Readers of this blog will know that my interest in Korea—and eventually BTS—didn’t arrive all at once. It emerged slowly, as part of a broader cultural curiosity.

Like many people, I was initially drawn to the members whose appeal was easiest to recognize: confidence, charm, visible success. Over time, though, one figure registered more quietly. Jin. Not because of bravado, but because of friction.

The group itself mirrored dynamics I recognized from my own life—friendships where I was present but never seamless, where something essential about me failed to translate. Jin’s early solo work, especially “Awake” and later “Epiphany”, articulated a feeling I hadn’t yet learned how to name: the desire to be known, and the deeper desire to be known for one’s heart rather than one’s performance. His circumstances differ from mine in obvious ways, but the emotional logic felt familiar long before I could explain it.

I’ve always sensed that I process the world differently—from classmates, from characters I admired, even from the public figures I projected onto. Last year, I finally sought a neurodiversity assessment and confirmed what I had long suspected. I don’t experience diagnosis as revelation or destiny. I think of it as context.

Labels, for me, are tools. They allow for patience. For care. Occasionally, for courage. I’m less interested in identity than in orientation—in understanding how I move through the world without flattening myself in the process. If anything, I want to use this knowledge outwardly, the way Jin reframed his experience of being the “least talented” member into something quietly sustaining for others. I have abilities I’m only now learning how to value without apology. Joy, lately, feels less performative and more necessary.

When I look back at the stories that have stayed with me, I can trace how my self-understanding has changed. In FernGully, I’ve always felt like Crysta on the inside—animated, earnest, alive—while the world often seemed to read me as Batty: chaotic, excessive, difficult to categorize, met with confusion when what it saw didn’t match expectation.

Nimona marks a later shift. The loss of naïve trust. The recognition that the world is harsher than I once believed. And still, a refusal to stop transforming—not to become palatable, but to remain a counterpoint.

Then there’s The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which unsettled me for a different reason. I didn’t recognize myself in Haruhi, but in everyone orbiting her. I was the architect rather than the god—unconsciously shaping conditions, stories, even versions of myself to be noticed, valued, kept. What made me resilient also made me vulnerable. Power, I learned, is never one-sided.

My blog is a mishmash by design. It reflects a seriousness about ideas and intellectual exchange, but it’s also a place where I allow myself to be singular. Curious. Idiosyncratic. Contradictory. Neurodivergence is one thread in that weave, not the pattern itself.

I am a whole person—layered, shaped by experience, still very much in motion. I’m less interested now in winning arguments than in laying ideas out carefully. Not because I’ve lost conviction, but because I’ve gained steadiness. The trust I place in people, in their ability to arrive at what they need in time, is no longer ornamental. It’s becoming structural.

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Images by Charles Deluvio + Austin.