Aromantic Representation in Hades | Slice of Ace



Hades is an action roguelite from Supergiant Games. I’ve played a few hundred hours of the game, and it was the last place I expected to find Aromantic Representation! There’s a really nice little bit of representation here and I’ve wanted to talk about it for a while.

Game footage sourced from:
Dusa’s Story [Interactions] Hades v1.0 Gameplay Walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwemlPoD6Ro
Hades – Romancing Dusa in Zags bedroom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0Qjy6wRyYQ
Hades Launch Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD8x5xLHRho
Hades IGN Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDMXQo_LalQ

Music:
Out of Tarturus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqFaCDvHxU4
Good Riddance (instrumental): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCQl34o3Jok

source

12 thoughts on “Aromantic Representation in Hades | Slice of Ace”

  1. Oh this is cool! I’ve seen this game and wanted to play it and now i wanna play even more. Its great to see that there is a romance option for everyone, a gay one, a straight one and an aro one! Even if its not confirmed you can always have it as a headcanon lol

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  2. As an aro, Dusa makes me feel so seen. Also, (spoilers) Dusa's aromanticism is mentioned a bit more in future dialogue:

    After forging a bond with Aphrodite, Zag and Dusa will have a conversation about how there are 7 different types of love. Zag asks Dusa if she's romantically into anyone, and she says romance isn't really her thing. Zag tells Dusa about how Aphrodite told him about the 7 kinds of love, and Dusa says that she does love him, just not romantically. So it's sort of made explicit that they're in some sort of queerplatonic relationship, without romance.

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  3. i want to preface this by saying that i haven't played hades yet, so i might be missing a bunch of context, but while it's cool to have pretty explicit aromantic rep i'm not super enthused by it being…a disembodied head with a cutesy voice? aros already have to deal with a bunch of dehumanisation and infantilisation (as do aces), so when putting dusa up against the romantic/sexual love interests who are quite clearly adult-human-looking, it's not exactly a great look. i don't think this was the devs' intention, but in a game where the protagonist can be bi and/or polyamorous depending on your choices to only see myself in a floating head with uguu anime eyes is a bit…disappointing.

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