Voltaire said
This is why I actually like the renegade ending the best."Oh so after you went and just killed FUCKING EVERYONE you expect me to abandon my original goal for some reason? FUCK no! You gonna DIE!"BLAT BLAT BLAT KABLOOIE!!!!I always interpreted the Synthesis and 'Hero' endings as the Reapers trying to trick you into letting them live.
I always looked at the Control and the Synthesis endings as more Reaper manipulation, and if you look at the Control Console verses the Destroy Pylon, you notice they're colour-coded like the Paragon Blue (Control) and Renegade Red (Destroy). How a single person's mind is supposed to control an entire species of sentient star ships made up of the collective corrupted consciences of the countless billions of lives harvested to make each one that have for the entire series have been repeatedly been shown to completely control and subvert minds doesn't make any sense. On top of that, in the Arrival DLC, Shepard touches a fucking Reaper artifact, just like Saren and the Illusive Man (shown in the Evolutions comic), so I'm not going off the whole 'lolol but Shepard's part machine!'. Sure, Shepard's a machine the same way as somebody with pins in their legs is a machine.
So, I think that since the Reaper's leader (I still think that the Starchild is Harbinger trying to manipulate Shepard, especially if you do the 'refuse' ending, the kid yells at you in Harbinger's voice since there's no point in keeping up the charade at that point) is trying to sway your opinion and making you think that you've actually got a choice, especially in light of the fact that you're in a position to actually harm the Reapers, so they're not going to be like 'gg, kill us if you feel better about it'. The fact that the ending that goes against what the Reapers really want is Red like the Renegade choices (which you've been conditioned to think as the bad/ selfish choices. Up until this point, you've been shown that Renegade choices will do shit like kill the Rachni, sabotage the Genophage cure, and other decisions that effect the fates of entire species in a negative fashion), they also throw in the whole 'but it'll kill the Geth/EDI if you pick it!' is an attempt to pluck away at your guilt. Keep in mind, you don't KNOW what the Crucible does and it's the fucking REAPERS telling you what it does. Does that not seem a little suspect?
Throw in the fact that TIM and Saren both believed that they had free will and what they were doing was exactly what they need to do to safe the galaxy (or humanity, in TIM's case), is that not exactly what Shepard's been trying to do? Anyone who's indoctrinated isn't blatantly shown in blinking lights that they're being controlled, they think that everything they're doing is their own choice; it's very subtle. It's only when they start to question their motives and try to change course that the Reapers get aggressive and the tech becomes more invasive in the body. The second Mass Effect novel, forget what it's called, does a character POV from a character called Greyson and it shows exactly what he's experiencing under more invasive Reaper control that he's immediately aware of, kind of in a similar manner as a Husk. In TIM's case, it was always more mental.
As for Starbinger, or even the kid that was killed, I don't even think that kid existed to begin with. You never see anyone look at or acknowledge the kid, such as when Shepard sees him in the vent (Anderson should have heard Shepard talking to somebody, and if not heard banging around in the vent. The kid just vanished), then a few minutes later, the kid somehow gets down on the ground from a sky scraper and across the river to an extraction point when you got down to the harbour when the building fucking started collapsing and when the kid starts to climb into the shuttle, nobody's paying any attention to him, let alone trying to help him in when he's struggling, which you'd expect somebody to do if they saw a young kid struggling to get inside the Kodiak. From the Codex,
The precise mechanics of the indoctrination effect are poorly understood. It is believed that the Reapers generate an electromagnetic field, waves of infrasound and ultrasound, or both in order to stimulate areas of a victim's brain and limbic system. The resulting effect varies depending on the intent of the Reaper: the victim may suffer headaches and hallucinations, have feelings of "being watched" or paranoia, or come to view the Reaper itself with superstitious awe. Ultimately, the Reaper gains the ability to use the victim's body to amplify its signal, manifesting as voices within the victim's mind.
Reapers generate EM fields and sounds, which is pretty standard stuff. The Dead Reaper in ME2 was shown to be able to indoctrinate Cerberus scientists and Shepard was exposed to that, as well as the artifact in Arrival, plus I think one or two others. If you think of Shepard's dialog choices and actions of being controlled in the same manner of you as a player controlling what Shepard says and does and shit gets downright meta. A big part of Mass Effect is choice, but in Shepard's case, his or her choices are all dictated by an outside force. This I admit is a stretch, but it's fun to think about.
Anyways, the hallucinations and feelings of being watched are DEFINITELY apparent with Shepard; the reoccurring nightmares are filled with really vivid, yet indistinct imagery such as the shadows and the whispers that kind of play at the back of your mind (the whole "manifesting as voices within the victim's mind" bit, which is a lot like how other indoctrinated characters explain what's happening to them). As I mentioned, the kid may or may not actually be real, so that could definitely be filed under the hallucination and being watched symptom.
Even if BioWare dismissed the Indoctrination Theory, it makes waaay too much sense.
