Fictional Characters With Undiagnosed Aspergers or Autism

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Here is an oldie (1985 movie) to ponder over:

In "Real Genius", the character Lazlo seems to be on the spectrum. He is found living inside the walls of a dormitory, hides from most people and his interest in winning a contest by sending in tens of thousands of entries. The black haired girl (I can't seem to recall her name) who has a crush on the 14-year old boy would likely also qualify as she is a bit quirky (sanding floors in the middle of the night for fun and very aloof socially).

For those who have never seen the movie (I highly recommend it), the guy who plays Lazlo also plays Napoleon Dynamite's mean uncle much later on.

Even more confusingly, Cumberbatch has vehemently, even defensively denied intending to portray either Sherlock or Turing as autistic or Asperger-like. I thought the defensiveness to be a bit disingenuous too, since I ran across a season 1 interview about Sherlock on YouTube in which Cumberbatch calls Sherlock "a little bit autistic." I think perhaps he cherry-picked some Aspie traits to make his characters more unusual (or maybe it was unintentional), got called on the inaccuracy of it, and then decided to pretend he never meant to play it that way.

Or maybe I'm just paranoid, dunno

Off topic: in theory, if an autistic person were to write fiction, would the characters then have autism/autistic traits?

I never understood the draw to Cumberbatch. Sherlock is good, but I prefer Watson, Martin Freeman.

Maybe, maybe not. The old adage is, "Write what you know," and i think people tend to write from their own experiences, so even if the character wasn't explicitly autistic, they might have traits. And if one tends to have trouble imagining what other people are thinking and feeling, I would think it would probably require a good deal of research for an autistic person to write NT characters. I know I certainly have trouble fathoming why people do what they do, which is why I can't write fiction at all. NT's motives make no sense to me and seem random and arbitrary some times.

Arbitrary, yes, totally! People seem to act with no motivation at all. If your answer for why you do something is, 'I don't know,' then don't do it.

Anyway, I enjoy writing fiction, but I worry sometimes that if were to try to get published, my characters would not seem fully rounded to NTs. I actually find that I have more trouble with description than dialogue. I can see the scene clearly, but I don't know how to describe it in ways people understand. I tend to go on and on in my attempt to be clear.

Erh...please skip this post if somewhat offtopic blathering irritates you. But someone mentioned writing and it triggered my brain to respond.

I write, myself, and have literally hundreds of characters (and that's likely a low estimate). My answer to the original question would be: It depends.

I imagine that someone with limited understanding of social conventions, and of why people do the things they do, would tend to write characters with personalities and traits much like their own, simply because it's all they fully know. It's difficult to get into other people's heads, and easier to stay in one's own. Perhaps it's more like writing about characters doing things as if you're watching them? And since your own head is the one you know best, you write from that perspective, therefore the characters' thoughts and reactions resemble your own.

But I don't seem to be in that particular situation. I HATE being in my own head. Instead I put myself in the heads of characters who are HUGELY different from me--I don't watch the characters doing things and then describe them, I BECOME the characters doing those things, even if they're things I would never do and things I sometimes don't even really understand. For example one of my favorite current characters is a sociopath, often charming but also really rude and with no conscience or tact, foulmouthed and vulgar, drug addicted, sexually promiscuous, plus he's a contract killer...in short, the polar opposite of me. But I adore writing him because he's just so very different from what I know (though I'd loathe him if I ran into him in reality). In fact, the bad guys usually seem to be the most interesting characters to write, just because they're so vastly removed from my personal experience.

--digression--
I might have developed this trait/ability (leaving my own head and putting myself in characters' heads) due to my habit of near-constantly daydreaming and roleplaying my characters in my imagination...I might be taking a walk down the road to take pictures of trees, but in my imagination, perhaps I'm being chased by bad guys, or am on a search with a police officer, etc. etc. I daydream even in my actual dreams.
--end digression--

Alternately, even though I'm starting to recognize Aspie traits in myself, it seems to be virtually absent in my characters. I've actually tried to come up with a character who is definitely Aspie and it's proving to be difficult not to turn him into a caricature--very weird. But then again, I have VERY few characters who are largely like me...I do have a few who have possible social anxiety and insecurity/low self-esteem issues, but nowhere near like my problems.

Tl;dr--I never write characters who are drawn from my own personal life experience, because IMO they'd make horribly boring characters. I've never even written a Mary Sue. I honestly feel I could NOT write a character if they were too closely based on/resembled me. They wouldn't be rounded; they'd be a caricature. It's like if a character is TOO CLOSE to what I know or have experienced, it's too uncomfortable for me to write them. I have to remove myself from myself to write effectively.

Oh, here's something I just realized. For the most part, I have lots of difficulty putting myself in the heads of OTHER people's characters. One reason I don't do fanfiction (or collaborations, even if somebody were willing). I can empathize in the reading, but not in the writing. So there's my possible deficit in writing convincing characters--they have to be my own characters. I also cannot write convincing characters right on the spot; I have to have spent some time in their head first. (Therefore, I write only in series/related stories and am no good with one-shots/standalones. )


...BUT, seeing as nobody reads my stuff, maybe I'm completely wrong about all of this and I really do suck at getting in other people's heads and writing decent characters; who knows. I'm blithering now so I'll shut up.

Anyway, back on topic...has anyone yet mentioned Brick Heck from The Middle?

I used to think he had OCD (diagnosed, myself). But on thinking about it longer...his social and physical awkwardness, his utter cluelessness about when and why his actions have infuriated or frustrated others, his tendency to always be lost in his own little world, his forgetfulness and lack of attention toward things he's not interested in, his general lack of friends, his tendency to be more interested in books than in people, his odd behavioral traits (such as repeating the last word of something he's just said in a whisper, and occasionally crying, "Whoop!"), and his weirdly obsessive interests (just look at how excited he gets about fonts)...all just seem to scream "Asperger's" to me.

*Googles him*

Looks like I'm not far off.

"...Brick Heck, youngest of Mike and Frankie's children, loves to read and has a habit of repeating words from his previous sentence to himself in a whisper. In season 1 episode 5, it is revealed that he possesses an eidetic memory. He is smarter than most teenagers, having read Of Mice and Men, a book his elder brother is struggling with at the same time. He also loves the "Planet Nowhere" series, and the real-life Percy Jackson & the Olympians. He has referred to Diary of a Wimpy Kid as "the book that changed my life." He is exceptionally intelligent but easily distracted, leading him to procrastinate on doing his homework assignments and projects (it is loosely implied that he may perhaps have Asperger's syndrome). Brick is a known gephyrophobiac, and is fascinated with fonts. Due to his awkwardness, he struggles to make friends. In Season 2, he befriends an equally awkward boy named Arlo, whom Brick himself struggles to deal with."
--The Middle (TV Series)

Just like the previous poster, I want to apologize for hijacking this thread. Disregard this post if you don't want to read off-topic discussion.

That makes sense. I agree with you that writing about myself would be really boring. None of my characters are supposed to be autistic, and it is important that people identify with them when they read the story. The story I'm doing right now has two main characters, and I guess they are both like me to some extent. One is a young boy about 12 years old; he is pragmatic and logical, analytical and not prone to emotional outbursts, just like me. He's supposed to be a pretty normal kid, though, not weird or autistic. But he's smart and he thinks things through.
The other main character is older, about 18 - 22, but he's much more emotional and also much more naïve than the boy. He is supposed to be pretty normal, too, but he doesn't think things through like the boy does. He tends to overreact and to make mistakes because he's too passionate; but he's very loyal and has a very clear idea of right and wrong. For him, right and wrong are black and white with no grey area. That's like me, too. I can be naïve and I often see right and wrong as black and white. What's fun is that my two main characters are from separate worlds, so they can have conversations about things they don't understand. The boy is from our world, so he can explain things about it from his limited point of view (like sex and making babies), which makes for some fun skewering of the oddities of humanity.
I have a bad guy who turns good eventually; I love to write him because he is much older, very mature and very calm, patient and calculating. He's a soldier and a remorseless killer. He is on the side of evil now because he sees the logic in it and its potential for success. He will turn good when he sees the leaders he placed faith in fall, when he sees what deplorable things they've done in order to win, and when he realizes that it isn't logical to follow them anymore.
But my real villain is the hardest character I've ever had to write. She's a queen who took the throne by devious means when she didn't deserve it. She's a religious fanatic who worships a demon god who she is trying to free and bring back to life (sort of) so she can gain more power. Power is all she really cares about; she wants more and more of it, and she's never satisfied. The demon she worships is the demon of gluttony and insatiable hunger to satisfy base desires, so the queen is sort of a smaller reflection of that. She is really hard to write convincingly because she is so unlike me. She's a woman, and girls are always harder for me. She is devious and underhanded, and I am open and straightforward. She craves power, and power is something I very much do not want. I find it almost impossible to come up with things for her to say or do that don't make her look like a caricature of a religious nutjob. She has to be more than that; crazy, yes, but also smart and calculating and formidable, otherwise she won't be believable as actually being dangerous, she'll just look silly. That's not how I want her to appear.
I'll have to spend some time trying to get into her head... maybe that will help me write her better. But I fear that is a talent I don't have.

(I refer anyone reading this to my previous disclaimer regarding me going offtopic. )

Ah, now see, I am starting to get amped up, because this is a topic of interest.

First off, I LOVE writing scenes where the characters are from two completely different worlds/societies and are trying to explain things to each other, or else are fumbling through their differences and misunderstandings; so much potential for interesting interactions.

Secondly, I fully understand what you mean about characters being easier to write if they share certain traits in common with the author; I'm willing to bet most of my characters have particular traits of mine, just not my entire personality. (As I said, I would be way too boring as a character inspiration. ;_; ) Some of the most fun I have writing characters, for example, is when they have emotional meltdowns...well, guess who else has frequent emotional meltdowns. So even though the character might be my polar opposite (such as the guy I described earlier), bits and pieces of my own personality make them seem more familiar and easier to write.

Every so often I come across a character whose head I just can't seem to get into for some reason...my guess is something about their character isn't fully developed yet. Result, I never warm to them and I always struggle to figure out their motivations or what they will do/say. Somewhat different from your situation, though the solution seems to be the same, you just have to spend more time getting to know them as a fully rounded person and not just a set of traits.

There was a book I wanted to recommend, though it seems to be out of print. Here's a link to it anyway just so you can see what it's like:

What Would Your Character Do?

Basically, there are fictional scenarios, some everyday things, some more dramatic things, and you place your character in the middle of those situations and try to imagine how they would react. Things such as, your character has to serve on a jury, or your character is going out to lunch but their friend is late, or somebody has picked a fight with your character--will they fight back, try to reason with the other person, or flee?--things like that. (Those aren't real examples from the book as I don't have it on me, but it's along those lines.) It shouldn't be too hard to come up with one's own scenarios to put a character in and test them to see how they would react; since your story seems more along the lines of fantasy, more fantastic scenarios would work better.

It has to move beyond simply answering the questions, though, and into really trying to put yourself in the character's place. Which is easy for me to say since I've been doing that my entire life and can't even stop , though I do realize how difficult it can be for certain characters, as I mentioned above.

It sounds weird, but I would recommend daydreaming or mentally roleplaying such scenarios while you're busy doing things that don't require all your attention. It might feel silly at first, but you also might start to learn more about certain characters that way. (Music can help with this.)

Plus, try to see if there are any positive attributes to really over-the-top bad characters, and negative attributes to really over-the-top good characters (I think you've already got a handle on this with your bad guy who reforms himself), since that helps keep them from becoming too unrealistic. Maybe, even if a character seems completely different from you, you can find similarities in how you both react, just different in terms of the situation/intensity (to use the example of your villainess, is there anything about which you might get fanatical?--perhaps you don't want power, but is there anything else you want as desperately as she wants that?). And it always helps to keep asking, WHY? (WHY did this character take the path she took, WHY does she want endless power, WHY has she become so fanatical, etc. etc.) Figuring out the "why" can keep a character from becoming a caricature as well. Everyone has their reasons for doing things, even if we don't understand them.

...

Keep in mind I'm not published and am not some sort of expert, so this is all just my own attempt at assistance, and it might all be utterly worthless for your own situation. Though even if I haven't managed to help, I do get where you're coming from. (Still can't figure out certain characters of mine! )

That is a fantastic idea, and one I shall try. Hmm...if my villainess were to serve on jury duty.... She would sit quietly as a juror, taking in all the information she could about every player in the scenario: the judge, the accused, the prosecuting and defending attorneys. She wouldn't care whether the accused were guilty or innocent, only whether they were a threat to her. If they are a threat, she will see they get put away and then have someone on the inside kill them. If they are no threat, she will disregard their fate entirely. She will calculate whether the judge or one of the attorneys is more likely to hold the most influential power, and then she will orchestrate a series of events that puts her in close contact with them. She will ride their coattails to greater power until they become of no more use, and then she will cut their throat (either figuratively or literally) and assume their position. She doesn't hesitate to step on the people who are below her unless they are useful to her.

I definitely struggle with making my good guys TOO good, I'll have to watch out for that. I compensate a little by giving them other faults, like the guy who is too emotional and does things without thinking. It gets him into trouble, but it isn't really a BAD thing. It's like cutting sweet with savory instead of bitter. It isn't really opposite, but different.

I haven't seen any purely Aspie characters.

Alan Partridge comes pretty close at times, but he has no empathy and no problem with deception.

Monk. He's supposed to be mainly OCD, but they seem to throw in a lot of Aspie traits as well. He doesn't seem to get social conventions at all, and when he tries to copy NT style and humour, he fails. Welded to routine.

Chloe from "24" seems very Aspie though. Highly intelligent computer geek, socially awkward, inappropriate facial expressions, blunt, doesn't schmooze.

Jonathan Creek. Rather monotone voice, brilliant at magic but prefers to work in peace in the background for a famous magician. Lives reclusively in a windmill, bluntly tells a woman that she's sexually interested in him and gets yelled at for being so infuriatingly honest.

Sondra Locke's character Laura Lee in The Outlaw Josey Wales seems rather autistic and at first is completely nonverbal. At one point, another character refers to her as someone's "strange" daughter.

I can think of three

Shu from Guilty Crown: it has been 3+ years since I last saw the series, so my memory is hazy and I can't provide much in the way of specific example; but one of the things the really stuck with me was how he had trouble looking people in the eye, and someone suggested they look at their cheeks instead (so it looks like he is looking at their eyes when he isn't; advise that I received word-for-word when I was going through aspergers-aimed behavioral therapy as a child).

Shinichi (post "revival") from Parasyte: -the maxim- (a series which I highly suspect is an analogy of the struggles those with Aspergers/HFA have in this NT society): He finds it hard to connect to others or understand his own feelings; he is prone to suddenly explosions of anger, but is aloof and distant the rest of the time

Hachiman Hikigaya from My Youth Romantic Comedy is Wrong, As I Expected: a character who after a life of social failure after social failure is extremely jaded and cynical. He's come off as an insensitive jerk, but he is incredibly analytical and brilliant, and he has no reservation in performing self-sacrificing actions to arrive at the "ideal" situation. But he fails to consider how others feel, hurting those closest to him time and time again. One character, in tears, told him "You should give more thought to how other people feel! How is it that you understand so much, but don't understand that?! I can't stand that."

Tech creator in the tv series "Alias" Marshall Flinkman, maybe but maybe not.

He's the customary geek-genius, who acts a bit eccentric, but as I thought of the entirety of his character, he seems to have levels of expressed emotion and connect with others in ways that are not what I think of as being spectrum characteristics.

In some ways he seems autistic, others not:
https://youtu.be/Tnn7zLFSFf4
https://youtu.be/KQAC7cjlVQ4

DeeDee from Dexter's Lab- Dexter's older ditzy sister. Very wierd clumsy ways of waling of moving. She has imaginary friends she made up (like a dinosaur who make burritos), frequently goes to her imaginary world and does not know how to act in the society of the real world. Her imaginary world is Koosland and lives the world in an imaginary way as if she was a little girl (she is 14 years old). Very immature and has wierd views on life. Very good with and obsessed with ballerina. Some people say that DeeDee has ADHD instead. But in my opinion, DeeDee looks like she has Autism/Aspergers.

Why is it that every non-verbal character here is thought to be an aspie? Tom and Jerry almost never talked (until that stupid movie came out), the Pink Panther rarely spoke in the old cartoons (he did in a couple, but he sounded like the suave character he was supposed to be, rather than the stupid voice Matt Frewer gave him in the newer cartoons). Kirby only says more than a word or two, like "Hiiiii!", but I heard he's supposed to technically still be a baby, which may also explain his seeming lack of moral sense when he devours numerous creatures whole.

I have a tendency to talk *too* much. And post too much, too.