The fictional character I relate with most as an autistic person is Laios from Dungeon Meshi. The autistic hyperfixation, the tunnel vision for your passions, the disconnect from the people around you, having to learn social cues as a technical skill rather than a felt notion, etc.

4) Remaining true to the origin. Media is absolutely dripping in Aesops about characters that steal their powers being somehow inferior to people who didn't. There's some good-intentioned messaging in there about not taking shortcuts, but they seem to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'd like my character to use the ability to incorporate things that previously would have been incomprehensible to themselves to develop greater perspective and understanding. What does it feel like to flip a switch and suddenly be psionic? Or instantaneously develop a connection to the divine because I stole some Outsider's spell-like ability? Do I regret stealing the Scent ability? All of that stuff in point 1 applies as well. Lots of times in gameplay this crops up in the form of being given a neutered child-safe version of what the ability was before I took it, which feels like shit thematically and is almost insulting mechanically. I want it the way it is, without the serial numbers filed off, and to perceive something I couldn't have imagined before because of it.


Anyways. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.