Web Video / Liam Kyle Sullivan

♪ Let's get some shoes... ♪

Liam Kyle Sullivan is a Youtuber, famous for defining the 2000s era of the website’s comedy and music sides with his alter ego “Kelly”, whose debut video and song "Shoes" tops out at over 66 million views. In 2008, he was nominated for and won the People’s Choice Award.

Sullivan’s skits consisted of him crossdressing to take on the role of Kelly, a stereotypical American teenage girl obsessed with shoes and other material things, whose aggressive and driven personality puts her at odds with her parents Bill and Kathy and her twin brother Chris, the latter of whom is favored over her. However, she gets along with her tipsy grandmother (“Mother Grandma”) and her much kinder lesbian aunt Susan, and is almost never seen outside the company of her best friend, Heather the vampire. As Kelly, Sullivan released the album Shoes on iTunes, containing several versions of seven songs recorded under that persona. Kelly’s mother, played by Pam Cook, also recorded “Where Do You Think You’re Going in That?” for this album, and Susan Walker’s Greatest Tits was also recorded in the voice and persona of Aunt Susan.

The universe Liam Kyle Sullivan created spans many characters, most played by himself, and not all of them intersect with Kelly’s own misadventures. Heather has her own vlog series in which she attempts to answer fan questions, but tends to be distracted by her father’s perverse commentary.

Although by 2012, Sullivan had left Youtube, his impact is undeniable: from 2006 onwards, innumerable parody videos across all genres and forms of media have been made using his songs, and dozens of Youtubers cite his videos as inspirational to their own creative rising. His comedy skits and music are fondly remembered as displaying what made early Youtube a fun place to be. Since leaving, he has gotten Happily Married and had a daughter.

In 2020, Kelly had a comeback, releasing Masks, a re-mix of Shoes to show support for proper pandemic-era health awareness. Many of The Cameo characters returned for the beat drop, and Pam Cook reprises her role as Kathy. Not long later Kelly's Family Reunion would come out to commemorate Halloween/the 2020 election.

Sullivan has championed LGBT rights and awareness, and held several fundraisers for this cause.

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Music Tropes

• Broken Record: “Shoes” is the best example of this being used to keep the pace of the song going, but it and “Let Me Borrow That Top” also use it for comedic gag purposes.

Skit Tropes

• Action Fashionista: Kelly gets into a fight with mall security and has been banned from the location, not that that stops her.
• Affectionate Parody: Kelly did a commercial for "Inactiv", a parody of Proactiv, in 2011.
• Art Shift: “Shoes the Full Version”, “Text Message Breakup”, and “Muffins” were made first, and it shows. As Sullivan pulled in more money and began to get better sets and equipment, the skits improved in quality markedly.
• Battle Rapping: Kelly and Neal in "No Booty Calls". Kelly engages in a rap battle with her ex, wherein he keeps trying to hook up with her again, but not date her, while she has no interest and takes several digs at him. While Kelly spits fire without cease, his rhymes in response are rather weak.
• Birthday Beginning: The original video for "Shoes" begins with a skit that shows Kelly and Chris's parents celebrating the twins' birthday. The fact that Chris is so obviously favored by their parents (he gets a new computer and car while she gets a stuffed animal) is the catalyst for Kelly leaving the house to buy herself a pair of shoes.
• Bland-Name Product: “Honeynut Shetbags”, Sullivan’s take on old-school dramatic family cereal commercials. There’s a betchslap in every bite!
• The Bus Came Back: 14-and-a-half-years after "Shoes" and 9 years after Sullivan had made his last skit, Kelly and friends came back with "Masks" and a new virtual meeting skit.
• Butt-Monkey: Neal, though he has it coming. Whenever he shows up in a video he isn’t the focus of, it won’t take him long for him to get whacked with something.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Kelly calmly talks back to her mother Kathy after a new round of verbal abuse come the 2020 pandemic-era "Masks". She's left speechless.
• The Cameo: Sullivan’s skits and songs have involved bit roles by such stars as Emma Stone, Amanda Palmer, and Margaret Cho.
• Character Development: What was hinted at in "Masks" was continued in the 2020 Halloween skit:
  • Bill is still proudly supportive of Kelly, marking that his Heel–Face Turn is for good.
  • Chris has suffered in quarantine, becoming addicted to video games and short with any interruptions. He's also at least somewhat smarter (he gets the definition of "patronize" half right...) and tries actually hitting on Heather.
  • The loss of control in her family has marked a steady decline in Kathy, resulting in her becoming downright unpleasant, snappy and critical of anything and everyone.
  • Kelly is more vocally appreciative of the family she does have on her side, and, for what it's worth, still has a temper but is no longer hair-trigger, showing unprecedented patience with Chris and Kathy.
• Cool Old Lady: Mother Grandma. She happily bobs for apples and twerks (much to Kathy's horror).
  "Kelly! Put me on the Tiktok!"
• Determinator: Kelly will have whatever shoes she wants. That, and she also threw herself onto Caitlin’s car to continue demanding her top. And unless Caitlin drove to the park very, very slowly, that also makes her Made of Iron.
• Dope Slap: Watch out, Chris—Kelly has recently displayed the ability to betchslap people through video screens.
• Dumped via Text Message: The aptly-named "Text Message Breakup".
• Escalating Punchline: “Muffins” in a nutshell: Mrs. Cunningham advertises a lengthy list of muffins her company bakes, but they steadily go from typical (say, blueberry) to atypical (such as pumpernickle or boysenberry) to outlandish (bird, fish, monkey…) to outlandish and dangerous (FIYAH!) to straight-up nonsensical (imaaaginary muffin…)
• Fair-Weather Friend: Kelly is this to Caitlin in “Let Me Borrow That Top”, leaning on their friendship in order to get her to lend her a cute top. She’s initially polite, but pushy, but quickly gets frustrated, and the video ends with Caitlin getting called a fat bitch as Kelly instigates a huge fight at the homecoming assembly and declares that they’re not friends anymore.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Kelly. One too many shopkeeps said she had too many shoes and got slapped for the trouble, and she attacked a woman who implied she had big feet. These actually got her banned from the mall, not that security was able to stop her re-entry.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Kelly and Heather can depend on each other no matter what.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood:
  • Vera’s life growing up under her father, to the point that she can’t think of anything positive to say in a Father’s Day card despite her best efforts.
  • Downplayed (relatively speaking...) with Kelly. Kelly's parents blatantly favor Chris over her, laugh at his immature teasing of her, call her fat, and generally constrict her the way hyper-conservative midwestern Christian parents would. It's funnier than it should be. (In Masks her father admits he was wrong to do so and apologizes. Her mother...is unrepentant.)
• Interspecies Romance: Defied. Heather struggles with romance not because she isn’t good at it, but because she just wants to date another vampire and can’t find any.
• Karmic Butt-Monkey: Kathy.
  • Back in the debut era, she called her daughter a whore in "Shoes". By "Let Me Borrow That Top", a tee with her face on it declaring her to be a whore was becoming popular.
  • In the revived era's May 2021 livestream Zoom call, Kathy summons the twins to express displeasure that Chris didn't get her a gift, and that she didn't like the one Kelly got her. While six-inch heeled cowboy boots admittedly wouldn't suit a woman of Kathy's age, anyone who knows Kelly would find this to be a very heartfelt gift from her, showing that Kelly still tries to do right by Kathy despite plenty of reason not to. This is followed by Kathy attempting to dote on Chris, who completely ignores her. Then Mother Grandma joins the call to show off all the Mother's Day gifts she was given. It's clear at this point that Kathy is unwilling to understand that she brings most of her ills on herself.
• Mama Bear: Not Kelly's mom, but her grandma did whack Kelly's ex-boyfriend in the head with a frying pan for having the gall to break up with her via a poorly spelled text message.
• Muggle Best Friend: Inverted. Kelly is the Muggle and also the focal character, while vampire Heather is the best friend.
• My Girl Is Not a Slut: Vera’s father is incredibly hostile to the idea of her even knowing what sex is, despite her being 27 years old.
• Odd Couple: Kelly and Heather. The former is a portrait of a prep, while the latter is as goth as goth gets. Kelly is vocal and aggressive, while Heather is more subdued. It even extends to their families, with Kelly’s uber-conservative Christian parents only matched by Heather’s inappropriately sex-addicted father.
• Parental Fashion Veto: What “Where Do You Think You’re Going In That” is about.
• Parental Favoritism: In "Shoes", Chris gets a new computer and a car for the twins' birthday, while Kelly gets...a stuffed animal.
• Racist Grandma: Not Mother Grandma, but Kathy, Kelly’s mother. She hits the “it’s America, so speak English” part to a tee. Also, Vera’s dad is stated to “not celebrate” Martin Luther King Day and it’s implied he’d go berserk if he knew she banged a Mexican man.
• Really 700 Years Old: Mother Grandma claims to remember when women didn't have the right to vote, which would put her well over 100 years old.
  Kelly: How old are you?
• Serious Business: Shoes and Scrabble.
• Spiritual Successor: “Can I Get A Box” by Joy Brooker in 2016 and “Where’s My Juul?” by Full Tac and Lil Mariko in the tail end of 2019 have both been noted to successfully emulate the spirit and style of “Shoes”. Both have gone viral, and Can I Get A Box was even professionally performed by Cali Je.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Kelly's father, Bill, has softened up and become much nicer and more supportive of Kelly by the time of "Masks".
• Twin Telepathy: When Kelly and Chris begin bickering in "Shoes", their mother tells them "Stop fighting, you two are twins, for goodness sake...Don't they have the same thoughts?" The video then shows the interior monologue for them, with Kelly thinking about shoes and Chris thinking about a Playstation, proving that, no they really do not.
• Verbal Tic: Kelly has an odd accent to place, but it’s best characterized by the pronouncing of i’s as e’s, meaning “bitch” becomes “betch”.
• Woman Scorned: "Text Message Breakup" is built on this trope and then some, as Kelly unleashes unholy vengeance against her boyfriend after sending the titular text to end their relationship. Kelly's only further incensed because he used the wrong version of "break."
  "B-R-A-K-E that's for your car, dummy!"