Don't Call Me Master! or "I Hope This Doesn't Awaken Anything in Me"
Although I'm glad to let other stolen YouTuber jokes languish unnoticed until someone calls me on it, I want to point out that my title for this post comes from the thumbnail and intro section of Jack Saint's BEASTARS Is A Deviant Furry Masterpiece,
which you should all totally watch.
Now, let's gear up to talk about this blog's first PWP, or porn without plot,
if that's somehow not an acronym commonly used in weeb or fanfic spaces anymore. It's true that our last oneshot post didn't have much plot either, but I don't think Eros in the Stoic's major function is being porn, so there ya go. Like usual, feel free to jump to my actual thoughts if you're already familiar with this story or don't particularly care to know the details.
Plot Summary
Don't Call Me Master!
is a oneshot from the Canvas ni Kuchizuke (w)o tankobon, which has a main story that sucks ass and no one should ever read. Despite its shitty main story and snooze fest first oneshot, the last two oneshots are pure flames and I read them all the time when I'm in the mood for some explicit nsfw content.
This oneshot tells the story of Kazuki Midori, a beautiful guy who is constantly mistaken for a girl and therefore frequently harassed by strange men, and Fujita [not sure I know his first name], a salaryman who is mesmerized by Midori's beauty. Our two heroes meet and get together due to some iconic public transit woes. Both are riding the bus home one evening when Fujita confronts some old guy for feeling Midori up. Horrified to discover that Midori is also a man, Fujita pulls him off the bus to apologize profusely for causing him public embarrassment and misgendering him. Midori is stunned by the sudden change in his personality or public presentation, from white knight to wimpy apologetic bitch boy.
Too bad for both of them, but that bus was the last of the evening. Ooh, I've been there, buddy! Fujita sets Midori up in a hotel for the night and walks home after he's unable to get a cab to come out where they're located. With this meet cute now behind them, the two notice each other often on their bus rides home from work (Fujita) and campus (Midori). Fujita continues the chivalrous shtick and Midori finds himself becoming attracted to Fujita's kind and devoted nature.
One night, Midori gets on the bus drunk and passes out. No sweat—Fujita's not the kind of guy who would take advantage of an inebriated person. Midori wakes up sober in the same hotel he stayed at post-meet cute, this time with his clothing unbuttoned. Fujita panics and insists he didn't unbutton him for sexual kicks and Midori heats things up by telling Fujita that he could have done so because he knows that Fujita wants it. Midori reflects:
Up till now, I've only encountered people who try to touch me whether I want them to or not. His hands stop just before touching my skin and I feel the distance keenly.
Fujita then orally services Midori and goes home. Talk about my ideal evening! From here on out, the two periodically meet up and Fujita gives Midori head multiple times a night, after which he returns home without demanding his own sexual gratification. Instead of jumping for joy like I would be doing in such an arrangement, Midori grows increasingly upset by the ambiguity of their relationship, worried he's unwittingly become the plaything of a closeted married guy who convinces himself he's not cheating by refusing to go all the way.
The next time they meet Midori begs Fujita to let him return the favor, which he eventually does despite Fujita's horror. As Midori explains that he's fallen in love with him, Fujita comes on Midori's face, freaks the fuck out, and blurts:
Oh no! What have I done to you, master?!
Yes, it's my wildest dream come true—Fujita is a submissive man in literally every way! Apparently, Fujita views his dick as dirty and doesn't want to defile Midori with himself. (I mean… is he wrong?) Almost instantaneously, Midori decides to start making sexual demands as is his right as The Penetrated. He wants to do butt stuff but also wants to respect Fujita's intentions, so he tells Fujita to only stick half his dick inside, which makes me die every time because Fujita looks so fucking concerned:
The best part of these final panels and the omake (in which Fujita actually manages to only go halfway, so let's hear it for Fujita) is that Midori has no fucking clue he's domming Fujita so hard with his requests… talk about being a tease and putting a guy through tortuous sexual denial. Fucking goals, honestly.
My Busted Opinion, aka the Beast Unleashed
For starters, I want to clear up a major critique of this BL tankobon. Nangoku-sensei has a reputation for producing smutty works of little substance, and we can mostly blame the shitty quality of Canvas ni Kuchizuke wo on the fact that it was her first BL volume. Her author's notes indicate that her editors pressured her into making BL because she reads the genre IRL, so I say cut her some slack for her plots or lack thereof. She didn't give a shit, nor should you.
That being said, this oneshot is a fucking 10/10 story for me—I love these two! I make a lot of jokes about how I would marry BL characters (e.g. Shio, Fukurou), but if Fujita actually existed and was anywhere near me, I am nearly serious about this one. Call me Bulma because I'd happily be Mrs. Fujita.
Fujita is fucking perfect, just absolutely everything I want in a partner. But when I read this oneshot years ago, it took me longer than it should have to figure that out. And why is that?
I've talked a little bit before about how media geared towards girls and women normalizes pushy
behavior in men and encourages us to romanticize situations in which our consent is confounded or we just go along with it.
An issue that goes hand in hand with that idea is the fact that girls and women are generally not socialized to like submissive traits in boys and men, while we are also discouraged from assuming dominant roles in our relationships with them. Not to make a patriarchy hurts us all
argument on purpose, but conversely boys and men are not socialized to like dominant traits in girls and women, while they are openly discouraged from assuming submissive roles in their relationships with us.
As a result, dominant women and submissive men tend to be considered abnormal and are harshly judged by our predominantly patriarchal world. Judgments of abnormality often morph into assumptions of perversity in sexual or romantic contexts; when we think of a dominant woman or a submissive man in the bedroom, we are likely to imagine a BDSM scenario or something equally extreme. Cultural phenomena like Fifty Shades really haven't helped in this department either.
Now, there are certainly a number of dominant women and submissive men that are into BDSM behind closed doors, but I think it's damaging in the long run for dominant women and submissive men to be represented almost exclusively in kink contexts. Limited representation suggests that the only way women can be dominant and men submissive is to have kinky sex, which isn't true at all. Similarly, it implies dominance in women and submission in men is as taboo or alt as being sexually aroused by pain and/or violence. When it comes to dismantling these assumptions, Don't Call Me Master!
actually does something interesting, if very subtly and only halfway. ಠ‿↼
While I would never go so far as to say that Fujita is a character that receives no judgment—the story most definitely laughs at his expense, plus Nangoku-sensei apologizes in her afterward for including so many stories with so-called perverts—this story was really helpful for me in making the distinction between being socially and sexually dominant and being a dominatrix. (Do I deliberately blur those lines for irony and laughter at my own expense when I call myself a domme? Yes, so I'm part of the problem here.)
I don't want to cause a male partner harm for my sexual gratification, but I do want to boss him around (within reason) and have sexual encounters mostly center on my satisfaction above anything else. To some extent, a flustered, rebuked, embarrassed, teased, or otherwise emotionally strained guy titillates me, but I don't want him to be literally tortured by my words or antics. Would I be willing to perform certain dominant sex acts for a male partner? Yeah, but I'd have to love him, like, a lot because that sort of thing is more amusing than stimulating to me.
While Fujita is without a doubt a super submissive dude who uses the language of kink to some extent (master
), I love that his submission basically just manifests as being at Midori's service and viewing his own sexual expression as gross and defiling. I do (unseriously) think men are pathetically preoccupied with concerns of the body in the same way the Greeks thought of women, so Fujita's instincts are perfect as far as I'm concerned. And although Midori seems put off by Fujita's anxious deference, that shit has me over here looking like ♥‿♥.
Before reading this oneshot a ways back, I had a feeling I might be dominant just based on the group of women who raised me and their powerful auras, but reading this shit made me sure of it. Previously, I just didn't know men could be submissive in a way that didn't require me to do a lot of work re: inflicting pain and performing kinky sexual acts that don't interest me. Again, we tend to assume all subby dudes want to be in a sex dungeon when that's only true for some. For a young, more dominant woman, though, that's very important information to store in your back pocket. I remember obsessively re-reading this oneshot exclusively for Fujita. I was just v:
Similarly, Midori is compatible with Fujita because he's a bit of a natural dominant in ways that are relatable to me personally. He's a lil bratty and immediately delighted by the influence he has over Fujita once he understands the situation. He makes demands that prioritize his pleasure while still working to respect his partner. I like it!
However, Fujita's awe at Midori's transcendent gorgeousness does admittedly put a damper on my fun because the rules of the traditional
sexual marketplace for the most part still apply with non-traditional
men unless they have fetish for a certain kind of partner. And while it's nice to be openly desired once in a great while, fetish is a uniquely unflattering kind of desire that I have difficulty tolerating along with basically everyone else on the planet.
In other words, there are men out there like Fujita, but the male imagination of who is worthy of submission isn't super expansive or inclusive; if anything, it's a bit more limited than usual, which is saying a lot. But as a fat, unconventional kinda gal, this would be a problem for me either way, so no real use crying about it. A man will come my way if he comes my way. I'm only 25, but I'm already too old for those kinds of missish tears. I fully recommend all young girls spend their formative years single; that way more of us are unwilling to settle for some loser out of fear of being alone. Alone not lonely
is a great life motto to live by.
So, yeah, read this oneshot if you like submissive guys and you're in the mood for some very nsfw content. It's a real gem! Plus, if the pure smut strikes your fancy, you have the rest of Nangoku-sensei's catalog to binge for funsies.
xoxo Shio
Post History and Author's Notes
This review was originally posted to WordPress under the category One Shot, Two Shot
on May 13, 2020. Post content was converted from its original format and made viewable for Neocities on June 2, 2022. Where applicable, unicode faces have been substituted for emojis to capture more of a yesterweb vibe. The stylesheet used here changed to simple.css after base.css was retired in Fall 2022.
Last updated: 2022-10-02