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@youronlyone @autistics @actuallyautistic

Tl,Dr: Stephen King

Great Q, thanks for getting my mind thinking along these channels.

My characterization has always been by far my weak spot. I can churn plots and settings all day, but like you described, my characters are always two dimensional.

You know who excels at limning two dimensional characters? Stephen King. At least pre-1990. I haven't read much he wrote after that. He was so good at it that when I pumped gas for a living, my coworker and I would describe the occasional customer as a Stephen King character. Lots of truckers--they'd have one overpowering aspect to their personality, and it was enough to know them fairly well in the few minutes it took to fill their tank.

Hmmm...Heinlein also drew caricatures rather than people...Harry Harrison...a lot of the old timey sci fi was like that. Probably because all the authors were autistic :)

Kurt Vonnegut...

As far as video goes, I'm having trouble. I can think of actors that are spare with their emotion, but I really never notice characterization in video. It's too short a format for me to emotionally attach to the characters. Star Wars has cartoon characters and makes it work...The Matrix as well. I can think of two good series that might be useful. Altered Carbon does a pretty good job with the "nice guy being evil" trope, developing it with minimal wastage over the course of the first season. Again, though, a lot of that is credit to the actor. And American Vandal. I was really, really impressed by that one. It deals with teenagers. Teenagers are bipolar cartoon characters in real life, but that show managed to create extremely believable, well fleshed-out characters in an incredibly short format.

Hope this helps.

Edit: Autistic people generally have a good grasp of cPTSD. Traumatized people frequently have a flat affect and sparse emotion. Like Altered Carbon. You could build stories around people like that. Make the characterization a product of the plot and backstory. Just a thought.