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alisarb · 4 years

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Thoughts on Frenchie and Kimiko (deleted scene + 2x04)

Okay so tHINGS have happened since we last saw each other, folks, so let’s get cracking immediately.

Spoilers for The Boys season 2 until 2x04, stop reading if you haven’t seen it yet!

Before I delve into last episode’s events, I’d like to talk a bit about two deleted scenes that I think still play a vital part into context for the kiss scene in 2x04. Get for a LONG meta post.

The events that lead up to that kiss are influenced by everything we saw last season and that I talked about in a previous post: Kimiko opening and sharing her trauma with The Boys because she trusts Frenchie, Frenchie telling her and only her about his dad and his traumatic childhood, how their relationship is defined by freedom and absolute liberty to choose without judgement, etc.

Then, on season 2, we see that Kimiko has begun to interact with the other members of the gang a lot more (Hughie approaches her from behind to praise her on her writing practice and she smiles), and that everything has been going a bit roughly since Butcher left, holing up in the back of a store with some sketchy guys that Frenchie knows.

It’s obvious from the beginning of the season that Frenchie has been stressed and frustrated since everyone is highly wound up, but the moment Kimiko goes to him to show him the origami piece he stops to pay her attention and smiles.

One of the main points of this season is that Kimiko is finding a voice, a way to communicate. Unfortunately, another main point of this is that Frenchie is struggling to understand her.

He doesn’t get what the paper means, or why she keeps talking about “a boy and a girl.”

This boy, as it turns out, is her brother, who was also taken from the terrorist group into America and injected with Compund v, turning him into a Supe like her sister.

The conversation between the two of them is very telling. At one point, she asks if it hurt when they injected him, and he says: “I wanted to die.” She replies: “Me too”, and goes on to say that Vought had turned her into a monster.

A few scenes earlier, Kimiko goes into the store with Frenchie and brutally murders one of the employees. Frenchie looks completely horrified at the excessive force and shocked at Kimiko for “returning to her old habits”, in a way, but then realizes that he belongs to the Shining Light Liberation Army.

These two things help us understand her personality: when we first meet her, she’s locked in a cage and is completely feral and savage (understandably so). She’s only able to form a bond with Frenchie, and uses violence towards people without much remorse.

However, this season she doesn’t seem so prone to it, and I think the change in her character is what surprises Frenchie at the store.

Now, before we go into 2x04, let’s talk about the deleted scenes.

The first deleted scene: Cherie

I’ve tried to record the scene but to no avail, so I’ll describe it for those who don’t have Prime Video since I can’t find it uploaded anywhere else.

The scene is presumably set at the beginning of 2x02. We see M.M working on his dollhouse when suddenly some voices can be heard arguing in the background: Frenchie and Cherie. Frenchie sounds angry and tense and Cherie talks in a playful, passive-aggresive manner.

Frenchie: You’re getting on my nerves. You need to shut up.

Cherie (laughing, playful): You shut up. Just fucking say the truth then.

Frenchie (tense): Bye-bye...

Cherie (now visibly angry too): That’s all I’m asking. Say the fucking truth.

Frenchie (shouting): Okay, you can stop right there, okay?

Cherie: You wanna fuck her? Fuck her! Just (I didn’t get that part lmao)

Frenchie: We are not-! I would never sleep with her!

Cherie: Why!? Then what does she do, then? I mean, I see the way you look at her!

Frenchie: It’s difficult, it’s difficult to explain, okay? She’s special!

Okay, I won’t transcribe the whoooole conversation because IT’S LONG but I’ll describe the rest and quote the final part:

Cherie gets offended because, oh, Frenchie can fuck her hard and rough just fine but she’s too “magic and special.” Then Frenchie tries to explain (through C.I Joe characters wtf Frenchie) that him and Kimiko are like soulmates: they can “read each other thoughts”, and they think and feel the same, they are the same.

This mirrors what Karen Fukuhara, who plays Kimiko, said in a recent interview (posted a week before 2x04) when asked about the nature of their relationship:

“It could be love, romantic love. It could be like paternal love, because in the comics, she is portrayed as a younger girl, I think, when you first see her. Or it could be something deeper than friendship, something that we call “twin flame,” something that ties two people together kind of like a magnet, soulmates, if you will.”

Cherie grabs him and asks him how does he know what the fuck she’s thinking if she doesn’t say a word. Maybe he’s just projecting what he wants to believe into her for this very reason (VERY TELLING OF THE KISS SCENE).

Then, she turns around to leave and runs right into Kimiko. Cherie touches a strand of her hair and tells her: “I don’t think you’re too magic to fuck” before she leaves.

Kimiko looks at Frenchie confused as fuck, ofc.

The lovely @daddy-winter asked me what I thought because they’ve been announcing for a while now that their characters will drift apart this season, and I think this scene is key in understanding that.

Their relationship has been interpreted in many ways throughout the show, and this scene marks it clearly as romantic, as it shows Cherie being jealous or at least annoyed with how much attention he’s giving Kimiko. This also resembles a scene in S1 when she demands to know when he’ll be with her again. Then it takes a turn when Frenchie tells her he’d never sleep with her (which seemes to be disproved when he later tries to kiss her).

The way I see it, this scene was too open-ended, and at the same time, gave away too much of what’ll happen with them. I also don’t think it’s truly fitting with Cherie’s character since she later learns Frenchie tried to kiss Kimiko and is not excessively annoyed nor surprised (CHERIE KNEW FROM THE BEGINNING AND I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL).

We don’t see all the glimpses into their relationship and everyday life. In fact, when S2 begins we’re taken already into present day with no clarifications as to how much time passed (it doesn’t seem like more than a few weeks) or what has happened in that time (except for Butcher disappearing and them hiding with the gun smugglers). But we get this scene, which, as another user commented, is incredibly romantic in the way Frenchie straight-up affirms he would never sleep with Kimiko.

And now we get to the dreaded 2x04 and the terribly terribly timed kiss.

2x04 and dumbass Frenchie’s fucked up timing

The third episode ended with the death of Kimiko’s brother by Stormfront (played brilliantly by Aya Cash, btw) and her staring at the TV with boiling anger and grief.

The fourth episode begins pretty much the same way, and it reminds us of an earlier version of Kimiko: disheveled, huddled up under a table and staring at the TV in a dark room.

Frenchie, who was first introduced as a character way too comfortable with taking pills, stops getting high in S1 (coincidentally when he meets Kimiko). Then, all of a sudden, we start 2x04 with him snorting coke and getting high as a kite (Butcher’s words, not mine). The stress of the situation could be triggering enough on its own, but as we talked about at the beginning of this post, he’s seen relaxing instantly when Kimiko is around. However, the minute they start drifting away even the slightlest (them not being able to communicate, her isolating herself to grieve her brother) he feels the need to consume again.

That’s how he finds her: high, tense, and emotionally destroyed. An explosive mix, to say the least. He goes up to her to comfort her, but does the stupidest thing he could do: he goes in for a kiss. Of course, she pushes him away swiftly, and is shocked and angry.

The timing is terrible: she’s grieving her brother and the last thing she needs is to deal with this right now, especially when the show has already established that she’s emotionally fragile and not ready for more than slight contact (and just with Frenchie).

Once again referring to Karen’s interview, when asked about her brother’s death and whether or not it will be a setback in her character’s development:

“But then because of this loss, it’s going to create rifts within her relationships, especially with Frenchie. In a way, it’s not necessarily Frenchie’s fault or anything he does. Actually, scratch that. He does do something. But Frenchie’s not the source of the pain, you know? The source of the pain is the death, and she doesn’t deal with it. I mean, nobody deals with death the right way. The rest of the season is her grappling with how to deal with loss and grief”.

Later in the episode, Frenchie goes to Cherie (for the first time in presumably a long time) and they sleep together. Afterwards, she asks him to tell her what’s wrong and he admits to trying to kiss Kimiko. He affirms he was just “trying to make her feel better.” I’ve seen some discussions about how this means the relationship could still be platonic and he didn’t know any other way to do it, but I want to offer a different approach.

We already know Kimiko is inexperienced. I mean, it’s not explicitly said but we can all assume she probably doesn’t know a lot about normal, functional relationships apart from the one with her brother. Everything she’s known outside of that is violence, abuse and cruelty.

But we forget Frenchie is just as inexperienced.

They both come from abuse, and even though he prides himself in being succesful with women, Frenchie has never been in love. He doesn’t know how to properly love someone or communicate with them. Yes, he has had sex, but he doesn’t know anything about intimacy (sexual or otherwise). Kimiko was the one to show him, and the only way he can think of to comfort her is sexually, as it seems to be the thing that works for him (that, and drugs). This is confirmed when he later goes to sleep with Cherie to drown his sorrows, probably still high or drunk or both.

His face in Cherie’s bed as he tries to convey his feelings is heartbreaking. He just doesn’t know how to function in such a situation, and he’s terrified that he destroyed their bond by going too fast.

There’s another deleted scene set in 2x04 where Kimiko is in her room watching Stormfront’s speech and she finds a mouse wandering about. She feeds him, as it probably reminds her of her brother (her nickname for him was Mouse because he used to feed mouses in the camp that didn’t have a mom). Then later, she tries to feed it again and finds it dead under her bed, caught in a mousetrap. She breaks down and goes to Stormfront’s rally as Frenchie keeps pounding her door, pleading her to let him in. He hears the noise and forcibly opens the door, only to realize she’s gone.

The next we see of them is already at Stormfront’s rally, where he saves her from literally killing herself. As Frenchie says, she will not survive. Stormfront is more powerful and dangerous and she’s probably too weak anyway to fight her again. She looks at him and it’s clear there’s no resentment from before in her eyes. Kimiko feels safe with Frenchie, and she feels love for him:

Look at this and tell me they don’t love each other, I DARE YOU

But her grief and her vengeance are too much of an obstacle right now. She needs to leave and sort it out. It’s a clever, intelligent move for her character and for once I’m so glad the writers are aware that female characters are more than their romantic interest. She gets annoyed at him when he tells her “let’s go home”, for the simple reason that he’s not understanding her. He does it out of pure concern for her, but also comprehensible selfishness: he loves her and doesn’t want her to die. But by doing that, he’s belittling her need to get revenge for her brother. In this matter, Kimiko feels alone for the first time, and it mirrors the S1 scene where he offers her a choice to leave and find her brother. Now, he just can’t bear to see her go (of course now she’s in a lot more danger, but still).

This episode is so perfectly described in a post by @pineapplesperhaps: it is about love. From the title (Nothing Like It in the World) to the whole plot: the women talking about it and relationships in a ‘When Harry met Sally’ style (about communication, which is sorely lacking between them this season); every character’s story this episode is marked by love in this, in all of its forms: Hughie and Starlight, Butcher and Becca, Homelighter and milk. And then himself. Thinking about it, let’s not bring that up ‘cause it was too disturbing. Also please stop writing scenes about Homelander and milk I can’t bear it anymore wRITERS-

Karen mentions in the interview that there’s an episode this season about Frenchie’s background story that will also cause another shift (not rift, mind you) in their relationship. I’m so excited about it.

I think their drifting apart was inevitable and necessary to a degree for them to be able to come together in a healthy way. Kimiko is learning who is she as a free person, as a Supe, as a member of The Boys, and it’s hard to do so while figuring out the complex relationship with Frenchie. I don’t think she didn’t want him to approach her romantically, but the timing, as everyone has pointed out, was terrible to say the least. They are both new to this kind of bond and need to find the common ground necessary to get closer.

I am hopeful that this rift will only make their bond stronger and help them move forward with their relationship. The show has already established that Frenchie feels attraction towards Kimiko (as much as you want to comfort someone you don’t kiss them if you see them as a little sister or a daughter; besides, in the deleted scene with Cherie, she asks him if he sees her as those things and he denies it), and I think it’s pretty clear those feelings are returned, just expressed differently. The way all their physical interactions in the show have been initiated by Kimiko prove this.

To conclude this essay about the pairing that will probably kill me, I want to recommend a fanvid of them with a song that perfectly describes them: x&y by Coldplay. The lyrics talk about a lover the singer tries to comfort after a terrible loss but being ultimately unable to do so.

Trying hard to speak And fighting with my weak hand Driven to distraction It's all part of the plan When something is broken And you try to fix it Trying to repair it Anyway you can

I dive in at the deep end You become my best friend I wanna love you But I don't know if I can I know something is broken And I'm trying to fix it Trying to repair it Anyway I can

This is the video, it’s perfect and beautiful.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk and please keep up the fanfiction, you’re the ones that keep me going till Friday arrives.

#frenchie #kimiko #frenchie x kimiko #kimiko x frenchie #the boys #the boys season 2 #the boys spoilers #the boys spoilers season 2 #i will literally die next week #when i tell you i GASPED when he went in for a kiss #like i knew he was into her fuck holy fuck the writers are not playing #we all know kimiko is the one that's going to kiss him next time

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notthelasttime · 6 years

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mmmmtagged by @flykiwiflyaway

Rules: Answer 30 questions and tag 10 people

# following: around 250

# of followers: 70ish here, 300ish on my main blog

Average hours of sleep: really really depends tbh. been trying to get a solid 7-8 hours bc i’ve felt pretty garbage lately but sometimes shit happens and i’ll get like. 4 or 5.

Lucky number: 8 and 13

Instruments: haven’t picked it up in a considerable amount of time but I can still play (badly) the viola and violin

What are you wearing: sweat pants that are too big on me and an old tshirt that’s been washed too many times and is starting to fall apart. it says ‘dissent is patriotic’ on it, bought during my young edgy teen punk™ days

Dream job: GOD anything self employed at this point, either art or writing, but my production is so up and down i.. don’t know if i’ll ever actually be able to make it happen. you can’t finish one thing every 6 months and hope to support yourself on it so

Dream trip: I have romantic ideas about paris that i know would realistically only lead to disappointment. otherwise i’d probably give my left tit to see ankor wat irl

Significant other: nnnnnah son

Birthday: october 5th

Height: 5′6ish, maybe a little taller

Gender/pronouns: female, she/her

Other blogs: main blog, art blog, a shared writing blog for short stories i have with a friend that we keep forgetting about then trying to revive, that blog i kept while working at a sex shop to save ridiculous stories but is now defunct and i just don’t have the heart to delete it, a blog for my/my best friends youtube channel which has turned into nothing but bad video game memes

Nicknames: jess is already a nickname. sometimes my dad calls me jezebell or just bell. a last-name related nickname that would make no sense out of context

Star Sign: libra. why i’m so full of Justice and can never make up my mind, apparently

Time: 8:59pm

Favorite Bands: thee michelle gun elephant

Favorite artists: ummmmmmmm idk that i can settle on one favorite but i went through a pretty hardcore ivan albright phase for a while lmao. and i strive for my linework to be as intense as junji ito

Favorite tumblr artist: UH well not a tumblr artist so to speak, more like an artist that happens to be on tumblr - daisuke ichiba. i've also been very in to apollonia saintclair but BIG nsfw warning on her tumblr

Song stuck in your head: my very uncool answer is that the bridge combat music from hellblade has been stuck in my head for like a solid week

Last movie you watched: jiro dreams of sushi but idk how much it counts bc i just had it on as background noise

Last show you watched: started watching one punch man recently

Why did you make your blog: this blog in particular was made to keep my fanfic bullshit separate from my regular bullshit.

What do you post: bad opinions, video games, occasionally writing and even less often art

Fandom contributions: initially all promnis fic but now i’m branching out. expanding my horizons. trying my hand at gladnis, sheith and fenhawke. becoming the one woman ignyx show.

Last thing you googled: john corigliano

Ao3: notthelasttime

Do you ever get asks: i do on occasion. more after i starting live blogging the dragon age experience lmao

How did you get the idea for your url: i wanted something for ao3 that had no connection/similarities to anything else i had online but i have no idea it just sort of popped in my head. i think initially i was thinking like.. won’t be the last time or something similar, but i like the repeating letters in notthelasttime

Favorite food: man idek i couldn’t even narrow it down i don’t know

Last book you read: currently reading Hannibal mostly because clarice can be cool sometimes

Top 3 fictional universes: DA has gotten fantasy on my brain so middle earth absolutely comes to mind. columbia from bioshock strictly from an aesthetic standpoint my... issues with the game itself aside.and there’s a big soft spot in my heart for deepgate from the book scar night but i would definitely not want to live there, also the other books in the series were so... mediocre in comparison. but there’s something about deepgate for sure.

from my recent notes minus people that have already been tagged: @breotch-iunderstoodthatreference @libertusostiums @lunaloupgarou @the-mad-duchess @muncharoux @cheepx2 but also ZERO pressure if you don’t wanna

#sorry i'd link my art blog but it's my full name and i'd feel weird posting it here #and a lot of you have figured out my main blog anywya #tagged #thank u this kept me entertained for a while lmao

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tarushipping · 7 years

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Hello to all my discord friends.

I'm sorry I'm no longer in the channel anymore, and I'm sure the mods will inform you as to why. For those of you that want a more thorough explanation, I think I've calmed down enough to write something out. While I can't speak for the others that were also kicked out, I can try to at least explain myself.

For the short of it, I was shipping with minors as an adult and under the new rule I was out. I...made very big mistakes and it's not something easy for me to think back on. My main regret is just not realizing what I was doing was wrong sooner.

That being said, I really enjoyed and came to love the community. Everyone is such creative, kind, generous, strong, loving, and passionate people and I can't express enough how thankful I was and still am for it. Thank you all so much for welcoming me and for giving me the support that's been really helping me these last few weeks.

I would still love to stay friends with any of you through here or private messages on discord! I understand if you're too uncomfortable to talk to me, and I don't want to make anyone feel that way. But otherwise, I would still love to support all you and your beautiful f/o’s. Please feel free to hit me up if you just wanna chat or anything or even if you'd like to let me know to leave you alone.

You guys are a great community and the mods do a good job keeping it safe. Thank you all again for everything.

For anyone wanting more in depth explanation, I'm placing it under the cut:

I'll try to...explain this as well as I can. I want to emphasize that this isn't an excuse for what I did.

I can't remember dates very well, but I stumbled upon the selfship discord channel almost a month ago I think. When I joined, I was notified very fast that mentioning selfshipping with a fictional minor while being an adult is against the code of conduct. I'd missed seeing the code of conduct because the discord app doesn't have a way to check pins that linked to it. Immediately I apologized and read it in full.

And I understood why it was against the rules. I just never thought about selfshipping with minors in a pedophilia context. And pedophilia is something I definitely don't agree with and the minors in the server didn't need to be exposed to that. Since that moment, I spent a while thinking it over.

I'd been into selfshipping for 10+ years at this point and most of that time was spent as a minor myself. I would occasionally find small pockets and corners of the internet where self insert fics existed and of course the OCxF/O fics. Otherwise, everywhere else shamed on it and I was always too embarrassed and afraid to really put much content out myself-much less have anyone to talk to about it. So I kept my fics and drawings to myself. I think the internet was a bit of a different place for selfshippers. It wasn't until last year that I saw any sort of selfship positivity (on tumblr) and slowly discovered others. I'd like to explain all that to help show how someone at my age, 23, hadn't even thought of this issue. I suppose I was just set on autopilot and kept doing the same thing as I did since I was in fifth grade.

I guess my mindset always saw these characters as first most fictional instead of minors. And there's plenty of series out there that draw/write minors as if they were adults. They always seemed to be just fictional characters in a separate world, but until I had read that rule, I started realizing they were fictional...but they were also children. And I felt gross about it.

Selfshipping is still something very close to me and has been a long time, so the shift of mindset didn't happen overnight. It took me a while of trying to figure out how I felt and what to do about it. I made no mention about all this on discord of course, and was too scared and nervous to really talk to anyone about it. On my personal tumblr blogs, I think a few minor shipping related posts were queued and posted during the first week of my time in the discord channel. I stopped minor shipping myself from that point on. At the very least, I didn't feel comfortable minor shipping while I felt gross about it. This last week I'd been debating if I should delete them off my blog entirely. Part of me figured it was all from a while ago and didn't reflect my current self anyway. I think I was scared to see those words I'd written before and acknowledge that I had said them.

While I was working, I'd missed some sort of chat about adults in the group shipping with minors. Myself included, of course. After work, I had gotten a message saying I was taken out of the channel because of my prior minor shipping. While I hadn't technically broken any rules, it was no longer in good conscious to let me and the others stay. And under the new rule, anyone known to ship with minors as an adult are out of the group.

It...hit me hard to say the least. I shakily attempted to explain myself better. I don't exactly blame the moderators for doing as they did. Trying to keep the channel safe for everyone, especially the minors is very important and I agree with the reasoning. Even now however, I don't think I was treated fairly either. I had been kicked out from the community without a discussion, warning, or even a chance to explain my now different view. I understand that what I had done before was wrong, but I thought I would have deserved...some sort of chance. During my time on the chat, I obeyed the rules and tried to pour the love I was receiving back into the community. I wanted to be involved with everything-having fun on voice chats, playing games outside of discord, writing prompts, fanart love, google docs. I loved everyone and their ships and wanted to support as much as I could.

But in the end, I don't think the mods knew me well enough to trust what I was saying as the truth. And they didn't want to risk exposing any minor shipping to any of the minors in the channel. While I think it might have been handled too severely (again, I'm only speaking for myself at least-I don't know the situations for anyone else), I don't disagree with the action itself.

I'm really sorry about what I've done in the past. I think I'm not the only one that's fallen into that sort of mindset, and I really would ask that you think critically about yourself. My biggest regret coming out of this is not having thought about this sooner. For not having the conviction and strength to delete those posts sooner. To realize sooner that what I was doing was wrong.

It's been a couple days, and it's been...really rough for me. But I know I'll be ok eventually, and at this moment I'm starting to try and feel hopeful again. It's been a great month hanging out with everyone on the channel, and I really can't say how thankful I am for the time. I've gotten so much support and I've been given much more confidence in my own selfshipping. Thank you all again.

While I will probably never be on the discord channel again, maybe I can still try and support the friends I did make during my time. I originally made my selfship blog to support other selfships/my selfships/selfshipping in general so I'll continue to try and do that. Selfshipping still makes me very happy and I want to try moving forward with the confidence that I was given and try and spread that feeling to others.

Thanks for reading all this though to the end, and if you’d still like to stay friends with me, I would love that. I understand if you'd rather not though and if we talked a lot before and would like to no longer do that, please feel free to let me know so I don't keep bothering you.

Thank you all again. I only wish the best for everyone.

#stuff

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