Revisiting the First Blog Post I've Ever Made

This is the last blog post I'm ever making as a high schooler. That's right, I'm graduating tomorrow and moving on with the next stage of my life. Since this is such a big event in my life, I wanted to do something on this blog to cap off this chapter, but I wasn't sure how to. I thought about reminiscing about songs I loved during my high school career, but then I realized I'd be talking about songs I've already talked about a thousand times. So I thought it would be fun to reminisce about how I've changed as a person and a writer.

I first started blogging at the end of sixth grade, when my friends and I made a blog called The Brick Wall. We would always say random, funny things at lunch, and then at some point, we decided to publish them on the Internet. In hindsight, I think all of us can admit that everything on that blog was embarrassing in some way. I'm still glad that I had the experience. You can't improve unless you start somewhere, no matter how embarrassing that starting point is. Today, I want to react to my first post on the Brick Wall. Funny thing is I already made a similar post in 2015, after I had been on the Brick Wall for a year. The goal is to see all the ways I have changed since 2014. Think of this as being like how Vanity Fair has done the same interview with Billie Eilish for three years now.

Hello, you've reached Music Mondays! I'm not_luna_lovegood, and I'll be here to tell you all about music and stuff during the month of June! When June is over, I'll be moving to Travel Tuesdays and Banana_Elephant will be doing Music Mondays! Since this is my first entry on the blog, I thought I would take some time to introduce myself to y'all!

Okay, so let's preface this by explaining the "days." I had five friends writing on the blog, so we split up duties by assigning everyone a topic for a month and developing a cycle. On Monday, we talked about music, on Tuesday, we talked about traveling, on Wednesday, we talked about whatever we felt like talking about, on Thursday, we did Throwback Thursday, and Fridays, we talked about...cringe...fandoms. We were middle schoolers going through a Harry Potter/Hunger Games/Percy Jackson phase, so we made Friday "Fandom Friday" as an excuse for us to gush about how much we loved those books. I started out with Music Mondays because I wanted to. I have always loved talking about music, and unsurprisingly, that's still what I talk about mostly on here.

First of all, I am NOT the character Luna Lovegood from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, nor do I know her at all. But I can assure you that if I did know her, we would totally be BFFs! Just wanted to get that out there, haha. I don't know how I came up with my username, I was just sitting there in health class and it just came to me.

I initially chose not_luna_lovegood as my screen name because I was such a hardcore Harry Potter fan back then. Luna Lovegood was my favorite character because I loved how unabashedly odd she was. I thought the name "not_luna_lovegood" was incredibly clever at the time, but it's just embarrassing now. My current screen name of Stellar fits my personality a lot more. Stellar is just a random, nice-sounding word. Stellar can talk about anything and it can be believable, whereas not_luna_lovegood is pigeonholed into only talking about Harry Potter. I'm glad I changed my name.

I also feel like my writing style back then was pretty embarrassing. Using abbreviations like "BFF" and writing out "haha" isn't dignified. I also used a lot of frivolous sentences, like "Just wanted to get that out there."

So anyway, I'm gonna list some random facts about me in an attempt to introduce myself.

"Ok, so anyway..." I hate when people talk like that.

1. I am a die-hard Harry Potter fan. Mention Harry Potter around me and I will start screaming and fangirling because I love it so much. #potterheadandproud

Oh god, the word "fangirl" will never not fill me with rage. The concept of girls being fans of things and freaking out about those things isn't bad. Every girl, screw that, every person, regardless of gender, should find something to be passionate about. It's just that single evil word. I'm going to use this word a lot, but it's very cringe-worthy. But then again, I make a ton of references to "stanning" in my daily life, and I'm sure I'll probably look back on the concept of stanning in a similar light. 

As for Harry Potter, I have a...complicated relationship with it. I'm always going to have some respect for it. After all, it helped me connect to many of my friends in middle school. The story itself is great as well. It's just that JK Rowling sort of rubs me the wrong way. It's been over a decade since Harry Potter was released, but JK Rowling loves retconning. She loves thinking she's socially aware by tweeting that certain characters were actually minorities. She just decides that, long after the series was over, that so-and-so is gay or so-and-so is Jewish. It rubs me the wrong way because it just seems like she wants to be seen as progressive. But it's not progressive, instead it's disingenuous. If you really want your characters to be diverse, write them as diverse! This probably sounds pretty confusing, so this quote from "The Problem With J.K. Rowling Making Things Canon Retroactively" by Emma Oulton for Bustle does a great job explaining the problem:

The truth is: Harry Potter was set in a straight, white world. J.K. Rowling has since proved herself to be a big promoter of diversity and tolerance, but by retroactively adding diversity to the Harry Potter canon, she's undermining her own message. Instead of reassuring us that people of color were present at Hogwarts behind the scenes, I'd like to see Rowling acknowledge that Hogwarts in the '90s was pretty whitewashed — and that she can do better.

Long story short: Do I still like Harry Potter? Yes. But contrary to what I thought back then, it's not perfect. I certainly wouldn't call myself a hashtag-"Potterhead" because I can't help but feel like hashtags are sort of dated. I occasionally use them ironically, but that's not what this was. This was dead serious.

2. I love music! I play clarinet in school band, piano, and I'm going to learn guitar this summer. My favorite genre of music is pop, which is what we talk about on Music Mondays.

I think the part of this that I most regret is saying that we only talked about pop music on the blog. That was not the case at all. My friends often wrote about other music-related things on there. For example, Chuckles made a particularly interesting post about the Native American flute, and Banana_Elephant talked about her favorite songs from TV shows. (She mentioned the Pokémon theme as one of those favorites, hell yeah.)

Also, the only instruments I can really play are clarinet and bass clarinet, the latter of which I started playing in sophomore year. The bass clarinet doesn't require a different skillset from the soprano clarinet, it's just bigger and lower. I took piano lessons in elementary school, but I don't remember much from there. I can't read bass clef at all. I have a good ear, so I can teach myself little melodies, but I'm not much of a pianist. As for guitar, I barely even tried. I have a guitar and I took lessons in summer school, but I didn't have any interest in practicing. I would like to learn ukulele, though. It's like a guitar, but smaller and cuter. 

3. I refuse to answer any and all personal questions (my real name, age, address, school, etc.) and comments (I think I know you, I know what your personal Instagram is, etc.). I'm terrified of stalkers. Don't even bother posting personal questions and/or comments because they won't show up.

I don't think I have to worry about stalkers because nobody really reads this blog except for when I make my friends do it. I still won't get too personal, because there is a lot of stuff about me that I just don't want out in the open Internet. Besides, I don't feel like mentioning my address or school or anything will really affect what I write about. I'm not freaked out about mentioning my age, though. I'm eighteen, just about to graduate high school.

4. The idea for the Brick Wall first started about a month or two ago, but it wasn't until about a week ago that the idea became a reality. We were just talking at lunch and saying the randomest things when we thought, "Hey, why don't we start a blog about us saying random things?" And finally, after waiting for around a month, Quidditch_Turtle finally started the blog!

I don't think the Brick Wall really consisted of us saying "random" things. And I'm glad for that. The things we were saying were disjointed, quote-unquote "funny" things that really didn't have anything to do with each other. As embarrassing as we could get on our blog, at least our posts were always some level of coherent instead of us screaming "HEY I HAD A DREAM ABOUT HARRY POTTER AND HERMIONE RIDING UNICORNS IN OUTER SPACE!" or whatever. Yeah, we were in that phase where we thought randomness was the peak of humor. It's embarrassing and I regret it.

5. We came up with the name "The Brick Wall" because of the brick wall near the table we sit at in our school cafeteria. One of the bricks has a piece of masking tape that says "Brick" taped on it. And that's sort of how we came up with the name.

Looking back, I don't think "The Brick Wall" was a very good name. It was just a reference to some dumb inside joke. But more than that, it was just dull. It also wasn't original and makes it hard to Google us. When you Google "The Brick Wall," you just get a bunch of Lego-related stuff. At least Stellar in Neverland is easy to find on Google.

6. I'm not just a grammar Nazi, I consider myself Grammar Hitler. Seriously! Use the wrong "there" in a sentence (We saw the train sitting their as opposed to We saw the train sitting there) or something like that and I will start raging madly.

This was just...extremely wrong and I regret it. No matter the context, it was wrong for me to compare myself to a man who was responsible for at least 11 million wrongful deaths. I'm still a bit of a stickler for bad grammar, but I don't refer to myself as a grammar Nazi. It's in poor taste. I typically use "grammar police," because as cheesy as it sounds, it's not making light of the Holocaust.

7. I love to read and write. Besides Harry Potter, my favorite series are Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Divergent, and The Hunger Games. Right now, I'm writing a story and I'm not really sure how to explain what it's about. I might publish it on another website when it's done.

I already talked about my gripes with Harry Potter, but I also have complaints about all the other books I mentioned, Divergent especially. The premise is just dumb. You can only be one thing: smart, brave, kind, selfless, or honest, and if you’re more than one, you’re as good as dead. I’ve never met one person who is only one of those. And they expect people to be completely fearless or honest all the time or whatever. It makes no sense. With The Hunger Games, I just think it's overrated. It's not terrible, and I did really like the first two books. But from what I remember, Mockingjay was a slog to get through. As for Percy Jackson, I actually have no complaints about the books. It's probably my favorite series of all time, with fantastic worldbuilding and references to Greek mythology, and a blend of serious moments with lighthearted moments that reminds me of Avatar: The Last Airbender more than anything. My only complaints are that the movies were terrible, but there's a Disney Plus series in development, which I have high hopes for. The author of the series, Rick Riordan, is going to be heavily involved, and I know he won't let me down, especially since he's the biggest critic of the movies out there.

As for that story I was talking about myself writing, I think it was about these three girls getting trapped in a hotel or something, and then they met this girl who pretended to be Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter. (I had a one-track mind.) It was inspired by a dream I had in middle school, and I haven't written on it for at least five years. It's dead. As for what I am writing, I'm writing this young adult romance inspired by a terrible experience I had at the homecoming dance my junior year. I'm proud of it because it deals with anxiety and getting over it, but mostly because I'm in love with the guy I created for it. I gave him every trait I could ever want in a man. Too bad he won't be real.

8. I'm a big fan of Disney movies. I love them all, but I'd say my favorite is Finding Nemo (which is actually made by Pixar but I count it as a Disney movie). Finding Nemo is my favorite movie of all time!

Finding Nemo isn't even my favorite Pixar movie. It's Inside Out. I made a list of my favorite movies a few years ago (link here). A few opinions have changed since then (at some point, I'd like to make an additional top ten list of movies I missed the first time), but I'm still proud of it. Also, I'm slightly irritated that I didn't italicize my titles back then. 

9. My favorite color is blue because if I were a student at Hogwarts (school in the Harry Potter series, in case you didn't know that, but you probably do) I would be in Ravenclaw House, and if I were in one of the factions from the Divergent series, I would be in Erudite. Coincidentally, both Ravenclaw and Erudite have blue for their representing color!

Oh god, enough with the fandoms. I was in a phase where I thought liking Harry Potter and The Hunger Games was a valid personality trait. I did get past that, but I moved to the phase where I thought liking Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco was a valid personality trait two years later. And I guess it is technically a "valid personality trait," I just thought it was valid for my love of those things to be the only trait I had. When Fall Out Boy said "You are what you love, not who loves you," I took that way too literally. It's great to be passionate about the things you love, but that can't be your only personality trait. There are many things I'm a fan of, like Pokémon, Ariana Grande, 80s movies, and more recently, kpop, but I'm not solely defined by my love of any of those things. I'm a creative, passionate, honest, and loyal person who will fight for the things she believes in at any risk. I believe in equality for all and I stick to my principles no matter what. I love expressing myself creatively, mostly by writing. I've been through some serious shit, but I've come out swinging. Doesn't that say so much more about me than "I like this book" or "I like this singer"?

Oh right, we were supposed to be talking about colors. Yeah, I truly don't know what my favorite color is. I like certain shades of every color, but I don't have a definitive favorite color. I guess it would maybe be purple? 

10. I would love to be a famous singer, but I sound like a dying cow when I sing, so that will never happen!

I swear, it's a Shakespearean tragedy; the girl who would love to sing, but can't. I'd love to be able to effortlessly hit high notes and belt it out with the best of them, but I can't.  I think this lack of talent is why I tend to appreciate good singers more than anything. More than any cool beat or witty lyric, a great singer is what I notice in a song. If you can sing, I'll like your song at least a little bit, probably. 

So that’s just a little bit about me. I hope you enjoy our blog!

I feel like this is kind of a rushed way to end things, and I don't like it. It's the same "so anyways blah blah blah" dialect I already complained about. And yet, I can't come up with a good way to end this post. Conclusions have never been my forte.

I guess, summer's starting again, so I'll be able to devote even more time to this blog. Of course, I'm getting ready to go to college in the fall, so I'll be spending a lot of my summer doing that. But I won't have any major vacations (my family was going to go to Disney World, but Miss Rona decided otherwise), so I should have a consistent schedule this summer, unless something out of my control happens. I also feel like I've really found an enjoyment in writing my blog that I haven't had since I first started. I'm looking forward to this next chapter of my life and my blog.

Stellar