When quarantine gets lit

While life is crazy during the lockdown, fan fiction themed around the virus is crazier. We invited a book blogger to review three stories

When quarantine gets lit

Kinjal Parekh

The wrong direction

Parekh learnt of Wattpad back in junior college although her paperback-loving self became unsatisfied with it. About this new fiction that has emerged, she says, "If this is what is bringing awareness about a particular subject then it's good. Keep going. But one has to be responsible when they put out something which is taking a toll on human lives."

Harry Styles

Larry Stylinson Sick Oneshots by twoghostsinonehome is a series of short stories where One Direction's Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson are basically sick with every damn sickness there is including COVID-19, and still very much in love with each other. The 33-part story has over 60,000 reads which Parekh attributes to the huge fan base of the band. Elaborating on the motive to write such a story, she says, "They've been on a hiatus for years, and their fans are still waiting
for them."

Louis Tomlinson

Working out the tough times

The popularity of the American TV series The Office can be measured by the sheer number of Michael Scott references you come across daily. On Wattpad, user AbbyLe_ imagines the Coronavirus making its way to Scranton, Pennslyvania where the show is situated. Now, salesman Dwight Schrute is tasked with quarantining the workspace.

"But will he be able to if he's struck with it?" the writer asks in the plot. This one, Parekh found bizarre but still the best of the lot. "It highlighted many important points like quarantining yourself, especially when you have a travel history, sanitising and helping out [in society]. There's a chapter where the guy started dreaming of making millions of dollars by selling beans that he presumes to be a magical cure. If this unusual story helps people avoid believing in any such news without any authority confirming it, then it's probably working out for the best. It was also a good way to portray that even if one person from an entire group/family fails to self-isolate and thinks that the virus is a joke, it could lead to a massive chain reaction."

Dwight Schrute

While personally none of the stories worked for her, she doesn't rule out the possibility that it can't work for teenagers. "The fact is that such content is being read by thousands. I just checked that about 85 per cent of the website's audience are teenagers. It could also work for someone who isn't a reader — because an avid reader tends to analyse a lot, comparing them to books they have read, their writing style, characters and flow."

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