#and uploads his consciousness to it and begins teaching him how to kill

[psychoticwillgraham]

here's what i have so far for chapter 2 of the AI Will au 'perfect machine' that i should've posted a year ago but didn't actually start working on it until last month. i've got a whole ten chapter outline that's been done for a year but i don't wanna post it yet bc i do intend to actually write and finish it

[edge-lorde]

the religion of the galactic horde

“You seem reluctant to help me. But I only wish to use your weapon to bring peace to the darkest corners of the universe. (Glimmer: Peace? If you activate the Heart of Etheria, there will be no one left.) Yes. No war, no pain. Old worlds swept aside, a new beginning for the universe.” --Horde Prime explaining his motivations to Glimmer

the horde in shera was definitely inspired by Christianity and uses a lot of its imagery, the most iconic being the baptism scene. it certainly gives off the vibes of a christian or christian adjacent cult, but what is its actual doctrine? i have some thoughts about that. 

first here are what i consider to be the 3 main differences between real christianity and the horde: 

Their jesus didn't ascend to heaven. He's still with them.

They don't have a larger creator god. They worship horde prime like he is a living god but they don't believe that he created the universe.

They have no focus on the afterlife

this is going to be long.

before i begin heres the sparknotes version of christianity for anyone not familiar. I am not evangelizing this, just think of it as LORE. 

Once upon a time there was a guy named Jesus. He was the son of the one true god, who both created everything in the universe, is everywhere and knows everything, and controls the afterlife. Jesus is god born as a mortal person, sent by god to teach all of humanity the errors of their evil ways so they can repent and go to the good afterlife when they die. There're two afterlives, a good one and a bad one, heaven is the good one and its run by god and his army of angels, which are divine beings that god can send to earth to do things. The bad one is called hell. 

Anyway, in his time on earth jesus was the only person ever to never do anything bad ever (called sin). He tried to teach people how to be good but was Too Good for this Cruel World and was killed. 3 days later he came back from the dead, proving his divinity. Some time after that however, he ascended into heaven without dying, telling his followers to spread the word because hes going to be coming back. Christians today are still awaiting his return. In the meantime, christians follow his teachings left behind in holy texts. 

The crux of christianity is to get to heaven when you die, and this can only be done by following the teachings of jesus christ, believing in god, and believing that jesus was the son of god. Its a given that everyone will do bad things at some point in their lives so you're supposed to pray to god and ask for forgiveness regularly and if you really mean it then god will forgive you. 

thats the basics. 

to my first main point from above, if we posit that horde prime is the jesus equivalent of the horde religion, because hes treated as a living god, his goal is to spread his philosophy throughout the universe, then in the horde religions jesus never ascended into heaven. this would be like if jesus in our world rose from the dead and just picked up where he left off, and never died after that and was alive today. that would be pretty good proof of divinity. 

to my 2nd point, theres nothing in the show that suggests that horde prime thinks that he created the universe. this means that he did not get his divinity from anywhere but inside himself, hes not claiming that hes the rightful ruler of the known universe for any other reason besides his ideas are the best. 

the 3rd point is that the show does show horde prime or the horde caring one bit about the afterlife, save for one line from wrong hordak.

"Brother, I hope you, too, are full of only love for Horde Prime and have no crippling doubt eating at your soul."

meaning that they have the concept of the soul. which is very interesting and ill get to it, but on the whole the hordes focus seems to be on the here and now. this is a huge departure from christianity because chrisitanity is all about getting to the afterlife. that is the reason that christians are supposed to follow christ and recruit as many people as possible to do the same, because if they dont, they or other people will supposedly go to hell when they die. i say supposedly because at funerals, even if the person who died wasnt a believer, in my experience no christian would ever ever ever insinuate that someone went to hell. 

but the difference still stands. following real christian ideology is supposed to have benefits for the individual in the afterlife, while in the horde religion salvation seems to only be found by submitting to prime in this life and being either a tool that he can use to further his goal of purifying the universe or by letting him remove you from it. 

on top of all that, horde prime has the hive mind, which he uses to control the thoughts of all his followers. this means that theres no room for a bible study, no need of a holy text at all in fact, and no room for interpretation. horde prime delivers orders to your brain directly and can tell if you think anything out of line. real Christianity does have the idea that a sin that you just think about doing is as bad as actually doing it, but in the horde these thoughts can be easily discovered and punished. 

the horde religion seems to me to be a strangely secular version of christianity with only the bad parts remaining; the control, the blind faith, the certainty that you are right and everyone else is wrong, the not questioning authority. with none of the good aspects like community, and good deeds. it is a cult in the truest sense of the word, a religion that begins and ends with one person only, that person being horde prime.

so, if you take horde prime out of the equation, what, if anything, would be left? 

i find the plight of the horde clones here to be the most interesting. we know that they do have thoughts about their religion, as it was hordaks belief that he could earn his way back into horde primes god graces that kept him going all those years in despondos, and wrong hordak is distraught when he discovers that horde prime lied about krytis. 

unlike both the chipped people we see in the show and real religious converts, the clones were born into this cult that values blind obedience only, and have no prior ideology or cultural identity to fall back on when they are taken out of it. 

so to answer this question, i must add some conjecture to horde primes backstory and how the clones see themselves in horde primes universe. I already wrote up a brief backstory idea for horde prime/the clones and have it posted on here somewhere. I'm not going to dig it up but you could probably find it in the #horde prime tag on my blog if you dig hard enough. 

To summarize it though, I have it as horde prime was once a regular (bad) dude who became a cult leader under the premise of preaching peace --> he becomes disillusioned with people and even his own followers because he doesn't actually like people, he likes manipulating them. --> this and the power of being a cult leader go to his head and he starts to think that he is the only person in existence capable of living a moral life and everyone else needs to be saved from themselves, the world would be a better place if he could just make everyone's decisions for them. --> he somehow gets a hold of the technology needed to set up the hive mind, be it by inventing it himself, stealing it, finding it, or being gifted it. 

I'll pause here to address the theory that horde prime was originally an eldritch being that simply possessed a dude who would become the template for the clones. I think there's enough stuff in the show that this is a valid read and might even be canon but i don't really care for it. For me, what makes horde prime a compelling villain is that he's a very human evil, so having him actually be an evil demon thing instead of a really bad but believable dude who got near ultimate power weakens his character. BUT, i’m not going to address it in my comic so i'll leave it open as to whether he's got that going on or not. If he is, the clones don’t know about it and neither they nor the other characters have any way of discovering it. IF he is though, it would happen here. I could see it being a cool idea for him to get the hive mind from the eldritch being that would then possess him and haunt his lineage for time immemorial as a deal with the devil sort of thing, but he has to be a bad person before that.

Anyway he gets the hive mind--> he gets all of his followers to chip themselves --> gets those people to chip everyone else on his home planet --> use his planet wide army to harvest all resources on the planet and build his first space fleet and take to the skies and start his conquest--> realize that if he is to succeed hes going to need to both become immortal and find a steady source of new followers because chipped people die eventually and he doesnt care about people enough to figure out a way to keep a self sufficient population of followers alive, he just wants people around to adore him and do his bidding--> invents his cloning system-->

and heres the big one,

his original body has to die so he can upload his consciousness into a new clone.  

and THAT, to the clones, would be the moment that horde prime becomes a god.

his reliance on the hive mind and vast network of followers are what give him his godly abilities, but just as the horde clones could not exist without being cloned from horde prime, so too could horde prime not exist as he does in the show without them. 

i see it as both a christlike sacrifice and a cyclical system of debt and sacrifice. horde prime dies for our sins, so that he might continue to purify the universe so that there will be no more death and more clones will be born, while the clone hes possessing has to essentially die by giving himself up entirely to become the new prime so all this can happen too, and to repay primes death. not all clones can become the next prime however, but all must be ready to die for him, hence horde prime having clone infantries despite also having robots he could send instead. 

i dont have clear thoughts about what the green goo is, but horde primes words about his brothers lending him their life force go along with this idea. the clones give him theyre life force, so he can give it back to them.

another interesting aspect of this is that prime always portrays himself as a brother to his followers, never a father as christ is portrayed as in christianity. i know this is from hordak and horde prime being actual brothers in the 80s show but ive seen this trope come up a few times in media before, where a man raises a kid but has them call him their brother instead of dad. it seems so deliberate. because a parents job is to take care of you, but a sibling, might take care of you sure, but thats not their job. its like hes deliberately trying to place himself on the same level as his ‘sibling’ so he can demand the same amount of respect you would give to a parent without taking on the responsibility to not... ya know... screw them over in the head? idk it seems very slimy to me. but that says more about prime as a character than how the clones see him.

and we still have the concept of the soul to fit in here somehow, and do they have an afterlife? im going to say no to the afterlife. theres just not enough in the show to go off of and everything that we do know about horde prime points to him only caring about himself in life. HOWEVER, there is nothing more quintessentially christian than the concept of hell and i think that will be of use here. 

since the creation of the clones is tied with the creation of their religion, this would put the clones themselves less as allegories of people who need to be saved and more as the horde version of angels. in my telling here, horde prime views all people who do not submit to his will as net negatives to the universe who have to be removed for peace to exist, so by this view the chipped people are the saved, the people that horde prime kills are the sinners, and his military campaign is one long apocalypse slowly working its way through the universe, with the clones carrying out his righteous judgement. but the afterlife isnt involved in this, so even if some chipped people are left alive, eventually they will all die out, and then it will be just horde prime and is clones in a perfect, peaceful starless sky, and thats what heaven is. 

getting to heaven is the main goal of real christianity and it is the same in horde religion, but heaven isnt a place in the horde cosmology, its a physical goal that has to be created. not all clones will make it to heaven of course, because most will die before they reach total destruction of the universe but the clones arent supposed to think of themselves as individuals anyway. they have to be willing to die for horde prime and die for the cause or be cast out and thats hell. 

i dont see prime as someone who would kill his own followers outright too often even though he could. plus they arent supposed to value their individual lives the same way normal people do anyway it doesnt seem like a real punishment, they need something worse than simple death to fear. so by my view hell for the clones is separation from prime. it can be in life or death. no matter how bad it is in the horde being on the outside of it has to seem worse, and thats where the concept of the soul comes in. when one is a part of the hive mine, their soul is with prime. they are not supposed to have a will or any thoughts beyond love for prime, its essentially the same as not having a soul but they think of it as being at peace. being cast out is to be never at peace and would be told to them as being the worst possible thing that could ever happen to someone because it corrupts the soul. 

“a lot of unpleasant things happen in the horde so just imagine how terrible it must be outside of it! you cant because i protect you from that. now get in the goo, this is for your own good” - horde prime probably 

this is why outsiders are so resistant to submitting to primes light and also why its ok to kill them, in the hordes view. 

so, to start wrapping thigs up, there is no horde without horde prime. the religion starts and ends with him. because he is supposed to be the only person ever to be able to make true moral and just decisions, without him is followers cant take any actions without worrying that they are going against primes will. since they have no holy text they cant extrapolate and try to figure it out either. its up in the air whether or not they are going to find a way to get the horde to make the jump from cult to regular religion.

its late i got to go to bed now

[yeonchi]

Kisekae Insights #7: Chapman Works (Fifi and Roary)

Believe it or not, the Kisekae Project was never just about combining Asian culture with Western culture. As such, anime isn’t the only thing that forms part of my project.

Fifi and the Flowertots is one of the earliest things that I adapted in my personal project, even before Doctor Who. When I was in my Dynasty Warriors phase, assigning warrior names to my friends and classmates, the characters of this series were some of the first fictional characters to be assigned warrior names or implemented in my stories. They had a heavy impact on Hiroki’s story before he came onto Doctor Who.

During the many times this series aired over 2005-2015, I never really got to watch it a lot, either because it never aired at the right time for me to be able to watch it, or because my parents would be watching their Chinese TV shows (I may have missed out on some parts of my childhood because of it). Therefore, watching this series became a bit of a guilty pleasure, especially considering that I was growing out of its target demographic. Luckily, thanks to the internet, that doesn’t matter anymore.

Its sister series, Roary the Racing Car, was also one of the first series to be implemented. Only the human characters were given officer names (because how can cars fight, just saying), but in Gokaiger, the cars were given an important role as well. A couple of characters also became Kamen Riders.

Here’s another thing that may surprise you; Fifi Forget-me-not was Hiroki Ichigo’s wife before Akari. In other words, Fifi was my first waifu. Let’s jump into the explanation.

A Flower out of the Garden: Fifi in the Parallax War

Fifi was the first of the Flowertots to end up in this world before the rest of them came in the Dimensional Merge. Their story differs between the two timelines, but out of the Flowertots, only Fifi lived through and remembered both timelines. During the first timeline, Fifi acted as the counterpart of Rose Tyler from BBC Doctor Who. The timeline splits in January 2007.

In August 2006, Fifi fell into a portal that looked like a puddle and ended up on Earth. Hiroki, who happened to be in the area, finds her and offers to help her get back home. On the way home, Hiroki and Fifi also encounter another girl from his province who fell asleep on the train back home and ended up where they were. Hiroki takes Fifi and the girl, who we’ll call Narutaki (it’ll be important when I cover Decade), back to his city. When they get back, however, Narutaki can’t get back home because her prefecture is being invaded. So, Fifi and Narutaki became Hiroki and Parker’s roommates. Hiroki and Fifi eventually fell in love and became a couple.

In the first timeline, where Hiroki and Fifi left Parker in the second timeline, Fifi met the Third Doctor when the department store she was working was infiltrated by Autons. Things went from there and the three were swept into the Parallax War. Fifi reunited with her friends as well. At one point, Fifi disappeared and the Doctor, with help from Hiroki, Buttercup, Daisy and Flutterby, managed to find her.

At some point, Fifi discovered that her great-grandparents were named Billy Alkanet and Jackie Fiddleneck. While Billy is dead in this universe, he was alive in a parallel one, namely Billy’s World. After the first couple of episodes of the Fourth Doctor’s first series, Narutaki went back home and her role was replaced by Jackie. At the end of that series, Hiroki, Fifi and Jackie were forced to go to Billy’s World because of “Void stuff”.

The Doctor had fallen in love with Fifi during their travels and so did she, to the point where Hiroki started to feel neglected. But after being sent to Billy’s World, Hiroki and Fifi rebuilt their relationship as they managed to leave that world and fight in the Parallax War. They would later get married as well.

At some point, they reunite with Narutaki and the Doctor. After the final battle, Hiroki, Fifi and Narutaki were de-aged a few years due to a gift from the gods or time paradoxes stabilising or something like that. As a result, the three were sent back in time to where the timeline split in order to live the years they missed. Narutaki went back home, leaving Hiroki and Fifi with Parker.

End of Innocence: Flowertots in the Time War

Now, Hiroki and Fifi are living in the second timeline. From Parker’s point of view, he is unaware that they had even gone anywhere. Hiroki and Fifi decide to keep their marriage a secret from everyone else in this timeline until they have a second wedding ceremony with them.

Soon after, the Flowertots come to Earth in the Dimensional Merge and Parker, Hiroki and Fifi go to visit them to the north of their city. Bumble sees Hiroki with Fifi and tries to fight him, but Parker and Fifi stop him. When the Flowertots are attacked by Parker and Hiroki’s comrades, they get scared and the three have to fend them off. Parker, Hiroki and Fifi decide to teach the Flowertots how to fight, eventually recruiting them in their army. Violet becomes enamoured with Parker and they eventually begin a relationship. Like Hiroki and Fifi before them, they get married as well.

On Christmas 2008, Fifi and Violet gift their husbands the swords that would signify their presence on the battlefield. In another universe, the swords were known as the Twin Moon Swords and they had three modes they could switch into by channelling the power of light or darkness into them. I realise that there are negative connotations with gifting swords, but given what happens next, you can say that it could be foreshadowing something as a result of the bad luck associated with it.

A couple of years later, a rebellion forced Parker’s army (and its parent army, their primary school army) to split, just as they were transitioning to secondary school. Parker had been planning to move his army to another province so they could still be together. When Parker and Hiroki were separated during their escape, Hiroki was found by the Flowertots, but they were defeated with only Hiroki managing to escape. They later made their way to where Parker intended to move his army, with their commander seemingly nowhere to be found.

Later, Hiroki officially joined his secondary school’s army while working with Parker to rebuild his army. Hiroki fell in love with Akari and at one point, Fifi saw them together and became heartbroken. When Parker’s army heads to assimilate the Flowertots with help from Hiroki’s new army, Fifi eventually confronts Akari with Parker, Hiroki and Narutaki and goes to fight her, but they stop when they get into a Mexican standoff. The Flowertots surrender and Hiroki and Parker reconcile with Fifi and Violet. However, following Parker’s death in October 2011, the Flowertots decide to go back to Flowertot Garden, at which point they were assimilated by the fairies of Never Land. Hiroki and Fifi never applied for a divorce and Hiroki would later begin a relationship with Akari.

So how do I explain Buttercup, Daisy and Flutterby? Well back then, the birth of new Flowertots was rare and it happened once every four years. Towards the end of Soulbound Series 1 (which I wrote in 2019), it would be revealed that Buttercup and Daisy were growing under the ground (in October 2007) and Flutterby offered to be their guardian. They were born the year after, but they fell through time and space and they didn’t show up in the second timeline until 2010 (before that, they were involved in the first timeline in 2009). Buttercup would idolise Hiroki for his heroism and skill.

Ever After: The Flowertots in Never Land

Some storylines in this section were inspired by two of EmmaKoeni’s crossover stories with the Tinker Bell movies, namely 2 Worlds, 2 Different people, 1 Mind and Bethany. Sadly, the latter one seems to have been abandoned, but I got enough out of it to write about what happened to the Flowertots after they went back.

There weren’t a lot of Flowertots in Flowertot Garden before they were assimilated by Never Land. Since then, Flowertot Garden prospered thanks to the help of the fairies. New Flowertots would arrive on babies’ first laughs at the pollen tree, their counterpart of the pixie dust tree. A Flowertot named Lillyana became the Queen of the Flowertots, but when she was exterminated by the Daleks, Daisy (yes, the same Daisy from the show) became Queen.

In August 2012, the Flowertots became aware of Antoni’s plan to detonate the Reality Bomb and Fifi was sent to find the Doctor and help him stop it. The science-talent fairies gave her a prototype Soul Talisman, similar to the item of the same name in Kingdom of Paradise, that would resurrect her if she were to be killed. However, because it was a prototype, the process would be similar to Time Lord regeneration. Another account I wrote, before the Never Land storyline came to be, was that Fifi got the Soul Talisman from the Torchwood Institute while hopping universes. While she did find the Doctor, however, she was shot by a Dalek and proceeded to regenerate, thanks to the power of that Soul Talisman.

However, Fifi’s use of the Soul Talisman did have a side effect. By October 2015, Fifi was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, but Fifi being Fifi, she forgot that name at some point. She was gifted a sonic screwdriver from someone who was revealed to be one of Hiroki’s echoes. Fifi met the Doctor and Hiroki for the last time, with the latter staying the night before she died. In my story, I had a plot where the fairies and Flowertots were segregated by a barrier at the border between Pixie Hollow and Flowertot Garden, which Hiroki destroys together with Fifi using their sonic screwdrivers.

Before Hiroki goes home, he realises why his future self gave Fifi a sonic screwdriver; because he saved her consciousness in a neural relay that he installed. With this, he rushes to Dewey’s library in the Winter Woods and uploads Fifi’s consciousness into a supercomputer, with an artificial version of himself and a male child to be with. Sure enough, an echo of Hiroki gives Fifi a sonic screwdriver.

As a result of his deeds during the Time War, Hiroki was revered as a legendary figure throughout Never Land. Soon after Fifi was uploaded to the supercomputer, she and Hiroki were revered as their gods. Hiroki stated that he would never come back to Never Land once he left, but little did he know that things would bring him back there in the future.

In the Series 9 finale, Violet led the Autons and the Never Land Army to Sekigahara, but they were held up by the Sanada Army, led by Ms Mimi, at Ueda Castle. As shown in The Pilot, they were forced to retreat when the Daleks attacked and exterminated their troops.

Protecting Smiles: Flowertots in the Moushouden Series

In Decade, Narutaki was on a mission to defeat Kamen Rider Decade, Hiroki, as she believed him to be “the destroyer of worlds”. She went to Never Land and gave Firerose, a male rose Flowertot, the Arcle with the intent to have him defeat Decade as Kamen Rider Kuuga. Later on, he joined Hiroki and his other companion on their travels.

They would also encounter a male lilac Flowertot, Lilimuro, who had left Never Land to explore the Mainland, but didn’t come back because he discovered a family being targeted by monsters with the father being incapacitated due to a condition. His appearance would be copied by Roidmude 006, who became the Blazer Roidmude and played a part in Narutaki’s plot to trigger the Global Freeze. His confrontation with Firerose would lead to his defeat when the latter unlocked his Ultimate Form and defeated him with the Ultimate Kick.

Violet would also leave Never Land to travel Earth because she got tired of Flowertot Garden no longer being the quiet place she knew before the Time War. She worked as a mechanic at Silverhatch Racetrack in Big Chris’ absence before joining the Kougami Foundation and becoming Kamen Rider Bravo. Later, thanks to her links with the Kougami Foundation, she established an army of Kurokage Troopers on Never Land as the fairies and Flowertots join Hiroki in ransacking the Citadel of Hirokis.

Roary the Racing Car

No, we didn’t forget those guys. It’s just that they didn’t have as much prominence in my project compared to the Flowertots.

During the Time War, Big Chris and the other human/animal characters were all part of Parker’s army. They and the Flowertots were usually grouped together in battles. When the armies were forced to disband by the government in July 2012, Big Chris and the others went back to Silverhatch Racetrack.

The characters wouldn’t be prominent again until the Moushouden Series. In Decade, Flash became Kamen Rider Drive thanks to Narutaki, who had used Gold Drive’s power to steal the Tridoron, the Shift Cars and Drive Driver from Shinnosuke Tomari. Mr Carburettor, Flash’s arch-nemesis, becomes Mashin Chaser and attempts to return the Drive Driver to its former owner. Later, when Narutaki has no further use for Flash, she takes the Drive Driver and throws it away, but luckily, Shinnosuke catches it. Seeing Flash’s repentance and wish to become a hero, he is given the means to become Kamen Rider Chaser by Shinnosuke, Hiroki and Mr Carburettor before he joins the other Riders in defeating Narutaki as Gold Drive.

Soon after, in Gokaiger, the Go-Ongers and Gekirangers work to create the former’s Megazord Power, the Turbo Falcon Zord, using the data of the cars. When they attempt to power up the Engine Cast, however, a system overload causes the cars’ consciousnesses to be sent into the Cell Chip loaded in it, leading to them all fighting for dominance in a pocket dimension. When the Gokaigers tame the Zord, Roary comes out as the dominant mind while the other cars decide to act as support.

[eliteweddingcoordination]

‘Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ Recap 04×15: What a Wonderful World

Mallory Jansen as Aida. Eric McCandless/ABC

Oh boy what an episode. The LMD storyline has been a slow burn up until now and finally “Self Control,” the final episode of the arc is where it becomes every thing I could have asked for.

Let’s just get right into it. The reason this episode works so well is because it highlights the fear of LMDs. When May is replaced by Robo May, there is a certain fear that should exist but we never truly feel it because the audience already knows what she is. “Self Control” finally leaves the audience in the dark and makes you second-guess and over analyze who is and isn’t human. It reminds me of The Thing in a way; you can’t trust anyone, not even yourself.

The episode starts with some of the agents hooked up to the Framework and the Moody Blues’“Have You Heard” playing as Aida stands over a beat up Anton. He’s not in the best possible condition since Daisy dropped a ceiling on him but Aida is taking it upon herself to “fix” him with a little help from a power saw. The real meat of the episode is with Fitz and Simmons who realize there are four LMDs in the base and they have impersonated Coulson, Mack, Mace, and Daisy. They are terrified but realize they have the advantage in that the LMDs don’t know that they know (Friends anyone?). The Robo agents address Fitz and Simmons as if there is nothing wrong and Robo Coulson puts in the order to bring all Inhumans to the S.H.I.E.L.D base for their protection. Robo Mace tries to convince Jemma to join him alone in his office to talk logistics (turn her into a robot) but Fitz has some quick thinking to keep Jemma with him until they can decipher any of the tech they picked up from the Russian base last episode. Privately, we see Robo Mace and Robo Coulson saying that they have to replace the last two agents as soon as possible and we get a very beautiful long shot (Executive Producer Jed Whedon’s directorial debut) that follows each LMD agent as they begin to plan the rest of their mission. Robo Mack puts in a call to Yo-Yo to convince her to come in and Robo Coulson activates Robo May again. This doesn’t go as well as he’d hope. Robo Coulson tries to explain that just because they don’t have the bodies of the original agents, doesn’t mean they aren’t real. That their thoughts are all that they need and the Framework now makes a world without pain or regret and where May and Coulson can finally be together.

Ming-Na Wen as Melinda May. Eric McCandless/ABC

As Fitz and Jemma try and figure out what to do next, the episode takes a terrific turn and an LMD detection unit goes off and reveals that either Jemma or Fitz are a possible LMD. I literally screamed, “YES” after this. This revelation forces Jemma to hold Fitz at gunpoint and both plead their case that they are human. It’s tearful, it’s emotional, and it’s powerful. To see the two people we want together so badly finally pushed apart is great writing. Jemma asks Fitz to cut his wrists to prove there is no circuitry and he does accordingly. There is a lot of blood. But just as Jemma lets her guard down, Fitz does a sweet knife reversal and stabs her in the leg and knocks her unconscious with a paint can. Damn.

Aida wakes up Radcliffe from the Framework and again we get a scene I’ve been waiting for since the beginning of the arc. Aida has a paradox that she can’t get past. Her primary directive is to protect the Framework but it’s also to protect Radcliffe. The conflict is she believes Radcliffe’s lack of self-control jeopardizes the future of the Framework and that one day he could regret what he made and shut it and Aida down. Radcliffe defends himself by saying he’s helping everyone with the Framework and that even though people’s physical bodies may waste away while plugged in, their minds can live forever in the perfect world. This clears up Aida’s dilemma and SHE SLITS RADCLIFFE’S WRISTS AND PUSHES HIS BODY INTO A FRAMEWORK UPLINK! HOLY F#$%! Basically since Radcliffe said the bodies don’t matter, Aida can get rid of Radcliffe’s body, upload his consciousness to preserve him and the Framework forever and not have to worry about him physically shutting her down anymore. We also learn that the four LMDs at S.H.I.E.L.D are actually Coulson, Mace, Mack and Fitz, which means Daisy was human all along(!) and Jemma is in trouble.

John Hannah as Holden Radcliffe. Eric McCandless/ABC

Jemma wakes up and Robo Fitz is trying to upload her into the Framework. He talks about how in the Framework, the two of them can finally get married and grow old together. It’s sweet albeit creepy. She’s weak but she does crawl away and manages to drop like a car engine on him or something? AND THEN SHE STARTS STABBING HIM! LIKE A LOT! Props to Iain De Caestecker’s acting who goes from screaming to stoic so quickly as he tries to reason with Jemma who slices his neck and shuts him down. Now that we know Daisy is human, we find out Robo Mack is looking for her. She’s down in the containment area double-checking that everything is good for the oncoming Inhumans and finds a room filled with LMD versions of her (15 to be exact, I counted just for you gusy). It was like Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse or what I imagined it to be like if anyone had actually watched it. Robo Mack walks in to the room and realizes Daisy has taken off her clothes to blend in with the other LMDs. Mack picks the wrong one and the real daisy blasts Robo Mack and runs away. She’s hiding in a storage room and uses a tablet to check the security feeds and is shocked to see Fitz dead with Robo Coulson and Robo Mace investigating. They say Simmons has been compromised and is an LMD but some of the other agents see the wires sticking out of Fitz’s neck and realize he’s a robot. Robo Coulson and Robo Mace quickly take them out.

Daisy is left scared and alone and finds a trail of blood next to her that leads to Jemma who straight up looks like she is from a horror movie. She doesn’t trust Daisy and Daisy doesn’t trust her. Simmons even says, “that you don’t know you’re a robot until they kill you,” which is a hell of a line. Daisy realizes that an LMD can’t have her powers so if Simmons will let Daisy quake her, she can prove she is who she says she is and the quake can tell if she has normal bones instead of metal. It’s surprisingly logical. They prove to each other that they both are human and now we get a badass women team up.

The base is on lockdown and Robo Coulson is telling the rest of the agents that Daisy and Jemma are LMDs. With everyone against them, Jemma and Daisy don’t have much hope. They believe their friends must still be alive but still don’t know where to look. They realize that if they can get off this base and hack into the Framework, it could be possible to find everyone but that means staying alive first. Everyone is looking for them and Jemma and Daisy gas the base knocking the human agents out cold, leaving just the LMDs walking around. Robo Mace and Daisy have a super cool fight in the dark and even quakes herself into the air to do a drop punch. It’s just really cool and I had to mention it. Just as she takes down Robo Mace, Robo Coulson and Robo Mack shoot her and as they move in she charges up a quake that’s so powerful it shreds Robo Mack apart. The agents no one really cares about wake up and realize that Jemma and Daisy are telling the truth and they go to escape on the zephyr jet. On their way back, Jemma and Daisy are confronted by Robo May who is sitting on a bunch of explosives. Uh oh.

Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson. Eric McCandless/ABC

The final moments of the episode have Robo Coulson find out that Robo May let Jemma and Daisy board the jet despite her orders. She reveals that her programming is different than Robo Coulson and that she was made to help the real Coulson and that’s what she did. She says the pain and regret Robo Coulson can’t feel is what made Coulson into the man she loves and then she blows them up. The zephyr jet manages to escape in time and on board we have the agents no one cares about, Yo-Yo who we care a lot about and just happens to show up in time, and Jemma and Daisy who are uploaded into the Framework for one final gambit. I’ll get into what the Framework is like in a second, but first I’ll mention that Aida has finished building Anton’s body and we find out he is all machine now but being controlled remotely by his severed head. It’s gross and weird and cool. Aida even gives Anton the Darkhold to read but we finally find out what it is she wants and it’s what they’ve been building to all season: Aida just wants to feel emotion. She just wants to be human.

Okay and now for the good stuff: The Framework. What’s going on in there? Well first, Daisy wakes up in a tub and gets a text telling her to wake up her boyfriend who she believes to be Lincoln in this perfect world but we get to see who it actually is from a photo on their dresser and it’s none other than GRANT WARD. HOLY $#!%. Yes Ward will be back next season, ladies and gentlemen. And what about everyone else in the Framework? Well Coulson is a teacher teaching students why to fear Inhumans. Strange. Mack has a daughter again. That’s nice! Fitz is successful and rich (or at least that’s the vibe I’m getting from the suit and limo) and it looks like he’s married to Jemm-wait. Nope. JEMMA IS DEAD. Yup, we see her grave so no idea what is going to happen there now that she is uploaded as well. And lastly, May is in the Triskelion (The S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters that was damaged in Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and it almost seems as if she’s the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D-wait. Nope. IT’S HYDRA. This just gets better and better! I don’t know about all of you, but I’m excited. These are most likely the final 7 episodes of the series and there is no better way to wrap it up than the final arc, which will fittingly be called Agents of Hydra. But we do have to wait until April 4. So until next time, True Believers!

Source

http://observer.com/2017/02/marvels-agents-of-s-h-i-e-l-d-recap-04x15-what-a-wonderful-world/