My Horrifying Realization

I finished the game two weeks ago and it's been buzzing around in my head since. I don't know anyone IRL who I can discuss the game with, so I wanted to shout my thoughts into the void and get it all out.

This game's narrative blew my mind, particularly Anya's story. Bear with me here, but I went through the entire game assuming Anya and Jimmy had consensual sex, but the pregnancy was a mistake. After finishing the game, I read the Steam reviews and one mentioned that Anya was a SA survivor.

I was puzzled. Where's this coming from? I didn't remember any of that in the game. I dug deeper and found a post that explained everything.

I was dumbfounded. I couldn't believe I'd missed something that, in hindsight, seemed so obvious. The game's writers had written such believable, multi-layered dialogue and I missed all the clues as if I were missing social cues in a real-life conversation. For context, I am a straight, white, cisgender male. If I were a woman, I'm sure I would have noticed Anya's subtext throughout the game.

Once I had a better grasp of the game's full story, I had a haunting realization:

I was just like Curly.

The evidence was in front of me, but I was oblivious. I was even doubtful when hearing the truth for the first time. This really shook me to my core and it felt like I was discovering a flaw in myself.

Now whenever I think about Anya's situation, it makes me want to cry. Like the rest of the cast, she's a beautifully written character. While I understand why the narrative needs to happen the way it does, my sympathetic brain wishes for her to be happy. Recently I've been relying on the fandom's beautiful artwork and silly memes to cope. I haven't been this affected by a videogame story since Doki Doki Literature Club, which had similarly deep characters and a bleak story.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. It took a long time for me to type this out in a coherent way, lol. I'm curious if others had a similar experience.

TL;DR - On my first playthrough, I missed the subtext about Anya's SA and when I learned the truth, it made me realize that I was just as oblivious as Curly.

EDIT: Thanks for the positive reception everyone! It's been fascinating reading everyone's thoughts! I'm kinda relieved that I wasn't alone on this. Cheers!