Why the ending did not work (repost)

No, I'm not forgetting... you're trying to "forget" that Thane's was a private message though just to be, what, argumentative.  Heck, I'm agreeing with you that there's a problem with there being an inadequate "response" to the Citadel being taken in the ending... and that problem that is not limited to the ending.  It's even there in ME1.  Why, with so many ships flying around Citadel each minute is the Destiny Ascension apparently left hanging out on it's own to handle Sovereign until Joker can muster the Arcturrus fleet to come in from all that distance?

Also, in ME1, when Saren attacks with the geth - Avina indicates that "civilian casualties are high" and there's lots of damage.  Yet, when the Reapers roll in in ME3, there are "some casualties" according to Weekes?"

See above - it's a problem with implication of the Citadel being this city-sized busy place (I think the ME1 Codex says something like 13.4 million people live there), yet it's apparently a place where the Reapers can just roll in and move it en masse without a fight and huge numbers of casualties... everyone just hiding behind barriers until the whole thing is over?

That must be in the save the council version. Since I never save the council, other ships are seen near it before it goes boom
Does the holograms definition of high mean the same as yours, mine or anyone else? The same with some.

Yeah, the trip from one system in a galaxy to another in a short time... through a relay??? ... would be smooth as silk and no one would even notice.  Too busy dancing, I guess.  You're just being argumentative as well, aren't you.  Oh, and those "hundreds of ships per day" wouldn't notice that their control tower's vector changed location by several light years.  I quit... bye for today.

How it that being argumentative?

Where did you get "no huge number of casualties"? Apart from that, in order to move the Citadel, you just need to control the Citadel's control areas. Quite possibly, parts of those areas aren't even known by anyone but the Keepers. Did anyone even know the Citadel can be moved? It's not exactly good storytelling, but as opposed to some other things, it's not a critical flaw.

I find the timing of the whole thing much more problematic. How did TIM get there so fast? If the attack was a reaction to Sanctuary, how did the Reapers get there so fast? I know time counts for basically nothing in these games, but I'm hard-pressed to find a plausible scenario here.

In any case, compared to some other aspects of the ending sequence, this is completely irrelevant.

Yep. As I said in this post, ems should've be effected, but it wasn't. The same as attacking Cronos. EMS is not effected even if Mirand wasn't able to tell Shepard she put a tracer on Leng or she isn't in ME3.

It's a problem because the Citadel is...the Citadel.  A lot of NPCs we have interacted with were there:  the Council, Bailey, Aria, Aethyta, etc.  Heck CONRAD VERNER and Jenna!  Not to mention numerous NPCs we don't really interact with, but who made up the ambiance of the place: the refugee girl, Private Talavi, the suicidal asari, and so on.  People who put a face to the war.  All in a place which the Reapers suddenly had a very strong interest in and managed to take over apparently effortlessly.  Did any of them survive?  Get indoctrinated?  Did they get launched into space when the Citadel arms open up to admit the Crucible?

Telling you what 100 minor NPCs were doing after the end would've bogged the ending down in details. Even books do that only rarely, and where they do, they do it in an extended epilogue. Would you want an EC with 100 instead of 20 scenes? Really, you're making a mountain out of a molehill. I might as well ask what happened to Kate Bowman if she didn't die in ME1. She was my favorite minor NPC of ME1, so it would've been nice to know, yes. But not knowing is NOT a problem.

The thing was *built* by the Reapers, *and* it houses the Catalyst. Do you really need to ask how they took control? The more pertinent question would be "why didn't they take control of it in ME1?". THAT is a problem. Also, since the Reapers built it and it houses the Catalyst, it is plausible that this wasn't a big fight and most people on the Citadel survived. They wouldn't have survived for long had the Reapers won of course, but they didn't and they did. So again: what the hell is the problem?

Well, you did hit on part of it:  Why wasn't this done sooner?  

(of course, there are also those who claim the Catalyst has little or no control over the Citadel, thus why it "needs" Shepard, but we'll let that go for now  )

But again, why did they not process the occupants of the Citadel?  They are harvesting entire planets, but leave millions of people on the Citadel alone?  It's just more hand-wavey "space magic" in an attempt to placate people rather than acknowledge the terribad ending.  It just adds more illogic and stupidity to an already raging garbage fire.

Okay, that last part's description got away from me, but I'm keeping it because reasons 

I think we all agree that the Catalyst's presence on the Citadel messes a lot of things up, but that's not a matter for the ending. It is a plot hole that affects the whole trilogy, but given the Catalyst *is* present, the fate of the Citadel at that point is plausible.