Oh wow

That's disgusting and unsettling and a real bitch to deal with, I understand, but you still did the right thing by reporting them to Trust & Safety. Nothing about what you did is in any way, shape, or form illegal and you can't be prosecuted for acting in good faith under the assumption that they were an adult in an 18+ server. The onus is on them for lying to you, not you for being deceived. You aren't going to face any legal repercussions whatsoever; even in the event that someone tries to be malicious, there's no case against you for doing exactly what you were supposed to. Trust me as someone that has been in the same situation several times over the years: you're hard-pressed to get the police to take action against a legitimate groomer, much less a hapless adult who disengaged and reported to the authorities.

Take some time to silence your kneejerk panic response and understand that, while it might feel like the end of the world, under the very harshest possible reading this is still an extremely minor infraction, and no government on earth has the time or resources to waste on you having an uncomfortable but ultimately brief interaction on Discord dot com when there are actual predators causing genuine harm out there.

I'm not trying to minimize your feelings, which are real and genuine, but providing perspective that outside of what your anxiety might be telling you, this is objectively not a big deal to anyone else. Minors lie about their age all the time, and if people were hauled to prison every single time they fooled someone, the internet would look like a very different place.

I've been thinking a lot about time loops and the inevitability of narrative and that's something I've been wanting to play around with for the longest time. Characters who know they're just playthings, pieces moved around the board by an unseen hand, powerless to fight against the amusement of these higher forces but trying (and trying, and trying, and trying) to find meaning despite it all. The bending and breaking of assigned archetypes into something raw and real and lasting has been on my mind lately!

There’s something about somebody else in that place getting more familiar with the character and coming to appreciate her, interacting more than she has to, at first just as a novelty or joke; play-acting friendly with the work subject that way that people do. But eventually starting to see her as a person, maybe having a proper realization after some kind of big moment, but more likely just on accident, getting enough emotional attachment that the recategorization happens before she even notices.

And of course the character I’d play would have confused, messy feelings; maybe she had a crush on her ‘favorite’, having taken the earlier friendliness at face value, or just having been starved for even that much intimacy and desperately wanting to take the risk and trust someone to be able to help her. She might not even have a very good grasp on the nature of her emotions, being essentially neglected in a lot of respects, and needing help sorting that out; maybe even displaying little to no emotions, but still having them, under the surface. And if she is doubtful there could be a conflict, a worry that this is all some kind of complicated trap, an offer of intimacy to catch that she’ll break the rules after all or just another angle on the experimental research. That she can’t afford to trust anyone and it would be foolish to do so and she has to follow the rules, but then, what if it’s not a trick? What if she follows the rules, doesn’t keep the secret, and then never sees that researcher, the closest person to her, again?

And then trying to make this work and be intimate without getting found out, and somehow get out of the situation together without either getting killed and before the experiment runs its course or the tool is shipped off to be used as whatever she’s supposed to be, as a spice of plot and drama that I really have no idea how to properly implement in practice.

I've been thinking a lot about time loops and the inevitability of narrative and that's something I've been wanting to play around with for the longest time. Characters who know they're just playthings, pieces moved around the board by an unseen hand, powerless to fight against the amusement of these higher forces but trying (and trying, and trying, and trying) to find meaning despite it all. The bending and breaking of assigned archetypes into something raw and real and lasting has been on my mind lately!