#DJ MacHale

[pendragonthegreat]

i've been thinking about livestreaming some pendragon stuff recently, like playing the old flash games, taking pendragon quizzes, looking through old fan stuff, maybe playing the sims with pendragon characters, and just talking about pendragon live... i have a lot of ideas and i think it sounds fun so who would be interested? let me know!

[arcadialedger]

Did anyone else read the Pendragon books when they were younger?

That series deserves new covers/ a re release and facelift.

[worldssmallestghost]

Journal 37. The end. A last look at Pendragon.

It's finally come. I finished my re-read of the Pendragon Adventures. I apologize, this is going to be another essay. Thank you in advance to anyone who reads this, especially my regulars. Y'all the real ones, I'm glad this fandom isn't quite dead.

I'm probably going to come back, write theories and such over time as well. I'm going to do one more re-listen and then shelve the series for the next stage of my life that I think it's appropriate to come back.

I finished Soldiers of Halla last night. As an adult with a different mindset, I didn't hate the ending... But I still have issues with it, as a writer myself now. I'll get into that later.

The ending did, however, nearly bring me to tears. The series meant a lot to me as a teenager. The kind of teenager that ran to the "haunted" bathroom at school to get some time alone like Mark. Now that I've grown and gotten married and well, learned to write, Bobby's last moments in his re-written life hit different. Especially hearing about how he found his niche, wasn't super successful, but still made the tiny change he wanted to make in the world. That's the whole reason I want to become an author, so hearing that love of the craft portrayed by an author I looked up to made me feel a kind of sentimental kinship.

It did feel rushed, there's a lot of questions that if I ever met DJM, I'd ask about. Was the timeline reset? Was there an isolated bubble for the travelers? Was that the real Courtney and Mark that Bobby got to finish that life around? If not, what happened to the real ones?

I guess I'll have to come to peace with another aspect of that ending. Damn you, DJ.

If I'm gonna be honest, I feel almost... An emptiness after finishing the series again. I've been on and off listening to the audiobooks for the past three or so years. I started during the pandemic. In that time I've met, and married, the love of my life. I wanted to involve "Hobey ho" in my wedding vows despite nobody knowing what that meant. It didn't pan out for logistical reasons, but I will during our second ceremony down the line.

I have so many amazing memories I now associate with the series. Nothing will ever take that away. I'll never forget listening to The Reality Bug while meeting my now wife. Listening to Courtney and Dodger's adventures on First Earth while I actively planned my wife's immigration. Or delving into the secrets of Ibara again while trying my best to get through pre-wedding jitters.

I'm never going to let those memories go.

I'm not done with the fandom, I've got theories and a lot on my mind. I think I'm firmly stuck here now.

If I ever met DJ, after all the questions, I'd thank him. His little book series that hasn't gotten nearly enough attention it deserves meant something to me. It helped inspire me to become a writer myself. It gave me perspective on what it means to do the right thing in the face of adversity. Helped me realize that for every victory, there are some failures, and that's okay.

I'd also reprimand him for killing off Mark to... *checks notes* cancer. But that's a personal thing.

Looks like I've got another stage of my life to look forward to.

This isn't goodbye. Just another stage.

And so we go.

[bi-luminescentdragon]

Maybe I'll get chewed out for this, but I really don't like Courtney Chetwynde (I don't even remember how to spells her last name and don't wanna 😂) Come at my bro.

[junkydrawr]

Nevva Winter

[secondbestaquaneer]

sometimes I worry that my generation wouldn’t find pendragon relatable, but then I see things like this:

“Bobby, doing everything wrong: ‘Like that?’”

And I think that we’ll be okay.

[tandonshows]

Have you ever wanted to be whisked away to a magical world where you could make a difference?

This week, Harrison Prince, writer and host of the upcoming Ruff Boys podcast, joins to talk about the Young Adult Sci-Fi series, The Pendragon Adventure by D.J. MacHale.

We discuss how the books helped Harrison escape during a tumultuous time, the way the first book's format broke the rules of writing, and how the series helped Harrison to start to hone his own craft.Tangents include whether books have to be good to be worthwhile, controversial reader takes, and Matthew McConaughey.

Part 1 & 2 of this conversation are available now. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or find You Are What You Love on your favorite podcast app now!

[zangetsusundelion]

I'm still not sure what the slogan "imagine the unimagined" had to with Pendragon. It feels like it was swapped with another young adult series or something

[bedlam-moon]

she hobey on my ho until i-

*extremely loud incorrect buzzer*

[lcain1341]

LISTEN. I'M A PJO FAN THROUGH AND THROUGH.

But Pendragon deserved an adaptation.

Bobby Pendragon is what everyone wanted Percy Jackson to become.

[pendragonthegreat]

happy birthday bobby pendragon and dj machale!

wonderful art by my good friend todd! :)

[birdy-bird-art]

I've been studying the style of the pendragon graphic novel these past few days and trying to learn it (for... reasons), and am pretty happy so far. Still got a lot of my own style in it but it's working. Huzzah!

[worldssmallestghost]

Pendragon and being an adult.

So, I've been making a lot of Pendragon Adventures posts while I'm here. I found the series when I was in middle school. I started with the first book and got hooked pretty quickly. I've always been a sucker for, well, for lack of better terms, isekai stuff.

I spent the next few years chasing the books down, being there when books nine and 10 were released. So, if I was a teen when I read these books, why am I talking about them now, as a thirty something year old? I've grown to read more adult series, I've begun even writing my own dark fantasy novel. Why am I here?

I was in a dark place during 2020, but who wasn't? I didn't have much going for me aside from a job that had only one perk; being able to listen to audiobooks while performing my menial tasks. I decided, after finishing A Song of Ice and Fire, that I'd move onto something more light-hearted. In hindsight, yeah, maybe as an adult reading a book meant to deliver darker themes to kids was a bit of a weird decision.

I started listening and begun to pick up on themes I hadn't in my youth. Sure as a teen, I noticed the themes of hardship and found family and friendship pushing through even the darkest times.

But as an adult during these... Quite frankly, uncertain times...

Book six is what made me think. The themes of fascism and disease and humanity's stubbornness in the face of what's right, being blinded by hatred...

I envy my younger self for not being able to identify with those messages. With finding them to just be fantasy elements made to raise the stakes in the story.

I finished Raven Rise recently. I'm on Soldiers of Halla currently.

Ravinia is real, to an extent. Not literally, Halla and Alexander Naymeer and the travelers and Saint Dane aren't real. But the fanaticism? The very real levels of approaching fascism that humanity is speeding towards, despite the fact that some people who *lived through that* are still alive?

God.

I wrote earlier about learning to appreciate Soldiers of Halla's ending. As a teen, I hated it. I hated the idea that Bobby would throw away his friends and memories. I hated that everything had just gone "the way it was supposed to be". I wrote about how as an adult who's gone through some really hard times in my life, I can see why Bobby would throw all that away. Throw his trauma away. He lost a lot, but gained peace. Something I, an adult with stress and trauma disorders, wish I could do.

"Hobey ho" has stuck in my mind all these years as a triumphant "I CAN DO THIS!" hail Mary. As dorky as it sounds, on my wedding day, I had planned to say it in my vows to the person I love more than life itself, someone who has never read these books. Nobody in the room besides me ever had. I wanted to take this next challenge in my life on with the same enthusiasm as an over-energetic aquaneer about to take on a space fascist.

It brings me back to a time I was more care-free, where my biggest problems were if the girl I liked wanted to say she liked me back. While also reminding me of a grim future lurking around the corner, and that there are good people out there who just want the human species to make the right choices.

Once I'm finished book ten, I'm gong to listen to them all again in a row and then leave the series for a while. Until I feel I've reached another turning point in my life worthy of looking back at Bobby Pendragon's struggles through space and time.

I'll ride down the flume again someday and face whatever comes next with two words in my heart.

Hobey ho.

[noybusiness]

Thanks for the mention, @minalblood! I'm glad I helped keep up your enthusiasm for continuing. Now in the home stretch!

Mary, why didn't you just knock the nice policewoman unconscious before she could take John, the way a normal person would? 😉 You'd have been out of town in moments, and she's a fraction your size (I hate to say it, but Betty doesn't make a very convincing officer for the 1970s; today, yes, but not then).

Poor Kyle. Once John's name is cleared, his folks will think he lost the plot, committed suicide and tried to frame John for it.

It was good to see Maggie in the almost-flesh and see how close she and Lata were, which hadn't been mentioned much before. She looks not unlike Mary and Dean, too. Given that it was a vampire who was said to have killed her, I have a slight suspicion we might have seen her again in Season 2 and learned she was actually turned instead of killed.

Erebus's bracelet is like the Sword of Shannara in Terry Brooks's Shannara series (which was made into a TV show called The Shannara Chronicles on MTV that is actually quite good despite diverging from the books a lot, but in ways that actually do more with the post-apocalyptic theme the books set up and the individual characters). It gives its wielder the power of truth to use on others but they have to endure it themself first. 

Also, I appreciate them using one of the relatively obscure primordial Greek deities. A Dictionary of Classical Mythology was one of the first books my parents gave me to read as a little kid. My early passions were Greek mythology and family trees (which I combined in a family tree poster of the Greek gods, heroes and monsters - the heroes and monsters are all related to the gods and therefore to each other - for Home Room in middle school).

I don't think Millie, John or Mary has canonically been taken in on suspicion of being delusional, but it's an interesting idea and would make a good fanfic (although Mary would be sprung by her parents pretty quickly, I imagine, legally or not). In Season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we learned Buffy had been briefly institutionalized before the first season after she famously burned down the gym to destroy vampires at her old high school in LA, before moving to Sunnydale.

Would definitely be interested in those real-time notes!

 "There are two kinds of people in this world. People who hate and fear clowns... and clowns." - The Quillan Games by D.J. MacHale

I'm back and I'm so sorry! I won't make any promises for the last 2 ep of the Winchesters, but I will be reviewing/rewatching them anyways just ... who knows when, I dont!

But let's get started on You've got a Friend 1x11.

I hopefully will be a bit less rambly since O have a draft of my thoughts already written for this and its less... as Im watching (i can post that too if yall wanna but dunno if ull understand my handwriting)

We begin where we left off and I love that we have this scene of them needing to clean up, adds realism, adds dimension to the world. Love also that we begin with Lata being the Lata we all love - dejected in this case about her chimera paw was ruined. Queue Carlos with the teasing. The 2 of em banter a bit before Mary redirects us all to the matter at hand.

And Mary has come a long way in these episodes, because she may not join the banter (still closed off somewhat as opposed to Carlos and Lata's easy repartee) but she is going off of it and adding them into her area of interest.

But all stops when John come in blood soaked and in shock - Mary instantly worried he might be hurt, but nope, not this time.

I am so happy to see them portray the actual shock and numbness John is feeling, then the guilt and sadness, just all the reaction to Kyle's death really. And considering the survivor's guilt John is lugging around, it makes it even more heartbreaking. I also love seeing that Mary is the level headed one here - she,.imo, is clearly pushing down the grief to focus on John's issues here, hell we see very little of her grieving in this episode and everytime we do, she's quick to redirect that feeling into action - sometimes into violence point blank. She does it here, asking what the Akrida could want, she does it even moreso with Millie, where she does open up a bit since Millie is offering comfort, but then it turns into Millie coming with a plan which directly leads to Mary wanting to storm the police station guns blazing and the ep ends with Mary and John discussing Kyle (also god Mary looks absolutely exhausted here, fuck) but Mary derails it by saying they need to find Dean instead. She's def not allowing herself the moment to deal with Kyle's death which may prove relevant when discussing next episode.

I'd forgotten this ep was the Lata episode. Like ep 8 was Carlos', this one is Lata's. And god does it hurt.

1st, move the feather boa, Carlos!

2nd, I do genuinely believe Lata and Maggie were together. Everything in this episode points that way to me (but especialy the sweetpea nickname) We'll round back to this though.

The other thing we note in the sequence in Maggie's room is how close Carlos and Lata are to each other. Which we knew, but I always love seeing it again in action.

Before we continue with the emotional core of this ep, we have to get back to plot with Betty! I love Betty..I also can't blame her for being ....hesitant to say the least. Like imagine what she's seen so far: the guy who, before leaving to the marines illegally, proposed to her, is suddently interacting with, apparently, imfamous Mary Campbell, who is seen at several murder/investigation scenes suddenly appears ro have killed someone? And she already knows John had anger issues before hand. Like i get her here. And still shes trying to be nice while doing her job.

Which leads me to the next part, her job. So the detective... he's wording (even with him being really Akrida) echoes a lot of corrupt cop rethoric which only gets further emphasized when he later threatens to have John... killed 'accidently'. And, on top of them, speaking pf policw corruption even a 'good cop' like Betty becomes complicit simply because of the power the Akrida gained via the detective role cuz she was unwittingly helping them throughout.

But god, was John a bit too cocky here. (My notes have this marked as "this is why you let villains monologue, John!"). Especially since he actually doesn't have any info on Dean. (Love that we see the pic of Dean, missed him) l.

Meanwhile Lata and Carlos have found the bracelet and it's fucked them over. Also, I fucking hate the shadows thing, very creepy. Also also it reminds me of the daeva that Meg uses in s1 of SPN. I'm also reminded of SPN with the story the detective tells John about how they'll get rid of him - SPN's own crooked cop ep featured exactly this sorta plan too, but in killing Dean.

Really though, the main thing I found interesting upon rewatch is just how much Lata is our Dean mirror in this one. Specifically, in getting targeted by the bracelet she's forced to relive a trauma (Sania's death) via Carlos acting as substitute, only this time she succeeds where prior she thought she failed (which lemme make clear, no, Lata was at no point and in no way at fault, but she did internalize that guilt - much like Dean tends to internalize guilt) . Which Dean, much like Lata ends up doing when getting involved with this universe, ends up reliving a trauma (his parents death - Mary especially) of something he failed, in his mind, to prevent/save via rescuing this universe's Mary. And much like Lata, who can't undo what happened to Sania, but can "begin to make it better" (the Hey Jude line just hit me so I had to use it), so too can Dean. It won't change what happened in his life, wont save his mom, but it will help him heal nonetheless.

Adding to this Maggie? Who opperates as a Cas parallel here - she was Lata's person, who shared everything with Lata but Lata couldn't in turn for fear of judgement/shame, who notably is dead and thus Lata can't ever reveal her secret to. Well, it hurts is what it does.

But watching this I noticed another interesting thing though, for all that the bracelet seems to work like Osiris (pulling on the guilt the person feels is most agregious), the bracelet actually seems to want the wearer to get out. Carlos is taken just as Lata begins wondering which secret it's trying to make her face and is sent to Sania's room - direct answer. Then later,.even more blatant, using Maggie's face, tries to get Lata to disclose the secret, but Lata talks around it instead til the creature takes her too.

It seems like Erebus had a test for his warriors, one he wanted them to win.

Throughout all of Lata's story, I was seething. I truly hate her family and Carlos was 100% saying exactly what I was thinking.

Another thing I appreciated though, about Carlos, is the emotional maturity. Yes they were dying and yes it was urgent that Lata disclose her secret but Carlos made certain to reassure her throughout. Tried to give her as much space as possible.

In other thoughts, Lata's mom making that "vs family" distinction, uuuh it rattled sth in me only to them have Lata say "my parents would never look at m the same way"? In the Dean Winchester show? God, the echoes of John's shitty parenting were deafening. Bur yes to eveything Carlos said. It truly wasnt Lata's fault.

And I adore also the ending conversation between Lata and Carlos (both wearing blue and god I want Carlos' coat) because yes, this kind of stuff shouldn't be forced out on anither persons whim. Lata doesn't have to tell John and Mary anything, it is her story to tell, but also yes, Carlos is right to reassure her that if she wants to share it with them, they'll likely react well like he did. And yes the reason this particular scene hit so hard is partially personal, but because of that it drove me insane in SPN where there was a tendency for people to push other to open up at their own whim (and yes, Sam did it often to mutiple people, hounding them until they cracked and spilled whatever trauma they were trying to deal with but then have nothing to give in return, no comfort or even really reaction, and yes he most of all did it to Dean a lot and it did puss me off) So yea, love this episode for the Lata and Carlos of it all!

Also I have a few questions, when Millie was trying to convince Betty about the supernatural, at one point she said "it's not like-" and cut off. She was trying to defend against the accusation of 'playing make believe). Also, Betty says sth like "Mary, I expected.this from" with relation once more to her not believing in monsters soooo.... has Mary ever been taken in under suspicion of being delusional? Was Millie? Or John?! I've questions ok i need y'alls opinions on this one.

Also, I would've soo cracked if the Akrida asked about Dean, cuz I def miss him a lot and id fucking gush about him at that point.

Anyways, that's it for this one. See you guys next time where we'll be clowning (have I mentioned I hate clowns?)

@noybusiness thanks for push earlier this month, i needed that a lot and thanks for the support for this rewatch ❤

@shallowseeker thanks the new posts, been inspiring me to get back to writing this ❤

[bi-luminescentdragon]

Some good book series I forgot (or almost forgot) about but really enjoyed and would like to share(possibly read again in the near future):

The Morganville Vampire series by Rachel Caine

Cirque Du Freak series by Darren Shan

Pendragon series by D.J. MacHale

Shadow Falls by C.C. Hunter (not my favorite but it appealed to my inner teen lol)

Life After series by Julie Hall

Dirty Blood series by Heather Hildenbrand

The Testing Trilogy by Joelle Charbonneau

The Tide series by Anthony J. Melchiorri

The Extinction Cycle by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

The Extinction Cycle: Dark Age series by Nicholas Sansbury Smith and Anthony J Melciorri

The Deadland Saga by Rachel Aukes

The Zulu Chronicles by Steven Konkoly

The Scattered and the Dead series by Tim McBain and L.T. Vargus

Slow Burn series by Bobby Adair

Vampires are in red and zombie or zombie like creatures are in purple :)

[junkydrawr]

From DJ MacHale's Pendragon book series, Saint Dane.

Baldy version