The Iliad (II)

[taotrooper]

Book II

In which people freak out because of a dream mail (dr-email?)

Okay, this chapter was pretty much boring and not a lot happened. Hold on tight, guys.

Humans

Achaeans
→ Agamemnon: King of Mycenae and foolish boss of the Greek team. Douchebag.
→ Calchas: A prophet. Now in flashbacks.
→ Nestor: King of Pylos and disgusting old man. Douchebag.
→ Odysseus: King of Ithaca. The smoothest guy.
→ Thersites: Self-designated troll. Do not feed him.
Trojans
→ Hector: Prince of Troy. Can recognize divine voices doing Internet memes.
→ Priam: King of Troy. He sure got around...

Gods

→ Athena: Goddess of war and wisdom. Hera's PR manager for the time being.
→ Hera: Queen of Olympus. Professional nagging wife.
→ Iris: Messenger goddess. You've got mail!
→ Morpheus: God of dreams. Shape-shifts into anyone in non-kinky ways.
→ Ossa: Goddess of fame. I want to liiiiive foreveeeeeeer~
→ Zeus: King of Olympus. Fails at sneaky intervening.

~*~

Zeus couldn't sleep that night, not because of Hera kicking him while asleep, but because he was trying to think of a way to favor Achilles. Since he was already in bed and wishing he was sleeping, the only plan he could think of was... well, sending the Greeks a dream that could bring them to certain doom. So he calls the designated god of dreams for that.

Zeus: Hey man, make them choose between the red and the blue pill, and they'll be stuck in the Matrix forever.
Morpheus: I'm not THAT Morpheus, my Lord.

I also tried to insert a Sandman pun in here, but I couldn't think of a good one. Bummer.

Anyway, here's the plan. Morpheus would get inside Agamemnon's dreams disguised as Nestor, and then tell him he was coming with a message from Zeus because he liiiiiked them very much, and if they invaded Troy like right now they'd win since Olympus was chilling at the time after being lashed by Hera. Aggy woke up all excited about attacking the next day and getting Troy. Even Homer is calling him a dumbass; it was still a batshit crazy idea, victory being promised by a god or not (besides it totally wasn't). Plus, I wouldn't trust a Nestor who'd cut to the chase without some tales of his youth at the pub.

But never mind common sense, and Aggy puts on his best clothes next morning and calls his friends to tell them about his totally sweet dr-email.

Aggy: Okay, so instead of just being honest with the soldiers, because a dream from motherfucking Zeus isn't enough for positive motivation, let's test them by ordering them to GTFO back home. Then you guys try to convince them to stay to the fight! Isn't that a great idea!?
Nestor: You do realize that this dream is so crazy that if you hadn't been our boss we would've mocked you and your idiotic plan?
Aggy: Really?
Nestor: Kid, common sense says it's false and we shouldn't trust this shit.
Aggy: But I'm the boss.
Nestor: ...Exactly. LET'S DO THIS, WHIPPERSNAPPERS.

So with the help of the goddess of fame and celebrity gossip, the kings gather everyone. But before, Homer considers a good idea to spend the equivalent of a paragraph in telling the whole history of Agamemnon's staff. Yuuuup. I'll tell you guys about it since a) it's a slow news day chapter and b) they mention Hermes and that alone makes the paragraph awesome.

Hephaestus: My Lord, I made this fine staff for you to have it.
Zeus: ...Uh. It's well crafted and as... handsome as y-- Thank you, son. I really like it. A lot.
Hephaestus: *beams and leaves*
Zeus: Uuuuuuugh, more junk. HEY, HERMES! When was the last time I paid you a bonus?
Hermes: About two centuries ago. Why?
Zeus: You like staffs, you're always carrying that one with the snakes. So have this one!
Hermes: Oh well, a freebie is a freebie.
King Pelops: I'm really good with horses and chariots!
Hermes: Trudat. Hey, do you want a tacky staff?
Pelops: Do I?! It'll match well with the winged ponies I got from Poseidon.
Hermes: ...right, you had bad enough taste to be uncle Don's eromenos.

So excuse me for being creative here. The real story is that this staff was made by Hephaestus and then passed down like a Christmas fruitcake to Aggy's grandpa, who then gave it to his son Atreus (Aggy's dad), who then gave it to his brother Thyestes, and then somehow went back to our king douche, thus being a totally awesome family heirloom. But if it really was that great, why didn't the gods keep it? Hell, from all the royal families to give it out, they went with one full of killing and curses and cannibalism and incest. Then I spent around 15 minutes reading about these creeps in wikipedia. The House of Atreus is such a soap opera, it would make Oedipus feel better about himself. MY GOD. Anyway, this staff must've sucked so much as it's tainted with grade-A douchebaggery from its owners.

...Where was I, again? Right, Aggy was going to give the soldiers a faux speech. I was really close to start it with 'I have a dream' to make a pun, but that would be insulting to Martin Luther King. The tl;dr version: "You guuuuuuys, Zeus first told me we wouldn't leave without winning but now he orders me to leave and he sucks balls bawwww it's been nine years and this never ends so screw this we're going home we didn't want Troy anyway." And the plan... works, because they're all preparing to leave. Well, what did you expect, douche?

Meanwhile, at Olympus!

Hera: ...I can't fucking believe these losers are actually leaving without kicking Priam's ass. Athena, be a dear and do something.
Athena: *facepalms*

So Athena descends and finds Odysseus with his arms crossed, staring at the idiots and not getting his ship ready. Athena is fond of people who think, as they are so few in this book, so she goes to talk to him. Odysseus recognizes her voice and all, so he decides to do the very thing Aggy's pals should be doing: convince the meme sheep to stay. For this, he borrows the Staff of Douchbaggery from the boss, as it was really useful to hit screaming people on the head, and then goes to talk to everyone ever. Odysseus uses Psychology! It's super effective!

So problem solved? Not likely, as this fugly dude called Thersites decides to stir things up. No one from the cool guys liked Thersites. He kept flaming Agamemnon on his Facebook wall. People asks him to STFU but he's a troll and won't go away.

Thersites: Agamemnon sucks balls! He's a greedy bastard! He insulted Achilles! Let's leave him here alone!
Odysseus: *bitchslaps him with banhammer Staff of Douchebaggery* Shut up! Next time I'll beat the crap out of you and send you home weeping like a baby.
Thersites: *OWNED* Owie ;_;
Greeks: LOL WIN

And since Aggy is still somewhere scratching his ass or whatever, Odysseus feels inspired by this victory and decides to give the Greeks a speech, while Athena approves. Then he tells us about this good omen I guess everyone knew about, but they had to fill us in anyway. Before the war began, they had this sacrifice going on at Aulis. Then there was this snake (or a dragon in some versions) hanging around some plane tree. In the tree there was a nest with a mother bird and her chicks, and the snake/dragon started eating them one by one. Then a ~miracle~ happened, and Zeus turned the snake/dragon into stone. Then Calchas, the prophet from the previous statement, interprets this as them going to fight the same amount of years as there were birds, so they'd win in the tenth year. Oooookay... Either way, Odysseus' speech works fantastically.

Then Nestor is all like "you kids from the council are such BABIES and know jack about war!" And after rambling from a while, I totally lost respect for the old bitch when he encourages everyone not to leave Troy until having raped at least one Trojan wife. GODDAMMIT, Nestor. He gives some more advice to Agamemnon and the latter also gives a douchy speech or something, but I'm still too grossed out about the part of raping other people's wives to care anymore. C-can we move on? Please?

Anyway, Aggy decides to sacrifice a fat ox to Zeus and gathers the best guys to hang out with him. Rollcall! Nestor, that old bastard. Someone called Idomeneus. Two dudes called Ajax. Diomedes. Odysseus, who made so much effort to keep things glued but no one even gave him a pat in the back afterwards. Melenaus, aka Helen's husband, who knew what his brother was cooking (literally). So they killed the ox and again give us the recipe in gorey detail; in Olympus Zeus is all whatever at the sacrifice, since the original plan was to send them to shit anyway. Nestor is kissing Aggy's ass once again. Bleh.

Later, people are forming and Athena is directing and cheering on them from behind the scenes. No one wanted to GTFO again. They crossed the plains and scared geese off with their shiny armors, and looked like flies gathering to sour milk. And yes, I am paraphrasing Homer's descriptions and similes. And yes, I find the last one hi-la-rious! Stay classy, book. Meanwhile, Agamemnon looked more badass than he probably was.

Now, what comes after this is lines and lines and lines and LINES of namedropping according to place of origin. More than rollcall, this was a fucking CENSUS. Sorry, I'm skipping this one. When I told you it was a slow chapter I wasn't lying. I doubt anyone but historians could possibly give a damn.

So muse, tell me, which ones of the gazillion douchebags mentioned above were the best? Admetus owns some really awesome horses, Apollo brand, so better recognize that. The Ajax who is son of Telamon is the most badass motherfucker. Oh, but that's because Achilles is MIA! Because he and his horses could eat the ones mentioned above for breakfast if he felt like it. However, during this chapter he's throwing the frisbee with his homies while his ponies are omnomnoming, so we'll have to settle with what we have.

Meanwhile, it's about time someone tells the Trojans about the legion of Greek idiots who are about to kamikaze at their gates. So Zeus sends Iris to leave the message at Priam's place. And by now you should've noticed the trend of every god but Athena to shape-shift into someone else. She changes to Polites, one of Priam's 69 children (yes, HE HAS 69 KIDS, THE MANWHORE. let us laugh at the number some more).

Polites!Iris: Yo Priam, I know you like teal deer speeches and imma gonna let you finish, but the Greeks coming this way right now are the largest army of all time!
Hector: Isn't that Iris' voice?
Polites!Iris: Of all ti--!! Wait, how can you even recognize my voice?
Hector: Because... I'm not a douche?
Polites!Iris: Makes sense, I guess. Hey, since you have reinforcements from everywhere and they all speak their language, have their own bosses to give them order instead of babelfishing.
Hector: Can do!

So team Troy are gathering around, and now we get our long, boring rollcall of this side. It's less thick than the Achaean bullcrap, but PASS. That's it for now, folks, the chapter has ended in cliffhanger!