MesserMoon’s Kill Your Darlings is a fanfiction written from 2022 to 2023, published on ArchiveOfOurOwn.org; it is over 300,000 words long and has more than a million “hits.” Kill Your Darlings works with and adapts the characters of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, following Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, among other characters, in a modern college setting (as opposed to the magical world of Hogwarts). The story is narrated collectively, as MesserMoon switches between these characters’ perspectives. In Kill Your Darlings, Remus is deaf, and his deafness is central to his characterization. When MesserMoon is writing from Remus’ perspective and he is reading lips, the text is written in bold (designating oral speech), with blank spaces where he does not catch words here and there, consistently articulating his deafness through writing. In all characters’ perspectives, when communicating via sign language, the text is italicized to distinguish it from speech. Remus is also queer, and his queerness and deafness are intertwined by way of his intimacy and romance with Sirius Black. I would argue that Kill Your Darlings subverts dominant ideologies of love, defies common, stereotypical disability tropes through the depiction of a queer-cripped romance which rests on access intimacy, care, and the cherishing of Deafness, and expands ideas of sexual pleasure and intimacy. Kill Your Darlings is a vital addition to popular media, which rarely depicts the extrinsic value of Deafness or joyful, pleasure-filled disabled/nondisabled love (Bauman and Murray; Rainey).
Fan writing, generally, grants writers and readers the space to grapple with representations of race, sexuality, and disability. Fanfiction, according to Bronwen Thomas, refers to fan-produced stories which take a “pre-existing storyworld in a new, sometimes bizarre, direction” (1). Furthermore, according to Thomas, fanfiction is a transgressive force that gives textual and cultural space to marginalized groups and offers the opportunity to play, sometimes provocatively, with elements of its source material. The fanfictions resulting from the Harry Potter series exemplify fanfiction’s subversive potential, particularly those of the “Marauders” fandom. The “Marauders era” refers to the characters and happenings of the school years of James Potter, Peter Pettigrew, Sirius Black, and Remus Lupin; essentially, this era constitutes the generation before the characters written about in the actual Harry Potter series (“Marauders”). Most of the characters of this era either feature briefly or are only referred to in passing in Harry Potter, which, in addition to the fluid nature of fanfiction, allows the fan community relatively free reign in constructing their personalities and aesthetics. Many Marauders era characters who are straight, white, and/or able-bodied in the source material are commonly understood to be queer, non-white, and/or disabled within fandom spaces, often in explicit defiance of Rowling, who is publicly transphobic and stereotypically portrays racially/ethnically diverse and disabled characters (Romano). While the Marauders fandom’s specific resistance against Rowling certainly merits further discussion and analysis, that is beyond the scope of this paper.
Fanfiction also factors into the creation of an alternative archive of stories, characters, and worlds. Archive of Our Own (or AO3), the fanfiction website on which Kill Your Darlings is published, explicitly denotes the archival creation and community implicit in fan writing; in its title, it tells users: this space is for us, for our imagination, and for our stories. In this archive, and the subarchive of the Marauders fandom, Kill Your Darlings is a widely read text. Out of 62,178 total fanfictions written about Sirius Black and Remus Lupin as a romantic pairing on AO3, Kill Your Darlings is in the top ten, according to the number of hits (“Sirius Black/Remus Lupin”). As Fredrika Thelandersson articulates in her analysis of sad girls on Tumblr, online spaces and communities allow for the creation of a “collective psychic apparatus” and a shared affect between users (10-11). Similarly, Thomas contends that fandoms often share an “implied narrative world,” a term which accounts for “the ways in which continuity and coherence may exist across texts” (11). The collective nature of online fandom spaces allows for understandings of characters that transcend a single text, which gives significant cultural weight to highly popularized fanfictions like Kill Your Darlings—these texts can help build a fandom’s implied narrative world. Therefore, Kill Your Darlings has the ability to challenge dominant portrayals of love, pleasure, and intimacy as nondisabled, given its sizeable fanbase.
Remus Lupin is canonically a werewolf, and his lycanthropy causes him to be cast out of wizarding society, take monthly days off for recovery, and have scarring along his face and body; this characterization can be read as a sort of disability analogy. Rowling has also retroactively announced that his lycanthropy was a metaphor for HIV/AIDS; however, this metaphorical stigmatization was not explored very robustly, as Rowling represents his illness/disability as an insular, individual experience, rather than diving into how society disables him (Charlton-Dailey). Therefore, Remus Lupin is often refigured as having some sort of disability in the world of fandom. Also, Remus is almost always depicted in a romantic pairing with Sirius Black, to the point where their romance is expected in any Marauders fanfiction. This fact resists notions of disabled people as undesirable; it is assumed, within the fandom, that Remus is both disabled/chronically ill and in a sexual/romantic partnership.
Throughout Kill Your Darlings, Remus cements his deaf identity to himself and to those around him, especially his father, a sort of burgeoning politicized embodiment of deafness. Those who consider themselves Deaf, as opposed to the lowercase deaf, “view and define deafness as a cultural identity” and move “away from impairments and medical conditions and towards a politics of embodiment” (Tucker 6; Herndon 245). Remus’ father, Lyall Lupin (who is not deaf), consistently urges him to assimilate to hearing culture through speech therapy, the rejection of sign language, and the biotechnical intervention of cochlear implants. Many Deaf culturists and disability scholars argue that cochlear implants pose a threat to Deaf people and culture, yet another manifestation of the ableist impulse to cure, fix, or entirely eradicate their “abnormal” embodiment (Padden; Tucker; Herndon). Lyall often uses ableist language to refer to Remus’ deafness: he considers it a birth defect, he wants to “fix” it, he wants Remus to be “normal.” Lyall sees Remus’ deaf speech as improper and seeks to eliminate its differences. He repeatedly corrects Remus’ pronunciation of words and refuses to sign, prohibiting Remus and his mother from signing either; he relegates Remus to the language and world of the hearing, telling Remus, condescendingly, to “use his voice” (MesserMoon ch. 3).
However, Remus makes it clear, throughout his narration, that he does not particularly want to hear. He hates his hearing aids, which he only uses around his father, because they “just make everything very noisy” (MesserMoon ch. 3). He is also not interested in changing his identity, which he believes cochlear implants would do, as he increasingly understands his deafness as an embodied identity that he enjoys and feels comfortable in. This understanding reaches its culminating point when Remus responds to Lyall’s questioning of his unwillingness to get cochlear implants with two simple words: “I’m deaf” (MesserMoon ch. 16). Not only does Remus articulate his deafness as an intrinsic part of his identity, he also actively chooses his deafness. Bonnie Tucker considers, rather pejoratively, the rejection of cochlear implants to be the election of disability. However, using Tucker’s idea imbues Remus’ decision with radical power, as he chooses to maintain his deafness and Deaf cultural identity amidst a culture that, as disabled activist and scholar Eli Clare makes clear, will go to any length to “un-choose disability” (129).
Furthermore, Remus’ interactions with his dad pertaining to his deafness mirror the experiences of another character, James Potter, when he comes out to his father. Lyall tells Remus that, as a deaf person, it is “such a lonely life” and says that cochlear implants could “make it easier” (MesserMoon ch. 16). In the same chapter, James’ father tells him that if he comes out publicly, it will “be so lonely James, having to hide who you are, who you’re dating,” since James plays hockey, notorious for its homophobia (MesserMoon ch. 16). This seemingly intentional parallel ties queerness and deafness together, presenting them as similar social/cultural identities. Cochlear implants and forced closeting are thus equated, depicted as oppressive technologies, forcing assimilation into dominant culture. Although both fathers believe that their sons are or will be isolated due to their crip/queer identities, they could not be further from the truth; Remus and James are unerringly supported and surrounded by a tight knit community of friends and kin. The brilliant intimacy of the Marauders’ friendships goes beyond the bounds of Kill Your Darlings—it is another aspect of the fandom’s implied narrative world.
MesserMoon beautifully depicts the queer-crip romance which blossoms between Sirius and Remus, using the literary throughline of music. At the beginning of the story, they are already close friends and are undeniably in love with each other, although they do not openly admit it; their buried feelings proceed to generate nearly seven hundred pages of yearning. Remus knows, resolutely, that Sirius will meet his access needs without asking, including signing, not speaking out loud to Remus without facing him, and asking others to do the same. Disability justice activist Mia Mingus describes access intimacy as being “that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else ‘gets’ your access needs. That kind of eerie comfort that your disabled self feels with someone on a purely access level” (n.p.). Sirius and Remus, throughout their years of friendship, have this specific kind of intimacy, going beyond simply meeting access needs. Sirius also knows when not to help Remus, even if his access needs are not being met. In one instance, Sirius can tell just by “the way the Remus is squinting” that he was not able to fully read someone’s lips, and “resists the urge to sign it for him” because if “Remus doesn’t ask for help he’s not always a big fan of people stepping in” (MesserMoon ch. 5). Sirius’ familiarity with Remus’ facial expressions and desires when it comes to his deafness highlight the work Sirius has put in to knowing him, in his totality. Sarah Smith Rainey proposes that “the entire concept of learning and work in love relationships contradicts popular love scripts,” which is part of popular culture’s construction of love as nondisabled (29). Rainey articulates that the idea of love as an instant connection leaves out the possibility of disabled love, given that disabled/nondisabled couples “often have to learn how to interact and how to communicate using a letter board, voice box, or just patiently learning the unique cadence and pronunciation of a disabled tongue” (29). Sirius and Remus exemplify Rainey’s statement; although they are entranced by each other upon first meeting (depicted in a flashback), their love and intimacy come years later, after the establishment of shared communication and knowledge, which makes their romance that much more potent.
Throughout the story, MesserMoon includes stunningly gentle, loving scenes of Sirius singing to Remus by letting him feel-hear the vibrations of music while signing the song’s lyrics. At a party, Sirius pulls Remus to stand next to the speakers, places Remus’ hand on his chest, and sing-signs along to a love song for him: “Remus can feel it, he can—a laugh bubbles out of him—Sirius’s voice is under his touch, is weaving its way around his fingers, vibrating through his bones. And then Sirius starts to sign … it feels like a confession” (MesserMoon ch. 17). It is a moment of intense romantic and sexual tension, the air heavy with love and lust. Shayda Kafai explains crip sex actually goes beyond sex: it is the foregrounding of disabled pleasure. Sirius and Remus create a crip pleasure universe in that crowded house party, refashioning what intimacy and pleasure can look like in their cripped engagement with music (Kafai).
Remus, for most of Kill Your Darlings, does not tell Sirius about his father’s push for cochlear implants, because he is worried that Sirius might also want him to get them. When he does confess, towards the end, he airs his anxieties about his deafness being a burden, something that makes life harder for those around him. MesserMoon’s writing of Sirius’ signed response is, simply put, breathtaking: “But you don’t make my life hard, you never have. You make my life … Big. … Before you I didn’t know what music felt like, that it’s in here, he presses a hand to his chest, and not just here, pointing to his ears. … Because of you, I see the world differently. My life is bigger”(ch. 20). Sirius specifically references what H-Dirksen Bauman and Joseph Murray define as “Deaf-gain,” the idea of Deafness not as a fundamental lack, but rather a unique aspect of human diversity (371). These scholars also argue that, although intrinsic arguments about the value of Deafness (like the validity of Deaf culture in and of itself) exist, the extrinsic value of Deafness has not been explored robustly. They argue that “all individuals would be enriched by becom[ing] a bit more Deaf” (381). Sirius clearly articulates the extrinsic value of Remus’ Deafness—it makes his life bigger, like granting him the ability to feel music. Sirius, essentially says that Remus’ Deafness makes his life whole, counteracting the dominant notion of Deaf and other disabled people as lacking essential human qualities. Furthermore, Rainey explains that popular media depicts physical sameness as a requirement for love. Remus and Sirius’ relationship pushes against this notion, as their differences actively enhance each other’s lives and their romance.
Remus and Sirius’ love and intimacy allow him to fully embody his Deafness and leads them to seek out the Deaf world. Sirius, grappling with Remus’ belief about his deafness as a burden, asks out Remus on a date to their school’s Deaf Awareness club. He apologizes to Remus for constantly making him do “hearing things,” and although Remus is nonplussed, saying that is just the way of the world, Sirius makes it clear that it does not have to be that way (MesserMoon ch. 22). Sirius’ commitment to finding deaf communities with Remus eventually leads Remus to confront his father about cochlear implants, resolute in his decision not to proceed with the surgery, saying: “I’m not looking for something to fix this. I’m not saying it’s never hard, I’m just saying it’s not only hard. I like signing and I’ve started to find communities, with other people who are deaf. And there’s a boy … who says I make his world big.” (MesserMoon ch. 28). His queer romance and Deafness coincide, building off each other into a stunning resistance against ableism and the culminating assertion of his Deafness’ inherent value, compounded by his delivery of this statement in sign language. By signing, he resists his father’s ableist directive to assimilate to hearing culture by using his voice, rather than his hands. Remus’ representation in Kill Your Darlings opposes what Ashley Shew describes as the “inspirational-overcomers trope” in media, which implies that disabled people “must disown [their] collective or community identities in order to be individuals” (42). Remus, in fact, does the opposite; the story ends with him proudly proclaiming his Deafness and actively seeking out other deaf people and communities, highlighting his personal agency.
Bauman and Murray underscore the necessity of redefining the public perception of Deafness, given the encroaching threats to Deaf communities and their languages. Kill Your Darlings does just that, within its specific archive. Since it is a highly popular text within the fluid, mutating space of the online Marauders fandom, its thoughtful representation of a queer, Deaf character and his gentle, crip love holds weight; Kill Your Darlings has the potential to drive change in understandings of Remus’ disabled characterization throughout the fandom, as well as readers’ understandings about Deaf/disabled romance, love, and intimacy, writ large. It is an important addition to the subversive, archival world of online fanfiction.
Works Cited
Bauman, H-Dirksen L., and Joseph J. Murray. “Deaf Studies in the 21st Century: ‘Deaf-Gain’ and the Future of Human Diversity.” The Oxford Handbook of Deaf Studies, Language, and Education, Vol. 2, edited by Marc Marschark and Patricia Elizabeth Spencer, Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 0. Silverchair, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195390032.013.0014.
Charlton-Dailey, Rachel. “Why Remus Lupin Is a Hero for Those Suffering with Chronic Illnesses.” HelloGiggles, 16 Mar. 2016, https://hellogiggles.com/identify-with-remus-lupin/.
Clare, Eli. “Moving through Cure.” Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure, Duke University Press, 2017, pp. 173-187.
Herndon, April. “Disparate but Disabled: Fat Embodiment and Disability Studies.” NWSA Journal, vol. 14, no. 3, 2002, pp. 120–37. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4316927. Accessed 4 May 2025.
Kafai, Shayda. “Crip Sex as Transformative Pleasure Universe.” In Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice and Art Activism of Sins Invalid, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021, pp. 133-151
MesserMoon. “Kill Your Darlings.” ArchiveOfOurOwn.com, published July 2, 2022, https://archiveofourown.org/works/40038048/chapters/100269270.
Mingus, Mia. “Access Intimacy: The Missing Link.” Leaving Evidence, 5 May 2011, https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/access-intimacy-the-missing-link/.
Minkel, Elizabeth. “The Online Free Speech Debate Is Raging in Fan Fiction, Too.” The Verge, 8 Nov. 2018, http://www.theverge.com/2018/11/8/18072622/fanfic-ao3-free-speech-censorship-fandom.
Padden, Carol A. “Talking Culture: Deaf People and Disability Studies.” PMLA, vol. 120, no. 2, 2005, pp. 508–13.
Rainey, Sarah Smith. Excerpt from “Images in Popular Culture.” In Love, Sex, and Disability: The Pleasures of Care, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011, pp. 27-47.
Romano, Aja. “Harry Potter and the Author Who Failed Us.” Vox, 11 June 2020, http://www.vox.com/culture/21285396/jk-rowling-transphobic-backlash-harry-potter.
Shew, Ashley. “Scripts and Crips.” In Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Need Improvement, Norton, 2023, pp. 34-45.
“Sirius Black/Remus Lupin – Works.” Archive of Our Own, https://archiveofourown.org/works?commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=hits&work_search%5Bother_tag_n ames%5D=&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search% 5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5 Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D =&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&tag_id=Sirius+Black*s*Remus+Lupin. Accessed 3 May 2025.
Thelandersson, Fredrika. “Social Media Sad Girls and the Normalization of Sad States of Being.” Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry, vol. 2, 2018, pp. 2-21.
Thomas, Bronwen. “What Is Fanfiction and Why Are People Saying Such Nice Things about It?” Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies, vol. 3, 2011, pp. 1–24. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5250/storyworlds.3.2011.0001.
Tucker, Bonnie Poitras. “Deaf Culture, Cochlear Implants, and Elective Disability.” The Hastings Center Report, vol. 28, no. 4, 1998, pp. 6–14. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3528607.
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