FIC: Reflections in a Golden Frame

Here's my daily_deviant entry for June. From the kinky options for this month, I chose "mirrors." No actual mirrors were harmed (or forced into voyeurism) during the writing of this fic.

Title: Reflections in a Golden Frame
Author: kellychambliss
Characters/Pairings: The Mirror of Erised and various permutations of Albus Dumbledore, golden-haired pretty boys, Molly Weasley, Charlie Weasley, Narcissa Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy, Rolanda Hooch, Alastor Moody, Minerva McGonagall, Filius Flitwick, brooms, dragons, socks.
Rating: light R
Kinks/Themes Chosen: Mirrors
Other Warnings: Did you read the characters list?
Word Count: 1850
Summary/Description: After Harry Potter spends too much time staring at his family, The Mirror of Erised finds itself banished to a dungeon with stone walls, no rats, and a lot of memories.
Author's Notes: My thanks to my beloved partner for the lightning-fast beta. Poor thing, she doesn't even like HP. And then I give her this.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

( Reflections )

"Being" Lesbian

A second supposed "lesbian" blogger has been outed as a fraud, just days after the celebrated "Gay Girl in Damascus" turned out to be a Straight (Married) Boy in Edinburgh.

Yes, on many levels, this sort of thing seriously pisses me off. But it also raises fascinating questions about the nature of internet identity and friendships and trust. Impersonation is nothing new; for centuries, there have been people who pretended to be other than they are. But the internet makes it much easier to be extremely convincing and in categories in which someone could never succeed if s/he actually had to show hir face and "be" the person s/he claims to be. Internet cons like this have the potential to take in literally millions of people, as opposed to more conventional cons, which usually have far less impact. (The "Gay Girl" blog was just recced the other day on lgbtq_recs, for instance.)

It's interesting to speculate about what the perps get out of these masquerades. I mean, why would a straight male Scot choose to be a gay female Syrian? Just for the "I can do it" hell of it? Some of these cons are no doubt set up to sucker people out of money, but most of them seem just to give their originators a sense of power, the kind that comes with knowing secrets, with exercising (illegitimate) authority, with subversively trying on different personae.

These people are listened to, taken seriously -- and believed in by scores of people, many of whom consider themselves genuine friends. The sense of betrayal must be tremendous.

Online, it's just so damned easy to be "someone else." Many of us do it all the time, though on less-deceptive levels than these "lesbian" guys -- we can be outgoing online when we're shy in RL, for instance; we can be popular and sought-after electronically even if we're the world's biggest dork when we're at home. I haven't sorted out all my deep, thinky thoughts about these topics, but every time I read about these sorts of deceptions, I find myself speculating about the whole nature of performance and identity in even the ordinary ways we live our lives.

What are your thinky thoughts?