Everyone needs writing advice from time to time. Stephen King's wife read Carrie and convinced him it was good if he actually had a woman's perspective. She went through it for him and critiqued the hell out of it and he made the changes she suggested and his agent sold the book for two-hundred and fifty-thousand dollars, when King heard two-fifty, he was elated to just get anything and then the agent dropped the bomb and said, "No, two-hundred and fifty THOUSAND." if King had not gotten advice from someone, he wouldn't have sold his first book because he threw it in the trash and his wife found it while he was at work.
J.K. Rowling (yes, I know, people want to hate her now for speaking her opinion.) used adverbs like crazy instead of letting the narration indicate how characters felt. She also had no idea how to write a teenage boy or teen boy interactions. She needed advice but nobody would stand up to her including her editor. She had pages of dialogue in the middle of a confrontation where the combatants circled one another. She wrote from outlines and didn't re-read her previous novels so didn't realize how her characters had grown and had to perform character assassinations on several to get them back in line. She had characters forgive and forget transgressions and betrayals like they'd been Obliviated of the events. She absolutely needed writing advice.
It's not pandering if you just include normal folk going about doing normal things and not being judgmental about it. You can still write what you want, how you want, but why the hostility towards those that are not like you? Why don't you like people that aren't like you? That doesn't seem very tolerant. Isn't the goal to get everybody to be accepting of everybody else? When you demonize one side then you cause those on that side to stop listening or caring.
Echo chambers are bad on both sides. Do you only interact with people that agree with you? Do you believe that shutting down discussion is a good thing? I believe in having the conversations and the better ideas will win out. Having your MC discuss different ideas to either grow himself or convince others that their views may need to be examined is a good thing.
Actually, you DO have to smile and thank the person. That's PR 101. Don't alienate or anger your fans.
