Reader's Discretion Advised

Oooh, yeah, baby. Give me that steamy ephebophilia.

Actually, if you think about it - which I find most people tend not to - there's a sort of parallel in the stories of Ganymede and Persephone. Ganymede's Kouros to Persephone's Kore. I didn't pursue this, but it was an interesting thought that occurred to me as I was reading.

And really, it was cute when Ganymede said he never thought Zeus, the wise and mighty, would "act like a thief or a slaver, stealing unarmed boys for his own lecherous purposes." Now, granted, I have no idea how the continuity of Zeus' various...ahem, conquests work, and if the stories of them would have traveled around, but come on. He defines "anything that moves," AND clearly has no compunctions about ravishing in odd forms *cough cough* Leda *cough* Danae *cough cough*.

Side note, but man were the Greeks kinky. I mean, Perseus was conceived when Zeus visited Danae in the form of golden rain. *snort* Of course that was rain...

Aaaanyway, awkwardness aside, let's focus on this story.

It's funny because in the mythology anthology things I got my hands on as a kid, they mention Ganymede, but don't mention that Zeus kidnaps him to ravish him. As far as I could tell, Zeus was just like "Oooh pretty *yoink*." And anyways, it was mentioned so in passing that it was just kind of a "dude, those Greek gods were weird. They kidnaps boys in the form of giant eagles." There was nothing really attached to it; it was more of a fun fact.

I have to say, I rather like this eratos-eromenos arrangement (I hesitate to mention the term "pederasty" because of the connotations attached to it...)


And OMG the net. The golden net. That net. The one made by Hephaestus. The golden net made by Hephaestus. That was the one he used to trap his wife Aphrodite and her lover Ares so he could call the other gods to ridicule them as revenge for her cuckolding. OMG IT'S THAT NET.

The best part was using nectar as lube. Genius.


I see what Emma meant about Zeus seeming more aloof in this one, and I think if he'd been aloof, it would have been nice, fitting, even. In this one, he's more...I feel like he comes across as a typical one-night stand you might read in another M/M. Reeeaaaally explicit about the sex, but not much personality. It's not all the way through; there are just a few moments. I think it was this one line that really killed it for me:
“Ah, you are so tight,” he said, his voice straining. “So hot inside, so brutally tight, you squeeze me like a fist-”
That one seemed OOC and kind of killed the mood a bit for me.

Other than that (if we ignore that line), I thought Zeus-aloof made a lot of sense. He's a god. He's all divine and shit.


Yeah. I liked it a lot.