pet peeves/pressure points.
i think one common misconception that people have about shimizu is that because she’s blunt she must have a bad attitude. she can be portrayed as someone who’s very unforgiving and cold ( considering that for most, if not all, of ennoshita’s movies she’s taken on the villainess role ) because of the way that she speaks to others, even though her conversational style is more based on thoughtfulness and restraint. still, most characters who run into her consider her a cool, somewhat severe type of person, and considering the way that she treats tanaka and nishinoya with a no-nonsense mindset, others might assume her to be easily irritated.
but as i mentioned before, she’s misunderstood because her communication style is thoughtful and restrained, not because she’s easily frustrated. in fact, most of her “pressure points” ( dislikes ) are common. she may express them a bit differently, choosing to not mince words when she points them out, but her motivations for responding to them are more often because she 1) has expectations for proper behavior and assumes that most decent people understand traditional values like her, and 2) because she’s stubborn and she’d rather point those expectations out *for people she knows than tiptoe around them. these aren’t really unreasonable expectations in her mind, and although she might be stern when she points them out to someone like tanaka or nishinoya, she doesn’t necessarily expect any change to come out of her comments. in that way, she’s also reasonable about her pressure points. she knows that if there is someone with a personality she dislikes, she can’t change everything about them, but she may be able to satiate their behavior in a certain circumstance so that they’re more tolerable ( i.e. if her team would quiet down when they’re being too loud indoors ).
*i bring up this point about being blunt “with people she knows” because in the instance where terushima kept pressing her for her phone number, she was polite and tried to excuse herself rather than coldly telling him that he was annoying. however, with tanaka and nishinoya, whom she knows well, she will say “you’re being annoying. stop that.” i think she’s more comfortable expressing her judgments on people she knows better, because she knows that it’s not considered “rude” if it comes from a place of friendship / acquaintanceship. after all, most friends try to be considerate and accept their other friends’
some of her “pressure points” i describe below. these are more like topics of frustration, but ultimately i do bring up some personality traits that she strongly dislikes in other people.
the first pressure point is a lack of consideration for others, which is pretty broad. at its simplest definition, this relates to the way that people are mindful of their surroundings, if they share those surroundings with others. thus, volume level, cleanliness, and manners are usually the first sorts of things that shimizu takes notice of. if her team is being disruptive, if they don’t pick up the club room, and if they try to start fights, it will probably irritate her. however, i don’t think that this necessarily bothers her enough to scold them EVERY TIME for it. in terms of the cleanliness and volume, she may rely on someone with more influence like sawamura to bring it up. if tanaka and nishinoya are about to start a fight to protect her ( like they often do prematurely at events ), she will make them stop, though mostly because it also makes her look bad. if they’re trying to stir up competition and intimidate other teams, where she’s not included as part of the topic, she would then instead expect sawamura to step in.
she also dislikes discord in friendships. she despises drama and arguments among friends, which is why most of the time in her homeroom class when her female peers start to talk about the bad things their friends did, she tunes them out. because shimizu wasn’t able to make friends until hitoka-chan, she strongly values those types of relationships and feels that friends should be cherished rather than combatted against. despite shimizu’s unfamiliarity with having close friends, she thinks that if she were ever to have a friend that she would fight with, she’d rather stop being friends to save them both the pain of conflicting with one another. however, admittedly that is somewhat of an immature thought that she has in high school and one which she needs to learn to grow out of as an adult. i think ultimately she does learn that fighting is a natural part of any relationship, including familial and romantic, but it’s not one that she likes to prolong. it can be hard because she’s stubborn by nature, but she definitely wants to avoid fighting when it’s with friends like hitoka-chan who have shown her a kindness that she’s unused to with peers / acquaintances who never became meaningful friends to her.
next, she dislikes egoism. this is extremely unattractive to her because of her more traditional values. being humble, for some reason, is incredibly attractive because it denotes some form of wisdom. when people are able to recognize their weaknesses and strengths without OVERDOING their strengths, it speaks to a level of emotional maturity that shimizu appreciates. furthermore, though confidence and humility may overlap, she prefers humility more often because it inherently suggests that someone could be aware that there’s always more to learn about their strengths. thus, even if someone were confident in their receiving ability, being humble and recognizing that they can continue to improve is more impactful for her. she thinks that egoism is blinding for certain individuals, and makes people into highly competitive / condescending peers that nobody wants to be around. not only does egoism contribute to highly inflated self-views, but it also starts to foster a thought process where people begin to look down on others. that could contribute to 1) high expectations that can’t be met and therefore punished by the egoist, 2) unhealthy competition and the need to push people away to feel differentiated and “better,” and 3) a nasty tendency to self-isolate, especially when that person might need to depend on others for help. she probably avoids the types of people who she considers egotistical, simply because she knows that this is a major flaw she doesn’t want to be around. while the “pressure points” mentioned above are more forgivable, this one is something she’s steadfast on disliking.
finally, the one thing that she’s learned to “hate” the most is probably unsportsmanlike conduct. i believe i wrote a headcanon at one point, that since then has been deleted, where i explained that shimizu probably disliked oikawa, kageyama, and tsukishima at some time. this was mostly based on what she had seen of their playing styles or heard of them. oikawa, although not on her team and thus not a person she’s privy to knowing very well, also seemed somewhat egotistical to her, so that contributed more to his rating; but kageyama and tsukishima were players she could watch closely. kageyama, firstly, had a sort of unsportsmanlike conduct because he didn’t seem to respect his team and felt that he could do things on his own. again, this plays somewhat into egoism ( which i mentioned above ), but he was also stepping out of line as a new club member. he should have had more manners as a first year towards everyone else, even his peers. tsukishima, conversely, was able to cooperate with the team in-games, but was offensive when talking to the other first years, and shimizu always seemed to interpret him as feeling genuinely distasteful towards them.
the reason why i think unsportsmanlike conduct became so important to shimizu is simply because she grew to appreciate volleyball and the work that went into “making a team.” because she also felt like part of that team and wanted to contribute to making it the best it could be ( atmosphere included ), anything that disrupted their relationship was something she couldn’t easily find forgiveness in. at the beginning of her third year she may have been a bit immature in thinking this way, because i think it had just dawned on her that she would be leaving in march and she wanted to find “belonging” in a positive place … but she eventually grew to understand that kageyama and tsukishima were immature, too. i don’t think she ever excused their behavior, and she still probably dislikes the way they acted early on, but she’s come to accept it more. if she hadn’t it definitely would have disrupted their team’s dynamic, and she didn’t want to hold any grudges, because she thought “if i was able to grow to love this sport and find my place here, maybe they can learn to grow, too.”
