the exit strategy - this is where a plan comes together. badly.

You know that dream you have about being naked suddenly and everyone is pointing and laughing? Yeah, I never had one of those. Wait, this isn't me being smug about my lack of nudity in dreams here; I am saying that with that entire surgery coming up, one of my big terrors seems to be that under the influence of post-anesthesia and painkillers I'll like, come to my journals and post something insane and friendship destroying.

(I'm sorry; are you judging my fears? Step the fuck off.)

This is haunting me; I was up in a cold sweat recently trying to work out an exit strategy. Because I'll be honest with you here; I won't even try the surgery/painkiller defense if I post something crazy. I'll be like, in metaphorical Burma or something with a new name and deleting every reference to Seperis the fanfic writer I can find while trying to find some kind of interest in Pokemon or anime or something that no one who knew me would be around. Possibly on ff.net.(God. I like anime, but not like that. This is so depressing. Do I need to learn Japanese and embrace loli? I suck at languages.)

But I did work out a plan. Here's how it will go.

1.) Wraithbait. Get the few fic there.
2.) Take out my webpage in a fell swoop.
3.) AO3 next. I'm being subtle.
4.) The dS archive and the trek archive I put fic in.
5.) Diaryland.
6.) Dreamwidth; now my plan is coming into focus!
7.) Livejournal!

Then I realized that I didn't even hit the fucking tip of Seperis' digital footprint.

Insanejournal, Journalfen, Metafilter, Vox, Fanlore, The Remixes, several messageboards, a few blogs, all my cowrites that other people have archived, dear God the mailing lists.

Because there is still the SSA that isn't self-archiving, Trekiverse, PTCollective, WolverineandRogue archive, some other--archives?--and like, I had this open archiving policy for a while and I fall on top of my fic in obscure archives all the time (thanks! I'm glad you liked it! Maybe tell me next time though? Just so it's not quite such a shock to see my name pop up in like Archive of Obscurity I Have Never Heard of Before?), and then there's the fact I used Jenn pretty interchangeably on my fic with Seperis before I switched full time to Seperis--seriously, that was because I was lazy and it was easier if everything matched and seemed less confusing to people, and I get that, too many names--and then there's usenet and that's goddamn eternal. Cockroaches and the usenet archives will survive the apocalypse. And then.

Then there is google.

Dearest God there is google. There is yahoo. There is wayback machine. There is every comment I have ever made. Icerocket, ljseek, bloglines, rss feeds, and that's when I realized that IRL I could vanish a lot easier and with fewer traces than Seperis can. I could get away with a new identity in a new city easier than I can on the internet.

I feel a fetal ball position coming on.

....God, that doesn't even include my email addresses. And Facebook. And MySpace. My AIM, YIM, GCHAT, ICQ (I don't even know the password to that anymore!). And I--don't know what else?

Right. People.

See, that's where I'd actually need that obscure area that no one who has ever met me ever goes; it's not that I'm so unmistakable people might guess on a comment. It's more I'm stupid and I see like, IDK, scy and be like "HEY THAT IS LIKE THAT FIC YOU WROTE THAT I LOVED ABOUT X," and she's like "OH MY GOD I NEVER POSTED THAT AND ONLY SEPERIS EVER SAW IT"--that is the kind of stupid shit I'd do. And not just once, mind you. No. I am not subtle in my stupidity. I mean, I want to say that it's my so-strict ethics that keep me from using sockpuppets and anonymous--no. My so-strict ethics developed from my fail to pull that shit off. I tried--once--in a flamewar ten years ago and I made a mess of it. And that's with like, seven other people telling me what to do.

And fact; I have posted pics, some of you have met me, vacationed with me, let me sleep on your futons with long metal bars through the bottom of them (no names or anything), got drunk with me, and probably would be a little suspicious if a strangely familiar person showed up at the con as YouDontKnowMeReally548 with an eerily familiar vocabulary in too-tall heels clutching a laptop and trying to look like I'm trying really hard to totally not know anyone, you know? My first vodka, just take me for a cigarette and I'll tell you pretty much anything you want to know. I may also want to cuddle; it happens.

(Also. I could be wrong, but I imagine a couple of people who have my mother's phone number just might take advantage of that fact. And by a couple, I mean; wait, why did I give people my mom's phone number?)

There's so much history, and it's not that I didn't know that--it's that I didn't know it like this. I don't blink when someone calls for me using Seperis at a con or out with fangirls; there's five pronunciations and I answer pretty evenly to them all (I'm textual; I have no idea how it's pronounced. I made it up! Then I found out it's an actual legit surname in Serbia circa 2004ish and I'm scared to find out what it sounds like). Half the people I talk to probably have forgotten my name is Jenn. Online, in fandom, in fandom spaces, I don't answer to Jenn as fast as I do to Seperis.

I don't have a problem with that, actually. It's mine the way my birth name isn't.

So this may be more complicated than I originally thought. Yes, I get that not-posting during this hypothetical anesthesia/painkiller crisis is a potential solution, but come on. If I'm going to post crazy, you think I'm going to like, ponder whether or not I should post?

I need to rethink my exit strategy. Maybe while eating this convenient Kit-Kat.