I started writing in English and I’m starting to hate Westerners now. (Also state of modern readers in general)
I was stuck at home and bored, and I had a strong urge to write a book. Nothing special, a coming of age story about the struggles of friendship set in a niche fantasy setting. My main language is Russian, but as a Ukrainian I wouldn’t want 80% of my target audience to be Russian, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone - improve my English AND my writing skills.
What I encountered over the last few months:
Several people telling me I have to make the mcs gay. Some black woman even tried to persuade me to rewrite the novel but make the mcs gay. Once you decline, these people just start looking for shit to be angry about and bother you about it.
People quitting the book over “offensive” content. Apparently, if the mc has mommy issues and is angry about women it means I as an author also do. If another mc uses a slur it means that the author is homophobic. If a side-character is racist - I am racist. If there is inequality in my medieval setting (even when explored with nuance) people start bitching.
Your books have to conform to modern politics, no matter the setting, or you get these reddit weirdos bothering you or even trying to cancel you (I’m not that big, of course).
Transgenders. Wtf is their problem? I was told they’re a small % of the population, but they pop up everywhere online to spread unhinged takes and hyperfixate on “fandoms”. One of these people who called themselves “a chinese auntie” had a sperg-out because they disagreed with my plot logic, yet when I provided counter-arguments (which were very simple, and required just reading the first chapter) they exploded in incoherent mess and this became personal.
Psychopaths. Why didn’t your main character kill the guy who saved his life? The novel is “grimdark”, why did your main character cry after killing his childhood friends? Shit like this. Very grating.
Gamers. Power fantasy enjoyers. Self-inserters. The biggest gripe - imagine a sort of man who reads literature about video games, but text, and wants all fantasy books to be like this. They often want wish fulfillment and harem plots, same cliches and dopamine hits in every chapter.
These people also struggle to relate to characters unless they can self-insert. If you do anything to ruin their self-insert fantasy, like make a character flawed or make them have a complicated personality, they quickly lose interest.
- ESL third worlders. They come and complain about your language being too complicated and needing to use a translator to read your book. Word examples: meandering, haunting. Lmao.
I pasted my text into the complexity analyser and it was 6-8th grade complexity, as far as I recall, yet it's considered too complicated for a huge chunk of the audience. Makes sense that modern movies and books are dumbed down now, I guess.
I’m not claiming I am a good writer, by the way. Far from it, although I’d say I’m improving. I just never expected the audience part of this hobby to be so unbearable. I also received a lot of good criticism and met interesting and fun people, so it's not all negative, but my overall impression of Westerners is much worse now.