#what we see from more functional indoctrination victims isn't emotionlessness it's rationalization.

[tenleaguesbeneath]

I feel like ME3 kinda leaves the revelation on Chronos Station hanging when EDI is like “oh yeah Cerberus is Indoctrinating civilians and augmenting them with Reaper cybernetics, that’s why they treat their soldiers’ lives so cheaply”

It comes really late in the game, after Shepard’s walked over a pile of Cerberus bodies. Maybe part of that is that by the time she has a chance to rest after having it confirmed, she’s done fighting Cerberus for good. But then, it’s pretty heavily foreshadowed. Grissom has datapads saying they plan to make Phantoms out of the biotic students if they can take them. Eden Prime has a thing where they’re pretending to the civilians they’re occupying that the people they’re kidnapping are being taken away for forced labor and hiding that they’ll never be seen again. fucking Mars has you see their Reaper-cybernetic-altered faces, though you don’t find out about them not being willing volunteers until later. Liara seems to be aware of this given her convo with Aethyta.

I’m not sure if it’s my copy of ME:Legendary or something else but sometimes when I throw them they get stuck ragdolled in a corner with hit points remaining but they’re not getting up, and finishing them always feels kinda grim.

The version of Shepard they portray who has no comment on either doing that or finding out that she’s been doing that to people who were taken from their families against their will and mind controlled is, like...

it says disturbing things about how inured she is to violence. the entire squad, really.