I have a pretty bad case of POCD, but I'm not sure if this is legit fear or that. I'm in the UK and drawings of kids in sexual situations are illegal here. I played Breeding Season for a bit with the "Neoteny" trait switched off but it still brings up pics of the childlike monsters standing around, switched it off when I realised but I'd already been playing it. Also today I was browsing for fandom stuff and accidentally ran across untagged ick twice in a row. I really didn't mean to but I'm petrified law enforcement will see it and won't believe me, partly because I've also viewed some written underage content, which isn't illegal here. I looked at the latter as an attempt to fix my POCD by showing myself nothing bad happened when I saw it because as I said it isn't illegal here but now I'm panicking over this. I blocked the offending Tumblrs and reported the game to the IWF saying it ought to be blocked over here. Can any fellow Brits help? I feel completely vile and I can't sleep.
Oh no, OCD sucks, you have my sympathy. I can't give you any real help, but I can reassure you that your fear is not legit, and nobody is going to persecute you for running across internet content you did not even particularly want to see. You saw childlike images in a game that you didn't finish playing, and on tumblrs you blocked. If the ban on drawings of childlike characters was strictly reinforced, it would be the games and blogs producing or distributing that content that would be persecuted, not the people who sort of browsed them. Nobody actually gives a shit about people looking at weird porn, it's not a police priority, if all cases of 'accidentally looked at ick' were persecuted there would be constant lawsuits all over Britain. Some anecdotal evidence: I lived in the UK for 4 years and browsed some seriously vile stuff, some of it on genuinely monitored university computers, and nothing bad happened, nobody gave a shit. (By vile stuff, I mean - no actual child porn, but tons of naked or sexual art of underage or underage-looking characters, because that happens when you're neck deep in Homestuck. Also I downloaded Katana Shojo, an eroge with underage characters.) Sometimes I deleted my internet history so porn didn't pop up when I'm at the library, but other than that I took zero precautions, and I was ok. Also, I had a look at Breeding Season (what a game, I should probably play it), and it says that the Neoteny trait means that characters 'retain childlike traits' into adulthood, meaning that they are not, technically, images of children. And idk if this helps you any, but a childlike-looking adult is not a child, and plenty of real-life adults have medical conditions that make them look childlike (see Turner syndrome), and have consensual adult sexual lives.
Thank you. Rationally this helps a lot but I think all I can do is wait for the worry to pass now. I've had to do this before with other worries. I asked IWF to block the offending sites in the UK or talk to their webmasters but their website is pretty scare-tactic-y and reading it didn't help a lot. I hate to be picky but was your time living in the UK before or after the legal ban started? The law changed comparatively recently (some years ago though). I know adults that look childlike aren't children, but I don't think the laws make the distinction with the drawn content (photos I could see because it could be proved that the "child" wasn't really one) so I felt weird.
Ah, good. Just making sure :) Now it's nagging at me that I played the game more than once. The first couple times were before the separate artwork for different traits was put in though. As I said, also worried because of the written stuff making it look like I meant to look at the art. Pretty sure I'm worrying about nothing, but assurance would help.
Just... when it comes down to it, Neoteny =/= underage. That's kind of the point of it- it's specifically 'the retention of juvenile traits by an adult'. While I know nothing about the game in question, it sounds like the characters were of age. If anyone did arrest you- which i'm like 99% certain they won't- you can just point out that this is a specific setting named after a specific condition which makes people look young, AND you had it turned off. I'm pretty certain you're absolutely fine.
Again, me logicking at you is not gonna fix your freakout, but. It doesn't matter that you played the game more than once, and it doesn't matter you've read the written stuff, because nobody is monitoring you. Nobody is scrutinizing your actions and motivations, nobody is trying to painstakingly reconstruct what you may have thought or felt or wanted except you yourself. Police departments are overextended and understaffed and they don't have time to worry about stuff that a) harms nobody b) occurs in privacy and c) does not actively go against any laws. The game you played is not in any way banned in the UK, the fics you read are not illegal either, and accessing tumblr is legal in the UK, therefore any content you see and interact with is not in itself illegal: if tumblr was distributing stuff that was illegal enough for the UK to act on, it wouldn't be legally allowed. Since the UK allows a site (or multiple social networking sites) that occasionally have hate speech, slander, misinformation, creep shots, true crime gore, drawings of nude kids and tons of copyright infringement, it is sort of implied that it doesn't intend to monitor or persecute the people who run across that stuff, or even the ones that manufacture it. If it helps, imagine that if a person is monitoring your online activities, they'd have to be monitoring the activities of everybody else who played the game you played, everybody else who visited the blogs you visited, and monitor them with the same intensity you feel that you are monitored. Imagine a poor tired bureaucrat browsing through tens of thousands of blogs, and then cross-referencing every single post they viewed with the other sites they visited. Ain't nobody got time for that. You're thinking about this, because your brain is fucking with you, but nobody is going to care about these things you did. I'm not trying to patronize you, I spent months afraid that I would accidentally kill my sister with my brain, so I get where you're coming from. But my sister is fine, and you'll be fine too. If you're not in therapy, you should get some though.
Thanks. Phew. I have gone through this fear thing before, I spent a chunk of my teen years terrified I was going to do something awful to my sister and I still get nervous every time I see police officers. I think it can be traced back to my having got in trouble a lot in childhood for reasons I didn't understand. (Aspie kid, fun for all involved.) It's just really hard to remember it's just the same thing over again. Seeing doctor and having assessment session with a counsellor tomorrow. Since I've been on the anxiety-depression roundabout so many times I'm asking him about mood stabilisers, for which I'll have to be referred to a psychiatrist. Wish me luck? Brain is going "but it IS against the law, technically..." :( I know it's unlikely to be enforced on me, I KNOW, but still.
I talked to someone on an anon email helpline but they weren't terribly reassuring - they said be more careful, report/block as necessary, and don't go on there again, that was about it. I was awake till 8AM last night and panicked every time I heard my neighbours move around.
I'm pretty sure that helpline person was not actually very helpful at all. Everything that everyone's said here still stands, by the way.
The helpline was actually for "what to do if you find this stuff" rather than mental health, should have specified. And I guess it's their job to scare people out of looking for it. I still feel awful for not being more careful and for looking at the stupid fic. I was feeling awful enough anyway.
Hey, I can relate, I've been through similar obsession. I don't really have much advice, only to have solidarity and try to wait it out as best you can, because these thoughts don't stick to you forever no matter how it may feel.
Thanks, everyone. Still feeling scared whenever I see a cop car. Normally I don't notice them and now I've seen about three or four in a week and my brain automatically jumped to them looking for me.
People the police arrest for pedophilia: People active in pedophile rings who share, distribute and make porn with actual children, and people who are abusing or have sexually abused real children. People the police don't arrest: People who looked at some drawings and played a game and read some fics which may or may not feature fictional underage people. Random police cars driving around are not going to arrest you. You are okay, I promise.
I checked out the game - I think what also pings for me is that a lot of the characters with the neotany trait don't actually look like kids to me. A few do, but a ton of them just look like smaller, lither adults. And everyone else is right about, this isn't something authorities moniter a lot with any intensity, especially when they're... bigger fish to fry? You accidentally looking at some images of drawn characters that straddle the line for looking underage and then turning off the game is not something most people would find morally reprehensible at all, and p sure the ones that would would object to the game anyway even though it's just a game. Furthermore, I think it'd be pretty hard for anyone to prove you had any intent here to see those pictures when all your actions point away from that? Obviously if the images make you uncomfortable I don't think you should play it, and I understand that your emotions on it are explicitly not based in rationality and that's okay. Just trying to reassure you here.
Thanks, I get what you mean. I looked up the actual law and I'm pretty sure the pics with them just standing there are okay legally. Still probably best I avoid it on triggery grounds.
I posted on their blog asking if they'd release a version which did, on the grounds it'd increase their audience.
