Infodumplings: Every Chimera Is Whole

Every chimera here is whole. This room never calls one anything less, and nothing about how it was put together is a problem to be solved.
House rules, Chimera Obscura on Stimpunks.World

What makes us different, makes all the difference in the world.
Randimals, quoted on our Different page

This week Infodumplings meets somewhere new. We are going up the tower to The Events Room on Stimpunks.World, a lighthouse keeper’s watch room behind the Events door at Cavendish Coworking. Infodumplings is already on its light list: Bring Your Muchness Down the Rabbit Hole, Thursdays, 7PM Central.

And we are talking about chimeras, starting with a short video: How Chimaera Mythology Became Reality, from PBS Storied’s Monstrum.

A chimera, in the words of the room where you make one, is “one creature made out of more than one animal.” Stimpunks has had chimeras for years. Ryan, Chelsea, and Inna each chose one — Bearmouse, Pandillo, and Bunnybadger — and Becky Hicks drew them for our About page. On Sunday, Chimera Obscura opened on the street: a camera obscura where you build your own, part by part, and watch it land on a round white table in full colour. It began with Norah asking for an otteraccoon.

Since Monday, a chimera can come with you. Take it with you, and it becomes your familiar. It follows you from room to room and sits wherever there are no words. The idea came from our community, after the animal orbs in Castle Crashers.

So tonight we make them together. Not everyone is on Stimpunks.World yet, so we start by getting everybody who wants in signed up and settled. Then we watch, and then we build. Bring a chimera you have already made, or make one with us on the night. Then the floor is yours: introduce us to your chimera. What is it made of, what is it called, and what does it say?

Or make nothing, and come watch other people’s creatures wander about. Lurking is a real and honored way to show up.

Date and Time: Thursday, October 22 at 7PM Central

Where: The Events Room, on Stimpunks.World

The Watch

How Chimaera Mythology Became Reality — Monstrum, PBS Storied, about seven minutes. Dr. Emily Zarka, with Joe Hanson of It’s Okay to Be Smart, goes from the three-headed Chimaera of Homer’s Iliad — a lion, a goat, and a snake, and the goat is the one breathing fire — to the “geep,” a sheep and a goat made from two embryos in the 1980s, and a 1998 attempt to patent human-animal chimeras. Along the way Hanson sorts hybrids from chimeras. A liger or a mule starts as one embryo, from two related species. A chimera starts as two bodies or embryos combined into one. Pegasus, it turns out, is one too.

Listen for one word. Monstrum is a show about monsters, and it opens by calling every chimera one. The patent office commissioner reportedly called the proposed human-animal chimeras “monsters” too. And there is a moment when people born with extra fingers become “kinda reptile-y.” It is a throwaway line, and it is exactly how the freak show worked: a human body, described as part animal.

The video ends on a question: we can craft chimeras, but should we? On Stimpunks.World we already do, in code. The question our room answers is the one the video doesn’t ask — what we call them. More on that in the frame below.

How to Make a Familiar

Everything here works without an account. Only the last step needs you signed on to the CB.

1. Walk into Chimera Obscura. It is dark in there on purpose: a room painted black inside, a lens in the roof, and a round white table where the picture lands. The otteraccoon is on the table when you arrive. Nothing makes a sound, and nothing moves until you press something.

2. Pick two animals at the bench. Start from one already made — Bearmouse, Pandillo, Bunnybadger, or the otteraccoon — or choose a first animal and a second animal. Then choose which animal each part comes from: the body, head, ears, mouth, arms, feet, tail, back, colours, and markings. Tick Let any part come from any animal, and every animal on the shelf is open to every part. Or press Toss and let the bench pick for you.

The shelf runs from bear and mouse to possum and opossum, with fox, owl, penguin, elephant, zebra, and more between. If the animal you want is not there, ask for it in the suggestion box in The Sandbox. It gets drawn as code, the way every part on the shelf was, and put there for everybody. That takes days, not seconds, and a moderator answers every request.

3. Name it. Suggest one gives you the body’s animal and then the animal that gave the most other parts. That is how a pig with a porcupine’s parts comes out as a Porkypine — a name Randimals and Stimpunks made together. Change it to anything you like.

4. Give it something to say. Write up to five sayings, one to a line, in your own words. Your familiar says one when you press it, and now and then in a speech bubble when it may move by itself, but only where the bubble covers no words.

5. Press Take it with you. Now it is your familiar. It is there in every room you walk into, in a little pool of the camera obscura’s light, resting only where there are no words. Drag it, or press it and choose Move it to use the arrow keys. Below MAX GLITTER it stays where you put it, unless you let it move by itself. At MAX GLITTER it wanders, follows you down the page, and comes over to your pointer or your keyboard. Send it home whenever you like. Your browser keeps it, and nothing is sent anywhere.

6. Bring it out, if you want to. Signed on to the CB, Keep it in my Profile keeps your chimera with its name, and lets you send it to the channel as a sticker. Bring my familiar, under Be seen here on the radio, shows your familiar to the people seen in the same room as you, walking about with its name and its sayings, and shows you theirs, for as long as you are seen there. It is off until you switch it on. It is never on Who’s online.

Some rooms have Chimera Cozies, a spot of their own for a familiar to sit in, each drawn in its room’s own colours: a velvet pouf in Chimera Obscura, a cushion of moss in the Garden, a knitted floor cushion in the Latibulum, a leather footstool in the Community Library, and an egg chair on a swivel foot in the Solarpunk Hermitage, in front of the campfire’s television. Press your familiar in a room with a free one and choose Sit in the cozy.

That is the whole of it. A familiar keeps you company, and that is all it does. No levels, no boosts, nothing to collect, and nothing counted.

The Stimpunks Frame

Bearmouse, or a spiky profile you can draw

Here is how our About page tells it:

Many years ago, a friend dubbed Ryan “Bearmouse”, intuiting a part of his neurodivergent spiky profile.
About, Stimpunks

The page does not say which part. It does not need to.

Inna chose Bunnybadger and Chelsea chose Pandillo, and the same page says what all three are for: “Our Randimals capture our exposure anxiety, social anxiety, rejection sensitive dysphoria, emotional sunburn, very grand emotions, justice sensitivity, and other neurodivergent traits.” Exposure anxiety. Rejection sensitive dysphoria. Very grand emotions. Justice sensitivity. A whole bodymind, drawn as an animal nobody has to explain.

A spiky profile is what our abilities look like on a chart: high peaks and low troughs, far apart. The world keeps trying to average it. Good at this, so why not that? Struggling with that, so surely not this?

A chimera refuses the average. A bearmouse is not a medium-sized animal. It is a bear and a mouse at once, every part where it is, and the picture only works because nobody blended them. Randimals call theirs “a unique blend of personalities, characteristics, instincts and skills,” and their line about difference has been on our site since 2022.

That is why a creature made of parts is a fair picture of a bodymind made of peaks and troughs. Not because an animal can tell you who you are. It can’t, and the room will not pretend otherwise.

Every chimera is whole

Bodies made of unexpected parts have a history, and it is not a cute one. The script that builds Chimera Obscura — and refuses to publish the room if any of its rules is broken — says it plainly:

Bodies made of unexpected parts were exhibited as freaks, and the people exhibited were mostly disabled. On a Disabled people’s site every chimera is whole, so the room’s own voice may not call one a monster, a freak, a mutant, an abomination, a mistake or wrong.
tools/make-chimera-obscura.py, Stimpunks.World

Mia Mingus, one of the people who shaped disability justice, traces freakery back to the freak shows of the 1800s. Physically Disabled people, trans and gender non-conforming people, Indigenous people, and people of color were put on display there side by side. Her conclusion: “we must never let ourselves be on the side of the gawking crowd” (Moving Toward the Ugly, Leaving Evidence).

Mingus also claims freak for herself, “in the most powerful sense of the word.” That is hers to claim. A drawing tool handing the word out to everybody who builds a creature is not reclamation. It is the gawking crowd with a new toy.

So the room says whole, and means it. Nothing about how a chimera was put together is a problem to be solved. That is the neurodiversity paradigm in one house rule, and the pathology paradigm refused in the same breath.

The same script refuses two friendlier things, and they are worth naming, because they are what most sites like this do:

A quiz. Nothing in the room may tell anybody which animal they are, call anything a spirit animal — “a term taken from Indigenous traditions” — or say what an animal says about a person. The friendly edit it refuses is “which animal are you?”
A count. No number of chimeras the shelf could make, nothing rare, nothing to collect, no score. The friendly edit it refuses is “hundreds of combinations!”

A quiz hands somebody else the authority to say what you are. A count turns play into metric fixation. Both look kind. Both take something from the person playing. We said it in last month’s newsletter, about the whole street: the friendly edit will arrive. And the answer we wrote down there still holds: take less than the page could.

A familiar is company

Autistic people have always kept company that isn’t people.

In Crafting Livable Worlds, an Autistic-led study of twelve Autistic adults in Australia, Megan Catherine Rose and Deborah Lupton describe nonhuman supports: making tea in a favorite mug, carrying plush toys, gardening, cuddling a cat. They also found the cost. Participants “worried that plushies or playful décor might be judged as childish or unprofessional,” and the judgment landed particularly on women and gender-diverse people.

Our Different page quotes Devon Price’s Unmasking Autism on why it matters. Autistic people experience object personification at elevated rates, and often connect with animals more readily than with people. The design principle there reads like a brief: “Divergent design should honor the unique relationships Autistic people have to objects.”

A familiar is that principle, built into a street.

It is a body double. Our glossary says a body double can be “a person or even pet who is present with us.”
It is parallel play. “Just existing together counts too.”
It asks for nothing. It has nothing to feed and no meter to keep full, so it cannot be neglected.
It rests only where there are no words, so it never stands between you and what you are reading.
And nobody can tell you that you are too old for it, because nobody sees it unless you choose.

Helen Edgar noticed something like this watching the otter cam at Solidarity Sesh. Many otters keep a favorite stone tucked in a pouch of skin, “a bit like a comfort item or a stim tool,” she writes (Stimpunks Solidarity and Otters, Autistic Realms). It feels right that Chimera Obscura’s table opens on an otter’s body.

Off until you say so

Every part of a familiar that reaches another person is a switch you press. Until then, Stimpunks.World does not know who has a familiar or which one. Bring my familiar is off until you switch it on, it is never on Who’s online, and sending your familiar home takes the copy back in. On this street, as our newsletter put it, seeing became the same switch as being seen. That is privacy as a design choice, not a policy page.

Tonight that matters in a practical way. The call carries the talking. The familiars of whoever chooses to bring theirs out do the being-near-each-other, walking about the room. That is shared-signal space — our glossary describes it as “a call kept open in the background while two people just exist near each other” — with a few extra creatures in it.

Join Us

Infodumplings happens every Thursday at 7PM Central. Most weeks that is in the Stimpunks Learning Space. This week it is in The Events Room on Stimpunks.World.

The call there is open to anybody. Type the name you want to be called, and knock. A moderator lets you in from the lobby. Your camera and microphone start off.

Bring a chimera you made, and paste its link in the chat — Copy a link to this chimera, on the bench, carries your chimera in the address. Bring a Randimal off your shelf, or a photo of one. Bring the animal you wish were on the shelf. Bring the five things your familiar would say. Or bring nothing and come to listen — lurking is a real and honored way to show up.

Cameras optional. Chat-only participation fully valid.
Stims, movement, and fidget tools encouraged.
No one will be called on. Silence is participation.
No account needed to come, or to make a chimera and take it with you. Only bringing your familiar out for others to see needs you signed on to the CB.
Nobody has to make a chimera, or say what theirs means. A chimera can be a picture of yourself, the way Bearmouse is, or just a creature you like.
Screen sharing available if you want to show your chimera, your Randimal, or the animal you wish were on the shelf.
Five minutes is plenty. You don’t need a whole segment.

Not on Stimpunks.World yet? That is what the start of the hour is for. Joining takes an invite, a username, and a password of your own, and a moderator can give you the invite in the call. Come at 7 and we will walk through it together. You can also request an invite ahead through the join form on our Stimpunks Community page. Getting started, at the Community Center, has every step written down.

🔭 Up to The Events Room →

🐾 Make your chimera in Chimera Obscura →

Want to curate a future session? Get in touch →

How the Hour Goes

Time	What’s happening
7:00 PM	👋 Welcome & housekeeping — knocking in, finding the chat, and the hour ahead
7:05 PM	🗝️ Onboarding — invites, usernames, and passwords for anybody not on Stimpunks.World yet, then switching on the radio. Already on? Wander the street, or help somebody find their way
~7:15 PM	📺 Monstrum: How Chimaera Mythology Became Reality — about seven minutes, on the Events Room’s screen
~7:23 PM	🔭 At the bench — on a shared screen, starting from Bearmouse, Pandillo, Bunnybadger, or the otteraccoon and building one together, part by part. Follow along on your own bench
~7:33 PM	🐾 Familiars — taking it with you, sayings, cozies, and Bring my familiar
~7:40 PM	🧠 Bodymind break — 5 minutes, do whatever you need
~7:45 PM	🎤 Open floor: introduce us to your chimera. What is it made of, what is it called, and what does it say?
8:00 PM	✨ Cozy overflow + next week’s reveal

Sessions run approximately one hour with cozy overflow after. Camera optional, chat always open, safe foods and stimming always welcome.

Reflection Questions

On your chimera

What is your chimera made of, and why those parts?
Is it a picture of you, a creature you just like, or something else? Does it have to be one?
What would your familiar say, in five lines or fewer?

On being made of parts

Has anyone ever tried to average you — to expect the trough because of a peak, or a peak because of the trough?
What is a word used about you that only you get to reclaim?
When has a friendly edit — a quiz, a score, a cheerful number — taken something from you while looking kind?
Monstrum opens by calling every chimera a monster. What changes when a room calls them whole instead?

On company

What nonhuman thing keeps you company? A mug, a plush, a stone, a cat?
Have you ever hidden a comfort object because someone might call it childish?
If the Events Room got a Chimera Cozy, what should it be?

Resources

Dr. Emily Zarka, How Chimaera Mythology Became Reality — Monstrum, PBS Storied, with Joe Hanson of It’s Okay to Be Smart. The video we watch
Chimera Obscura — Stimpunks.World. The bench, the wall, the shelf, and the house rules
The Events Room — Stimpunks.World. The light list, the screen on the wall, and the call
Your familiar, on the CB — the CB guide on Bring my familiar
What is kept about chimeras and familiars — Stimpunks.World’s privacy page
The Stimpunks.World changelog — how Chimera Obscura, familiars, sayings, and cozies arrived, day by day
tools/make-chimera-obscura.py — the script that builds the room, and every rule it refuses to break
About — Bearmouse, Pandillo, and Bunnybadger, drawn by Becky Hicks
Different — Randimals, spiky profiles, learning terroir, and Devon Price on object personification
Randimals — our friends who make combined animals you can hold
Mia Mingus, Moving Toward the Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability — Leaving Evidence, August 22, 2011
Megan Catherine Rose and Deborah Lupton, Crafting Livable Worlds: Sensory, Creative, and Nonhuman Supports in Autistic Adults’ Everyday Lives — Autism in Adulthood, 2026
Helen Edgar, Stimpunks Solidarity and Otters — Autistic Realms, on otters, monotropism, and co-regulation
Stimpunks Monthly Newsletter — September 2026 — the friendly edit, and seeing as the same switch as being seen
Infodumplings — the event, the format, and how to curate a session
Bodymind Break

—

Part of Stimpunks Recurring Events. See also: Solidarity Sesh and Watering Hole Hangs.