When did you feel 'seen' by a piece of media?

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mostly about autism, but can be about any life experience.

for me, just one time was when I was playing Doki Doki Literature Club Plus, and a character (Yuri) had a meltdown. (She already shows a lot of autistic traits but nothing is confirmed as far as I'm aware). The thing that got me was that she had a meltdown in the exact same way I do!- pressing fists to forehead and despairing echolalia

how about you all?

Lucy Snowe in Villette.

That has never happened for me with any character, on film or in a book or anywhere. I've enjoyed many characters and even related to some of them in the sense that I felt I understood something about them, but I have never seen a character that I identified with.

I recognised myself in Doc Martin when he was supposed to do a school prize distribution. He wanted to get back to his patients so he cut out all the timewasting ceremonial stuff and did the whole prize distribution in a couple of minutes, which rather annoyed the audience. I wouldn't dare to do that myself, but not so many years ago I might have, as I used to think that anybody with half a brain would surely know that ceremonies achieve nothing and that healing the sick is much more important.

Any stories about perennial outcasts seeking (and better yet, finding) some form of redemption resonate with me deeply.

The korean version of The Good Doctor. Only time I've thought someone was a bit like me. The american version of The Good Doctor is in my opinion, rubbish and I don't identify with it at all.

There's an episode of the show High Maintenance called "Trick" that features a budding romance between an asexual man who, IIRC, is autistic-coded, and an allosexual woman. It was the first time I'd seen such a natural, nonjudgmental, and sweet portrayal of that dynamic, and the first time media inspired a real sense of hope for me as a greysexual autist.

Some Blues Clues segment when they were talking about the alphabet and for the letter P, the word was pride. They had the letter P in the colors and designs of different LGBTQ+ flags and one of them was the asexual flag. Discovered it through some conservative groups complaining about it.

I never did. Ever.

Anyone can point, but those are just superficial stuff. Barely anything deep.

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I never have. But in all fairness, I don't own a tv or watch many things, so I miss a lot. Still, I tend to feel out of place even among autistic people. I'm not sure anyone out there in tv/movie/whatever land would be someone I can view and think, wow, that resonates. But who knows. Not me.

Anthe only character that comes to mind is Strelitzia from KHUx. for a very specific reason. in the story, she kind of observes the player from afar, and wishes she had the courage to speak to them and befriend them. (spoiler alert: she never does because well... if you know you know). I've been in that exact situation many times before, and I thought I was just a weirdo. but this random, obscure character who barely got any screentime from the most overlooked game in a well-known franchise does it too? wow, maybe I'm not alone. anyways, she's one of my favorite fictional characters of all time now (if you couldn't tell that’s where part of my name comes from) and I'm so excited for her to return in KH4 (side note: if she doesn’t end up getting some sort of happy ending I will literally cry and sue Square Enix /j)

Nico from the Percy Jackson series.

I though the 'Joker' movie of 2019 hit a nerve with the themes of being socially alienated and bullied by society.

Maybe not with the killing and the violence though.

For me it's the television show "Mr robot"

A lot of the show features the inner dialogue of a man who has SOCIAL ANXIETY DISORER, amongst other things, but I won't spoil that here
A lot of what he thinks resonates with me, someone who observes society from an outside point of view, he displays a cynical attitude about society and its flaws. But at the same time goes to great length to feel connected to his peers.

At one stage he was crying due to lonliness and he thought "what do normal people do when they get this sad?" That really touched a nerve, to think about yourself as abnormal and crying is not the normal reaction to being sad.

I very rarely see anxiety portrayed this accurately, the writing and the acting of this show is spot on.

Probably the X Men? I seem to have so many strange powers that other people don't e.g. cooling a room. If I get too annoyed, the whole room goes cold and people start staring at me.

I think I would have to pick traits from multiple characters to describe myself from fictional autistic characters.

Doc Martin: people skills
Harrison (As We See It): Social anxiety, but not the general anxiety.
Sam (Atypical): executive function