Stimpunks Foundation × More Realms · L★S · Field Guide No. 12

My Monotropic
Galaxy

A constellation of an Autistic self, in twenty named features. This is not a guide to a species or a phenomenon. It is one person's map of her own inner life, told in the language of the cosmos — and it ends by asking you to draw yours.

A guest field guide by Helen Edgar · Autistic Realms & More Realms

L★S
How to use this guide Each entry is a constellation Helen named, in her own words, at her own number. Click any entry to open the sky, if you want it — a short note on the real astronomical object, and links to anywhere in the collection that constellation has grown into a piece of its own.
Why there is no “sounds like / actually” table Every other guide here carries one, because it corrects a verdict somebody else handed down. There is no verdict here to correct. These twenty are one person's naming of her own life, and running a correction apparatus over that would be the wrong instrument entirely. Field Guide No. 10 set this precedent with the turtles people made. The format difference is the argument.
They are not a list Helen is explicit: “These are not separate entries in a list; they are interdependent, entangled and always in relationship with each other.” A grid of cards is exactly a list, so the map below draws the connections — but only the ones she states in her own prose. The rest are hers, and yours.
The map

Twenty features, and the lines she draws between them

Helen's original is a deep-field photograph overlaid with constellation lines. This is the index of it. Lines appear here only where her essay names the relationship outright — burnout arising from the Dark Matter Field, the flow state that carries her toward Love You Down To Your Star Stuff, the four she groups as the community reaching toward it. Everything unlined is not unrelated; it is simply not ours to connect.

The twenty constellations, with only the connections Helen states Twenty numbered points scattered in a star field. Five short dashed lines gather the Mycelial Stars, the Rhizome Array, the Sanctuary Stars, the Companion Stars and the Stellar Current around a central point marked L star S, for Love You Down To Your Star Stuff. Three short solid lines join the Dark Matter Field to the Supernova Remnant, the Tunnelling Nebula to the Emergence Point, and the Pebbling Cluster to the Companion Stars. The Stellar Current is drawn larger than the others because Helen calls it the heart of her galaxy. The remaining points carry no lines, which means only that her essay does not state a connection for them. L★S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 dashed: the four she groups as reaching toward L★S, and the current that carries her there solid: a relationship she states outright · the large point is 3, Stellar Current · unlined is not unrelated

“All of them are in relationship with each other, always in motion, always becoming something the map and myself has not yet caught up with.”

The constellation index

Twenty constellations

Helen's numbering, kept exactly. Her wording, kept exactly. Five of the twenty have since grown into pieces of their own in this collection, and those cards say where to find them — which makes this index the hub the rest of the galaxy hangs off.

Not: Not a diagnostic instrument. Twenty names one person found useful. No score, no threshold, nothing to be assessed against. Not a complete taxonomy of Autistic experience. Helen says so first: “a universe of infinite possible configurations.” Not a set of verdicts to be corrected, which is why this guide has no reframe table. Not the astronomy proving the experience. The notes behind the fold are ours and optional; the physics knows nothing about any of us. Not a checklist to identify yourself against. If a constellation is not in your galaxy, that is the expected result.
The theory, briefly

Monotropism — attention drawn more strongly to fewer things at a time, going deep rather than wide — is Dinah Murray, Mike Lesser and Wenn Lawson (2005), and it is the theory this whole map is built on. The double empathy problem is Damian Milton (2012). The rhizome is Deleuze & Guattari (1987), carried into Autistic community by Helen and David Gray-Hammond.

Helen also reads her galaxy through David Bohm's implicate order (1980) and Helen De Cruz on wonder as epistemic opening (2024). Bohm's is a minority interpretation of quantum mechanics rather than settled physics, and is used here as she uses it — a way of articulating an inner experience, a rhyme rather than a proof.

The invitation

Draw your own

This guide exists because Helen asked for it twice in her own essay, and it would be a poor rehousing that dropped the ask.

Find what resonates with you from this, some of these constellations may feel immediately familiar, and others may not be part of your galaxy at all. This map is just my own constellation in a universe of infinite possible configurations of ways of Autistic being. You may find it sparks the beginnings of creating your own map or drawing your own constellation or galaxy.Helen Edgar · My Monotropic Galaxy · More Realms, June 2026

Her chapter on the Monotropic Galaxy is forthcoming in a book called UNIQUE, which invites neurodivergent contributors to map themselves — qualities, strengths, struggles, deep interests, challenges, all held together as a constellation. At the time of her essay the book was still open for contributions, to anyone neurodivergent whether formally diagnosed or self-identifying. In her words: “No artistic skill is needed. No particular way of writing. Just your own unique map of who you are.”

You do not need our permission or hers to start. Twenty is not the number; it is her number. Yours might be four, or sixty, or one enormous one you have not finished naming. Print this, cross out what is not yours, and write in what is.

And if you would rather start on a clean sheet than on ours: The Constellation Sheet is a blank two-sided page built for exactly this — eighty stars with nothing joined, a title with a gap where Helen’s reads Monotropic, and a blank index on the back. It prints on A4 or US Letter and it is free to copy and hand out.