1:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 28
• The Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Thinking About Music Lecture Series •
“THEY SOUND HOT”: SEXUALITY AND VOCALITY IN SUPERGIANT’S HADES
Sarah Pozderac-Chenevey
The association of Supergiant Games’s Hades with bisexuality has become so commonplace online that it is the subject of memes and parody. Fan groups joke about Hades ‘turning people bi’ as well as the ‘horniness’ and ‘thirstiness’ of the game’s fanbase, and explicit fanfics and fanart of the characters are abundant online. Jen Zee’s impossibly attractive character designs befit the subjects, literal deities and mythic figures, but they alone do not explain why these millennia-old characters are suddenly the object of modern lust. The characters’ dialogue and the voice actors who brought it to life also play a major role. Furthermore, I argue that the superlative nature of Hades, the result of so much hard work at Supergiant, is not the only factor contributing to its iconic, memetic status. The paucity of positive, deliberate, unambiguous depictions of queer people and queer relationships in mainstream media meant that Hades shone all the brighter by featuring a bisexual protagonist, Zagreus, and offering the possibility of a polyamorous relationship among Zagreus, Megaera, and Thanatos. As players reconsidered their own assumed heterosexuality, the result of compulsory heterosexuality, they also formed and found online communities where others discussed their own queer awakenings. Eros and thanatos, sex and death, are two major themes in Hades, but they are not the only ones. Love, family, honor, the importance of communication, all of these are celebrated as the player progresses through the story. Willingness to embrace both-and—and therefore queerness—rather than demand mutual exclusion lie at the heart of the narrative, as Zagreus realizes that he does not have to choose between his mothers, that he can be himself and find a role in the House, and that he can love both Megaera and Thanatos. For the players and fans, too, there is both-and as the game satisfies both narratively and ludically, visually and aurally. By presenting characters who are unabashedly beautiful and sexy to both eye and ear—characters who lie outside of modern society’s norms, in a story that is ultimately happy—Hades pierces the enforced curtain concealing the possibilities of lives unfettered by compulsory heterosexuality and biphobia. The fan community has responded by writing about how Hades has contributed positively to their own identities and by making art that celebrates the grand diversity of human sexuality.
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
