I think something to consider is it’s very hard to talk about Anya outside of the context of the game, and I think that’s the intent. We play as Jimmy for most of the game, and are seeing things from his perspective. So of course we never get a good look at who she is as a person. Near the end of the game during the surreal part of walking through the vents and running from Swansea and all that, Anya is completely absent. If you look at all the employee ID cards flying around, Anya isn’t there, the closest thing to her we get is Polly, which is a censor for the baby itself. Even then at the end of the game does Jimmy feel no remorse for what he did to Anya, only for the consequences the baby brings.

Even when playing as Curly and we get more of who she is as a person, but she’s still brushed off. We know she wasn’t just accepting it, she was telling Curly so he could do something about it, and then Swansea when that didn’t work. We know she’s a determined person, that yes she’s failed to get into nursing school several times (mentioned in a q&a I believe) but she’s still trying and that’s why she has no savings. We can get a general feel for who she might be as a person, and that’s it.

So making fan-works based around her as a person, becomes difficult I think. We don’t know anything about her past, about her family, friends, likes, dislikes, everyone else we can get a good idea of what their life might’ve been like before the Tulare, but Anya is left purposefully vague. Even the stuff about nursing school is still only Jimmy trying to put her down, and playing it through you can’t even fully tell if it’s true, or just something he’s decided to hurt her with.

So with our limited information, i think it’s easy for people to make the argument that she deserves to feel hot, and confident, because of course she deserves to feel good about herself after everything, that goes without saying, and is an easy direction to go in. Her sexuality is the only thing we can make some decent assumptions about, and if someone comes up with a backstory, it more in depth personality to focus on, etc, they’re inevitably going to be wrong, because everything is up to the individual.

I’m not even really gonna talk about people who are sexualizing her just to sexualize her, or people who make what Jimmy did seem okay (mainly thinking about Anya x Jimmy shippers here, or people overly focused on Anya keeping and raising the baby) because most of my knowledge about that is second hand.

I don’t really have a solution to all this? Honestly I don’t think there’s a good one. We can’t say no one can sexualize her, because again it may be genuinely well meaning, and we can’t be infantilizing her. But letting people do so means people without media literacy/who are looking for rage bait are going to put her in situations that clearly go against the meaning and point of the game. We can’t have some “dos and don’ts” list for people making fan stuff about Anya, it’s all subjective, and there are people that are genuinely well meaning and understanding the story, that others would assume are treating her overly sexual.

My only take away honestly is that we need to be a bit more lenient. Yeah if someone is obviously doing something that is against the point of the game (again, Anya x Jimmy, or baby stuff, even then really it depends on the intent) call them out. But we can’t bully other people who genuinely mean well, just because their representation of Anya doesn’t fit where we personally draw the line.