[@shylarah]
No problem. I don't have a lot of formal education at all - so there's a possibility my opinion and analysis of all this isn't 'by the book' (not like I care about 'the book') - but I'm glad it's been a useful discussion, since giving people food for thought is one of the things I usually strive towards. Contrary to what a lot of people think, I'm not actively looking for arguments with people -- my primary purpose is to bring more insight to the table so people are constantly assessing their ideas and growing, including myself.

Romeo and Juliet is actually an example brought to the table by my friend, rather than one of the examples I brought up myself (such as Of Mice and Men). To be fair, there isn't actually anything wrong with love at first sight or with wanting to move a relationship forward quickly if the two people have a real connection (me and [@Ailyn Evensen]'s relationship blossomed very quickly, but that doesn't negate its power or merit), but obviously whether the connection is real or not is different with each situation and few couples truly get into a relationship without thinking -- divorce rates tend to be high in this era, after all. I remember enjoying the story, but it's been a long time since I saw any version of it. I'm not sure exactly why my friend used it as an example, but it could be that the movie was trying to make a point outside of just the romance story -- something involving the families perhaps.

With this said, it's very important to remember that 'literary fiction' very frequently becomes 'genre fiction' when it gets adapted into another media besides the one that the original writer created it with. In order to get whatever message the writer of Romeo and Juliet had in mind - for example - the original story has to be observed. This is very common in stories which get turned into movies or television series, where the message is lost due to the detailed narrative being taken out, leaving behind only the genre elements and the 'flashiness'.

As for Star Trek, I can believe that since I did tell you I just wasn't personally interested in it but wasn't certain enough about my opinion on it as 'literary fiction' to say one way or another without hearing my friend's thoughts as well. I remember personally not thinking a lot of the messages had much weight, but I'm sure there could be exceptions in an episode or so that I don't recall and to the best of my memory one of the movies (they go back into the modern era) makes a much better point than the others, but I don't remember the point it was making (I just remember the basic premise of what they were doing). If Roddenberry has gone on interview stating he intended his work to be social commentary though then that does make the series 'literary fiction' in intention -- at this point it becomes more of a question of how good its merit as one are in practice, which likely differs between episodes considerably. Another thing about 'literary fiction' is the themes are usually recurrent, even if they're not always present.

In Star Trek, Data is a good example of how there's a detachment from realism that can prevent the series from having literary merit. I don't know if the writers had the intension of using Data as an argument that 'robots have a soul', but if they did then the argument ends up coming across very weakly due to the escapist nature of the character -- there is no such thing in reality as a robot that's this advanced, nor can we actually prove creating one is even possible, so having a discussion about whether or not artificial beings like this are alive or not is basically a debate rooted in 'make believe'. To the best of my recollection, The Next Generation devotes a good number of its episodes to attempting this sort of discussion, and while my mother seemingly bought into it I never did personally.