User blog comment:Kaloneous/Mass Effect 3 Ending DLC Denied and PAX/@comment-1341687-20120329234302

So here's how it breaks down. If we believe that the Catalyst is a light being from the original species, then basically he is an Ancient and Mass relays are Stargates. I use that metaphor to try and just give a basis for what I'm about to say.

That being said, Shepard was always the only one able to see the child, but only because the Catalyst was present as the child. Not indoctrination, but the Catalyst as an observer. Essentially taking "human" form to make its observations of Shepard easier. As the species of the origination of Reapers, they would have been looking for anything that radically alters the cycle, especially when it has been postponed the way it has. If the dream sequences had made that a little more apparent, things would have gone slightly smoother.

A lot of the issue comes from BioWare not preparing us for the outcome. They prepared us for a battle. One that we get to start but don't finish. That causes some of the issue. If they had prepared us for the idea that something beyond our existence was watching, then we could have had less issues. Instead they tell us to get ready to fight and then make us disregard it completely.

Questions arise, such as, if the light-beings are even something like ascended, why do Reapers matter? It would just be them enforcing their will and design upon us. An arrogance that none could even come close to what they have achieved as they watched the first cycle after them become entrenched in problems with synthetics. At which point they do their own combination of organics and synthetics creating the first Reapers, the first of which would be Harbinger. One that would lead their will without their interference. As species would rise and fall, the seeds for the Crucible would begin. Eventually the light-beings would manipulate species into designing the Crucible for their own possible extreme outcome.

But when Shepard comes along and humanity with its diversity, especially when compared to the galaxy at large, they took notice. It is their own arrogance that led them to design the Crucible for this purpose. A galaxy that may be able to stop their own culling and thus their own salvation. That is why everything accomplished by Shepard and other species with synthetics do not matter and are a simple after thought to the Catalyst. They will be purged after our salvation, or destroyed and we will be handled later. That's why Destroy is so dismissive, it was designed to give an imagined possibility but one that would be easily talked out of. The easiest way to control something is to let it think it is making its own and the right decisions.

Control is the option Catalyst could accept because it just means it will eventually be able to bring the Reapers back and use them again. We have a slight reprieve and in that we will become weaker. Synthesis would be its ultimate goal. Synthesis is what Reapers are. By choosing that we finalize the salvation. It may not mean we are harvested, but it does mean we are under the control of the light-beings. Which just means that our cycle may or may not continue, but if it does, it will be designed by the Catalyst and its kind.

However if we do choose Destroy, then what would the Catalyst gain? Nothing. So it returns Shepard's body to the surface and either needs to find a new solution or what we see in the Destroy end with everything else does not happen.

Why do the Citadel and Mass Relays explode in the endings? In Destroy it is a punishment. We are now incapable of growing beyond what the light-beings allow not because there are no Reapers, but because we have been stifled in our exploration and returning to homes. In Control it is because the galaxy will be weaker when the Reapers return. In Synthesis it is because they no longer serve a purpose. A new design is being implemented and one that may see complete control.

Just my own ramblings.