New to the ImageGen community. Confused on what model i should dedicate for my image generation and fine tuning.

r/StableDiffusion
Machine Learning Generative AI AI Research

I am wanting to run a local image generation model on a dataset that i have curated for fine tuning. i want to make story consistent images with reoccuring characters. i am stuck on the many models right now i have widdled it down to SDXL, illustrious, pony, noobAI (i have read about FLUX2 but i dont have the hardware to run that beast of a model