#the endless realm of eternal mcdonald's

[mysterybracket]

Elimination Death Gauntlet!

*You're on a long road trip, you have to go to the bathroom, so you pull over at a gas station to refuel the car and go to the toilet. But when you leave the gas station bathroom, you see that you're in a McDonald's now, and when you leave the McDonald's you see that everything has been replaced with a McDonald's, and you have been lost to the Endless Realm of Eternal McDonald's.

[santaresistencia]

Some highlights and notes from my sea of monsters reread:

This is so sad to me. Poor Tyson 😔

Not Olympus profiting off CHB 😂 I’m choosing to believe the ban on Cokes is from Dionysus specifically. Also love to think of the whole black market the Hermes kids have going on in there.

Love that they're all just one giant brutal dysfunctional immortal family.

More Perseus parallels!!

The Thalia/Percy parallels are immaculate. I really like that both of their journeys run parallel to each other. Thalia was a forbidden child of the big three, Thalia was intensely loyal to her friends (so much so that she died for it), both Percy and Thalia hold justifiable anger and an irreverence for the gods. But Thalia denies the prophecy and chooses to become immortal (to save her friends) while Percy purposefully chooses the prophecy and denies immortality (to save his friends). It's one of the reasons they clash so much in later books - they are way too alike.

I like to think about what monsters are linked to what chains in the Riordanverse. Do demigod kids have to fight off sirens everytime they go to Starbucks? What horrible monstrosity is McDonalds tied to?

Little does Percy know how badly he screwed Reyna and Hylla over.

I love this whole theme of demigods straddling both worlds and how it makes them more powerful than the gods even - they have a freedom that gods don't, they have the ability to choose.

This whole quote is like the basis for Rick's worldbuilding going forward - monsters, gods, and heroes all stuck in an endless cycle of death and rebirth, order and chaos. With heroes as the ones bearing the brunt of it, having to kill or be killed by monsters, having to go on quests for the gods as their champions. And the idea that gods can be changed after a millennia of stasis is truly radical, that Percy makes them swear to change and believes that they can - it's a nice bookend to the series and a nice way to tie the overall theme of the story - that then gets lost when every book set after TLO muddles the message and has the gods falling back into their destructive patterns - and ultimately making the idea that they can be better read hollow, but more on that later...

And just how great is that one line - "You carry the hopes of humanity into the realm of the eternal."

Over all SoM is in my opinion the weakest of the five books, but its also the shortest and establishes a couple of scenes that are pivotal to the plot down the line (the fleece, Thalia, Annabeth's siren vision, Hermes + Luke).

rating: Sea of Monsters⭐3.5/5

[morcyrion]

The Red-headed Child

Yesterday, I had this thought: is Wendy the illegitimate and disavowed child of Ronald McDonald? Is she taking a run at the old man out of spite? That thought led to this:

As a callow young woman, Wendy was presented to her father by her hopeful and still lovelorn mother, physical proof of her endless devotion to Ronald McDonald. Wendy was horrified to witness her mother cruelly murdered by her father, who sent his FryGuy minions to harry her from the realm of McDonaldland, never to return.

At turns mourning the loss of the loving family that her mother always spoke in fervent hope of and yearning for vengeance upon Ronald for so cruelly destroying that dream, Wendy wandered through many lands, always looking for assistance from those who had their own reasons to loathe the Crimson Tyrant.

Seeking counsel from the Dairy Queen. Requesting sanctuary in the fabled Court of the Burger King. Finding brief solace in a small bungalow beneath the gleaming spires of White Castle.

Her wanderings often brought her into grave peril. She found herself caught in the crossfire between warring Qdoba and Chipotle tribes. She fled the destructive rampage of the beast known to the terrified locals as El Pollo Loco. Further south of the border, she stumbled upon the haunted town of Fourthmeal, and barely managed to resist the psychopomp tolling of the dreaded Taco Bell.

Where there was danger, though, there was also delight. Wandering through the sun-dappled olive gardens of the Fazoli coast, she met and fell in love with a swarthy older man known as Papa Giovanni. Their doomed affair was brief, but intense, and for a time she forgot the hatred that fueled her quest. But when she found a scoundrel in a Domino mask and cape standing over the body of her beloved Giovanni, the blood still dripping from his poniard as he muttered, "Robble Robble", the engine of fury and loss roared to life in her heart again.

The vacant smile of Ronald McDonald's nefarious assassin stretched wider, revealing only a single tooth untouched by rot. He beckoned to her with an obscene gesture, and despite hearing only that guttural chuckle, she knew he was inviting her to die weeping as his infamous blade did its eponymous work: the In-'n'-Out.

How she escaped the clutches of the evil rogue is just one of the many tales in her saga. Strange tales like that of the mad alchemist Julius the Orange and his eldritch concoctions. Tragic tales like that of the unfortunate farmer lad Sbarro and the wretched, desolate Court of Food which he is cursed to eternally inhabit. Whimsical tales like that of the jovial and friendly Ruddy Belcher (R.B. to his friends) and his constant companion, his horse Sauce.

All of Wendy's adventures, and the blessings and scars they left her with, would inexorably lead her back home, where the monstrous Grimace and the haughty burgomaster McCheese stood at her father's side. Her destiny, her doom, waiting there beneath the Golden Arches. 

[mysterybracket]

[mysterybracket]