Fantasy/Scifi and Real Life Commentary.

It has always annoyed me when people say that Harry Potter is just a children's series. Maybe I'm being a bit of a fangirl here, but there is SO much real life stuff hidden in the pages! (FYI, this is a post mostly for scifi/fantasy writers, though maybe other genres can benefit, too?) I'm using mostly HP and Doctor Who as examples of real life found in fantasy/scifi.

HP either is anti or has metaphors representing:

1. Torture.
2. Genocide.
3. Prejudice.
4. Bullying.
5. Alcoholism/addiction (Winky)
6. AIDS (Lupin being a werewolf is supposed to be a metaphor for a person with AIDS.)
7. Date rape. (Think poor Tom Sr.)
8. Newspapers that print lies.
9. Crappy political leaders.

DW has commentary on:

1. Plastic surgery. (Cassandra.)
2. Suicide.(Van Gogh)
3. Family. (Rose and her parents.)
4. Confidence. (Donna)
5. Change and repentance (think of when Rose wanted to show the Dalek mercy.)
6. Genocide.
7. Being forced to be a parent. (When Ten had his DNA used without consent to make Jenny could be seen as a metaphor for surprise parenthood.)
8. PTS (Nine and the Time War. One of my favorite bits of character development on Doctor Who ever was watching Nine fight his PTS over the war and what he did. *sigh* I miss Nine.)
9. Love, and gaining it and losing it. (Rose! And River! And the Ponds!)
10. Knowing when to walk away from a bad relationship. (Martha.)

And my own work in progress so far has a metaphor for cloning. So, fantasy/scifi writers, you want to make your book more real? Pick up a newspaper and ask yourself what you could do to make metaphors of real life. :)

PS

Yes, I realize that this isn't a Myers-Briggs post. Next Sunday. ;) And yes, I know that today isn't Sunday, but my time it's only 44 minutes to Sunday, so I think it counts!