User blog comment:The Milkman/Reaper Logic/@comment-4558124-20120424235150/@comment-84.52.174.203-20120719205231

If the Reapers "store" a civilization inside a Reaper, then maybe that's what Sovereign meant with "We are each a nation."

Still, no matter how benevolent the Reapers are, the "storage" of organics is a bloody abomination. Worse than just killing them. That's why those that are "enlightened" by the Reapers are called indoctrinated. And Shepard in the end just buys everything the Catalyst has to say.

I think it would be a much greater ending if it was just an inside struggle (indoctrination would work best) while Shepard was unconscious. There should be just two choices: control and destroy. Control should result in a game-over (The Prothean VI says that there were indoctrinated Protheans trying to control the Reapers as well, so it's an old trick) and destroy should result in Shepard waking up, aiming the Crucible at the Citadel and the Reapers would all just drop dead, because the Citadel (or Catalyst or whatever) controls them or something. But I can't think of a motive to indoctrinate Shepard.

If we ignore the Protheans' modifications to the Keepers, maybe it's the Keepers who are killing civilizations with the Reapers for ignoring them. :(

On a more serious note, if the Catalyst encounter wasn't real and/or his reasons for Reapers to reap were lies, then I'd say the Reapers reap to survive. They just consume the developed species, because they don't want to turn into monkeys. You are what you eat.