My Critique Partner is not My Timothy

I realized my friend and long time critique partner and I had irreconcilably different tastes when he told me I was inspired by the wrong pulp era detectives. “You need to read Dashiell Hammett instead of Raymond Chandler.” Which is funny because I’ve read more Hammett than he has.

From my work in animation, I’m very adapted to receiving criticism on my work. But I’ve become very frustrated with his feedback lately. It’s become more “you didn’t write this the way I would.”

I need to build a good pool of beta readers. I only have other writers who want to tell me how to fix things and rewrite sentences.