YMMV / Sudden Contact

• Archive Binge: What many a new reader has done. The review section is replete with comments in the vein of "I just blazed through this comic these past days and I can't WAIT for more!!!".
• Archive Panic: With a fic split into three instalments totalling 132 chapters and counting, there's quite a substantial amount of text for the prospective reader to get through. Made even more daunting if one decides to include the 20 chapters from the supplementary fic as well.
• Catharsis Factor: There are several of these throughout the fanfic, and they come in different flavours!
  • Irredeemable scumbags such Donovan Hock and Kai Leng face very gruesome deaths at the hands of either the (more) heroic protagonists or other, even worse villains.
  • Major antagonists such as Arcturus Mengsk and Alexei Stukov get to see their plans crumble all around them and experience a complete and humiliating loss of face.
  • Both James Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan get called out on their increasingly questionable actions and behavioural patterns, often with a poignantly delivered Armor-Piercing Question to boot. Those who complained about their uncritically positive depiction in canon have much cause to celebrate.
• Fix Fic: Sudden Contact addresses several gripes that both fandoms have with their respective franchises, enough that it deserves its own page.
• It Was His Sled: Even if your read this fic as exclusively a Mass Effect fan, as long as you come equipped with even a cursory knowledge of the plot of StarCraft, you will, thanks to promotional material for StarCraft II, know that Arcturus Mengsk is a villain and will betray his allies at Tarsonis.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Just as in canon, Arcturus Mengsk is this for the first entry in the trilogy. Arguably, he performs even better here, as he not only manages to enlist the aid of James Raynor and Jack Harper, but also the entire Citadel Council soon after first contact. Even once they turn against him after he sics the Zerg on Tarsonis, he played his cards well enough that he was granted immunity via both securing a spot for the Terran Dominion on the Council, as well as steering events in such a way that the Council races would also implicate themselves in the destruction of Tarsonis should they ever reveal it. Finally, despite being an autocrat, he still enjoys high approval among his own people, having built around himself a Cult of Personality, which also counts some especially enthusiastic devotees among the Asari refugee minority.
  • Alexei Stukov pulls off impressive feats of manipulation. Aside from enlisting James Raynor and Jack Harper (again) to the UED's cause, despite them, as colonials, both being very aware of what an oppressive institution the UED is. He also manages to recruit Urdnot Wrex in their effort to cure the Genophage, despite Wrex being extremely legitimately skeptical of their motives for very legitimate reasons. The list goes on about the unlikely allies he persuades to serve his aims, but the crowning achievement must surely be talking down the turian Admiral Janus from intervening in defence of the Terran Dominion, a fellow council ally. His methods and success rate may as well earn him the title as The Villain King of Batman Gambits.
  • Matriarch Raszagal does this throughout almost the entirety of Sudden Supremacy in their capacity as the Shadow Broker. Using their significant number of contacts throughout the galaxy along with insider knowledge few others would know, they succeed in plots ranging from destroying crucial evidence and eliminating power players to starting wars, burning worlds, and crippling powerful nations. On top of it all, they managed to do all this as a well-known public figure whose good alignment was considered unquestionable. And the only one to even suspect them was the Geth Consensus, who needed the entirety of their collective efforts to even clue in on them. The best part? They were convinced they were doing the right thing all along.
• Moral Event Horizon: In a story with several antagonists from two of video gaming's biggest franchises, there are plenty of these to go around.
  • Alexei Stukov has plenty of these throughout the series, with the first one also doubling as an Establishing Character Moment: murdering subordinates, human experimentation, holding entire species hostage, and attempted genocide. Even for the totalitarian, human-supremacist UED, he comes across as a particularly merciless, calculating psychopath.
  • Just like in canon, Arcturus Mengsk crosses this when he lures the Zerg to Tarsonis, cementing himself as a mass murderer and traitor. If that wasn't enough, it is also revealed that he sold Nova to the Collectors in return for their lifting the siege of Korhal.
  • Donovan Hock does this when he has an entire group of POWs summarily executed and then holds the survivors for ransom. Doubles as an Establishing Character Moment. Also when he has Kasumi unwittingly kill a resocialized Kenji and laughingly gloating about it.
  • Although Kai Leng is implied to be a fettered psychopath from the start, it shows the clearest when he has Grunt killed by ordering the nanites inside him to burrow out of his body. During his time in charge of the Tuchanka concentration camp, he also spends his free time shooting at prisoners for fun, in a similar vain to the notorious Nazi war criminal Amon Göth.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: While Urdnot Grunt is still very much an inexperienced Blood Knight, this gets poked fun at a lot in-universe, primarily by Wrex, Anderson, and Shepard. Especially Shepard. He also has more interactions with other characters and a very memorable and tragic death scene to flesh out his character.
• Too Cool to Live: David Anderson is a widely celebrated hero on his homeworld even before the story begins, and continues to perform a number of amazing feats throughout, at one point enough to become an Extranet sensation. However, in the end, he falls as well, though in a very powerful Dying Moment of Awesome that also doubles as a Tearjerker.