(this is not vagueposting about any current discourse or aimed at any specific story. I'm making up examples and not mentioning individual authors for a reason)
When assessing how successfully a subject is handled in fiction, whether the story approaches it literally or metaphorically is important. The creator is responsible for signaling this in some way; it'd be pretty disingenuous to write a straightforward heroic arc for a character depicted as an actual historical Nazi and then claim after the fact that it was a symbolic representation of some internal struggle, for example.
On the other end, everyone has seen the reviews/critiques that are like, "How Mystica Starlight Magical Adventures Fails to Grapple with the Real Horrors of War" as though abstraction is a fatal flaw and not a necessary tool when using recognizable conflict as a catalyst for characters' personal growth. It does actually trivialize real horrors to give them a protagonist, but stories transform the unfathomable into the personal. It is more respectful to draw clear lines between the play-pretend you are making up for your own entertainment and others' and things real people have suffered, even if your characters are experiencing realistic emotional fallout.
Some young creators very clearly feel that their fantasy stories need to be allegories for struggles against real-world injustice or else they're being irresponsible, and they end up portraying the most confused, reductive politics imaginable because the premise they find interesting is, "What if there was a really cool girl and she did really cool magic." This is a very sensible premise to spend your creative energy exploring during your brief time on Earth, regardless of whether it addresses the machinery of real-world oppression and the necessity of killing fascists.
I'm not going to say there's no way to gracefully and appropriately combine the two, but your debut novel probably won't be it. It shouldn't have to be. I have seen a few of these that are such products of their time that at worst, future audiences will read them as wildly insensitive "Mary Sue kills Hitler" ego trips despite the total sincerity with which they were written. At best, several of the key points will only make sense if you remember which Twitter discourse they were targeting.
Marginalized writers especially seem to be expected to write the definitive guidebook to revolutionary politics and deliver a stinging rebuke against injustice, but with vampires. They are under pressure to come out of the gate effortlessly weaving literalism into a framework designed for abstraction, and then they can have a little fae ballroom drama and enemies-to-lovers bickering as a treat.
Readers traditionally go to fantasy expecting to see some kind of dream logic or very personal shames and fears painted as larger-than-life archetypal figures. Because that's one of the ways humans process those things safely; that we can pile any kind of fake constructs into a fake arena and make them do fake things that we can banish from existence in the end by saying, "But it didn't really happen" is one of the most powerful tools we have to navigate self-awareness.
Not to beat a dead horse bloody, but Steven Universe addresses concepts like conflict resolution and complex interpersonal dynamics to an age group that experiences recess friendship breakups as epic tragedy and apocalyptic betrayal. Naturally the thematic backdrop of war is resolved by the aggressors learning not to be spiteful jerks rather than being executed for their crimes.
This is probably inevitable at a time when so many people have seen the impact of rampant propaganda with their own eyes, but some people have concluded that nobody can be trusted to interpret a story's meaning on their own. So it follows that if your metaphorical narrative--in which your evil ruler represents a common human failing, or an act of terrible cruelty represents a self-inflicted emotional wound--shouldn't be read literally, then it's irresponsible to write it. Because someone could read it literally, and they might come away from it with the wrong sympathies.
If you believe the purpose of fiction is to make persuasive statements about how real people should act and feel in the equivalent of real situations, then fantasy--or any kind of ambiguous, open-ended storytelling--is inherently suspect. I think media created to accommodate that during this period will seem judgmental, thoughtless, and even regressive in a few years, and I am sympathetic toward the young creators who followed the guideposts they were given at the time. I'm pretty sure most of us write this stuff at some point; most of us do not see it published to high expectations and wild contemporary acclaim.
