Lady Boyle's Last Party remains one of the most atmospheric and memorable missions in gaming for me.
I recently realized that in nearly fifteen years, I've never once drawn Lydia, Esma, or Waverly Boyle. Somehow, I always end up circling back to the Outsider and Emily, with a small side obsession involving Daud.
But Dishonored's supporting cast is every bit as intriguing and memorable as its protagonists. Sometimes, I'd even argue they're more interesting.
And I hope you'll forgive my shameless addiction to chromatic aberration. It's become my newest artistic vice.
I know this is quite the argument to get myself involved in, but this is a really important subject to me. I want to be clear that this is not inherently a criticism of shipping Alastor in general. Shipping/not shipping aroace characters is a whole separate discussion, one that I don't care to get involved with right now. To summarize my stance on that: the most realistic answer is to tag your stuff properly, and block the tags you don't want to see.
My reasons can be found both inside canon and from the words of the creators. Alastor is aroace, no doubt about it to me.
Alastor is explicitly stated in the show to be asexual. This is completely, inarguably canon. Additionally, there is significant evidence that he is sex-averse or sex-repulsed. Both in the Pilot and in S01E01, when Angel Dust propositions him, Alastor doesn't just say no, he looks somewhat horrified.
"I can suck your dick!"
*static screeches* "Ha! No!"
Same with his reaction in S01E01
"If you film me going at it with Mr. Fancy-Talk Creepy-Voice, you'd be rolling in participants willing to stay at this tacky hotel."
"Ha! Never going to happen!"
That's not disinterest, that's pure horror, shock, and disgust. He is defintely sex-averse, if not sex-repulsed.
In both S01E04 and S01E06, two episodes with significant sexual content, Alastor is completely absent. He is nowhere to be seen for the entirety of both episodes. He doesn't watch Angel's film, he doesn't go to Consent (the sex club), he is completely missing. And even in S01E03, he has absolutely nothing to do with any of the sexually charged scenes, like the BDSM club Angel takes them to.
So, it is extremely clear that Alastor has absolutely no interest in sex whatsoever. At the absolute most he is sex-indifferent, but I am leaning towards sex-averse (given he looked more irritated than disgusted in S02E04 about watching Vox and Valentino have sex, but any mentions of sex involving Alastor seem to disgust him).
His aromanticism is what people like to argue/push back against more. But not only are there multiple pieces of evidence from the creators of the show that he is aromantic, I believe there is plenty of canonical evidence in the show itself.
Let's start with the evidence outside the show. Amir Talai (Alastor's VA) called him aroace, then retracted that, stating that he is asexual but his aromanticism is unknown, and this is the primary evidence cited by those arguing that Alastor is not aromantic.
However, for a long time before this, Alastor was repeatedly cited as being aromantic/aroace until Vivziepop decided to retract that so as not to "ruin the fun" of shippers (like that would stop anyone).
The implication here is that Alastor is in fact aromantic, and they just won't confirm it in the show because to make someone aromantic "ruins the fun." What the actual fuck?
My identity does not "ruin the fun." This statement is extremely arophobic in my opinion. First of all, no one's identity should be talked about in this way. Secondly, canonicity really does not affect shipping. Even if he was explicitly aroace, shippers would still ship, and that's fine, tbh. I would draw the line at saying a canonically aromantic character should be made canonically alloromantic, because that's queer erasure, but shipping is completely separate from canon. People ship characters from different fandoms all the time, that has no effect on canon. Tag your stuff properly, and block the tags you don't wanna see.
I really do try to avoid discourse for the most part, but this statement here is one of the most hurtful things I've ever heard someone say about aromanticism. Like, genuinely, it's a really cruel way to view a queer identity, as nothing but a tool for fun (or an obstacle to fun). If someone said "No, this character is going to be heterosexual or it would ruin the fun" or "This character is going to be cisgender or it would ruin the fun" there would be outrage. But everyone seems perfectly happy to accept this shit when it's about erasing aromantics.
Note: obviously this is an old livestream and a spur of the moment comment, not necessarily something that was planned or scripted out. I mess up in my phrasing of things all the time. I doubt the intention here was to be arophobic, but it hurts nonetheless, especially since she hasn't (to my knowledge, please correct me if I'm wrong about this) apologized even for the phrasing or anything. My issue is moreso with the way everyone accepts this when they would be outraged if it were any other queer identity. There's a real double standard about applying the SAM only for the sake of erasure.
But then, Amir Talai posted a video in which he said that Vivziepop does view him as aroace. Here's a link to the video, (go about 10 seconds into the video).
In the announcement that Helluva Boss was coming to Prime, Blitzø called Alastor "the freaky red guy everyone's into", and the official Hazbin Hotel account commented, referring to him as "The freaky red guy who's NOT INTO ANYONE!"
(old screenshot because I'm not going on TikTok just to find it myself, sorry)
In the season 1 recap song (sidenote, I really need a title for this song), Alastor blatantly makes fun of Huskerdust, and his tone in describing Charlie and Vaggie's relationship ("She fell from grace and fell in love") sounds very sarcastic. Again, very repulsed aroace coded.
Now, with all of that outside context, let's talk about some things that are explicitly stated and shown in canon, which are significant. First of which being the "ace in the hole" line. Rosie specifically says: "Who's this you brought with you? Come now, Alastor, she's much too young for you. Oh, I'm just kidding! I know you're an ace in the hole!"
Obviously, Rosie was implying that Alastor was dating Charlie before saying "Oh, I'm just kidding!" The joke was with regards to dating (aka romance), not just sex. Like, the joke makes way less sense if you assume it's only about his sexual orientation and not his romantic orientation as well. The pun just worked with "ace" rather than "aro" or "aroace." I don't know how to actually put it into words properly, but it's clear to me that she's saying Alastor wouldn't date at all because of his orientation. AKA, that he's aroace.
Additionally, Alastor looks extremely irritated to hear Charlie's relationship issues.
This is the most "dear god please save me I can't deal with relationship drama" aroace face I've seen in my life. I have never understood this man so much.
His static gets louder and louder as she rants about her argument with Vaggie, and when she finally asks "Wait, where are we?" he looks SO relieved to have something else to talk about. Especially now that we know Rosie owns his soul, why would he be so happy to be going to her UNLESS it's because he's just so relieved to have someone else to pin all of the romantic complaints that he cannot care about on? That's certainly how I (a sometimes-romance-averse-sometimes-romance-repulsed-aroace who gets asked for relationship advice way too often) would feel.
This is possibly the most overdramatic pose from Alastor we've seen in the entire show. He is so extremely relieved to talk about literally anything other than Charlie and Vaggie's relationship issues.
His neon color palette is purple and green, AKA the primary colors of the asexual and aromantic flags respectively. Like, just look.
AND in the Valentine's Day merch, Alastor's Valentine's card specifically says friend: "You're a very deer friend." His keychain says "Love yourself."
This is some of the most aromantic Valentine's day merch imaginable. The only thing more aromantic for me, personally, is the "love loses" jokes (I know not everyone enjoys them, but I do).
Finally, why does it have to be such a fight to prove that a character's romantic orientation matches their sexual orientation only when that sexual orientation is ace? Why is the SAM only considered by fandom at large as an excuse to make characters more allo? No one is arguing "well technically Angel Dust is canonically gay, that doesn't mean he isn't aromantic" or "Vaggie isn't technically confirmed to be homoromantic, only a lesbian." And when we have this much evidence, it feels intentional to keep arguing against it. It feels like erasure and amatonormativity. It's disingenuous to only bring up the split-attraction model as an argument to decrease aspec representation.
Let Alastor be aromantic, for fuck's sake. Alastor being aroace does not affect fanworks. People will still ship regardless, and that's fine, for the most part. Annoying, but not harmful. But Alastor being aromantic is really important to a lot of people, myself included.
So, yeah, Alastor is aroace. I have never in my life seen a more aromantic character. I cannot think of any character with more clear, in-text evidence of being aromantic. He's aroace.
Do what you want in fanon, but PLEASE don't try to argue that he's canonically alloromantic, because that's simply not canon. The most you can argue is that his romantic orientation is ambiguous, but as you can see, there is extremely, EXTREMELY clear evidence that he's aromantic, even if the show is too cowardly to explicitly state it. Here's hoping that changes.
I highly recommend listening to The Ace Couple's episode about Alastor, it's just a good listen overall. (Sorry, I hate Spotify and I'm working on moving elsewhere, this was just where I could find the episode).
Here's an excellent post about Alastor's aromanticism that you should also check out. It touches on some things that I discussed here, but brings up some other points as well!
Tbh one of the most difficult illustrations for this project (esp for my laptop which kept turning itself off while i was trying to finish this artpiece lol)
