Thank you all for your responses and taking my concerns seriously. I was worried that, by posting in a place like this, I’d just get MAPs back-patting me to make themselves feel better about having embraced pedophilic thoughts as something completely alright to have, but it seems I was proven wrong and can confidently take these messages seriously. This has helped. I suppose part of my issue is that I feel shame for having participated in and contributed towards something that I thought had the potential to cause harm, but your responses have helped me get closer to letting myself believe that I don’t need to bear the guilt of having harmed minors.
Some things, though:
This is incorrect: I don’t consider myself a Minor Attracted Person because, by and large, I don’t feel true sexual attraction towrds children. The notion of being sexually involved with a child has consistently been repulsive to me on a visceral level beyond just the moral concerns involved, and outside “fits” of looking up drawn/written child pornography and experiencing intruding ““fantasies””, what has given me actual sexual satisfaction and what I’ve willingly and pleasurably sought out has been different kinks entirely.
Furthermore, some comments here have expressed the idea that art and fiction can never have any negative societal effect whatsoever, which I can’t help but disagree with. If art can influence people positively, it can influence them negatively; if it can impart positive messages, it can impart negative ones. Propaganda wouldn’t be nearly as effective as it is if art were fully incapable of negative influence. I agree with the example given that Doom players shouldn’t feel morally culpable for Columbine, but let’s not go too far into the other end here.