#another also has ADHD and is super busy. and the last one is autistic and is disabled with chronic pain

[theheroheart]

As an adult who celebrates (heavily secularised) Christmas, including now actually inviting people over for dinner and stuff, I now understand the reason behind going overboard making the house look nice.

It's not about appearances or upholding tradition or anything like that. We're only inviting people who don't really care, and I only care about traditions that make me happy.

HOWEVER

A) It's fun to decorate and do something a lil fancy once in a while!

B) It's a good fucking excuse to actually make yourself clean the house properly, after putting it off all year.

[fallenrocket]

Unhatched Observations: Ms. Marvel

It’s that time again—looking over some of my old posts about a story with Big Neurodivergent Energy and realizing how it resonated with me as an “unhatched” autistic ADHDer. Today, we’re looking at Ms. Marvel. I’ve got a mix of comics and TV show posts here, and it delights me that I picked up on Kamala Khan’s similarities to Peter Parker, another ADHD-coded teenage superhero.

Ms. Marvel, Vol. 1: No Normal

I like that [Kamala’s] a bit of a nerd and a total Avengers fangirl (she writes Avengers fanfic—love it.)  She’s smart and funny, with a bravery-loyalty combination that tends to outweigh her sense of self-preservation, but she can also to impulsive, insecure, and reactive.  It takes her a while to get a handle on her powers, which feels realistic, especially considering how closely powers can be tied to emotions.  I love the scene of Kamala hiding in the girls’ locker room with one hand enlarged so big her wrist can hardly hold it up, desperately trying to will it back to normal size before anyone sees her.

Ms. Marvel, Vol 4: Last Days

And then, just for fun… Spider-Man!  Just an amusing romp with Kamala and Peter chasing after some baddies who’ve stolen a Terrigenesis cocoon for nefarious purposes.  Kamala is awesome pestering Peter with annoying fangirl questions and geeking out over helping him execute some of his “classic moves.”

Ms. Marvel, Vol. 5: Super Famous

She’s beyond thrilled to get her shot in the major leagues, but it takes a toll.  Kamala is shocked by all that’s been happening in her life that she straight-up hasn’t noticed because she’s so busy, both personal (her close friend Bruno getting a girlfriend who isn’t her) and professional (a definitely-shady real-estate outfit using her likeness to promote their gentrification agenda.)  Frantically playing catchup, Kamala tries to do it all on her own, wanting to prove she can handle herself, but with less-than-stellar results.

***

I really enjoy the theme of Kamala having too many balls in the air but stubbornly trying to do it all—both because she genuinely loves everything she’s involved in and because she doesn’t want the Avengers (read:  her heroes/new colleagues) to think she’s just some kid who’s out of her league.  The mistakes she makes here feel real and well-earned thematically, and even though some of them are definite doozies, they’re drawn so organically from who she is as a character that I can totally buy Kamala getting herself into this situation.

Favorite Characters: Kamala Khan

Despite her love for all things superheroics, especially Captain Marvel, Kamala Khan never dreamed that that could be her, not really. Sure, she throws her entire soul into her cosplay for AvengerCon, but in her experience, “It’s not really the brown girls from Jersey City who save the world.” She instead injects drama and stakes into her ordinary life, planning her clandestine excursion to AvengerCon like an intricate heist.

***

Ms. Marvel has always been a spiritual successor to Spider-Man, and in Kamala’s live-action debut, the show really leans into the parallels with the MCU’s version of the webcrawler. Kamala brings so much Peter-Parker-in-Homecoming energy to the proceedings. She’s super excitable and inclined to run before she can walk, she’s incredibly well-meaning but very capable of causing accidental trouble, and she struggles to balance ordinary life and superheroing. In short, she’s a good kid who’s dealing with a lot, and she doesn’t always handle it in the most responsible way.

***

Also? She’s just a ton of fun. I love her wild imagination, fangirl attention to detail, and penchant for doodling.

Relationship Spotlight: Kamala & Muneeba Khan

Muneeba doesn’t get Kamala’s intense fandom over the Avengers, she worries over her daydreamy daughter’s flightiness, and she frets over Kamala’s well-being. This leaves Kamala feeling misunderstood, judged, and distrusted, which isn’t exactly a recipe for a healthy mother/daughter relationship.

[hajimeow-archived]

Yo Hajime talk abt ur kin mems

since there were no specifications on which ones i am going to start from the beginning and go where my brain takes me from there. they're all gonna be for hajime bc i physically cannot think about my other memories anymore jsyk

also! this ended up being so long i had to put a cut. i will not be apologizing because i feel no remorse.

so first the basic stuff, i remember having a med skin tone and a FUCK ton of freckles like those motherfuckers were everywhere i had skin. also i was 5'7 i think?? or 5'6. i still can't remember exactly but it's something like that. i was also alloaro, some form of mlm, unfortunately cis, and autistic and probably had some other stuff like adhd or depression or whatever but i forgot. also i was kinda muscle-y but also chubby at the same time. and i had light green eyes. basically i was fanon hajime JSJSKDJDKS

and i was going over the wiki recently and my personality was EXACTLY how they described it like i'm genuinely surprised they got it so accurate

i don't remember much pre-game and post game, most of my memories are in game but i do remember pre game chiaki really well, honestly i rly miss her :( she would always reassure me that i didn't need a talent and i never even cared when she beat me in games cus just simply playing them with her was so fun .,.,,;:,,...,,!:&:&:jsjdjskskck</3

anyways. in game. ok. i'm gonna skip over memories where i just know feelings and not specific things like strong feelings or ppl saying stuff or else this would be so long. also obvious sdr2 spoilers

so i remember the party & blackout in the beginning of the game pretty clearly. i was mostly just standing alone in the corner and watching everyone have fun, but it was really freeing to see the others able to enjoy themselves in such pressing circumstances. then the blackout-- it was kinda like all that happiness going away and the dread and denial immediately setting in .

anyways i remember like panicking and wanting to cry when i lifted the table cloth cus i really liked twogami. i'm p sure i did end up crying cus i really liked them for their realism and leadership skills, and the realization that one of us killed them and that the killing game was actually real etc etc

anyway i don't remember much from the investigation or trial besides being really freaked out when nagito basically admitted to being the killer n stuff, and pretty much all the body discoveries after that (besides ch 5) we're just like "ah shit here we go again" but i do remember mikans trial really freaking me out when she just straight up shifted completely, and i also remember being really proud of fuyuhiko for putting his walls down a bit and deciding to help everyone out while the despair disease was going around

anyway enough of the boring stuff, i spent basically all my free time with komaeda, chiaki and mikan (in order of frequency) and with mikan i mostly listened to her talk about medical stuff and i comforted her when she needed to vent, but i didn't hang out with her much because the constant apologizing n stuff started to bother me since i really liked seeing her happy. chiaki i would mostly play games with and we wouldn't talk much, but she gave me a really strong sense of familiarity like when we played games together it gave me a shit ton of deja vu

AND i've already talked a lot about komaeda but idc i'm doing it again. so we started talking cus of him waking me up on the beach obvs and i was pretty attached right off the bat, but i stopped talking to him for awhile because the way he acted in the first trial REALLY scared me so i just got a pit in my stomach even being around him

but he was the one who started approaching me first, i'm guessing since he couldn't rly sense anything was wrong he just kinda picked things up where they left off and started talking w me at breakfast n stuff and it was pretty weird at first, but i wanted to give him a chance and didn't wanna be rude so i accepted offers to hang out in his cottage n stuff

i remember he has surgery scars tho and i'm rly mad ppl don't draw him with any!! i think he had about 5 and i don't remember all of them but i know one was a skin graft on his leg and the one on his side/stomach that i touched wassssss for appendix removal maybe???? mmmm i'm not too sure about that one tho

also !!!! his death. hoooooly shit. ok so yunno the despair that junko always talks about ?????? yeah <3!! i remember like once i saw his body and took the reality in i just. straight up could NOT stand i like fell to my knees and jsut . cried. like i had no thoughts my head was so full that it was empty i just kinda sat there and silent cried while chiaki stood next to me it was so awful dude

later while investigating n stuff i felt really bad ab how i treated him and thought about him, and i thought a lot about our last interaction. it was the first time i had ever approached him myself cus usually he'd come to me. i was gonna hang out with chiaki but i wanted to check up on him first, so i did and he told me to go hang out with the others and i just. knew something terrible was about to happen.

OH AND THE FUNHOUSE OMG ok i literally. i usually didn't mind being around komaeda like he was chill most of the time when he wasn't ranting about hope but when he was acting like such a bitch in the funhouse i wanted to punch his stupid twink ass so bad like...... what BUSINESS does this dude have being such an asshole. he doesn't even know what face wash is. what the fuck. which is another fun fact! komaeda did shower every so often which is why he didn't smell that bad but his skin was always so dry cus he didn't know how to actually wash right and do proper skincare so he just washed his face w soap and left it like that

also he didn't need to cut his nails cus they were so brittle they would just break off on their own <3 plus he had a nail biting habit so they just never grew ever

OH AND THIS IS THE SADDEST THING i remember feeling so bad for this man bc i would like put my hand on his shoulder and he would lean into it. i mean i'd tap his shoulder for a SECOND and girl when i let go hed be lowkey so sad i could just sense it like??????dude he needed a hug SSO BAD like when i hugged him in my cuddling memory he was like holding on for dear life but also was like "u dOnT hAvE tO tOuCh TrAsH LiKe mE hAjImE" like dude it was the saddest shit. i want to hug him forever. like what the fuck what the fuck!!!!!!!!!

also a thing hed do when he started ranting ab hope n shit like he would just go on and on and yunno that one sprite where he's hugging himself yeah he literally did that shit. also sometimes hed just stare dead at me and start backing me into a corner ((ish-- we were usually sitting somewhere but he mostly just got super close to me) and it was the scariest shit i. bro if i saw him like that on the streets i'd return him to the mental hospital like i can remember it somewhat vividly and that shit was TERRIFYING i mean obvs after i shoved him away and told him to cool it he'd apologize and go back to the way he was but jeez dude ....

also a little fun fact the only reason i really kept hanging out with him (i had a few ofc but this was the most prominent) is cus he was hot in my stupid monkey brain. yes that's it. like that's literally pretty much it. i hate admitting it but this post is SO fucking long i doubt anyone's gonna read it anyway so i'm admitting it now lol

anyway i hope u enjoyed :) i'm glad u asked btw! i'm sure you regret it though!

[asnakewithwingsisadragon]

Updated list of the bitches in this system because Gods know we needed it, go!

• Fae- Actual owner of the body. Has not been fully “themself” since they were like 6 (when Harl got here). Always co-cons with someone because they can’t stand being out alone.  Doesn’t know or care what we do with their life. Terrified of people. Has left us alone for extended periods of time. If you think you’ve talked to them, there’s a 99% chance it was actually Claire, Amanda, or Becky.  Actually a very sweet kid, but very hurt. Will go to the end of the world for their friends. Can hold a grudge like nobody’s business. Paints themself as a bitch but is a softie. Their mom cannot tell the difference between them and Becky. Diabetic, to Nidia’s displeasure. Closet Gryffindor turned Slytherin in order to survive.

• Amanda – Our system’s “guard dog”/Head Bitch in Charge. Much more complicated than that. The real author of Fae’s thigh scars (barely visible now), and maybe the only reason we made it through high school. The little voice that says “kill everyone and blame it on me”. Zero concern for consequences for herself. Impulse control consists of “Jail is awful and Fae doesn’t deserve it”.  She’s over 30.

• Lisbeth (Sally)- Just…Sally. The other voice that wants to kill everyone but doesn’t because she actually thinks about the consequences of her actions. Max is technically her partner, but we don’t talk about that (you can ask). I think she’s 30-something, but might as well be Fae’s age.

• Claire- Possibly Fae’s projection of herself into different universes. She can be 6, 17, 24 and 35. Last name Constantine. From Liverpool. Awful accent. Please don’t call her Australian. Another closet Gryffindor turned Slytherin.  Most of Fae’s friends are actually hers. Has been Fae for longer than Fae has been Fae. Likes soccer and we’re sorry. Punk. Hella Punk. Also hella broke.

• Mara- Claire’s sister (maybe twin). Approach with caution. (One of the several sexual alters, can be the same ages as Claire) Responsible for most of Fae’s awful dating decisions.

• Valentina- Rarely comes out, but she’s apparently God? We don’t know. Seems like she knows everyone, though. She always looks 20-something, but we know she’s older.

• Nidia- Claire’s daughter and the pure incarnation of Fae’s ADHD. A Jedi. Weirdest kid EVER. Super compassionate. Wears heart on her sleeve.  Can be 5, 9, 16 and 21. Impulse control is 100% artificial, but existent. Can, like Amanda, drink up to 3 cans of Monster Energy Drink in a row without batting a lash. Will eat ALL THE CANDY. The reason we need to carry an extra insulin syringe with us most of the time. Pours fun dip and sweetarts into her drinks. The kind of kid child leashes were invented for.

• Hellena- Mara’s daughter. STAY AWAY. Evil incarnate. Abusive A.F. Can and will destroy you. In her 20’s

• Christine- Hell’s identical twin. Remember that girl in Mean Girls who wants to bake a cake out of sunshine and rainbows and smiles? Christine is that cake. Rarely out. Same age as Hell.

• Evey- Hell and Chris’ big sister. That one kid with the pink hair and lots of tattoos. Zero impulse control.  Always looks like a teenager for some reason (not over 25)

• Vlad- Agender/Genderqueer mystical creature of the forest. Valentina’s child. Awesome person in general. Permanently 17.

• Harley- Yup. THAT Harley. You know the drill. She’s actually the one who makes all the fun plans because she’s the one who has the energy for it. Gets along with everyone until she doesn’t. Can drink us all under the table. Can drink you under the table. Has been Fae for longer than Claire has been Fae. Was the first one here, so she has tattoo privileges. And dating privileges. And everything privileges, basically. If I say how old she is, I may not live to see another day. Fae’s real mum. Will take you to Petco on exam week to pet puppies. Will yell “doge!” out loud.

Pets every dog. Will steal Teddy from Max.

• Edward- Mr. Nigma, sir. Somehow has better makeup skills than all the girls here combined.  If his attitude was as nice as his eyebrows, he’d rule the world by now. EVERYTHING HAS QUESTION MARKS. Knows more than anyone.  Is actually a genius. Wastes his time trying to school the little ones (and trying to get Naya to use proper words).  Smug bastard. Probs 40-something.

• Cass- Also from comics. EVERYTHING IS YELLOW (yiyo). Doesn’t talk much, but is always fun to have around. Will make you watch animated movies and take you to Starbucks. Will also make you work out. Can be 5, 9, 18 and 25. Smol Cass is a fan of pokemon. If it’s yellow, it belongs to her.

• Naya- Cass’ child. Has her own language, featuring words like “kaijukata”, “pakato”, and “omashii” (“Kaiju attack”, an insult of her own invention, and her word for “mother”.) There are no sidewalks, only pedestrian lanes. Biggest Kaiju Enthusiast. Wants to be Mako Mori.

• M.J.- Has been here for as long as Harley has. Isn’t around as much. The difference between her and Claire is that you can actually understand what MJ says when she gets mad. Probs 25 forever.

• Danni- Amanda’s daughter. Will also fuck you up. Has the weirdest kinks.  23

• Miranda- Danni’s daughter. Don’t ask. Also a sexual alter. 21

• Martha- Miranda’s sister. Level-headed.  A psychiatrist. 21. Actually the most mature person in this head, along with Tári.

• Alice- Nidia’s daughter. Also a psychiatrist. Likes psychoanalyzing people. Type 1 bipolar. Thinks all Arkham inmates are humans and wants to help. Will probably end up as an Arkham Inmate herself. Age slides. Toddler Alice is the devil. Can be 5, 9, and 21

• Alyssa- Mara’s best friend. Take Alice out of wonderland and teach her ballet, then add a sprinkle of Luna Lovegood. Permanently 17-ish.

• Robin- Alice’s little sister. Wants to be Carrie Kelly when she grows up. Terrified of squirrels. Can be 5 and 18. Lesbiab. Lesebeb. Girls. Yes.

• Tári- Alice and Robin’s eldest sister. Autistic. Genius extraordinaire. Loves to talk to Eddie. Often one of them leaves the conversation feeling stupid (it isn’t Tári). Loves Legos. REALLY LOVES LEGOS. Forensic Anthropologist/ wants to be Bones when she grows up. Vegetarian. Can be 12/17/21.

• Frances- Harley’s kid. Don’t ask, this was super weird. Frances herself is super weird. She hears voices. The voices tell her to do things. She rarely listens. Actually super polite. Has “opal” hair. 18-20. We don’t really know.  If we’re gonna have a sub-system, it will probably be because of Frankie.

• Shilo- Shilo Wallace. Infected by her genetics. Her nightmares are the worst. Once made Amanda and Sally fight over a pair of combat boots just so she could get to keep them. Probably Becky’s best friend in here.

• Bellatrix- That one got here on her own. Over 50. Still looks great.

• Azula- also got here on her own.

• Cassiopeia- Bella’s biggest mistake. Best teacher ever. Resident hipster chick. Is actually here to keep a little group of alters from causing too much mayhem.  28.

• Ascella- Lesbian extraordinaire. Sees dead people. I’m not even kidding. Permanently 23.

• Jamie Moriarty- Another one who got here on her own. Our self confidence boosts and power trips. Will maybe kill someone. Better than you and is not afraid to let you know.  Fae’s teachers were terrified of her.

Everyone’s terrified of her; I don’t know who we think we’re kidding. 32.

• Lestat- Fae’s gay vampire boyfriend. Is rarely around anymore. Probably for the best. 260-ish years old. Prick.

• Lindsay - THE definitive Sexual alter. From a comic book oneshot. Amanda on steroids, but if Amanda knew how to socialize. Loves horror, movies, photography and monsters. 26. 

• Becky - Called “morbid” for a reason. Disabled as all fuck. Autistic/ADHD, connective tissue disorder. A lawyer. Loves to argue. Jon Crane’s wife (at least here). 30ish. Always cold and always in pain. If we cancel plans, it’s most likely her fault and she’s sorry.

• Liliana - Necromancer. Big Titty Goth GF. We love and cherish her, alcoholism and all. Will never be over Jace and she knows it.

• Chandra - Pyromancer extraordinaire with severe ADHD. A lot like Fae in a lot of ways. Decidedly Pansexual, thank you very much. 25.

• Vraska - Ravnican to the core, but also a fantastic pirate. Great leader, good friend, fun to be around. Has the huskiest voice in the system. Has the worst flashbacks out of all of us. Can be 19 and 29. • Kari - Vraska and Jace’s kid. Hypermelanistic gorgon, telepath like her dad. Fun to be around. Can be 7, 12 and 25.

• Ral - Very very Izzet, and very very gay, and we love him for it. Very intelligent, good at fixing and making things with his hands. Confident, charismatic, and a workaholic. Tomik’s husband. Sometimes with Max. In his 40’s

• Tomik - Ral’s husband. Quiet, but very caring and polite.Also very smart and hard-working, always loves to learn new things and meet new people. 27-ish. Very gay, too. Makeup skills up there with Eddie’s.

• Teysa - Tomik’s boss. A Boss Ass Rich Bitch, and we love her lots for it. Very polite and interesting to be around. Could buy us all and our families ten times. Old, but looks to be in her early 30’s.

• Avacyn - An angel from Innistrad. Here to protect us. Really likes listening to old pop-punk and emo music with Max. Very sweet to be around, although she can be a little literal-minded.

• Olivia - A Vampire and a bitch. Liliana’s...ex? Something. A lot like Teysa, but much more fun-loving and impulsive.

• Nahiri - Doesn’t come out much. Stern but caring, very savvy, doesn’t take anyone’s crap. Can hold on to grudges like her life depends on it. 

[mikepemulis]

hows abouts giving a brief overview of your ocs 👀👀👀

!!!!

So I’m gonna put this under a read more cause there is A Lot.

I’m gonna separate this into two sections cause I’ve got like two projects/stories/whatevers I’m working on. A few months ago I made some posts about a different story that I was working on but that had some Serious Structural Problems and needs to be reworked, so it’s currently on the back burner. 

Anyway,

The first batch of OCs are from a story that I’m working on that will ideally become a novel. The project is called “The Unexplained Migratory Patterns of the Whooping Crane.” 

The main character is a 15-year-old girl named Oliver Lakely. Oliver is a sarcastic, quick-witted loner who has a really hard time fitting in with the other people in her town. She loves animals, music, and books. She’s cynical and artistic and really, really lonely. She’s also a psychic and her mother is a ghost. 

The other main character in TUMPotWC is 14-year-old Whyatt “Budgie” Kipling, nickname courtesy of his dyed bright green hair. Budgie moves in next to (but like country next to so quite a ways away) Oliver. He’s from London and his mother has been temporarily relocated to Oliver’s town to study the anomalous population of whooping cranes that have been nesting in this town for the last ten years. Budgie is a geeky, easy going kid. He loves to explore and is courageous to the point of being foolhardy. He knows that he’s weird, but is comfortable with it. 

Other characters include Miles and Siobhan Lakely, Oliver’s parents. Miles is psychic as well. He is a big tragic artist archetype. Plays the piano and has a lot of anger issues. Oliver’s relationship with him is a big part of the story. Siobhan is a ghost. She died when Oliver was 5 and has been manifesting in their house ever since. They also have a cat named Kyle he’s sentient and likes jazz. 

SECOND BATCH

These next children are from a project that is less fleshed out than TUMPotWC. It’s called “Pine Grove Stop & Go” and would ideally be a podded cast. It centers around a gas station off of the highway in Pine Grove, Wyoming, a one-stoplight town on the way to the Grand Tetons in the year 1997. The Pine Grove Stop & Go is a hotbed for supernatural activity, to the point that it is a bit of an urban legend. The story starts a month after one of the employees, Myla Heigel, is found dead behind the corner. Her death is ruled a suicide, but another one of the employees, Sophie “Lance” Lansing knows that isn’t true. 

Lance is the main character of the story. She’s 19. Anti-authoritarian, a flannel lesbian. Bit of a stoner. Super intelligent but hates school and organized education in general. Loves books and film. Cynical and sarcastic, comes off quite prickly but once she warms up to people she’s a total softie. All about that Repression TM. Has a whole thing later on where she becomes obsessed with a tape recorder to the point of near insanity but she generally gets better. ADHD.

Moving on. Noah Meredith. 19 as well. Conspiracy theorist. Gets a job at PGS&G to try and investigate Myla’s death. Super big nerd, diaster bisexual, the epitome of “bigfoot is real and we tenderly caressed each other one night behind the Arby's.” Not great at interacting with people asks A Lot of Questions WIth Little Regard for Politeness. Autistic icon. Really funny, loves campy sci-fi, secretly a bastard. At first he and Lance clash like crazy but eventually they get on like a house on fire. 

Seth Weiss. 17 years old. Burnout stoner. Likes to skateboard and makes dumb jokes. Crouching moron, hidden badass. Thinks that Lance is the coolest person in the world. Super gay but hasn’t figured it out yet. Sweet and genuine and kind of naive. Secretly Big Magic (He hasn’t figured that out yet either). Sees weird shit all the time but explains it away as either none of his business or a bad trip. Me, to Seth: my sweet boy let me show you the world. 

Lily Walker. 22 years old. The assistant manager at the PGS&G and *very* proud of it. Refuses to believe any weird shit. Always has a smile on her face but is like this close to just fucking losing it. The mom friend. Thinks she’s the token straight until she realizes that this is the kind of story where no one is straight and whoops she’s like hella bi. “Aren’t you tired of being nice? Do you ever just wanna go apeshit?”

Myla Heigel. R.I.P. queen. Was 20 when she kicked it. She’s like dead but also like ????. Big Dyke Energy. One of those people who smiles at you and gives you tea and then only after they’ve left have you realized that you gave them your social security number and credit card information. Walks up with her sundress and sandals and also like a crossbow. Super curious, could out-conspiracy Noah. Was investigating the weirdness behind the PGS&G before she died. Had a weird habit of recording everything on her tape recorder, which Lance picks up after Myla dies. 

--

Yeah those are all my kids I love them all and love talking about them and I’m sorry this was so long but also like you’ve met me so is it really surprising?

[sojournlist]

If you’re a blogger or writer or aspiring writer and have low page views and a bit of flexibility in your time. Read this. It’s long but I also wanted to get my backstory in to describe why I’m doing this.

I started out adulthood pretty clueless. Like a lot of clueless 18 year olds, I figured I’d join the Army. I spent 5 years as a Photojournalist in the Army.

While in, I traveled the world, met famous journalists and celebrities, received a letter of commendation from the president. I was pretty confident things were going to turn out okay.

I got out and failed miserably at becoming a freelance writer, so miserably in fact, I lost my truck, my apartment, my girlfriend and became homeless for a short time.

A friends mom put me back on my feet, and I worked in a factory that produced pipelines for oil rigs making 6 dollars an hour. I was the only white guy and 6 months later I found out I outlasted the betting pool that all the immigrant workers had put together on how long I would last.

I never wanted to sleep on the streets again.

I eventually went to college, figuring if I couldn’t make a living in Journalism and English, I’d make a living in Math. I started out planning on majoring in finance, buying into the whole Gordon Gecko greed is good mentality. But wound up switching to accounting. There were ethics that appealed to me. We were protecting the investor and it paid good.

I had been diagnosed with ADHD years before and college was a struggle, not because I didn’t understand the material, but because I hated the length and work of it all. I graduated, became an auditor, I worked for large CPA firms and small ones, primarily in governmental accounting, but specializing in low income housing audits.

Bored yet? I was.

One day a recruiter came knocking and said that he had a CFO position at a small magazine publisher. I was excited. I took the job, and dove super deep into it. I learned as much as I could. I redesigned the books, I got involved in analytics projects regarding sales and projections and budgets, was introduced to how Advertising sales works, and all of that. I also learned I had high functioning autism. I kept that a secret. I also learned exactly why journalists get paid so low and who benefits.

I also had a pretty volatile boss. He would yell and scream and throw fits. We actually got along fine. But because I mostly towed the line.

Then he hired a new sales manager, felt he needed to impress her or something by flexing his power and in a meeting loudly demanded that I collect 50k in A/R or he would withhold my paycheck. He looked smug and asked “How do you feel about that.”

I replied, “I feel like that would be the last day I work here.”

He flipped the fuck out and disappeared for a few days. I usually let stuff fall of my back, but I was pretty angry. The next week, he had me talk to his consultant. It was a good meeting, It was supposed to be confidential. I told her about the autism diagnosis. She immediately told my boss.

The next day, we had a closed door meeting to go over our conversation. Then he got mad at something and the argument renewed and he brought up my diagnosis. I was a bit shocked that the consultant told him despite the promise of confidentiality.

He then told me, “I knew you had a low emotional intelligence when you brought donuts to work and didn’t clean up after everyone. When you bring stuff into the office, it’s your responsibility to clean up after yourself.”

I replied, “I didn’t eat any of the donuts. I brought them in for everyone else.”

“Yeah, and a person who has emotional intelligence would know that they need to clean up after them.”

I was also under the impression that at work you clean up after yourself. Plenty of signs at plenty of workplaces illuminated that for me.

He also got mad, that an IT project of setting up a better WiFi system that I was halfway through resulted in a box filled with half the stuff I hadn’t finished setting up the day prior on a table.

“I don’t need some fucking autistic guy fucking up my office,” he shouted. “You have two weeks to help me find your replacement.”

I told him I’m not helping find my replacement. Packed up my stuff and left. It was April 12, 2019.

Stewing over it for the next few days I devised a plan. I was going to mix the low income housing business model with publishing. A model where by separate entities sharing responsibilities risk is reduced, expenses are decreased and profit is maximized for everyone involved from the reader to the writer to the advertiser and to us.

Why? My boss had regularly mentioned that publishing has a low cost of entry. I also had shitty bosses at small firms in Public Accounting. I never understood why bosses in industries, where their employees could easily up and become competition would be cheap with their employees pay and treat them like shit. Especially since they could walk out the door and become competition.

My boss would often tell me that our magazine didn’t really have any competitors.

I wasn’t eager to go back to working for someone else and I really wasn’t eager to go back to accounting.

So I decided I would try and become a competitor. The business did have a low cost of entry, however, I had 18 dollars to my name on April 12th.

A few days later, I told my wife my plan, she was impressed and thought it was a good idea.

I told a buddy I was in the Army with my plan. He left Army Photojournalism and remained in communications. He thought it was genius. He’s now our editor.

I threw together a rough business plan, told a friend and he entered us into a University of Washington business plan competition.

We didn’t win, I had lots of positive feedback. A guy who informed me he was an angel investor and his wife was formerly a journalist loved the idea. A developer looked at me like I was an idiot and told me my idea was impossible.

I pushed ahead anyways. Another friend from high school who is a website developer offered to help, and the website started and went live on July 15th.

A month later, we had racked up 10k visits and 50 or so profiles, 15 writers submitted material.

The site was slow and it was bothering me. I had also been practicing building websites on the side.

So I hired a guy from Fiverr to optimize the site, he did, but he also destroyed our log in process, which is kind of necessary. I broke the site in an effort to fix it.

So I took it down. Spent a month rebuilding it by myself, and it returned live a month later.

I spent pretty much next to nothing on the site. Maybe a few thousand. But I wound up building a travel and tourism blog / social media site that does a 75 percent revenue share and profit share with content contributors. We have an ad server where advertisers can go in order, schedule, manage and track their ads.

We have close to thirty writers now, nearly 70 submissions from amateurs and professional writers, a unique bucket list feature, basically a system that is designed to help writers make a better living, keeps our costs low, allows us to charge less for advertising, and has the potential to get readers free stuff for simply being members and interacting and reading material.

The site is 95 percent complete. Just need to make a few more additions to the bucket list, update our achievement images and make them shareable and once again fix the speed issues. It’s an impressive piece of work and we’re proud of it.

This last month, we’ve cleared 12k page views and now have over 130 profiles.

I accomplished this with no website building experience, no marketing experience, no SEO, no backlinks, and I think our DA score is zero.

I did it by taking research on the effectiveness of micro influencers and reversing it and applying it to small Facebook groups and it’s been rather successful.

We’ve even gotten some interest in our first hosted ad sales. 3 1/2 months in.

So please, join the site. We are strictly geared and dedicated to helping writers.

http://sojournlist.com

[peckhampeculiar]

All hands on decks

TENDAI CHAGWEDA ACHIEVED HER DREAM OF BECOMING A DJ – AND NOW SHE’S ALL ABOUT HELPING OTHERS DO THE SAME. 

The inspiring Peckham resident explains why she’s passionate about working with those who might struggle to access the DJ world otherwise

WORDS: EMMA FINAMORE PHOTO: LIMA CHARLIE

Many people consider their career mission over once they reach their dream job. But Tendai Chagweda isn’t like most people. The Peckham-born and raised DJ achieved her goal – being able to play music to other people for a living – and has now turned her hand to helping others achieve their own DJ dreams too.

Her Inspiring DJs school offers a wide range of workshops and classes, to help teach an even wider range of people all sorts of skills related to DJing. Through sessions at Mountview theatre academy and Peckham Levels, as well as classes in and around south London and up in Dalston, Tendai teaches everything from the basics on the decks, to how to operate as a professional DJ. Her students range from six to 50 years old.

It seems apt that Tendai is helping people achieve their musical ambitions in Peckham, having lived here her whole life – on Sumner Road – and beginning her DJ career in south London in 2007, playing sets at places like The Cube in Camberwell, and clubs in Streatham and London Bridge, spinning her beloved South African house music under her moniker, Petite DJ.

Now she’s DJed at places like the Shard, but it was here in Peckham that her love for music began.

“I was always raving; Lazerdrome in Peckham was my first experience of that,” she recalls, of the now-closed nightclub at the top of Rye Lane. Lazerdrome was open from 1988 to 2005, playing host to drum ’n’ bass, house, garage and jungle parties, as well as regular club night Innersense and DJ sets from the likes of Kemistry & Storm – who were huge in the ’90s UK drum ’n’ bass scene.

“I used to grab the mic, basically. Me and my girls who all grew up in Peckham were the ‘Dancehall Massive’,” Tendai laughs, remembering a chant she and her friends would shout. “We’d get the mic from the famous DJs.”

When a good friend who was also from Peckham offered to teach her to man the decks herself – rather than wait for someone to do it for her – Tendai was unsure at first.

“I wanted to be front of stage. Back then it was all about the person on the mic,” she says. “I wanted to be out there.”

She eventually changed her mind though and took some DJ courses, and although she gained the technical abilities required, she says she felt completely on her own as soon as the classes were over, with no guidance on how to use her new skills: “They took my money and then said, ‘Bye’. There was no aftercare whatsoever.”

Even though Tendai went on to establish herself as a DJ for clubs and events, specialising in South African house and even being interviewed on BBC World News about the rise of African house music in London, she never forgot that feeling of being left to fend for herself.

That’s what drove her to establish Inspiring DJs in 2016, bringing on board another impressive teacher – the award-winning DJ Smasherelly, who specialises in scratch and drop classes and is the tour DJ for big names like Stefflon Don and Estelle.

The school held its first classes at the PemPeople shop on Peckham High Street in November 2017 – “Nicholas [Okwulu] was the first person to believe in me,” Tendai smiles – and one of the first enquiries that came through was from the mother of an autistic child.

“He was an absolute pleasure,” says Tendai. “These people are excluded from society, but they have super powers! I refuse to call them ‘disabilities’. I’ve been attracting loads of people with super powers ever since.”

As well as a range of ages, Inspiring DJs is opening up the DJ world to those who might struggle to access it otherwise: people with ADHD, autism and dyslexia, as well as those from pupil referral units and foster care. What many teachers might see as hurdles in their pupils, Tendai embraces as strengths.

“For them, they love the encouragement and they love the autonomy,” she says of students with autism or ADHD. “Once I’ve taught them the basics, I just let them get creative without direction, but with lots of encouragement and motivation. It’s not difficult though because they genuinely have a super power, they get it [DJing] in a completely different way and style to other people. When I try to explain things to people without those super powers, they often overthink it, bring in too much logic.

“For some of the mums it’s a breath of fresh air seeing their children use their creativity in a way that is encouraged. It’s beautiful when you gain the trust of the mums. If they leave to go do their own thing, I record classes so they can see what we’ve done – it’s great when you see the parent looking back on what their child has achieved, and they’re like, ‘That’s my child!’

“I remember one mum [during a class delivered to foster care providers] just came up and hugged me – I guess she’d never seen her child in that capacity, being so enthusiastic.”

Working with young people from pupil referral units has been equally as revelatory. “They said they’ve never seen the kids so engaged ever,” says Tendai. “One of the kids kept on stopping us to ask when we were going to be doing it in schools. To hear they’d never been that engaged before, that touched my soul.”

Tendai describes how quickly pupils can pick up DJ skills. “One of the children, I call him my little David Rodigan [a reference to the iconic reggae and dancehall DJ] – within half an hour he was mixing, he’d never touched decks before,” she says. She also talks about how DJing is becoming more popular within schools: it’s starting to be taken seriously as a career choice.

This is where the other side of Inspiring DJs comes in: offering the “soft skills” required to build a business as a working DJ. Tendai offers coaching sessions for over-16s at offices she has in Vauxhall’s impressive Tintagel House, helping them plan for the future. “I find out what their dreams are, and teach them to dream big,” she says. “I basically do life-coaching with them, asking them, ‘Who are your dream promoters?’ and ‘What’s your idea of a dream salary?’”

Tendai tells how one of her students has gone on to work with some of his dream people in different capacities – proof that her holistic approach to DJ training really works.

Arguably, her success as a teacher is also down to the fact that she loves music. When talking about South African house, that passion really shines through: “A dream set for me would be sort of ancestral house – a lot of drums and chanting. A lot of the time the music we’re listening to, we don’t have a clue what they’re saying, but the beat and the rhythm is so entrancing. It’s hard to explain, but it’s when people just become one. No one knows what they’re saying but everyone feels it.”

This passion and emotion comes through in her selections and mixes: a fan got in touch with Tendai just a few days before we meet, enthusing about a mix CD she’d given them years earlier.

It’s an enthusiasm Tendai wants to pass on to everyone: as well as one-to-one classes, Inspiring DJs offers group sessions (for example parent and child, groups of friends) as well as fun sessions for birthdays and team away-days for local businesses.

Brimming with ideas, she talks about recent Netflix series The Umbrella Academy, and how she’s creating a DJ version of this in south London, acting as a platform to help her students get bookings. Southwark Council has already booked Inspiring DJs to play at an event, and instead of Petite DJ, it’ll be her young protégés taking to the decks.

She says real-life jobs like this will help them become better DJs, completing their training in the real world: “They’ll become more engaged, knowing what to play and how to keep their audience engaged.”

All this activity hasn’t gone unnoticed. Last year Tendai was nominated for Female Personality of the Year at the Zimbabwe Achievers Awards, a celebration of talent, art, business, expression and achievement in the Zimbabwean community (Tendai’s roots are in Zimbabwe), and she was even invited to Downing Street to talk to the prime minister’s business adviser about her work in local communities.

“The bread of that conversation was all about university,” she remembers of the Downing Street meeting. “But I said, ‘Sorry I’ve just got to interject here, I’m from the inner city, I personally haven’t gone to uni.’

“It’s about getting them to understand that not everyone wants to go to uni and not everyone can afford to go to uni, but they’ve still got the ability to do whatever they want.”

Tendai is living proof of this. She has achieved her DJ dream without a degree, and also teaches social media at London South Bank University.

“I don’t have a degree or any experience in universities, but I can still do it,” she says, reflecting the can-do, sky’s-the-limit ethos of Inspiring DJs. To all aspiring DJs out there, she says: “Come on down, we’ll show you the way.”