User blog:4Ferelden/A new interpretation of Starchild's motivation.

This blog is about the Catalyst (alternatively known as the Starchild) we all know and hate. His main flaw (besides popping up at the last 15 minutes for no reason) is his logic of harvesting organic life in order to prevent it getting destroyed by synthetics. I won't go into great detail on them here (especially since other users have already done that for me), but two of them are especially jarring:


 * The "organics vs. synthetics" conflict can be avoided by simply using Reapers powers of speech and/or indoctrination to warn the current organics and destroy any research stations that try to create advanced synthetics (for added impact, the scientists could be huskified in order to truly drive the point home.)


 * His "preservation" of organic life inside Reapers isn't just unspeakably horrible and unnecessary, but is also ineffective at its intended goal, as some Reapers will inevitably get destroyed at the end of each cycle, taking the species "preserved" inside with them.

In short, the Reapers are literally the worst possible way to solve the implied problem. But what if that was the point?

Catalyst's Origins
As we now know, the Catalyst is an AI, created by an unnamed squid-like specie in order to design the solution to the organics vs. synthetics" conflict. It has come up with these cycles as a response and harvested its creators into the Harbinger, thus starting off the whole conundrum.

This atrocity a lot a less insane when you remember that the Catalyst is a synthetic. IT HAS NO REASON TO AFFILIATE ITSELF WITH ORGANICS, or to have their interests in its mind. As such, it is more then likely that Starchild IS THE ONE WANTING TO DESTROY ALL ORGANICS.

Its creators have presumably foreseen that and integrated some kind of directives that prevented it from destroying all organic life. However, these measures haven't taken away the Catalyst's hatred for organics, just prevented it from wiping it out completely. As such, the Catalyst has designed the cycles as the next worst thing - a process that would eradicate all advanced civilisations every 50, 000 years, subjugating their liqufied remnants inside synthetic bodies, following the letter of its purpose while wilfully perverting its purpose.

Reason for giving Shepard choices
For a while, this was enough to satisfy the Starchild's hatred. By the time Mass Effect starts, however, it is tired of the futility of its actions, of how it can never fully destroy the organic life, as its directives prevent it from doing so.

As such, the choices it has designed for Shepard are motivated by this same desire to eliminate organic life, only manifested in different ways. Synthesis, his preferred ending, would forever remove pure organics from the galaxy by integrating synthetics into each and every one of them while letting the Starchild itself survive. After milennia of doing (in his view) same thing with the Reapers less efficiently, he is finds this compromise better then more of the same.

With the Destroy, he removes himself and the Reapers from the picture in hope that someday, sometime, the organics will create the synthetics that will carry out the genocide he was unable to complete.Control is the mixture of the two, giving him the pleasure of re-writing whoever organic makes the choice (your Shepard) as a complete synthetic, planning that eventually Shepbringer will either affiliate itself with synthetics more then with organics and carry out the genocide it (the Catalyst) desires, or will simply not be powerful enough to stop the process (doubt the last one will ever happen, but then, I'm not an ancient insane AI.)

While this interpretation is not perfect, I hope it addresses the key issues with the ending better then what we have currently been given.