thinking about word to the wise and his kiss, the riot.... thinking about how the “snippet” of advice literally snips out orpheus and eurydice’s chance.... thinking about how the basically all of both songs applies to both hades and orpheus..... thinking about “every coward seems courageous in the safety of a crowd” and how it’s easy for hades to continue as a tyrant when his people believe his words but as soon as other people stop believing in what he’s preaching he’s forced to question all of his choices..... thinking about the line “nothing makes a man so bold as a woman’s smile and a hand to hold/but all alone his blood runs thin” and how hades’s wall and all his Fucking Up was the direct effect of his fear that persephone wouldn’t come back to him and he wouldn’t have a hand to hold anymore..... thinking about how when the fates tell hades that “men are fools/men are frail/give them a rope and they’ll hang themselves” they LITERALLY give him the rope that he hangs his own compassion on and by showing him that there’s a bipartisan way out they prevent him from making a kind choice....... thinking about how hades literally gives orpheus the same test that he failed when he was unable to trust that persephone would still love him come fall...... how the fates take the conflict hades already recognized and magnified it for him until he was completely overcome by it, inevitably pushing them all towards the ending that hermes has been trying so hard to avoid over and over...... thinking about the change from the live “let them think that they have won” lyric to “let them leave, but let there be some term to be agreed upon” because his motivation in the story has changed from lowkey malicious to just desperate for some way to maintain some image of power while still showing some form of compassion....... the callback to “doubt that she’ll never come, dread that she’ll never come” with “all alone his blood runs thin/and doubt comes, doubt comes in” and the fact that, again, orpheus is literally set up with the exact same test that hades failed.....
