you ever see someone so coked-up on adulthood that they've replaced every shred of interiority with a regurgitation of normative power structures
every dream, every shred of empathy, every unique desire, all rotted away and replaced by what is needed for power and control. Someone who will, no matter how well you get to know them, never show anything beyond goldfish level thoughts behind those eyes, because there is nothing left. there is a history, there. you can learn what used to be, but for the rest of their life they will never seek anything beyond the most bog-standard socially-normative popularly-affirmed idle pleasures between working, eating, and rest. the death of childhood is the death of a human being.
you can't fix someone when they get like this, either. you try and break them out of their shell and they just give you this sad, hollow, patronizing look. a look that says "you haven't grown up yet, haven't you? you haven't finished becoming a real human being, like me." I think it's a fate worse than death, to be like that.
it's not about "NPCs"!!!! it's about adults who, in seeking to distance themselves from children and the youth, whom they wish to wield violent superiority over (as encouraged by the society which regards children as non-sentient legal property of the family), crush their own non-normative aspirations that might be seen as immature!!!!! it's about people who are so attached to the power and stability of Being Mature that there isn't room for anything else!!!!! Stop misinterpreting my post!!!!! Hits everyone in the notes who's interpreting me wrong!!!!!
It's about fearing being childish so much that they destroy all virtues of being childlike within themselves. Children have wonder and curiosity and questions and dreams not bound by the flawed societal rules they don't know. They play and imagine and dance and laugh loudly and sing. There are many ways that having childlike wonder allows you to see beyond limitation but there are people that erase every part of that in themselves just for pride or power or status.
