A collaboration between Helen Edgar and Ryan Boren, Stimpunks Foundation
We wanted to make something together that said, ” You belong here, all the way down to your star stuff”!
Did you know?
Every atom heavier than hydrogen was forged inside a star. The calcium in your bones, the iron in your blood, the oxygen you’re breathing right now — all of it lived inside a star before it became part of you (Sagan, 1980). We share around 97% of the same atoms as the galaxy itself (Howell, 2017). Not a metaphor. It’s who we are.
For those of us who’ve spent a lifetime being told we’re too much, not enough, or wrong somehow, we may feel this intensely. The universe didn’t create a single correct configuration of matter and call everything else a mistake. It made diversity — endless variation, always becoming, always connecting, always transforming.
We are all part of the same galaxy: connecting, interconnecting, interdependent.
This project grew out of conversations between myself and Ryan, and it weaves together several threads that don’t often get to sit together: quantum physics, Deleuzian philosophy, and Autistic experiences.
Relational quantum mechanics tells us that nothing exists in isolation — that what something is only makes sense in relation to everything around it.
Deleuze gives us difference-before-identity: the idea that variation comes first, and sameness is the thing that had to be built. Held together, they offer a different starting point for thinking about neurodivergence — not as a deviation from a baseline, but as difference that was there from the beginning, the way stars were never one kind of star.
It’s become a shared home across two spaces: a reflection here on More Realms, and a whole constellation of writing, zines, and art over at Stimpunks.
Come and Explore:
- 🌌 Read the full Star Stuff page — the heart of the project: the manifesto, the science, the philosophy, and reflections from the community, all together at Stimpunks
- 📖 Read the zines — eleven of them so far, including my own guest zine, Why Difference Comes First, which follows the quantum and Deleuzian thread in full, alongside community favourites like Bone Song and Underground
- ✨ Wander the Field Guides — neurodivergent constellations, the elements you’re made of, and the life forms that thrive in places we once thought impossible
- 🎧 Listen along — a 26-track playlist that carries the same spirit in sound