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liamtsullivan · 4 years

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{ self para - 001 }

“ identity cannot be found or fabricated but emerges from within when one has the courage to let go. ” -- doug cooper

{ TW's: mentions of prostitution / mentions of violence against sex workers; mentions of child predatory behavior; mentions of teenage intimacy; general sexual identity struggle; mentions of drug use / addiction }

ooc; i’ll be honest i went heavy on the warnings because i want everyone to take care of themselves; it’s some deep / complicated shit but it’s not extremely wild. but please do what you gotta do to take care of yourselves, babies.

AGE 6 ( Las Vegas, Nevada ) --

It’s late and Liam’s supposed to be in bed. Mommy’s not home yet, and it’s one in the morning; he knows because he looked at the numbers on the digital clock sitting on the floor beside their bed - a mattress with no bed frame, settled in the corner of their small bedroom. He’s sitting up coloring, and Miss Tiffany hasn’t come to check on him in at least three hours, probably assuming he’s asleep, only he’s not. Which is why he hears the front door swing open. Loudly.

“That mother fucker.” That’s Miss Wendy; she’s always loud, says all the bad words.

There’s sniffling that Liam hears next, soft whimpers that make the six year old’s head lift, wide blue eyes blinking toward the closed bedroom door.

“We should’ve taken her to the hospital. Damn it.” That’s Mommy, he recognizes immediately. She sounds worried; she gets that way sometimes when he hears things he’s not supposed to hear in the apartment, but this isn’t about him this time.

Shuffling off of the mattress, Liam leaves his Batman coloring book and jumbo sized crayolas behind him, slowly easing the bedroom door open. The crying is louder now, and from where he’s standing, he can see that it’s Miss Jeanie that’s crying. He can see that she’s got small, circular red marks up and down her arm; ones that weren’t there before when she was home that afternoon. They look like they hurt, Liam thinks, those little red marks. They shine in the light, and he thinks for a second ‘I don’t think that’s right’ because his skin’s never shone like that before, never been so glaringly red before, either.

As he slowly creeps closer, he notices miss Tiffany scrambling with a first aid kit, and she’s muttering under her breath about ‘calling the fucking cops on that bastard.’ Liam’s not sure what that means or what’s going on, but he knows that something’s wrong, he can read that well enough.

“Calling the cops wouldn’t have done shit, they don’t give a damn. They wouldn’t-- Give me that burn ointment. Get the gauze out of the medicine cabinet. Fucking hell.” Miss Wendy is barking angry orders, which is once again not entirely unusual, but it’s a scene to behold all the same.

Minutes go by, the three women - Miss Wendy, Miss Tiffany, and Mommy - all skittering across the floor, taking care of Miss Jeanie, comforting her, cleaning the red marks on her arms, wrapping them in bandages. He hears more swears in those ten minutes than he hears in a whole week - whatever happened, it was bad, it was scary.

He’s hugging the frame of the doorway into the living room space when Stephanie finally turns around and sees him there.

“Liam,” There’s a crack in her voice, and the little boy shuffles impossibly closer to the wooden framing he’s already clung to as she looks at him with wide eyes and drops down to his level. “You’re supposed to be in bed, what are you doing up, it’s so late, Liam. You need to go to bed.”

Her words are hurried, rushed, blending together, and there’s tears in her eyes. Liam frowns - bordering on a pout, lips pursed and brow furrowed.

“Mommy, why are you crying?” He asks; and he’s concerned - Mommy doesn’t let him see her cry very often. He’s heard it sometimes, when she’s in the living room, or talking to one of the other girls, or when she’s taking a shower. But he doesn’t see it often.

His small hands lift to touch her cheeks and Stephanie lets out a stuttering sigh.

“It’s okay, baby bear, Mommy’s okay.” She turns and kisses his fingers. “Everything’s okay.”

Liam looks passed her at where Miss Jeanie and Miss Tiffany have moved to the couch. Miss Wendy is outside, on her fourth consecutive cigarette. Miss Jeanie is still crying softly while she lays on Miss Tiffany who’s petting her hair gently and shushing her. It’s not uncommon for them, this sort of scene, but it is uncommon for Liam to witness it.

“Is Miss Jeanie okay?” The little boy asks, hands falling from his mother’s face. “Did she get hurt?”

Stephanie hesitates but nods her head. “Yeah, someone hurt her, but she’s okay. We’re takin’ care of her, okay? Don’t worry.”

“Was it John?”

Liam’s brow creases deeply as his mother lets out something of a whimper at his question. He didn’t mean to upset her more. Stephanie’s trying as hard as she can fucking manage to keep it together; because god, if it doesn’t absolutely fucking break her heart to hear that her child hears what they talk about in this house, what they’re doing. Even if he’s got the details wrong - there’s no John, only a John, multiple John’s. He had so little understanding of what was going on, and yet he had enough understanding to know that something was.

“I don’t want you to worry, alright?” The woman’s hand lifts to push back through Liam’s dark hair. “My sweet boy. Don’t you worry.”

Liam blinks at his mother, and while he doesn’t know what’s going on - doesn’t have a clue that the little shiny red dots on Miss Jeanie’s arms are cigarette burns, doesn’t have the faintest idea that Mommy and the other girls are putting themselves in different potential dangers every night, doesn’t remotely understand yet that this isn’t a normal life experience - he still nods his little head when his mother asks him. When she asks him;

“Do you promise to stay sweet forever? Never hurt anyone? Can you promise me that, baby bear?”

AGE 10 ( Las Vegas, Nevada ) --

Staying with Jeanie isn’t strange. They don’t live with her anymore, haven’t for a handful of years now, but she and Mom still work together so it wasn’t totally unusual for Liam to see her still. Wendy and Tiff were out of the picture now. At the respective times of their leaving his life, Liam had thought that was probably for the better.

He’s more aware of the culture of what his mom is doing now. More aware of the ins and outs of the process. More aware of the fact that it isn’t just about making money on a night with a John anymore. After all, it wasn’t the sex work that had her overdosing.

There was a ‘make yourself at home, honey’ that Jeanie gave him when he had first arrived. The uncomfortable feeling hadn’t kicked in right away. He knows Jeanie, she’s been there pretty much all his life. So the change of pace is unexpected.

By change of pace, it’s the way she lays her legs across his lap while they’re sitting on the couch. It’s the casual caress of the back of his head when she walks by him while he sits there. It’s the fact that she’s standing in the doorway to the bedroom he’s sleeping in after he’s gotten out of the shower and is in his underwear, about to pull a shirt over his head.

“You’re already so grown up, you know that?” She says, leaning in the doorway.

Liam thinks it’s a little strange, because why is she there? But he nods. He’s polite. And admittedly, he’s a little bit in a daze still, because his mom fucking overdosed this afternoon, and is spending the night in the hospital getting her stomach pumped, and he has zero fucking clue what tomorrow looks like following something like that.

He also has zero fucking clue why Jeanie is coming closer to him, why her hands are finding his shoulders and kneading there and she’s murmuring something to him about ‘being there for him.’ The connection isn’t there. He understands what they do, this job of theirs, but he doesn’t understand what Jeanie is doing. Because now she’s talking about Nick, some boy two grades above her that she knew when she was Liam’s age. They used to hide in one of the lesser used girl’s bathrooms at school and learn about each other. Liam’s young, but he’s not stupid, he knows what that means, he’s also realizing that this has little to do with him. Jeanie’s had some wine - a lot, actually, by the smell of it as she breathes in his space - and she’s under stress because her friend just overdosed, among other things, and--

He watched something on TV the other day; they used the word stressor. He wonders if that’s what this is. She’s downward spiraled into something she didn’t really intend to do, didn’t really plan for.

She doesn’t touch him more - despite small effort on her part; he’s not interested. Not only is it uncomfortable, but even any physiological response isn’t there. Whatever ‘growing boy needs’ she refers to don’t ignite a familiarity in Liam’s brain, they don’t ignite any curiosity, so she gives up. And he’s fine. He is. Because after that, she’s apologizing. She’s crying and she’s calling herself an idiot, and she’s saying that there’s something wrong with her and Liam, at his core, can’t agree with that, because having bad things happen in life doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with a person.

He knows that.

She shares the bed with him, and it’s strange but it’s not at the same time. He and his mom live in a studio apartment on their own now. They’ve shared a bed all his life. This isn’t his mom, though, it’s Jeanie. And the whole circumstance is confusing, and he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do when her arm is laid over him and she’s sniffling gently against his shoulder, and looking for some kind of comfort from a child that doesn’t fully know how to offer it.

But he gently traces the familiar little circular scars on her arm with his fingertips until she falls asleep.

He tells Mom about what happened a couple days later.

And he never goes back to Jeanie’s house again.

AGE 15 ( Los Angeles, California ) --

There’s a gentle panting coming and going between Liam’s lips still as he’s coming back down, flopping against his twin bed. Isabelle stands from where she’s settled between his knees and flops back beside him. He should pull his pants back on and he knows it, but he’s lost in thought - as fucking weird as that might sound for a teenage boy who just got his first blowjob.

It’s one of those things, though. There’s been a number of moments where Liam can’t quite figure how he feels about something. He can’t quite figure if he likes something. This experimentation has been going on with Isabelle for about three months now, and he’s learning things. They both are. He makes her feel good, she does the same, but there’s... A disconnect. There’s something missing.

He wonders if it’s him.

He wonders if it’s because they’re only fifteen and maybe they started this all too soon. But then he thinks, no, no that isn’t it. Because sex is something he’s familiar with, something he’s become desensitized to. Maybe not from experience, but definitely from exposure.

Considering.

It’s over the course of the next handful of months that it starts to dawn on Liam that the reason it feels off is because he doesn’t actually want to be being physical. He is, though. Because that’s what teenagers do. Because girls find him attractive. Because the guys in the locker room are talking about it after football practice. Because it’s normal. It’s expected.

He’s still fifteen when he loses his virginity. And he doesn’t care. Granted, that’s always struck him as something that effects girls more than it effects guys, anyway, but he doesn’t care. He did it. He did it because he thought that was what he was supposed to do. That it was some sort of milestone. That he would get used to it.

For the span of a few days, Liam wonders if it’s specific to girls. There’s a party that someone from another school is having, and a couple of his buddies invite him along. He kisses a boy there, testing it out, seeing if maybe this is where the disconnect lies.

There’s messy, fumbling hands down the front of jeans, there’s the press of bodies back into the edge of a bathroom counter. There’s the heavy breaths and the shaky groans.

But there’s still not what Liam was looking for. There’s still not an answer.

Because he doesn’t hate the touching or the kissing or the sleeping together.

But he also doesn’t want it. Not the way he hears people talk about. Not the way his health teacher implies hormones make it all work for them. He doesn’t want it.

He’s not sure, at this point, what he’s supposed to do with that, though.

AGE 19 ( Los Angeles, California; UCLA campus ) --

“Why don’t you ever want to have sex with me?”

The question is nearly enough to startle Liam, but he manages to stay relatively composed, simply blinking blue eyes in his girlfriend’s direction. Liza’s got a stern, questioning look on her face, and he can’t really figure out why. Or figure out her question.

They had sex yesterday, is the thing.

So he says so, points it out. He can’t imagine that she somehow forgot considering it was less than twenty four hours ago. The brunette huffs in something like exasperation at the reply, however.

“You never want to have sex with me, though.” She argues.

Liam’s head tilts, he can’t quite help it. He’s not an argumentative person, not typically anyway, but there’s something in that accusation that doesn’t sit right. “If you think I don’t want to do it, but then we’re doing it anyway, I think we have bigger problems, Liza...”

“You know what I mean, Liam.” She snaps.

“Actually, I’m not totally sure that I do. Hence this conversation.” His voice is level; he’s not picking a fight, he’s stating a fact.

If he’s honest he’s not even totally sure where this is coming from. He and Liza had been dating for the last five months and things seemed to be going pretty well for them. They liked each other enough. She was loud and confident and took the reigns in their relationship a lot. That was how they ended up sleeping together after only a month of dating. Four months had gone by since then, and given her very open and vocal attraction to Liam, it was safe to say there had been plenty more since.

Which raised the current questions.

“Every time I want us to have sex, it’s me. I’m the one making that call, it’s me that has to suggest it or instigate it, or whatever.” Liza begins.

Ah. He gets it now.

And there’s no argument he can offer now, because he knows that she’s right. It had never really struck Liam as becoming a potential problem - and perhaps that was narrow-minded of him. The fact of the matter was that he didn’t desire what she did all the time, he didn’t have that drive.

Doesn’t. Still.

He likes Liza, he cares about her a lot; he wouldn’t have spent five months of his life dating her otherwise. There’s no arguing, though, that he’s different about their intimacy than he is. His attraction to her is different than her attraction to him. She tells him he’s beautiful all the time, that he’s hot, that he’s distracting to look at. Of course there’s other things in there, too, ones that don’t just have to do with what he looks like, but he correlates them now.

Because his attraction to Liza comes from the fact that she’s loud, that she’s confident, and herself. His attraction to Liza came from the fact that she made him laugh four minutes into a conversation with him. His attraction to Liza came from seeing her passion for her studies, the way she dedicated herself to the things that she wanted.

And sure, he likes that she finds him physically attractive. He can recognize that Liza is a beautiful girl - wavy brown hair, green eyes that lighten up when she’s talking about something she loves. But his feelings have never come from a place of physicality. His place in their relationship has never stemmed from physical attraction. He’s never cared much one way or the other about what they did with one another physically.

She does, though. She likes being physical with him. She likes the intimacy of their bodies together, of making one another feel good. She likes to express her feelings in a way that doesn’t require words all the time. And Liam doesn’t fault her for that - how could he? That was normal.

But he doesn’t feel those same things.

It’s not exclusive to Liza. Liam doesn’t look at other girls or guys and think that he’s missing something. He doesn’t think that maybe he might enjoy himself in that circumstance with someone else. It isn’t like that. It’s never been like that. He’s experimented, he’s gone out of comfort zones, he’s done things for people because it’s what they want, and he wants to keep them happy. It’s what he’s been doing with Liza, isn’t it?

So when she says that she’s done - that because he can’t explain it to her, that because there’s no ‘making sense of it’ - he apologizes. He says that he’s sorry, but he doesn’t fight to keep her there.

It’s not like he can give her what she’s really looking for.

AGE 21 ( Los Angeles, California; UCLA campus ) --

Liam’s been throwing a word around for about eight months now. He took a Human Sexuality class last semester - curiosity, some answers, maybe just a vague interest in what he could learn from the subject, he couldn’t figure. It was an interesting class, though. And it helped. In ways he didn’t expect. Because that was where this word came from.

He says it out loud to himself sometimes, getting a feel for it. Immediately after the subject came up in class, he’d done a deep dive on the internet. Maybe to see if it was real, if it was something people actually knew existed. Maybe to self identify. Whatever it was, that had kind of helped some, too.

He reads it in forums, talks to a couple people from them because he’s not totally sure that it’s something he wants to throw out in the open yet. It’s a big thing, throwing a label on yourself, giving people a definition of you. Liam knows that.

He’s been so focused on school and on work and on helping his mom that it hasn’t stressed him out much.

He broke up with his third college girlfriend about a month ago, but he didn’t really feel it anymore. Things weren’t perfect there. Every time he thinks of Vivian his brain just circles back to this word he’s got now anyway.

Asexual.

He remembers it from Biology class, talking about plant cell division and shit. Which is embarrassing, because of all the things to remember when finally finding something he might identify with, it had to be fucking plants, didn’t it? There’s a lot on the internet about asexuality, and it’s all kind of on this spectrum, Liam’s come to find.

It’s the first time he’s really felt like he’s not fundamentally fucked up, though. It’s the first time that he’s realized that he’s not the only person in the world that feels - or doesn’t feel - this way. Which, deep down, he’s smart enough to figure that it’s pretty impossible with the sheer amount of people alive on the planet that he’s the only one. But seeing it made a difference. Hearing from other people who feel the same way made a difference.

He’s been really figuring this all out, this being asexual thing. He feels comfortable with it. For the first time it really is something he can put his finger on. He doesn’t have a sex drive. He doesn’t experience sexual attraction. It happens. He’s not the only one.

It’s nice. In a weird way. To feel like he knows why now.

He’s talked to this girl online; she’s nice, he calls them friends to himself. She realized when she was sixteen that she didn’t want to have sex. Liam relates to her in more ways than he thought he could. Her name is Heather, and she’s from Washington, and he thinks about going to Seattle to meet her someday. If only to thank her for giving him someone to talk through these things with. If only for being herself.

She grew up with a single dad, and Liam recognizes the mild irony in the fact that he grew up with a single mom. However, Heather’s dad is a contractor. He’s never been in close to the same positions that Liam’s mom has been - but how many people really had been, anyway? He tells Heather about his upbringing; what his mom used to do, where they used to live, the way that sexual intimacy has been like a static white noise that numbs the back of his mind. It’s there, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t do anything for him. He can talk about it, he can make himself do it.

But it’s not for him.

She apologizes to him, tells him that she can’t imagine living a life like that. She says ‘that must have been hard’ and Liam thinks that it wasn’t really. He didn’t have a hard life, his life was just different. He was still coming out on the other side alright.

Better now, with this.

AGE 26 [ current ] ( Chicago, Illinois ) --

It’s Pride Month and that’s always felt like a cool time for Liam. He’s got friends and has known a number of people of varying sexual identities and orientations, and it’s a happy time for them. He gets it. Feeling like celebrating your identity. Even if he didn’t for a long time.

He’s not wild about it. He doesn’t parade about, he doesn’t post on social media. He keeps the simple black band ring on his right middle finger. He doesn’t act any different than he normally would. If it comes up, it comes up, and he’s fine with that.

A few weeks back a girl in the bar really hinted at him that she thought they could ‘have a fun night together.’ It was bold, he’d given her that. He’d also, however, told her exactly what she was getting herself into. Or more what she wasn’t getting into, rather.

He’s not embarrassed to say it. It’s been years since he learned the word, since he found this name to a truth about himself. He’s felt freer, somehow, in that time. Having something to call it. Having knowledge of where these feelings - or lack thereof - have come from for most of his life.

It’s Pride Month and he knows that he’s got something to feel prideful for. He knows that he can stand up and shout from rooftops if he wanted to that he’s asexual and that it’s real and that it’s valid.

He doesn’t. He’s passed the point of really needing to.

Still, it’s nice that it’s there.

#liam. | self para #liam. | headcanons #i fucked around with a different pov at some points so forgive me if this reads in a messy way #this is also EXCEPTIONALLY long so.....#if you made it through the whole thing you may be entitled to emotional compensation #that last tag literally already exists on this blog but it applies here too i'm

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wvldcvrd · 4 years

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[SHAWN MENDES, CIS MALE, HE/HIM] have you seen MARCO SPIEGELMAN around sedona? MARCO is a BEEKEEPER, but they’re also THE WILD CARD in the sedona sleuths, so you’ve probably seen them around the firehouse shed. they’re known for being WARMHEARTED and OPTIMISTIC, but they’re also known to be OVERWROUGHT and NAIVE. when they’re not at the shed, i can usually find them at THE SEDONA FOREST. i can always recognize them by (a worn guitar neck with old strings, coming home three minutes before curfew, a crackling woodfire, and freshly blown out birthday candles).

hi friends ! my name is reed, i use they/she pronouns, and am so stoked to be here ! keep reading to find out everything you’ve ever wanted to know about my boy, marco.

tw: cancer, death, car crash, addiction

marco joshua spiegelman was born on an overcast august day in the city of boston, massachusetts. he was the fourth child and the youngest by seven years, meaning that in some way, he was his parents’ last hope.

the spiegelman family practiced orthodox judaism – his dad was raised orthodox and his mom converted from reform judaism in order to marry his dad– so marco’s childhood was very much focused on religion. the spiegelman family went to services every friday night, celebrated every holiday, forced marco to wake up early on sundays to go to hebrew school, and treated him they same as they had treated his older siblings. however, as his siblings grew up and moved out, they all stopped devoutly practicing judaism and moved into a more modern and laid back interpretation of their religion. marco craved this from a young age, but because he was stuck at home with his parents, he was forced to follow their rules and beliefs.

marco went to jewish private school for elementary and middle school, had his bar mitzvah in the seventh grade, and tried to blend in as best as he could. he liked history and english, eager to learn more about the past and help shape the future. at this point in his life, he had his goal of becoming a politician pretty much set. he would help the end the fighting in israel, solve world hunger, and just be an all around awesome guy.

however, his plans shifted on valentine’s day his eighth grade year. after coming home from school, his parents sat him down and told him that his dad had stage four exocrine pancreatic cancer. he knew that his dad had been losing weight and not eating as much recently, as well as complained all the time that his back hurt, but marco didn’t realize that it was something so terrible and life threatening.

with a survival rate of about one percent, the spiegelman family knew that his dad’s chances of survival were not good. the next few months were difficult, his dad went through lots of chemotherapy and experimental trials, but nothing seemed to be working, and he passed away before june. this crushed marco and his mom; his dad was a kind, gentle, and loving person, and the three of them had grown extremely close with each other due to marco being the youngest and the only child still living in the house.

it was hard for the two of them to live by themselves in a town that his mom didn’t really have any connection to, so a few months after his dad’s passing, marco and his mom moved to sedona, the place where she had grown up, to try and start fresh. their new beginning came coupled with the loss of their connection to their religion, and marco and his mom no longer practiced judaism

freshman year in a brand new town was intimidating for marco, and this resulted in him being extremely quiet and shy for the majority of the year. however, his history teacher saw how invested in history and current events he was and convinced marco to join the debate team. this is where he found his voice once again.

marco did a type of debate called public policy debate, a style of debate where you talk extremely fast and have to do an insane amount of research to ensure that you know what you’re talking about. in order to participate in that style of debate, his teacher assigned him a partner and he grew extremely close to her very quickly. the two of them went on to win the national title their sophomore and junior years

after joining debate, marco grew more confident in himself and began to talk more both in and out of class. being good at something gave him the boost he needed to no longer be shy, and he was well liked by most people at school. marco’s sophomore and junior years were quite possibly the best years of his life.

however, right before the trophy ceremony his junior year, he got a call from his mom, telling him that his sister had gotten in to a car crash and that she was in a coma in a hospital in san francisco. marco flew to san fran immediately after receiving the call, leaving his partner to collect the trophy on his behalf.

for the following two weeks, marco rarely left the hospital for fear that his sister would pass away without him there. although the two of them were not that close, losing another family member was something that marco could not imagine. on the fifteenth day of her being in the hospital, the doctors said that there was nothing they could do to save his sister. so they harvested her organs as donations, and the spiegelmans were forced to put another member of their family into the ground.

senior year came around and marco was a changed person. he was not as passionate or confident as he used to be, he quit debate, and he focused on judaism again to try and give his life some meaning. however, he explored the type of judaism his sister was into, reform judaism, based more on learning and exploring the ideas of religion than sitting in a sanctuary and praying.

although he skipped school often and had mediocre grades, he managed to graduate, his dreams seeming unimportant and his life in shambles. throughout this, he still managed to keep a positive attitude, now convinced that god had a plan for him and that everything would work out fine. he does have really bad anxiety tho, so it’s this classic combination of trying to have faith in the way things work out but never really being sure that they will

without his debate professor, he wouldn’t have even gotten into college, but with the help of someone making sure he followed through, he got into college t to study sustainable food & farming. this seemed like a out of the blue choice, but it combined marco’s love of research & science, and allowed him to feel like he could have a greater impact on the world than he could as a politician.

college went by without incident, but here are some highlights (joined hillel and loved being w/ other jews, was a nerd, did nerd things **including a lot of acid, lived his best life)

he recently graduated, and has found a love for beekeeping ! he has two hives and thousands of bees and he loves them all.

headcannons !

marco worked as a waiter at an italian restaurant in high school so that he could have spending money. money was never a problem in his household as his mom is a cardiologist, but he always felt bad asking for money for things, so he made his own money instead

if marco was a crayola crayon, he’d be pine green. the color is a bit darker than most of the other greens in the crayola family, just like marco in his family, but also has a hint of blue in it, hinting at the sadness that lies beneath marco’s outer layer.

marco really loves old school video games. his old nintendo 64 is collecting dust in his closet, and although he rarely has time to play it anymore, he refuses to throw it out. while growing up, video games were his way of connecting to his two older brothers, his older sister always watching on with a disapproving gleam in her eye. whenever the siblings get together, however, they always manage to turn on an old, favorite game of theirs, and the competition is always heated

in high school, marco smoked a lot of weed. he would always be seen outside at any high school party, smoking by himself or with a group of other people. however, after graduating, marco switched to cigarettes. he smokes frequently, but will furiously deny being addicted if approached about it

marco plays as waluigi when he plays mario kart/party

marco is a night person. he utterly hates getting up early in the morning, but staying up late comes easy and natural to him.

marco recycles religiously. if something is recyclable and you don’t put it into the recycling bin, he’ll lose a bit of respect for you as a person

marco absolutely loves space and the universe and stargazing (part of his appreciation for nighttime), but he also wholeheartedly believes that aliens are real, no doubt about it.

1/2 wholesome sunshiney boy, 1/2 sad and lonely and lost kid

#intro.

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mst3kproject · 7 years

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207: Wild Rebels

I guess if it's time to tackle the movies I've been trying to avoid, my next review should be a biker flick. I don't really like the biker episodes, but then, I don't really like biker movies in general, and the fact that MST3K naturally chose bad biker movies doesn't help me enjoy something I didn't enjoy much to begin with. Now, bad monster movies, on the other hand...

The hero, I guess, of Wild Rebels is racecar driver Rod Tillman. Other than owning a magical disappearing, reappearing guitar, he is not at all an interesting person. After wrecking his car, he decides to get out of racing and goes to a bar where he meets a biker gang consisting of leader Jeeter, ultra-violent Banjo, Designated Chick Linda, and mute Fats. They need a getaway driver for their next robbery, and I guess none of them can drive a stick shift. Rod wants nothing to do with them, probably because of the Nazi flag in their hideout, but then the police ask him to help them gather evidence against the gang. With Rod in tow, the bikers rob a gun shop, then a bank – not because they really want the money, but just for kicks!

I hadn't seen this episode for a while, and I'd forgotten Joel's joke about the Nazi-themed bikers having Trump's Art of the Deal on their shelves. Everything old is new again.

This is one of those movies that it's kind of hard to say anything about. It's bleak and dull, and in the closing sketch Joel and the bots already went through its low points quite thoroughly. “The villains were so cliché, they were laughable,” “so the hero was supposed to be unattractive and spineless,” and so forth. That basically covers Wild Rebels. It's a series of tropes and symbols standing in for a story, with a 'hero' we're never given any reason to be interested in.

The very first thing we see Rod do in the movie is give up. He's wrecked his car, so he decides to give up on racing entirely. He meets a girl in a bar, but when the gang tells her to get lost so they can talk to him, he gives up on her with only a token protest. This is actually pretty realistic, given that he barely knows her and the bikers are fairly intimidating, but in the context of his abandoning racing, it just seems to cement 'quitter' as his core character trait.

That needn't ruin the movie, of course – maybe Rod's character arc is learning to see things through, or to stand up for himself! But character arcs just aren't something this movie does, and Rod never seems to change. His return to racing was a setup to get the gang's attention, not Rod actually trying again. When Banjo jealously attacks him, it looks like Rod's starting to grow a spine as he successfully defends himself, but it's a false alarm. At the climax of the film he just cowers at the top of the lighthouse stairs waiting to be shot, rather than doing anything that might be considered heroic.

The gang members are stereotyped thugs, who seem to do what they do just Because It's Evil. Linda even says as much: they aren't interested in money or cars or high living, they just want the adrenaline rush. They have no backstories, no explanation of why they are the way they are. They surround themselves with Nazi symbols, like the swastikas on their jackets or the flag in their hideout, but they don't seem to have any actual ideology. The fascist imagery serves only to reinforce that they are bad people, which has already been amply estalished by their behaviour. It's a lazy substitute for proper characterization.

I don't know how old any of these characters are supposed to be. The actors appear to have been in their late twenties to early thirties. In the serenade scene Linda looks like she's around forty. The slang they use never rings true. It's like your parents trying to use emojis.

The romance between Rod and Linda is as unmotivated as anything else. He knows she's one of the murderous thugs he's trying to bring to justice, and while he might pretend to be interested in her as part of his act, he has no reason to develop real feelings for her. She, meanwhile, repeatedly calls him a square and knows that he's an untrustworthy outsider. She might pretend to be interested in him in order to keep an eye on him, but again, there's no reason for her to actually fall for him. They have no chemistry and nothing in common. Why does Linda kill Jeeter to save Rod? Does shooting a friend who trusted her really give her the kicks she craves? Or could the writers not think of any other way to end the movie?

The entire dramatis personae feel like they exist only as players in this particular story. We don't really know what they were doing before the movie began, and we have no idea what Rod is likely to do next. It doesn't seem like his story is over, because it never really began. He had no personal stake in any of this – he just drifted into contact with the gang, and seems to decide to become a police informant merely because he doesn't have any better idea what to do with himself. T-Bird Gang was not a good movie, but Frank had his father's death to avenge and was determined to do it with or without police support. That's a character motivation. Rod doesn't have that.

Because the characters have no real personality or motivation, the story cannot really be about anything. T-Bird Gang was about a quest for justice, and feels unsatisfying because it does not end in the way that theme would seem to demand. Wild Rebels feels bleak and hollow because it doesn't even have a theme. Movies like The Violent Years and I Accuse my Parents tried to be about why people turn to crime. Village of the Giants tried to be about the idea of rebellion. Wild Rebels isn't trying to be about anything at all.

If the film-makers had a goal beyond 'get the movie in the can and earn a few bucks', I think it was simply to make us feel as bad as possible. The beginning, in which Rod gives up on racing despite the encouragement of his friends, is depressing. The bar scene contains cringeworthy bad dancing, almost on a par with The Creeping Terror. The bikers murder a couple of barflies for no good reason. The gang's hideout is a ramshackle place full of paraphernalia associated with the most despicable parts of history. There are multiple musical numbers and they're all terrible. Joel describes the experience of watching Wild Rebels as like 'being dragged through a dark tarry abyss' and that's as accurate as anything else in the ending sketch. There's nothing fun or exciting in the whole movie.

There are a couple of places where the movie is mildly entertaining, but never in the way it wants to be. The bit with the syringe in the bank is laughably impractical. The movie's signage would blend right into Killer Klowns from Outer Space – there's the Swinger's Club sign that looks like it was drawn with Crayola markers, and the Citrusville First National Bank that Tom Servo describes as “printed with electrician's tape on ceiling tile”. Tires squeal on grass. The movie ends in the world's artsiest railing kill. 'Citrusville' is where the Man-Thing's swamp is in Marvel comics. Each of these is a nugget of amusement, but they don't add up to enough to make the movie worth watching even on that level.

Now that I've run out of things to say about the movie, I'm going to do something I don't usually do at any length, and talk about the episode. The riffing is mostly pretty good, with some golden lines like blessed are the grease monkeys, for they will lube and Ronald McDonald, shaking his McBooty, and the joke about the ventriloquist's dummy trapped in Rod's suitcase. The host sketches, with Wild Rebels Cereal and Dr. Forrester trying to figure out what ee-yuh-ka-ee! means, are instant classics. But it's also got some very uncomfortable moments in it, as Joel and the bots make fun of a character's mental handicap.

We are told that Fats suffered a head injury that left him unable to speak. He seems to otherwise have his wits about him – he can read, as demonstrated by his drawing the others' attention to the newspaper, he can certainly drive his motorcycle competently and he seems to know what's going on. But when he's on screen, we get lines like blue light special on chromosomes – extra ones! or riffs delivered in 'stupid' voices. There aren't that many of these, but they're very uncomfortable to hear. The swastika-wearing characters in the movie actually treat Fats with more respect than the peanut gallery does!

On the other hand, this was also the episode that began some proper characterization for Gypsy. Wild Rebels was when we found out that most of her processing power is occupied with running the Satellite of Love, leaving little room for anything else but occasional thoughts of Richard Basehart. Later episodes would develop Gypsy further, and she went on to become a rare example of a comedy character who is an outspoken feminist without being a bra-burning, man-hating joke. Although I have to wonder... if she runs the 'higher functions of the ship', what kept the satellite going before Joel started building robots? Did he simply take the ship's existing control computer and give her a way to express herself? Or did Dr. Forrester and Dr. Erhardt send him up to a satellite with no functional life support, so that he had to build some before he ran out of air?

Eh, it's just a show. I should really just relax.

#mst3k #reviews #wild rebels #tw: ableism #60s

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allisonswrittenwords · 5 years

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“Too Cool for School” Month wraps up with the inclusion of the last major staple of our very nostalgic school life!

Previously, on Allison’s Written Words…

We stocked up on the most important school supplies to prepare for our very nostalgic school life – a Trapper Keeper to store our school and homework in (bonus points if it was from the “designer series”), stocked up on Lisa Frank pens, pencils, stickers, erasers, and jewelry (gotta have it!), and we probably even picked up a locker answering machine or pocket folders with jeans-clad posteriors on them (or perhaps something else from the Class Act school supply line?). We’re missing one all-important supply: something to store our much needed fuel to keep us going during our very nostalgic school life!

Enter the ultimate container, where what is on it is just as important as what is in it!

“What Character Do You Have?”

The idea of a character-adorned lunchbox is not a new or novel concept, invented with the time I was growing up, and it certainly didn’t get ushered in with the current generation (though they’d probably like to believe they “invented” it!). In fact, it came in to the classroom on our parents’ generation.

The first licensed character lunchboxes, a common thing in today’s school supply aisle, was first ushered in during the early 1950s. A strategic move by Aladdin Industries, who had been making the standard lunch container since 1908, was to put Hopalong Cassidy on a lunchbox, increasing sales of lunchboxes from 50,000 units…to 600,000 units.

Unbelievable, you say.

Well, Aladdin knew what they were doing, striking a chord with consumerism that apparently really liked licensed characters. During much of the next 30 years, Aladdin continued to dominate, and well, the lunchbox went from being what kids carried their lunch in, to being “what character do you have?”.

The original licensed character lunchbox, circa 1954 (Image: eBay)

I should note though, it was only after American Thermos introduced full-lithography on all sides of their lunchbox, did Aladdin change their tune.

Adding On a Thermos, And The Change from Metal to Plastic

Aladdin’s acquisition of the Stanley Bottle operation cemented their company’s position in the food and beverage container in a big way, and it only increased from there. Not only did we get a cool new lunchbox, but a MATCHING THERMOS!!!!!

What wasn’t to love?

The introduction of Superman, Mickey Mouse, and The Jetsons on future lunchboxes after the initial introduction of Hopalong Cassidy only kept the line endearing to image-conscious kids who needed a lunchbox for days school didn’t have lunch they wanted. Saturday morning cartoons didn’t just have toys, books, bedroom sets, clothing, school supplies, and backpacks, they also had their faces printed on lunchboxes.

By the 1980s, metal lunchboxes turned to molded plastic, which were cheaper to manufacture. My first lunchbox (for preschool in the mid-1980s) was metal, but the first one I carried to elementary school in 1989 was plastic, as would my second lunchbox (More on those beauties later). I heard a story some years ago that the metal lunchboxes were banned, and I just assumed this was never true. I mean, why would metal lunchboxes be banned in school?

It actually is true. The state of Florida banned metal lunchboxes in 1972, amid “dangerous weapon” concerns. While other states followed, the molded plastic design was actually cheaper to manufacture, which lead to the ultimate discontinuation of the metal lunchbox by 1985.

What was the last metal lunchbox,you ask?

For $20, you can own the last metal lunchbox produced. Image: eBay

Metal lunchboxes met their end in a literal (guns) blazing glory in 1985, with Rambo conquering Vietnam…and lunchtime!

Yes, they were banned by some schools as weapons, but in reality, it was the lower cost of molded plastic that ended the metal lunchbox’s reign at lunchtime.

From Plastic, To Insulated, To One Company’s Discontinuation of Lunchboxes

By the mid-late 1980s, plastic lunchbox/thermos kits dominated the lunchrooms once populated by metal lunchboxes. Nothing changed about them, aside from the plastic lunchboxes only having the sticker of your licensed character adorning the front of the box. The rest was just brightly colored plastic. But you didn’t care about that minor detail, as long as it had the character you liked!

By 1998, Aladdin discontinued making the lunchbox altogether, but Thermos, Aladdin’s direct competitor in the “what character do you have?” game kept right on going, converting the cool images on those plastic lunchboxes to their insulated bags. Thermos still makes them to this day, but for the nostalgic set, these do nothing for us. For the kids some of us buy them for, perhaps, but not for us.

Although if you handed me an Avengers lunchbox tomorrow, insulated or otherwise, I’d run off happily with it.

Allison’s Lunchboxes

So, as I said earlier, I did own several lunchboxes in my very nostalgic childhood. My first one was a metal lunchbox/Thermos combination, featuring The Muppet Babies.

Allison’s first lunchbox, circa 1985. (Image: Everything But the House)

My brother and I both had this. The Thermos was super cute, featuring my favorite Muppet, Kermit. I have had a particular affinity for Kermit since my mom bought a Christmas stocking holder when I was about a year old. It’s not like I knew who Kermit was or anything (or maybe my one-year-old brain connected it with Sesame Street, I have no idea), but I liked it and kept a death grip on it. My mom said I liked it so much, I took it with us when we went out to dinner.

I’m assuming that lunchbox was bought for pre-school use, but after that, it became the holder of Crayola crayons (and a big red Crayola sharpener) for quite a few years. I have no clue what happened to the thermos, but the lunchbox stuck around for a while. I spotted it in a thrift store in Ocean City, NJ in the summer of 2002, along with the thermos. No, it wasn’t mine, I’m pretty sure that lunchbox found a trashcan in the early 1990s. I was tempted to buy it back then, but decided against it. Even now, I don’t really know what purpose it would serve, and lord knows I wouldn’t want to use a thirty-something-year old thermos that wasn’t originally mine!

The idea of that just…yeah. Ew.

By the time I was in first grade (we had half-day Kindergarten in my school, so I don’t recall needing a lunchbox), the need for a lunchbox was upon us, so we (naturally), went right for the licensed characters. It’s like I’ve seen in several lunchbox-related articles, they were like concert t-shirts for teenagers. This was 1989, and as licensed character stuff went from Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, and Rainbow Brite, to whatever was big among girls in the late 1980s. Of the popular characters to choose from of that time, I chose something rather timeless, brought up to a 1980s vibe.

Image: PicClick

I LOVED this lunchbox, especially that Thermos. Apparently there were several different version of the Mickey and Minnie lunchbox that year, but this all-glammed-up version was the one I took to first grade in 1989.

My final licensed character lunchbox was in second grade (1990-1991). This one surprises me. Where the early 1990s a dearth of good licensed character lunchboxes for girls? My brother had this really cool lunchbox that year…

Image: Pinterest

And I had this.

So it has been explained (through research) that the Yum Yums were Hallmark’s version of the Care Bears crossed with Fisher Price’s The Wild Puffalumps, several years after both franchises had quieted down (the former) and faded away (the latter). The toys smelled like candy, and these colorful characters had their own one-off special from Hanna-Barbera, The Day Things Went Sour.

(It’s on YouTube.)

I guess I saw it, and liked the characters…or was it because this lunchbox was neon pink and pretty? Either way, there was only one other kid with a Yum Yums lunchbox in second grade, and we weren’t in the same class. I’m pretty sure this was a over and done with long before I was over and done with that lunchbox at the end of the school year. I do love that thermos, it is super cute!

I don’t recall having any other Yum Yum toys. Nosey Bears, yes, but not Yum Yums.

If I had known this would be the swan song of carrying a plastic character lunchbox to school, I would have chosen more wisely. I mean, this one was cute, but there had to be something else I was interested in, right?

It probably wasn’t socially acceptable to take a lunchbox to school with a boy-type licensed character on it. That’s pretty much what I liked at that time, my brother’s cartoons.

When third grade rolled around the following year, I went to the Intermediate School, which meant big kids…and a big kid lunchbox to go with it. I remember a new insulated lunch bag that didn’t come with a Thermos, but my mom did use something new in the bag…an ice pack! By that point, character lunchboxes kinda fell by the wayside, and the big kids carried insulated bags. It was a nice time, while it lasted.