one of my favorite details about liam is the fact that he is very nice!!!! but he does NOT seem to get manners

his whole motive thruout season 2 is that he wants to save the others. from the looks of it, he doesnt CARE about the revenge part that much. like yeah itd be nice to stop the guy that physically harmed and killed you bc he did that, but thats an afterthought really - and i didnt interpret liam trying to kill airy even as an attempt at revenge so much as an extremely irrational and extremely stress-induced method of trying to make sure his friend + the others DIDNT get sent to the plane. his main priority is repeatedly that he wants to stop this from happening to anyone else. the only time he mentions himself is when saying that he 'cant live the rest of his life not knowing WHY this happened' (thats paraphrased) but that is immediately followed up w concern for this happening to other people

ofc, he also thinks he literally Has Nothing so the lengths he goes to to save the others CAN be interpretted as not things he would do if he thought he could go back to normal but at that point, thats just extremely specific speculation and i dont think thats supposed to be whats conveyed. some situations wouldnt even be necessarily related to him not having anything, so much as related to helping the others. he still throws himself into everything after "remembering what its like to have a life again." even when he realizes that he doesnt HAVE to have lost everything, he still cared and wanted to help the others more

i think he wanted closure, yeah, but he really did want to save the others. the scene of him helping julien is there for a narrative reason, after all (though i dont wanna get into that bc id go on a tangent about narrative choices in ONE). hell, hes the only one to try to get charlie out of the way of the stakes! (not that the others didnt try, but i feel like the intended take-away of liams general nature is fairly clear)

anyway, liam is nice!! he cares a lot abt others and doesnt want bad things to happen to them, and hes ok with bad things happening to him if it can help them.

but he does NOT understand a lot of social etiquette, or the concept of being polite.

my favorite example of this is the whole discussion abt going to go see bradley. when the restaurant gets shut down, liams first thought is to go 'sooooo. you dont have work, right?' when liam realizes he cant pay for the laptop, he just kinda. 'i dont have any money.' and stares at bryce like a cat looking at your plate of sandwich meat, waiting for you to inevitably give them some

this isnt even ONLY after the 7 months, theres hints of this trait before then! when amelia is talking abt stone making her team when the challenge, he just goes 'yeah sorry.' then talks abt how texty won their teams challenge, pointedly when texty is RIGHT there. liam doesnt even say goodnight back to owen! (this ones less impolite than the others but i think its silly to include)

it should be noted tho, that while this ISNT present before and after the plane, it DOES show up more prominently afterwards, and this could very much be the stress! but looking at WHY its more prominent afterwards also feels like it points more towards this just being How He Is.

all of the things hes kinda impolite abt? are things where he is TRYING to be nice, or arent unkind inherently. hes going to talk to bradley? well, doesnt bryce want to come? driving him there is more efficient anyway. oh you have work? well now you dont! so now things are easier! staying here isnt gonna make the restaurant reopen anyway! (liam also probably does NOT have the same weight associated w jobs that bryce does, since liam hasnt had a job in a capitalist society in 7 months. its probably still subconsciously there, but not at the forefront when the plane is still out there). i crashed your car? well, i think the lives of others matters a little more. you can get a new car, but if something happens to airys contestants WHO KNOWS whatll happen to them

a lot of it, i think, is made more extreme by stress and trauma, yeah, but these are patterns in logic that seem to already discard manners as being that relevant. and i, autistic, chose to view that as something hes just Like. hes not a dick and he doesnt ever mean to be! but also if someone can do something fairly minor to do something more important, why does he NEED to be polite abt it?? whats the POINT you get the same message across! and thats assuming he even REALIZES these things are "impolite," based on a lot of his interactions w vryce, i legitimately dont think he realizes how he acts could sometimes be considered 'impolite'

where bryce is knowingly kind of rude sometimes and doesnt care (though is STILL kind, he is just more blunt and uninterested in sounding nice, which i could do an entirely different essay on the autism of), liam seems to not really notice manners, nor does he think theyre very important to consider, and i just. really love that about his character :)

this is the kind of guy that, if you stubbed ur toe, hed probably not say 'oohh, sorry :(' and hed just be 'dang, that sucks' and move on