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ppeonppeonhan · 11 months ago

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The Sexiest 2023 BL Scenes

I think we can all agree that there is an art to executing a sex scene -- and not everybody's an artist. This year, we (and, by that, I mean you) gif'd a couple of masterpieces that range from romantic to...educational. Here are the ones that live in my head rent free, in order of PG-13 to NC-17:

BEST ROLE-PLAY SEX: Bed Friend

If you had told me last year that incorporating cat ears into foreplay would result in one of the hottest scenes in BL, I would've given you bombastic side-eye. But James, the actor who plays Uea, pulled it off, and is probably responsible for a lot of Amazon orders till this day. (Episode 6)

BEST BEACH-SIDE SEX: The Eighth Sense

This entire sequence was so beautifully lit in golden tones, with soft touches, and romantic moments. It almost made you forget about the depression plot. Almost. (Episode 6)

LONG-AWAITED SEX: Hidden Agenda

Joke yearned for Zo in a way that was borderline comical. From the moment Zo kissed Joke like he was trying to give him CPR and then promptly shoved him out of his apartment, I knew every kiss after that would have to come with a parental warning. I'm surprised Joke didn't move in. (Episode 8)

DO-OVER SEX: Love Class 2

The music for this sex scene was so perfectly matched with the caressing and hand closeups. And the fact that it happened after the initially-ghosted Joo Hyuk got Sung Min to reconsider made it even sweeter. (Episode 9)

BEST WET SEX SCENE: Kiseki: Dear to Me

I may have enjoyed Ai Di and Chen Yi's love story more, but Fan Ze Rui and Bai Zong Yi were helping us all live out our tall boy fantasies. When he mounted him with a soft bounce, I knew the gif Gods would giveth. (Episode 7)

BEST EUPHORIC SEX: Only Friends

Ray looked like he reached nirvana when he made love to Sand in that sardine can of trailer, so of all their sex scenes, this was my fave. (Episode 9)

BEST INSECURITY-INDUCED SEX: Only Friends

Say what you will about Boston -- and the fandom has said a lot lol -- but if you had to choose a cast member to get you off, you'd choose him in a heartbeat. And yes, this scene was grimey. He f*cked his friend's potential boyfriend in the backseat of his car after manipulating him into believing he was cheated on, but can you blame him? He was probably tired of always having to give and never receive. Plus, Top did this vibrating move that made me wonder who told Force to do that... (Episode 3)

GIF by wanderlust-in-my-soul

BEST CENSORED SEX: Wedding Plan

I'm still mad that this scene wasn't in the Youtube cut. It paints an entirely different picture of their dynamic and their personalities. But thank God for the gif'ers, otherwise I would've missed how ravenous they were when they weren't...wedding planning. 😳 (Episode 6)

BEST WHIPLASH SEX: Be Mine Superstar

To be clear, WE were the ones getting whiplash. One minute, we were watching a sweet love story between an innocent college kid and his idol crush, and the next minute we were watching a masterclass on how to bang your one-night stand (consensually) until he agrees to date you. It's like...Sir, I'm on the train. Could you give a bitch a heads up? (Episode 8)

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While I am generally envious of every single one of these experiences, I'm even more envious of everyone's knee strength and flexibility. I could never. Rollerblading has ruined me. If I tried half of these positions, I'd have to get physical therapy. 🙃

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iguessitsjustme · 1 year ago

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God damn it you’ve gone and unlocked my thinking brain. This is going to be an incoherent mess but I have Thoughts and I need to get them out. I also could be wildly and completely wrong and feel free to disagree.

I can’t get over the symbols in the first story with the rabbit and the bear trap. I don’t know anything about Zo’s backstory. We’re introduced to all of these characters very much in the present, but just looking at the story that was told, I am going to make some wild and big assumptions that are probably wrong but they aren’t wrong yet. Zo is obviously the rabbit and I think the bear trap is heteronormativity. He was walking along just fine and everything was quite literally bright and colorful until he was caught and had been screaming for help for hours. That little rabbit was screaming for help until his world was dark. Then the girl rabbit came and released him from the trap. The freedom he sought from the bear trap is his feelings for Nita. Even after the girl rabbit left, his world remained dark. So my major assumption here is that Zo is gay and then due to heteronormativity and societal pressure and just life in general, he became closeted, even to himself. Then he came across Nita, who is pretty and kind and he tricked himself into thinking he had a crush on her. Everything he knew about Nita was very surface level and he struggled to even talk to her, likely because he was subconsciously clinging on to his crush as a way to keep himself in the closet. I think the sword that the girl rabbit used might represent Joke. So Zo’s “feelings” for Nita are what freed him from the loneliness of being trapped, but what truly freed Zo is and was Joke.

Then the boy rabbit goes after the girl rabbit. He follows her, but as @heretherebedork points out, that story ends with loneliness. Zo’s friend is asleep in the studio. But who comes in to wake him up? Joke. So if Zo is truly trapped in loneliness forced onto him, then what better representation of his freedom than Joke being the one to force his friend to notice they’ve gone over their time and after the friend leaves, Joke puts on the headphones and listens. Joke is listening to Zo. He might not speak much, but he listens.

So his response to the Aphrodite and Adonis story tracks. He wouldn’t leave his love alone. We haven’t seen him ever leave Zo alone, even if Zo isn’t aware of it, Joke has always been there, waiting to free him from the bear trap. Joke listened to Zo telling him a story intently. He concentrated. Zo had his full focus and he cared about nothing else in that moment than what Zo was sharing with him.

Nita’s focus wasn’t entirely there during her story. She wasn’t there to listen to Zo the way that Joke was. She still listened and gave her thoughts, but she had to be prompted for them. And I don’t disagree with her thoughts on the story either. She said “isn’t it better to be with someone who truly values you?” What does this mean for Zo? Well, he never truly got to know her. So his crush was entirely superficial. And I love the idea that Zo is like the sunflower, rooted in place staring after a sun that can’t love him back because the sun is this ideal that he made Nita into. Zo made Nita into the perfect girl so he could crush on her. It’s so much easier to crush on the perfect girl than to allow himself to feel what he’s really feeling. He’s rooted in place as a sunflower, he’s trapped as a rabbit.

Only in the story he tells to Joke is Zo able to find some freedom. The story ends in sadness and in loneliness yet again. But the love is still there. The roses turn from white (innocence) to red (love). And then Joke tells Zo that he would never leave his love. He would be with them so there wouldn’t have to be loneliness. And that’s when Zo starts to feel something. Something more than he had allowed himself to feel before. That heartbeat came crashing through his barriers and is ever present. Making him question everything. Once the heartbeat comes into the show, it doesn’t leave. It stays. Constant. Forcing Zo to notice things that he had buried deep. Forcing Zo to turn away from the sun. He is quite literally uprooting himself and leaving. Even if it’s only for a bit. But then the person that is causing him to free himself from his loneliness decides to tag along. Joke literally does not let Zo experience loneliness because he will be there.

Zo might be the one telling the stories, but Joke is the one that is making them. Jokes actions inform Zo’s words. What new stories will Zo tell as he starts to let himself open up to a world that he didn’t think was possible?

So Zo has now told us three stories in the show, one that he was recording, one to Joke and one to Nita. And I am not @respectthepetty to be able to make plot predictions from these shows but I want to look at the kinds of emotional beats we get in each show and what we're seeing in terms of emotional resonance and the weight the stories are giving to different kinds of relationships as well as what they're showing us about the different characters.

The rabbit story is the only one that isn't a legend in general, it's an original story for the show obviously, but that doesn't mean we can't connect the ideas. And we start with, well, the beginning.

With pain. With being trapped. With being isolated and unheard. It's a bright and colorful cartoon but that bunny is still trapped and still hurt and still alone.

And we get the instant connection to the Adonis story. Being alone, being injured, likely crying out... but this time, there is an answer. Aphrodite rushes to him. This is also the story that Zo tells when he's with Joke. He is not alone in a recording studio, he isn't by himself and speaking into the void. He is telling this story to Joke and bringing meaning to this.

The first story is alone and isolated and the answer, the rescue, doesn't come from love. In fact, she barely seems to even notice she rescued him. She simply leaves after she releases him. Which is compared to Aphrodite's failure to rescue Adonis but without any doubt of her love for him.

So we have one story where the boy cries for help and is not heard but is rescued by someone who doesn't really care about him and a story where the person is loved and rushed to the rescue of but the rescue is too late and the love isn't what makes a difference.

This is... y'all. This is isolation and loneliness and that feeling that no one cares about you and, even if they do care about you, it only hurts them in the end. Two stories about being rescued, one successful but from not affection and one failed but from love... It's about whether or not love is worth it, it's about if love can actually save you or just hurts you in the end. Is it worth loving if you won't be rescued by love or is it worth being alone if it means that no one will come when you cry?

Probably a good time to finally bring up the story he read to Nita, right? Nita, who is almost certainly (I believe) meant to be the girl knight in the original story as told by Zo if not by the narrative of the actual show... but the story that he reads her reflects the elements of the original story that are not reflected in the story he reads Joke.

Aphrodite and Adonis is about requited love that is still not enough to rescue someone. The original rabbit story is about falling in one-sided love with someone who saves you. The story of Sunflower Clytie is about unrequited love and pining after someone without hope.

This story reflects many elements of the original rabbit story as well. About not being seen by the person you love, about being ignored by the world, about feelings that don't matter and aren't returned and are too big to put down but that just makes them hurt more.

The idea of staring and watching but doing nothing is so powerful and the fact that both stories end with nothing changing and nothing happening and no love and no romance, just pining and waiting and surviving on nothing but the concept of hope itself, the abstract idea of love.

The three endings. Loneliness, red roses and a sunflower. Two trapped and one lost but meaning something bigger. The boy rabbit and Clytie are both forever trapped by their love, in loneliness and as a sunflower, while Aphrodite lost Adonis but will always symbolize love to the world.

Zo told three stories to us in this show so far. One about loneliness, one about loss and one about being left behind. There's so much there to everything in the show and I'm sure many predictions could be made.

But I'm just thinking about how the only story that included truly returned love was the one he told Joke. That the story he told Nita was about staring after someone so long that you rooted in place, so long that you weren't even looking at them any more because you'd become someone else. And that the story he told that ended only in loneliness was told to a friend who had already fallen asleep.

Zo might have friends and he might have people around him but how lonely is he? How much of himself is behind these stories and his own grumblings and the debate club and the people who know him but don't know about his issues. How many hidden agendas are here and how many are on purpose? Can you have a hidden agenda so secret you've hidden from yourself and forgotten about it entirely?

Look. Zo is obviously a storyteller. He communicates through words and not actions. Everything is about expressing how he feels indirectly, even to himself, through stories and debate and discussion and worries and fears and twisting words until they both do and don't mean what he's saying. And that's why he doesn't hear Joke's hidden agenda. Because Joke's agenda is in his actions and his words are a struggle for him, as we've seen and as is clear in his actions. They're speaking different languages.

This is the only time he ends a story wanting to say more but not saying it. Every other story simply... ends.

Also, the reactions. The first one is just teasing, Joke isn't able to respond to the story because they're not at that point in their friendship at all. This story is Joke saying he'd never leave the person he loves alone long enough to get hurt. And Nita's response is to criticize the story and point out that it hasn't aged well (you know, like his multi-year crush on her that's going away).

I just... it's all so good and so mixed and it's showing how Zo communicates and sees the world as well. It's great. It's beautiful storytelling within storytelling and an amazing way to show us characters.

The real question is becoming... why did the girl knight save the rabbit and was it at the hands of another boy rabbit who's been watching even longer?

#hidden agena #hidden agenda the series #hidden agenda bl #this might just be utter nonsense but also i definitely think there's some truth to what i'm saying #but also also i'm not entirely sure what i'm saying

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