YMMV / The Last Spartan

• Angst? What Angst?: Though perfectly in-character for him to do so, The Chief, after realizing he's The last Spartan while at Spartan Hill, bounces back pretty quickly, asking Anderson what his next mission will be.
  • Chapters 20 and 21 reveal that he's just been very good at ignoring it though.
• Author's Saving Throw: Quickly and willingly Humanity gave up Artificial Intelligence after the First Contact War. Initially it seemed like a complete cave-in, but a Codex Entry at the end of Chapter 24 paints it as a long-drawn out diplomatic/legal process that climaxed with an incident with a rogue AI infiltrating the Citadel itself.
  • In addition, it's noted that A.I.s are still common among humans living outside of Citadel law and influence or working for ONI.
  • One of the stated goals of humanity and the former covenant races is that if they get a council seat, they're going to bring back Slipspace and AI technology.
  • On a meta level, the author has noticed that as the fic's popularity rises, he has gotten a wave of new reviews criticizing some of the content of the first chapters and plans to remedy this by removing a few Codex Entries containing already existing saving throws to said chapters to placate new readers long enough to keep them reading.
  • To a smaller degree, he points out later on that though he classified Mgalekgolo as dextro-amino creatures initially, it was because he mistakenly assumed that "Dextro-Amino" meant "eats rocks." He later apologized for this and added in that though they do eat rocks, they won't swell up and die if they eat Turian or Quarian food.
• Badass Decay: The Arbiter's suffered this a little bit, but isn't completely inept. This is justified because he's almost two hundred years old, and is reaching an advanced age, even for Sangheli. That and Miranda knows how Elites think, which helps her. The author also states that Miranda's enhancements make her a rough match for a SPARTAN-III, so it's less of "This character isn't as awesome," it's "This character is now old, and is facing a very clever, very strong opponent who is much younger."
• Broken Base: The entire worldbuilding of the fic has become this, particularly the decision by the author to have the UNSC and Covenant give up all slipspace and AI technology because the Citadel Council demanded it. Some don't necessarily mind the changes or are able to ignore it in favor of the character interactions. Others are completely unable to get past the decision to make the UNSC and Covenant races look spineless while making the Council look like braindead morons and are actively turned off from the fic as a result. Not even the Author's Saving Throw above has been able to reach many in the latter camp, as it comes off as putting a band aid on a problem that has long since become too broken to ignore.
• Crazy Is Cool: N'tho 'Sraom, and he'll be happy to remind you of that when he isn't actively proving it, Idiot Hero moments notwithstanding. He is, after all, from a species capable of fighting a SPARTAN on nearly equal footing and is a Spec Ops member.
• Creator's Pet: Miranda was accused of being this after her first appearance, but the author got rid of complaints with a logical (if not also debatable) reason, and noted that he didn't even like Miranda. Incidentally...
• Harsher in Hindsight: When Chief first sees Sovereign in orbit over Eletania, he wonders if its creators deliberately invoked the image of a deep-sea monster in its construction. We learn that he's somewhat right in the Leviathan DLC for Mass Effect 3... in a dark manner, though. The Reapers were designed after the bodies of the first race harvested, the Leviathans... who were the ones to create the AI that created the Reapers.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Tali mentions, when she explains why she didn't get a Star Wars joke, that they didn't get many vids in the Migrant Fleet. This was written well before the Citadel DLC, where it's revealed that Tali was actually a fan of vids (specifically Fleet and Flotilla) back before her pilgramage.
  • The commander of the Normandy fighting against creatures called Brutes? That would never happen... until Mass Effect 3.
• Moral Event Horizon: Saren, as in mainstream continuity, crossed this when he killed scores of innocent people and pinned the blame on Anderson solely to keep humans out of the Spectres. And also, as Anderson theorizes, out of bloodlust.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Some fans quite enjoy the April Fools Day Alternate Universe, especially when they saw the second chapter. Unfortunately, the fact that it's only an April Fools joke means that seeing a fully realized version of it is unlikely.
  • Though a second, similarly lengthy chapter was posted for that story the following year's April Fool's Day.

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