While the topic if the toys are still children or grow as thay have working brains is a complex thing to explain, I think I have to disagree that their behaviors are proof of it as they exhibit adult traits.
I think people miss the fact that a good chunk of that actually comes from learned behavior and/or survival tactics. They lived in a hostile enviroment and they had to adapt however they could and they picked up on traits learned from their abusers.
Oliver knows how to perform surgeries as hes had enough material to learn from and has done enough attempts to get it right with Preston and Gracie, up to 34, as we saw in the Experiment notes and a main reason behind his behavior and disapproving of childish behavior is due to him not having the chance to be one himself as he was constantly abused through his life by adults so the only way he knows how to install order is through violence and fear. It also just comes from a desire to not be alone.
Both Theodore and Marie were heavily traumatized by the experimentation they had to go through and the parentification forced on them. They knew something bad was done to them and it would happen to other children so they survived how they could. CatNap by pretending the conditioning worked and Mommy becoming aggresive to the staff that she knew would hurt the children as they did her. Mommy remembers Miss Harper's motherly nature and she protected them as she could with her limited resources and forced the adults out of her work place but complied with her job until she could kill the staff. She knew the games werent just that and CatNap knew what happened to the children he drugged at night. They were waiting until they could go feral on their abusers. The adults lied to them so they lied as well until they no longer had to. Learned behavior.
Poppy was raised in the 50s so she comes from a different era and thats gonna show a bit like how she calls Elliot Father in her diary and she alongside Doey had to become leaders for several other children hence they have to act mature and responsable even if they didnt reach adult age. Chum and Giblet had to learn to traverse and operate in a dangerous place to survive.
And yes, Lily wasnt conditioned to be a child but a toy. However a key part of the conditioning was Gracie infantilising the children and hammering in the importance of making friends happy with games and rules to follow, to be a good toy. The toy does what shes told by Gracie and what will make the Prototype happy. Its what she knows. What she was taught during the first 9 months of her existance as Lily Lovebraids. Gracie's brain was rewired to only know of pleasing those around her by being a good toy and since she doesnt get that, she acts like a brat because shes doing everything right yet they shun her. Shes not stupid but she was created to unintentionally be a parallelism to Gracies victims; only knowing very little and be dropped into a world where people expected you to do as youre told in order to get approval, to get the confirmation that you are a good toy so you wont be thrown into the bad toy box. She repeats Gracie's words and does as shes told as thats what she knows and a bit outof survival.
They all had to survive so they adapted but it didnt turn any of them into adults. Isaac may no longer be part of the team but I think they kept the basis of his idea that they dont develop like normal children do due to what theyve gone through and their bodies might have human components that allow them to think, reason and act.
It somewhat reminds me of the Anne Frank's diary discussion where people thought it had to be written by somebody else due to how mature the text was which I think is also partially people missing or not taking the context of her living situation into account.
So admittedly I have never spoken about my own opinions on whether I think the toys are adults or not because I find the entire debacle to be really fucking stupid, sorry.
Not directing this at you anon, ty for taking the time to write this out and articulate your position. It's more of a broad feeling that I have been sitting on.
I learned early on that the age discourse 99% of the time isn't coming from a lore perspective (not including this ask ofc) but is instead a conflict born almost entirely out of shipping. And I don't care about that.
I can't believe I even have to preface this, but just so I don't get put in the anti/pro stuff I have been seeing this is JUST an observation: does it matter how old they are when fandom always prioritizes its own desires and interests over the canon material anyways? I have been in fandom since I was a child and characters being minors, related, queer, disabled—even their actual personalities, the thing fans like them for in the first place—were minor details to be changed to suit an individual's fancy. It has been this way since before I was born and will probably continue after I and every fan of this generation dies.
So what's the point of this fandom's endless bickering?¿
It feels like too many people nowadays have turned fandom into some kind indicator of morality or proof that they aren't a #degenerate for carnally wanting Doey or shipping Prototype/Harley Sawyer, so they need canon to side with them a certain way or they'll feel bad.
Consider this though: the humble Adult!(Character). The humble Child!(Character). AUs. Doing what fandom historically does by ignoring canon or canon ambiguity when you don't like it. like??? y'all pmo
ANYWAYS to actually answer the ask (sorry) I do also see them as children or child-adjacent. People are still debating age on two fronts: mental & biological. The biological camp is currently trying to settle on whether Sawyer's method kills the subject and then reanimates them, or if the subject never dies and thus DOES age—they simply cannot die from aging now. Mental camp is what you touched on: are they mentally adults because they adapted or took on leadership positions, or are they still children because the transformation into toys inhibits all development including emotional and mental development/what we see is merely parentification and/or them acting out adulthood without actually achieving or knowing what that entails.
I try to avoid the mental camp as I am not well versed enough in disability studies to not say something off-kilter, and I have seen some very good posts explaining how many discussions in this camp end up saying things that are casually ableist or veer too strongly into infantilizing mental disabilities and impairments.
For me, I currently interpret them as children because it falls in line with the game's theme of stagnation & I feel like the toys would be non-senescent... because the research being done is to end death. It doesn't really make sense to me for Playtime to make toys that can still experience the complications of aging and then die?¿ The conflict to me always was on the grounds that the scientists got down biological/conditional immortality, but not the true immortality of the Prototype and presumably Poppy where they can forgo eating and come back from fatal levels of damage. If anyone has a different perspective I'd be happy to hear it though, because I don't mind either outcome, I just haven't personally found a convincing argument for them being adults.
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