#kyle simpson

Kyle: Yes!

It's most explicit in Child's Play 2, when he's eight fucking years old, because that's when we first see him really start doing it. Like, he hates talking about Chucky because it was incredibly traumatic and the only right answer any adult will accept is that none of it even happened. So in his first scene in that movie we see him play along with the child psychologist to get him to lay off:

But then we see it develop and sharpen after he's taken in by the Simpsons, since Phil isn't shy about wanting to send Andy back to the crisis center whenever his fear of Good Guy dolls comes up:

And so Andy pointedly pretends to be ok with Good Guy dolls just to get them to accept him:

Andy forces his feelings and reactions down in order to pass as normal and untroubled so that he's tolerable enough to keep around. Fun fact, this is actually expanded upon in the Child's Play 2 novelization in the scene where the Tommy doll falls on him in the closet:

Even though the book's additions and changes aren't canon, I feel like this section is true enough to Andy's evident arc in the movie to consider it a faithful representation of his perspective.

He gives up the facade of normalcy for most of the rest of Child's Play 2 because Chucky's on his heels and the stakes are too high, but we see the same patterns in his other appearances. In Child's Play 3, he fishes for the "right answer" that will satisfy Colonel Cochrane without mentioning Chucky, quoting from his official file:

It doesn't work, but you can see how badly he wished it had. And there are examples of him swallowing his panic and/or delivering "normal" responses to things that set him off throughout the movie:

Boy I wonder what this habit of suppressing and rejecting his emotions will lead to. I wonder if it will severely stunt his emotional development. I wonder if he will struggle to emote genuinely because he has learned to smother all his genuine emotions to avoid being given up or forced to revisit his trauma as something that "wasn't real". I wonder.

Then in Cult there's his strategic downplay of the number of weapons he owns and his textbook justifications to appease people who don't like guns:

Alas, just like with Colonel Cochrane, it doesn't work:

Funny how this is the second time we see Andy deal with the reality of people not putting up with him & his symptoms as soon as it's inconvenient or scary. Phil also thought he was too much and wanted to get rid of him. I wonder how many more times this happened when he tried to build relationships. I bet constant rejection would really reinforce his masking behavior and disconnection from the genuine parts of himself. Hm. (:

And the extra juicy bit that I stay up at night thinking about: he hid the Chucky head from Kyle for the same reason!! He doesn't want her to think he's crazy!

And Kyle does get on him for acting "irrationally"! Andy was right about how she'd react! Her initial judgement of his trauma-driven actions is that they're crazy! Everyone in Andy's life wants him to be normal despite his trauma, even people who were there with him when it happened!

Credit to Kyle, she lets it go pretty quick and doesn't hold it against him, even when Andy makes it pretty obvious that the real reason he kept the head for 4 years was because he likes hearing Chucky scream. There's not actually any risk of Kyle giving up on Andy because he kept the head to torture it; this is more Andy continuing his ingrained self-defence behavior patterns and Kyle being surprised and worried. Still, this exchange is telling of how and why Andy doesn't feel safe without carefully constructing an acceptable version of himself, even around those he's closest with.

Rachel: Is that Nathan with Michelle?! It looks like he's smiling.

Kyle: I didn't think he could smile.

Andy: He looks taller, too.

Nica: Well, we'd all be taller if we'd just divorced Michelle.

Bree: Taller, younger, happier, stronger.

Malcolm: Cheers to that.

Yes Kyle, tell' im!! 😫💜

@nicascurls @barclaysangel

The adults catch themselves doing this all the time, they also call each other out on it 😂

"-Yeah and then after I chopped Dad up at the age of six, my mother transferred me and Glenda into the body of infants."

".....And all this over three days?"

"Yeah. Oh and they Psyches stuff like I said."

Andy, Nica, and Kyle just standing there like:

I love our underrated final girl, a badass with a heart of gold. I adore her so much. 💛