9-11: Fourteen Years Later

Some things never leave you. Some nightmares are never forgotten.
Fourteen years can pass, and with the whisper of two numbers, you’re transported right back to that moment in time, that instant when you heard the news and your entire life changed.
I consider myself lucky. I live on the West Coast. The events that transpired on 9-11 were a continent away. Many news blurbs of East Coast issues are things I can tune out. It doesn’t affect me or anyone I know.
This time was different. It affected us all. It didn’t matter where in America you lived. We all felt anger, fear, shock, disbelief. Many of us knew at least one person in New York City. Some of us have family there, or friends who work in the Big Apple. My sister happened to be on the phone for an insurance claim with a man in one of the Twin Towers. Their connection was instantly cut off as the first plane slammed into his floor. She’s still haunted by the fact that hers was the last voice that man heard.
9/11/2001 is a surreal day to me. I don’t even remember most of it anymore. Even as it was happening, it was like a dream. Now, the details have faded with time. What will never fade, what I can never forget, is the moment I heard the news.
I was at college for some extra math lessons (my worst subject) and it seemed like far too many people were crowding around the computers. Something about President Bush, New York … like I cared about that stuff. Politics wasn’t my thing. So I studied, I did the supplemental assignments, and I left the math building. I paused at the top of the swooping staircase leading to the campus commons and pulled out my bulky cellphone to call my boyfriend, who lived near campus. I was hoping we could meet for lunch before the rest of our classes. In general, it was a normal Tuesday.
I was halfway down the stairs when his voice came on, high and panicked. “They’ve flown planes into the World Trade Center! The Pentagon’s been hit, too. They think there are planes going to crash into other places. It’s World War Three!”
I came to a dead halt, right there on the stairs. I honestly thought he was telling me the worst joke in the world, and I told him so.
This was something out of Hollywood: Wrong is Right: two suitcase bombs; Born in Flames: a bomb is set off at the top of the north tower; Shakedown: an almost prophetic plane heading straight for the Twin Towers; Independence Day blew up most American iconic buildings including these; Armageddon shows both towers damaged and in flames; the Iron Man 90s cartoon had the World Trade Center hit with missiles and then enemy plans to fly a fighter into the Pentagon (creepy); The Lone Gunmen had probably the most creepiest prediction where the heroes thwart a plan by the U.S. to fly a jet into the World Trade Center so they can blame a dictator and start a war. What ups the creep factor? It was released merely six months before the attacks occurred!
So seriously, Americans had seen Hollywood blow up the Wold Trade Center—or try to—so many times, it was practically cliché!
The Pentagon was another matter. That place is a fortress. Who the hell would dream of flying a plane into it? I kept thinking that. The World Trade Center, cliché, but … the Pentagon! That was a loud and clear declaration of war.
Still panicking in a voice I had never heard before in him, my boyfriend insisted on picked me up from campus, since the news was warning about potential suicide bombers on buses and trains. Classes were probably canceled, or if not, not a single one of my professors gave us a mark for missing that day, or the next.
The rest of the day and weeks to follow are a blur of wild speculation, frantic warnings of more to come, talks of war, retaliation against a bogeyman we had not yet identified, candlelight memorials, patriotic hymns, and the news filled with images that have now become iconic. Every car was suddenly adorned with window flags. They passed these out at the college, a way to unite us as a country and lift our bleak spirits through patriotism. There were also black arm bands with the American flag on them to honor and mourn the dead. I still have mine. We wanted to unite behind a cause of justice, but at the same time, we had no clue yet who did this.
Realize, we did not know many things then that we do now. Most Americans were blissfully unaware that a handful of radical Muslims had any problems at all with us. Words like jihad were unknown to the general public. Most Americans would not have been able to point out Pakistan on a map. Al-Qaeda? Bin Laden? No one had heard of him or his group. For that matter, it took a long time, what felt like an eternity, to even know who did this.
We were a nation filled with fury and no one to blame.
When at last we heard who planned this tragedy, there was outrage. In the months to follow, things got dark. Racism abound. My brother had problems because his Native American skin-tone combined with a nose he broke at a kid gave him what many thought was an “Arabic” appearance. He worked in a jail, where he received death threats out of the assumption that he was Middle Eastern. Muslim students at college were harassed. One professor in my college pointed at a female Muslim student and shrieked at her, “YOU did this!” (That professor was later fired.)
Then came the flipside. The media stopped lumping all Muslims, Arabs, Pakistanis, and Middle Easterners in general into one big umbrella of TERRORISM. We learned about different factions in Islam. People became intrigued with this religion that was like something out of a fairy tale to the average American. Islamic groups handed out free Qurans. (I took one because I was curious.) Muslim groups prayed in the central commons on my campus to show, “Hey, we’re here, we’re Americans, we’re no different from you, just a different religion.” Wearing a headscarf was briefly trendy as people tried to make up for all the ugliness we had displayed.
Needless to say, it was not an easy aftermath. To this day, even though we know more about Islam and the Middle East in general, America hasn’t fully let go of the pain, hatred and distrust. You’ll still hear from time to time a snide remark of “She looks like a terrorist” directed at a woman in a burka. If you even appear to be Middle Eastern and you’re going to the airport, you assuredly will be pulled aside and searched.
9/11 left a deep scar, more than just buildings. It shook America up. It came as a shock to many to discover that there were people out there who hated us for no other reason than we were American. We realized we could be vulnerable on our own soil, something we rarely experienced in the history of our country. In a way, we lost out innocence that day. We were blissfully unaware of so much.
Life for many of us became polarized: Before 9/11, After 9/11.
Time is slow to heal the soul of an entire country. Those two numbers still cause my heart to burn and my eyes to unfocus as I remember the dread and uncertainty of back then, never knowing if those burning towers and smoldering Pentagon and downed plane were merely a prelude to something much, much worse.
It is not easy to unlearn hatred and anger if you watched those events happen live and were old enough to understand the implications.
Americans intone solemnly on this day, “Never forget!”
We haven’t forgotten…
… Even if perhaps there are some things we should forget.

Lost in the Woods

So, I had a fun adventure yesterday. I left for a simple trip to the store and ended up a damsel in distress.

Let me set up the scene first. I live on a small mountain. Our apartments are built into the hillside surrounded by woods, and my cluster happens to be on the bottom. Literally, the forest is my backyard. I have two ways to get out of this place: 1) walk up five flights of stairs to the main entrance at the top of the hill and follow the twisty main road down, or 2) cut through the woods to the main road, which eliminates a lot of climbing. Since I don’t drive, I walk this hill a lot, and I’m used to it. However, we live on the west face, I usually go down the north face, and yesterday I needed the store that is down the south side of the mountain.

There are four paths out of our apartments and into the woods, and of course I took the wrong one. The really wrong one. In less than five minutes, I was lost, and when I tried to turn around, the meandering foot trails had forked so many times, I had no clue which way to go.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, it suddenly began to rain. So there I was, lost in the woods, not prepared at all since I was just supposed to go to the store, not even wearing proper hiking boots, it’s raining, and it’s cold with snow still on the ground in some places.

I’ve gotten lost in the woods once before, but that was at my grandfather’s cabin on the East Coast. At that time, I just kept walking downhill, no trails, just empty leaf-strewn ground, until I came to the river and followed that into town. Not possible in Oregon! Blackberries grow everywhere, like a weed with sharp thorns that continuously blocks your path. Plus, like I said, it was snowy, wet, and I had only normal walking shoes on, not boots. So I was forced to stick to the trails, and they were leading me everywhere but where I needed to go.

And that was when I heard footsteps behind me.

I stopped and looked all around, examining every tree. My ears picked up birdsong and raindrops as they strained to hear the talking of carefree hikers, or even the growling of an animal. Nothing. I was all alone. I shook my head, decided it was the imagination of a frightened girl lost in the woods, and kept going, trying to find the right path or at least a familiar tree.

Then I heard a noise again. I stopped, and the crunching noise of wet leaves stopped, too. By instinct, I crouched low, all muscles tensed, fight-or-flight adrenaline burning my veins and making my hands feel cold. However, there was no sign of another soul in those woods with me.

Up until then, I had been taking pictures of the woods and posting them on Facebook, as well as joking about being lost. This time I wrote something ominous: “I hope this is just paranoia from being lost, but I swear I keep hearing footsteps behind me that stop when do.”

I initially thought I’d leave a message like that to tease my readers a bit. As I kept walking, feeling uneasy, a morbid part of me also thought that with a message like that, at least when the police found my body, they would know I had been followed.

It stopped being a joke when, once again, I heard a twig crack behind me. I jumped around, reached swiftly into my purse, and whipped out my pepper spray. I stood perfectly still for two minutes, but I heard nothing else.

I kept telling myself, it’s the rain, it’s paranoia, or maybe it’s animals (I did see lot of squirrels and some raccoons). I wanted to keep calm. If horror flicks have taught me anything, it’s that panicking only leads to mistakes. The chick who freaks out dies first.

That calmness vanished when I saw discarded men’s boxers on the side of the trail. The last thing I need to see as I’m imagining worst-case scenarios of a stalker-murderer-rapist… is men’s underwear caught in a holly bush.

I wrote one last message into Facebook: “I’m outta here!” Then I put the phone away and ran.

About twenty minutes later, I made it out, and never did I see any person following me. Hopefully, it was just the over-active imagination of a scared woman reliving those terrifying stories from her youth, like Little Red Riding Hood, tales whose theme was usually “don’t go into the woods alone.”

I don’t think I’ll go out into the forest by myself for the rest of the winter.

- one of the pictures I took yesterday -

Todd Haberkorn, Man of My Dreams

I had an awesome dream. I went to a comic con and got to meet Todd Haberkorn (English dubbed voice of Natsu). I specifically wanted a picture with him showing off his Fairy Tail tattoo. After the picture, I also had something for him to sign, and I asked him to address it to “Rhov.”

He suddenly looked up wide-eyed. “THE Rhov?”

My heart just sort of froze. “Oh shit. Have you heard of me?” Instantly, I was thinking he had heard terrible rumors about some wannabe writer ruining the fandom by taking the characters he loves (and the Natsu he voices) and turning them into rambling romances and petty porn. I was starting to shake that he would be repulsed, maybe sneer, or at least scold me for corrupting the characters he loves so much. (My insecurities know no bounds.)

Instead, Todd suddenly leaped up and gave me a killer hug, and I was flailing like Lucy. “Wh-wh-what are you doing?" People were staring and whispering. My husband was giving death glares from the sidelines.

He shouted, “Oh my God, you’re Rhov the writer! I love your fanfics. I read them between recording sessions.”

Now my heart really did stop. “You… YOU read my fanfics?”

"Totally. I love that gory horror story you’re writing." Suddenly, Todd-frigging-Haberkorn began an impromptu dialog between Natsu and Feral Natsu, speaking the inner beast in the same Gollum-like voice I imagine in my head.

I suddenly started going into an asthma attack out of shock. “Oh…my God… You… you like Beastly Possession?”

He just laughed and waved for my husband to come and hold me while I was wheezing and grabbing my chest. “Yeah, I’ve got some of the other guys reading them, too. Once after work, we went out drinking, and me and Newton (voice of Gray) began reading parts from one of your slash works. I thought Colleen Clinkenbeard was gonna piss herself.” (That’s Erza, FYI.)

I was in tears at that point, and I really did think he was some sort of superman, swooping in to rescue me from my insecurities. In quavering whispers, I told him: “I write because I love to entertain, that’s all. It’s been my dream to write something people will remember, to be a name that people will say ‘Oh yeah, I loved her story, it really moved me.’ Todd… I may not have published a bestselling novel yet, but I think today, my dream just came true.”

He gave me a warm hug, whispered something (in that amazing voice of his) about “Keep chasing after your dreams,” and then… I woke up, tears of happiness still in my eyes, a fire in my heart, ready for another day of writing. I doubt anyone involved in the making of Fairy Tail actually reads my fanfiction, but… maybe… just maybe…

Feral Natsu Has Fans

So, apparently a fan (that is a weird word to use) created a blog on Tumblr just for my fanfic Beastly Possession. She has been posting some outrageously amazing artwork there, and for Christmas she wrote a "special" featuring the alternate personality I created for Natsu Dragneel, known to the fans as Feral Natsu.

I'm stunned that something I wrote as an experiment (can I write horror and do I enjoy writing that genre) has inspired others so deeply.

http://feralnatsu.tumblr.com/post/71056285983/the-night-before-christmas

Tutorial for Updating Fanfics

Alternate title:

Fanfic Efficiency by Website

Scenario: You're reading your fanfic story and notice a misspelled word, so you fix the error.

This is not only a tutorial for updating stories in the three major fanfiction websites, but it also shows the number of mouse clicks needed to fix the error, demonstrating user-friendly efficiency.

Tallies are based on a user who is already logged in, the chapter is not already exported for Fanfiction.net, and the story is on the first page of the fandom for AFF (no digging through 50 pages of old stories to find yours).

Starting point - being on the posted chapter visible to the public.
Ending point - returning to the same chapter without using Back button.

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Fanfiction.net

1. Click on User's name at the top right corner
2. Click Publish
3. Click Manage Stories
4. Click on story title
5. Click Content/Chapters
6. Click icon for Export
7. Click link for Exported document
8. Fix the error
9. Click Save
10. Click Manage Stories
11. Click on story title
12. Click Content/Chapters
13. Click Replace/Update Chapter
14. Click Select Chapter
15. Click desired chapter
16. Click Select Document
17. Click desired document
18. Click Replace Chapter Content with Document
19. Click Properties
20. Click link
21. Click drop arrow for chapter navigation
22. Click desired chapter

TOTAL: 22

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AdultFanFiction

1. Hover over Member Tools and click Author Panel
2. Scroll to desired genre and click Edit
3. Click Select Story
4. Click story title
5. Click Select Action
6. Click Edit Chapter
7. Click Edit
8. Click Choose Chapter
9. Click desired chapter
10. Fix the error
11. Click Edit Chapter
12. Hover over Archives or Anime/Games Archives and click which genre
13. Assuming genre has multiple fandoms, click letter grouping
14. Click desired fandom
15. Click on story
16. Click chapter selector
17. Click desired chapter

TOTAL: 17

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Archive of Our Own

1. Click Edit Chapter (for one-shots, click Edit at the top of the story)
2. Fix error
3. Click Update Without Preview, story will update and return to the fixed chapter.

TOTAL: 3

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As you can see, AO3 has far superior user-friendly controls for the author, allowing editing to be done directly within a chapter and returning to the same chapter when editing is finished, rather than navigating to an editing panel like AFF, or Fanfiction.net's need to return to your main login page just to leap back and forth between editing and managing.

Writers I have spoke to have said that Fanfiction.net's convoluted editorial process is so confusing, they don't even bother fixing known errors. This translates into far inferior quality on the site as error-riddled stories are left alone because the author doesn't want to spend 10 minutes managing, exporting, and importing.

When it comes to editing, Fanfiction.net is way behind its competitors. Rather than focusing on their forums and filters, their next major upgrade should be to the user-friendliness on the side of the writer. 22 clicks to edit a chapter, versus AFF's 17 clicks, and sadly AdultFanFiction is infamous for its outdated layout and extremely non-user-friendly design. Even worse, comparing it to AO3's 3-click easy updating is a painful example of how far Fanfiction.net needs to evolve.

Surprise, You're a Soloist

At my gig today, a soloist did not show up. The trombones turned to our fearless section leader. “Since he’s missing, who’ll play the solo?”

Fearless Leader turned and waved dramatically to me. “Rhov will play the solo.”

I snapped out of my coffee-deprived daze. “I…uh…WHUUH?”

"Have you ever played the solo?" he asked.

"NO! I’ve only played this song maybe twice."

"Perfect. There’s nothing quite like sight-reading a solo the day of a performance."

I gave him my patented ‘you die later’ glare. “Leader…I may have to hate you.”

30 minutes later… totally rocked the solo! Oooh yeah! Who’s the swingingest trombone chick in the band, eh? (Who’s the ONLY trombone chick!)

The Most Influencial Person in my Life

The director of my youth band, Mr. Ward (he will always be "mister" to me). We weren't "just a band," we were a family, and he was our parent. He took a personal interest in every musician. Many of us came from struggling families. He would treat us to dinner if he knew we didn't get enough food at home. He sheltered some who had abusive parents. He managed to get one musician out of a gang and protected him from retaliation. When my dad had a massive heart attack, he sat with me after rehearsal, knowing I was bottling my emotions (he could "hear it in my music") and he hugged me as I finally broke down in sobs, unable to cry at home, since I was supposed to be the strong one. He knew I love to write, so he pedantically corrected my bad grammar. He bought me my first martini, and he taught me to drink it with refinement. He saw the way I bashfully gazed at another musician, and slyly he would make us sit next to one another on the band bus, or take the same car on long trips. He nudged, we moved, and years later I married that boy. We invited Mr. Ward and other musicians from our youth band days to the wedding. Actually, when I told him I was engaged, he tried his damnedest to talk me out of it. Then at the wedding, he said he did that to test me. He really wanted me to be sure of this big step, because he wanted my greatest happiness. He taught me, not just about music, but about life, how to "step out on the right foot" and "keep playing no matter what." I lost my grandparents at a young age, so he became my grandpa. Yet sadly...I lost him too a few years ago. I hope he's somewhere, watching, happy to see that I'm still playing music, still married, and I still toast a martini to him on his birthday.