Marsisnthere

HADESTOWN

— I know death now. I've seen it.

and in turn i love a jesper who just does whatever comes to heart. a jesper who can’t read social cues for the life of him but thrives in social settings anyways. a jesper who is sarcastic and mean but never cruel and careful to never cut too deep.

He would never call them that, of course. He wouldn’t even in his head. But there’s something there nonetheless.

These scraps show up in ways that are shockingly good morals for someone who is filled with shades of gray and darker.

He never opened a brothel like every other crime boss in the Barrel. Even though we can certainly assume that makes good money, he didn’t touch it — even before he even knew Inej and her story. He never participated in the trade of peoples’ bodily autonomy. I’ve heard arguments that this is due to his touch phobia, but that wouldn’t really make sense, because in order to run a brothel he obviously wouldn’t have to physically participate as well.

He believes that fathers must love their sons until Jan Van Eck proves him wrong. He was willing to bet on it — and he LOST. He believed a parent must love their child so certainly, and he was surprised and disgusted that even that was a line people crossed.

He doesn’t harm young children — or he at least avoids it as much as possible. He scares them and threatens them into compliance — which yeah is a shade of gray morality for sure. But he doesn’t harm them, and he doesn’t kill them, and he rarely offers people his age or older the same mercy.

He also has certain morality for how to treat people that work for you. In the beginning, when Jan Van Eck has kidnapped him, Van Eck calls him and his methods violent. Kaz points out that most of Van Eck’s ships never come back, that people who worked for him died on those ships, and tells Van Eck’s to not speak of violence when that is something he does. He’s not denying his own violent nature, but he’s clearly showing an opinion that that is yet another unjust action Van Eck takes, and also shows distaste at the hypocrisy of it.

To further prove show this point, in chapter 26 of SoC, if I remember correctly, he is looking for Pekka Rollins in the cells, BUT once he gets there he realizes it’s making him late to meet the others, and that they could all die without him performing his part of the heist, he feels guilt, and so he restrains himself from actually wasting time murdering Pekka and goes to continue the heist. Now, he’s already very bonded with Inej and Jesper at this point, so that makes sense, but even though he is somewhat less bonded with the others crows, he still thinks about wanting to get his whole crew out safe. I feel like this ties into treating his workers/crewmates with a form of respect/equality/responsibility.

So, for a man who has so little regard for his shortcomings (until Inej), who kills and takes advantage of peoples’ foolishness and darker natures and doesn’t give it a second thought, there’s still something in there. Maybe you couldn’t call them morals in the traditional sense, but there’s a sense of justice there that still shifts his actions.

There’s an entire song of Hades trying to basically seduce eurydice into coming to hadestown (screenshots 1 and 2 of lyrics including) that was literally written to have sexual innuendos, even excluding that song, there’s so many other implications throughout the musical with hades asking eurydice to step into his office when she gets to hadestown, then her leaving in different clothes which you COULD excuse for just being an easy way for costume change had it not been for hermes (essentially the narrator) saying a lot can happen behind closed doors, leaving heavy and intentionally vague implications hell, in further songs the writer makes it so obvious with double entendres and intentionally vague lyrics (pictures 3 & 4)

“Men are kind until they aren’t” in flowers can be somewhat interpreted in that way though nobody really views it as that, more so as Irpheus having promised Eurydice riches, food, bed, and board but then leaving her alone against the cold to work on his song