on the street · the bodymind booth · next door to the dress-up den
no camera · no flash · no photograph
The Bodymind Booth
Draw yourself. Nothing in here takes your picture.
A photo booth on the street with no camera in it. Pull the curtain, sit on the stool, and draw your bodymind: how you get about, your shape, your skin, your face, your hair, and everything you always have with you. Then take it next door to the Dopamine Dress-Up Den and dress it, keep it as an avatar in your Profile on the CB, and wear one there, beside your name on Who’s online.
We’re not minds riding around in bodies, we’re bodyminds.
— Nick Walker, in Toward a Neuroqueer Future: An Interview with Nick Walker, Autism in Adulthood, read on our Bodymind entry
A drawing can only show the body half of that. The rest is yours to say, in your own words, beside it: what you write about an avatar is the only thing a screen reader hears for it, and nothing here ever describes a body for you.
In the booth
The booth draws in your browser, so it needs JavaScript to draw. Every choice is listed beside it either way.
Keeping sends what you chose, its name and what you wrote to the CB, under your handle, and only when you press. Nothing else here sends anything.
Your strip
Every avatar you keep goes into your Profile on the CB, a frame at a time, like a strip out of the slot. Signed on to the CB, you can open your strip here and change a bodymind you kept; anything you dressed next door is changed next door.
Where it goes
- Next door, to be dressed. Take it next door walks your bodymind into the Dopamine Dress-Up Den in the address, after the #, which never reaches any server. The Den puts whatever is on its stand on you instead, and you keep it from there.
- Into your Profile, when you press Keep. Signed on to the CB, an avatar is kept under your handle, scrambled, with its name and what you wrote about it. It is the second thing the street keeps under a person, after pets, and Forget me in Profile deletes them both.
- On the CB, one at a time, if your username is claimed. Wear one from Profile and it is shown beside your name on Who’s online, and large in your profile, to anybody signed on to the CB; Show my avatars on the CB shows the rest in your profile too. Change which one whenever you like: one for the dancefloor, one for the punk club, one for a day when you would rather not be looked at. An unclaimed handle is anybody’s who signs on with it, so it cannot wear one.
- As a sticker. Sticker on the radio sends one of your avatars to the channel you are tuned to, with its name and what you wrote, and it goes when the message goes.
What is kept and when it goes is on the privacy page.
House rules
- There is no camera, and nothing to upload. An avatar is the list of choices you made, kept as that list and drawn fresh wherever it goes. Nothing in here can take a photograph or keep one.
- No body comes first. The booth opens on somebody drawn at random, and draws somebody else whenever you ask, so there is no body it starts from and nobody is the usual one.
- What you always have with you is part of you here. Chairs, canes, crutches, walkers, hearing aids, cochlear implants, ear defenders, glasses, masks, oxygen, AAC devices, fidgets, chew necklaces and prosthetics are chosen in the booth and never sold in a shop, and nothing put on next door takes one off.
- No choice is anybody’s. Nothing in the booth asks your gender or keeps a choice for one. Any hair goes with any face, any beard with any shape.
- Skin is numbered, not named. Ten tones by how light or deep they are, because every word for a skin tone has been used against somebody, and four colours nobody is born in, on purpose.
- Only you describe you. The booth reads your own choices back to you while you build, because a choice you cannot hear is not a choice. Nowhere else says them: on the CB a drawing is silent to a screen reader unless you write what it shows.
- Nothing is kept until you press Keep, and then only in your Profile, which deletes it the moment you ask.
- Nothing is rated or compared. No likes, no best, and nobody’s bodymind beside anybody else’s except where they choose to wear it.
Whose this is
The idea came from our community. Somebody said they hoped we would have characters to dress one day, and Ryan wrote a proposal from it on 2026-10-14: a bodymind builder of its own, dressed at the Dress-Up Den and at any shop that styles a character later, kept in your Profile, one worn on the CB at a time and swapped at will, and sent as stickers.
The Dress-Up Den is Helen Edgar’s idea, and it stays body-free. Its clothes hang on a valet stand because a paper doll is one body handed to everybody. That is why the bodies are drawn here, in a booth of their own, where nobody is handed one, and why the only body the Den ever shows is one somebody made here and walked next door. Ryan’s call, 2026-10-14.
The drawing is the house’s. Every garment from next door is worked out again from the body it is put on, on its feet or sitting down, so a cardigan fits whoever wears it.
tools/make-bodymind.py builds this booth out of one data file, writes the same choices into the file that draws every avatar and the one the CB checks them against, and refuses rather than guesses. It will not build a choice with no words, a skin tone named by a word rather than a number, a mobility aid or a hearing aid sold as clothing next door, a body the booth starts from, or a script that asks for a camera, takes a file, keeps a picture or sends anything anywhere but your own Profile when you press Keep. And it sweeps the booth’s own words, so that nothing here judges a body, keeps a choice for one gender, calls an aid a tragedy, or rates anybody.
The type is Oleo Script, by soytutype fonts, for the sign, and Host Grotesk, by Element Type, Doğukan Karapınar and İbrahim Kaçtıoğlu, for everything you read, both under the SIL Open Font License and read off their own records.
Job marker — a strip of four frames out of the slot, with nobody in them, on the floor
You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.
The job: Only you describe you
Before the code: On the CB, what is the only thing a screen reader hears for somebody's avatar?
Hint 1
It is in the sixth of the house rules.
Hint 2
The box beside Keep says it too.
Last hint
Their own words.
Give me the answer
The answer is What its owner wrote about it. On the CB a drawing is silent to a screen reader unless its owner writes what it shows, in their own words. The booth reads your own choices back to you while you build, because a choice you cannot hear is not a choice, and nowhere else says them: nothing here describes a body for somebody else.
Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.
Quest code: CURTAIN
That is the one.
On the CB a drawing is silent to a screen reader unless its owner writes what it shows, in their own words. The booth reads your own choices back to you while you build, because a choice you cannot hear is not a choice, and nowhere else says them: nothing here describes a body for somebody else.
Quest code: CURTAIN
HOW LOUD DO YOU WANT IT?
Starts wherever your device says. Nothing moves, flashes, or plays until you say so.