Ouh that one hit like a brick to the face (not mine because I actually never took the time read 50SOG oops).
I understand where that feeling's coming from. There's definitely new and interesting novels/webnovels coming out, but even in the action fantasy category, if it's not an overpowered god gaining some sort of video game like power that completely breaks the balance of the (kinda often) cruel world he lives in, the story will rarely be "embraced", to re-use your terminology.
You exposed yourself as somebody who don't read often, it's fair game I expose myself as someone who begun writing my series because it was easier (and I don't read that much either lol). I'd like the series I'm currently writing on Tapas to become a cartoon series or anime or whatever terminology we got.
I feel like I have an immense opportunity to put a lot of effort on something while not doing a backflip on my finances and throwing away my schedule and other projects like a javelin. I can make and customize the experience, add different episode thumbnails, etc. It's just a lot of fun to write, it's accessible and like you said, it's incredibly intuitive because we've been thought to pick up a pen and we've been thought to click on keyboards.
I also feel like we've learned so much about what makes a great story from other medium (you put spiderverse in your examples and that is extra valid) and that, as long as we understand what is surrounding us when we are writing, we can definitely pull something amazing even if it's our first writing project.
And look, every other type of art went through this debacle between seeking great art and letting newcomers pop in. I had a photography history class this semester. Photography was a complex thing to tackle in the 19th century, it had different processes that made it so a single photograph could take days to complete, there were dark rooms created to save the negatives of photos, new experimentations, new ways of taking pictures almost every five years since it was published in the late 1830s.
Then pops up Kodak at the end of the century. You had people going feral over the commercialisation of photography (kinda like people in past centuries would get mad if you were a writer different then a white man named Balzac or Zola or Victor Hugo). Add another century to the equation and digitalisation of the process, the power of phones as cameras and selfies, and you got everybody taking 10 photos in the span of five seconds at a party. Snobbism failed to derail progress, at least for long, because of curiosity, because of desires to become better and improve.
Pewdiepie can learn how to draw and become a linux head in his early thirties, I'll gladly keep writing despite never being an avid reader (that said university kinda made me see reading other stuff could always be a good thing).
In essence, you have a great post and it makes me think about my place as a writer. I do intend on reading more in the future, but I wanna write because there are stories that I want to tell, regardless of the outcome. I'll keep writing! That is all lol.
