elk !!

I love that it doesn’t make sense. A lot of my fics will focus on the absurdity in their conflicting personalities. I don’t necessarily adhere to the headcanon that Ushijima is “secretly even weirder” or that they somehow are actually the same, I very, VERY much prefer to write them as being their own separate, distinctly weird people, where Ushijima does not somehow magically like and get everything Tendou does, and Tendou doesn’t have a perfect understanding of Ushijima and somehow isn’t stumped by his lack of communication. There’s obviously room for both of those concepts, but I think for them, as characters who both have the absence of friendship so distinctly in their backstories, that the idea that they’ve found someone not who understands them perfectly, but who loves even the parts of them they don’t understand, is very important. Friendship is not black and white, 100% in or out. They have a lot of interests that don’t overlap, they have a lot of personality traits that clash, heavily, they get it wrong a lot of the time, but through all that they have found a true friendship that can begin to undo the engrained belief that there are parts of them that are unlovable.

I like that they love differently, to each other. I like that Tendou is ugly and an asshole and probably the perpetrator of several crimes across his life, I like that he doesn’t have a sense of boundaries and seems to revel in making other people uncomfortable and I like that when I say these things, I do say them in an irredeemable way - now, don’t jump at the word, what I mean by that is that it’s not quirky cute, it’s real. It’s not the way Iwa calls people shitty, it’s actually genuinely being mean, and laughing at people’s upset, and grinning when he’s made them sad. And I like that, because he is a teenage boy and he’s one that’s never had a lot of friendships and so few characters in very few pieces of media have, what I consider, the holy grail of character traits, which is “being themselves even when it’s inconvenient to the plot.” These are characters that get mad even when it makes them an asshole, characters who are hypocrites, characters who are selfish and greedy and steal. And in a protagonist - even morally grey protagonists - you almost never get this. You almost never do, a character won’t humiliate themselves unless it’s cosmic retribution for the villain, a character won’t do anything to doom the plot out of sheer commitment to their own priorities, almost always, if you have a main character, you have someone who will always manage to be just enough not themselves to avoid every truly embarrassing themself. But Tendou is one of those characters that got given a bunch of weird, fucked up personality traits basically as a bit, putting a renegade coked up monkey monster on a team with the fucking Terminator, and that’s just what he’s allowed to be. His character, for all the depth he has, is so simple. And it’s just the monster of Shiratorizawa, good and bad though that may be. Which is why the fact that he is following Ushijima around in the few scenes they’re in like a pet lizard is so fucking hilarious. They made one of the only characters that’s given a sincere backstory about trauma and fun and wanting to play the game with his buddies a genuinely mean personality and then just had him trot around like a loser humming and hawwing at how pretty he thinks Ushijima is. I’m fairly certain like half the scenes he’s in post season 3 start with ushijima and then he just :D pops up like a curse you can’t get rid of. WHAT IS HIS DEAL? He’s such a capital-C Character and I’m obsessed with it. And I’m obsessed with the fact that the vast majority of this otherwise “good” character (in the meta context of evil v. good) has traits that dominantly make him an asshole. Remember when he sang a song about breaking people’s hopes and dreams? Remember when he saw Suga’s distressed and embarrassed face and thought that that expression was the reason he kept playing? Something is wrong with him!!!!

And despite all of that, Ushijima fucking adores him. And that’s canon, that’s not shipping or fanon, Ushijima really cares about Tendou. A) he flies to France to be in his documentary series and they clearly practiced saying that they were best friends at the same time, which is blatantly dork behaviour, and B) Tendou is the person who calls him when he’s having a rough time and gives him the motivation to keep moving, something that we don’t see at any other point in the series. (Ushijima needing anyone else’s validation, I mean.) Ushijima’s character is it’s own thing I could go into. The crux of what I love about him being this undefeatable robot of a volleyball machine who still manages to be good not because of raw skill, but because of his philosophy around what makes good volleyball to begin with. That whole “meet interesting people,” moral his father instills in him? That single handedly crushes any insinuation that Ushijima’s a singular strength, or going to plateau. You’re given right at the base of his character motivations the idea that he is driven to play better, and stronger, and to learn from every single interesting person not just because he can, but because that’s the entire point of playing at all. His father doesn’t tell him “oh, if you play well you’ll win lots,” he says “if you play well, you’ll meet better players” and that’s SO IMPORTANT! And that’s Tendou, not because Tendou was ever the better player or more interesting player, but in life. His father says it, outright, (paraphrasing) “and that’s not just about volleyball” or whatever. Ushijima found the weirdest freak he could and was like “ah, yes. The prophesied one.” AND HE WAS RIGHT!!! You can’t convince me Tendou didn’t change Ushijima vastly for the better, and Ushijima has been glad to learn from someone with a skillset so incredibly different from his own.

And they just… they don’t parallel each other. Maybe they did as kids - two freaks who can’t make friends - but they grew into fundamentally different people, and they’re not finding each other like soulmates do, they weren’t built for each other…. They just love what they are. They love each other's puzzle pieces whether or not it’s a perfect fit to their own and that has made them into a friendship, and, depending on your proclivities, a romance that is built on choice. Choosing to fly across the world for each other, choosing to stay in touch, choosing to grow and learn from each other. Not because of some cosmic sense of being built for one another, but because they fucking want to.

So… what keeps dragging me back in is… that…

They shouldn’t work? But they fell in love anyway. And they’ve chosen for whatever reason to stay together through every life change. They are not matching puzzle pieces, they might even come from two different puzzles entirely, but they both got lost under the couch.

And I like that Tendou sucks, I like that he’s bad and I like that Ushijima seems to unconditionally love Tendou despite that being who he is. And I like that Tendou has something that he can adore, and love, that is never going to walk away from him, never going to give up or need something more, that wants him as he is. Sucky and all.

And I think, for my writing, it’s more fun to write characters falling in love who don’t need to fall in love. I like writing with them because they’re characters are so full and with so much space to explore. The contrast to their ship (ironically) is IwaOi, which you all know I love but in a lot of ways is the antithesis to this concept. People who grew up together, who know each other too well. It’s almost impossible to write an IwaOi story, even one that starts at the beginning, and not have it feel a little bit like soulmates. Like they were just waiting for the right time. But Ushiten almost always feels like they are putting their foot down and saying no, this is the right time, right now and just taking it for themselves, fate be damned.