I feel like I'm swimming upstream in polluted water when I read other works out there for purposes of trying to see how something I would want to write might fit in.

It's bad.

A lot of what I skimmed over were Mass Effect clones, but somehow further right wing than Mass Effect already was, with the names changed and the numbers filed off.

A lot of what's left involves "humanity fuck yeah" space imperialism, grizzled tough guys with cold piercing stares and powerlifter physiques well into old age and their adventures with brilliant and hot scientist women that are defined more about who their father is/was and less by their actual job, that try to prove they are Independent Strong Willed Women but of course swoon for the timeless grizzled ego insert's blandly stoic charms. Also, a space bureaucracy usually interferes with the grizzled tough guy's very important imperialistic mission and his only chance to save humanity is to go rogue with a ragtag bunch of renegades and kill those filthy aliens before they threaten colonial interests. Or something.

I got some pretty harsh negative feedback for my inclusion of ideas in my own work. The idea that billionaires wanting to colonize Mars aren't actually going to save humanity by doing that and it would be an insatiable resource sink that would further accelerate Earth's decay was especially incendiary. Maybe I should have already become a rich and influential writer first before trying something like that, but that seems like it might have involved writing one of the above reactionary works instead and hoping another off-brand Mass Effect got more traction instead.

I'm demoralized, but I'm also nearly done with the third book in my self-published trilogy. It's a weird place to be.

EDIT: I may as well post a link to the website my wife and my friend helped set up. It has the first five chapters available for free and some other stuff.

https://www.tulpatrilogy.com/