Hades is about how queer polyamorous people win swordfights by having three strong, devoted partners sweep in to help them

I mean OP is a joke mostly by omission--Zagreus does call on Meg, Than, and Dusa in battle but also relies on powers from a whole host of cousins and uncles, and can use the help of his teacher and the teacher's husband, and a ton of other friends. And of course the whole thing is set in the framework of family strife slowly turning to reconciliation. I think what I really like about battle in Hades is that it's about relationships, like the story itself.

Also Thanatos doesn't like the surface because there's too much stimulation all at once, and it's far too bright when the sun rises? Attention, autistic Thanatos is a go! 🚨

And of course, Thanatos's twin Hypnos gives me a lot of ADHD feels, like being assumed to be incompetent/lazy but doing well once he's given the help he needs managing his work and schedule.

The first character that I thought was coded as autistic, though, was actually Tisiphone--and I know that can be read as derogatory since Tisiphone's being nonverbal is played for comic effect and she's primarily encountered as an enemy to be vanquished. It's not like being nonverbal is inherently a bad thing, though, and as with all the characters more layers emerge in her over repeated encounters. Tisiphone learning to say Zagreus's name over time reminds me a lot of how my child grasps words, and it's clear Zagreus likes her and wants to build more of a relationship with her as he does with everyone. She's not malicious like Alecto, she just does a grim and necessary job as an indispensable part of the underworld and the moral universe at large.

Talking about autistic video game characters reminds me I should finish that post about the heroine of the 2020 puzzle game Carto being non-verbal. I just need to fill in a couple of screenshots but the planned replay fell seriously behind schedule thanks to work and Hades. The text of the post is actually complete, just not exposed in the menus because it's marked as a draft. https://ljwrites.blog/posts/carto-game-nonverbal/

I'm not sure why I keep thinking of myself as "not really a gamer" when it's clear games are a significant part of my entertainment and I get pretty deep into the ones I like--I wrote Final Fantasy VIII fanfic for years, for crying out loud. Maybe because I play primarily puzzle and indie games, and I've internalized the gatekeepy idea that "real gamers" play AAA games, shooters and so on? Or the term "gamer" has specific connotations to me that I don't think fits me?

@ljwrites in my mind there's "gamer" as in a person who plays games and there's "Gamer" as someone who makes it part of their personality to get mad about game devs doing stuff they don't like