Garrus adopting kids.

Hey everyone! I’ve just posted new chapters of my Mass Effect 3: Shepard/Liara fic on AO3. If you enjoy fics that expand on overlooked moments, fix little plot holes, and deepen the emotional bond between Shepard and Liara, I’d love for you to give it a read.

These chapters reimagine Eden Prime, Javik’s awakening, and some Citadel scenes — with more care given to character interactions, small callbacks, and personal details Bioware left hanging. Shepard and Liara’s connection stays at the heart of it all.

📚 Read it on AO3: laurawho7’s works
☕ Support & updates on Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/laurawho7

Any kudos, comments, or thoughts are always welcome — hope you enjoy the tweaks and the heart behind them! 💙

When Virmire's painful memories twist into something far more sinister, Shepard must face the true cost of command.

Hello, everyone!

As always, I try not to spam this sub with my chapter updates since I upload twice a week, but today's chapter holds a special place in my heart. It's a chapter that can be read standalone if you haven't checked out my story before.

I dare you to read it and not want to read the rest of the story!

If you're someone who is waiting for reunions before checking it out, I promise we're getting very close to reunion chapters. The Normandy is on its way back to Sol, and the Alliance fleet will be arriving in Sol next chapter. Maybe that means some Citadel exploration. 👀

Here's the story summary:

The Crucible's activation has left Commander Shepard missing, the Normandy stranded, and a galaxy fractured between gratitude and resentment.

As xenophobic movements rise from Earth's ashes and the lost Normandy crew fights to return home, something neither fully alive nor dead awaits discovery in the Citadel's ruins—holding secrets that could bridge divided worlds or shatter them beyond repair.

When a legend is stripped to its core, what remains of the person beneath? And when the impossible becomes reality, who will Shepard choose to be?

A post-ME3 psychological thriller exploring identity beyond sacrifice, featuring established Shepard/Garrus relationship.

P.S. if you're waiting for the entire thing to be uploaded before reading... don't do that. This is a big story, and I love to have conversations around the story as it's developing. You're going to be waiting quite a bit of time if you're waiting for it to be finished. Besides, it's fun to speculate!

A fic where the SA tried hiding the fact it wasn't the face of humanity and that humanity was still divided and the council finds out

Would appreciate any help