The whole question of is fiction realistic/ authentic? is, to my mind, misguided.
The thing about fiction is that it does not need to be realistic.
What it needs to be... is subtler.
Fiction is not about telling the world as it is. (It can be; it doesn't have to be).
Fiction, you see, is part of what Pratchett, Stewart and Cohen call the "build a human kit".
The stories we tell define the people that we want to see.
Put another way:
The stories we accept do not need to be defined along the axes of realistic versus fantastic. All the stories we accept are equally true; all the stories we accept define for us the world we desire and, more importantly, the kind of people we want to be.
This is why a fan of Devil May Cry has nothing to say to a fan of Twilight, because a person who is defined by the core of grasping both power and humanity cannot understand why anyone would idolise giving up both.
And that is why we have to be careful about the stories we keep.
We may choose to accept a story because we feel a loyalty to a writer, or a place, or a movement. But the moment we choose to love a story for these reasons, we accept the story as it is, and the characters in the stories we choose start to shape us into the humans the writers think we should be.
So I say this, and I always say this: Choose stories with strength. Choose stories with agency. Choose stories that tell you that you have the power to change, if not the world, then at least the world around you.
Choose stories that teach you to turn weakness to strength, tears to fire, fear to courage, and you emerge stronger.
Choose stories that, ultimately, tell you the same thing:
You have the right and the power to choose, and the concomitant duty and responsibility to pay for that choice.
That is the message I choose, because that is the message I choose as my destiny.
The message is the bedrock. Everything else is just the trappings by which that bedrock is expressed.
And the fact that different genres seem to have different bedrocks is simple: These are the true faces of what the writers are. Some genres attract ugly writers who love the grotesque and the grey world of despair. Some genres attract authors waiting for the magic spell that will make them heroes. Some genres attract people who fetishise the authenticity that they have made themselves unable to feel. And all genres become closed-in and unwilling to accept other messages.
Fair enough. Each book is a world; all worlds are connected to other worlds.
You are a reader. Choose your world.
Choose your destiny.
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