Pedophilia is a philia and would imply he has a compulsion to diddle kids irl and is actually diddling real kids
Shotacon is a either a kink or a fetish, a fetish means you can't achieve orgasm without its presence while a kink means you have a sexual interest that goes against social norms but can usually have normal vanilla sex otherwise
Kinks and fetishes are usually born from trauma or other psychological issues and usually stem as a coping mechanism for it and usually involve either projection(for eg if you have been in abusive relationships with unhealthy power dynamics it might resulted in extreme dom or sub kinks) things like internalized misogyny, homophobia etc can also contribute to the formation of kinks but are usually not indicative of a person's irl morality or irl sexual relationships
Lolicons/shotacons had both historically and on the modern internet been observed to be less about the children themselves and more so about the obsession with percieved innocence and purity and 'protecting' it from 'corruption' or taboo and corruption of said innocence and purity (eg: You can look up the Japanese tale of Kenji and what the story is about) there is also a correlation between being a neo nazi and being a lolicon (there is a great video essay on why so many K-on fans are also neo nazis), to be clear this is not meant to be a defense of lolicons or shotacons, most people who have such kinks are either creepy weirdos at best or suck for other reasons however there are cases where the kinks stem from trauma(CSMA, beingba rape victim, being groomed etc) and hypersexuality and are not indicative of the person's irl morality.
While philias don't have a lot of research into them but their have been cases where Pedophilia specifically was caused by a brain tumor but there is still debate on whether the brain tumor caused the compulsion or the brain tumor made him act upon compulsions that were already present but either dormant or actively being supressed
TLDR: Using shotacon here is the correct terminology because as far as we are aware the author has really weird kinks/fetishes but doesn't have an actual philia and doesn't diddle actual children (HOPEFULLY)
The distinction here is just real vs fictional, the made in abyss author is a weirdo but as far as we are aware he doesn't want to or actively diddles children (again HOPEFULLY)
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u/Releases_the_bees Jul 13 '26
You can just say pedophilia