Illustrated Fiction: A Kind Of Magic (Hera x Ganymedes)
Hello dear demigoddesses and demigods,
please enjoy Hera obliterating Ganymedes, as requested by our birthday girl Alison. Happy birthday, Alison, I hope this helps in making your special day extra special 😚
The illustration was created by Arja, you will recognise Hera from the header image. As always, there is a great love to detail like Hera's jewellery and hairstyle, and her iconic crown that is depicted in lots of ancient Greek art. Ganymedes was designed from ancient Greek vase paintings as a long-haired youth with a fillet. The oaken bed is a play on Odysseus' and Penelope's bed in the Odyssey, a wonderful idea by Arja!
Glossary
alabastron: a kind of ancient Greek pottery vase used for holding oils, and originally made from alabaster. See this beautiful example depicting a winged Eros from the Museo Civico Archeologico in Bologna.
Aphroditos: Aphrodite with a phallus, a type of sculpture found in Amathous on the island of Cyprus, one of Aphrodite's major cult centres
Ganymedes: a Trojan prince abducted by Zeus who made him his immortal lover and the cup bearer of the gods on Mount Olympos
ichor: the blood of the gods
idiot: the word is of ancient Greek origin and was used in a similar way even back then. Ancient Greek ἰδιώτης (idiṓtēs) means “one who has no professional knowledge, layman, uneducated, ignorant or clumsy person”.
kylix: the most common type of ancient Greek wine-drinking cup, a shallow bowl-like design:
Kypros: the island of Cyprus, using the transcription from classical Greek Κύπρος over the Latin spelling
maiden sacrifices: in one version of Theseus' story, he replaces the seven maidens that were supposed to be sent to King Minos to die in the labyrinth of the Minotauros with seven beautiful young men who could pass for girls
pornos: a cheap male prostitute
Queen of All: Pambasileia, an epithet of Hera in the Orphic Hymn to Hera
spit and furnace: ancient Greek slang for penis (spit) and vagina (furnace).
strap-on: there is no surviving myth of Aphrodite inventing the strap-on, I shamelessly stole the idea from an awesome fanfic in which Aphrodite and Dionysos invent the strap-on. But it is likely it already existed in ancient times, though I have yet to find a dependable source for it.
The title references the Queen song "A Kind of Magic". It's supposed to allude to Aphrodite's magic imbued in the strap-on. The song itself references the film Highlander where the title character describes his immortality in that way.
An alternative title would have been "Queen(ing) It" but I feel like that could potentially fit with other Hera-centric stories too and "A Kind of Magic" felt like a better fit with the tone and ending of this particular story.
