Okay, I am not going to be nice to someone who is clearly homophobic and also has no idea what I am working on. I have had to stop and rethink ever allowing a friend to beta read a part of the book I am working on. This has caused me to want to pull my hair out and to realize that my friend has no idea what I am working toward.
He utterly gave off the air of a homophobic idiot when he mentioned two characters who are yes, GAY, were not all over each other. To be honest, they are normal people, they have jobs, they don't hold hands all the damn time. They live together, sleep in the same bed, but guess what, they're not HORN DOGS! They're actually mentors and friends, they project outside an air of professionalism, something this person seriously needs to look at when talking to other GAY PEOPLE!
I have never been so offended in my entire life, to be honest, I was raised around a gay man as a child, he acted just like any other concerned parent. While not my parent, more a babysitter, Tim was a model for how I thought all gay men acted. They work, they talk to men as maybe a potential date, but also as PEOPLE. He treated even a straight person like my parents like they were friends.
I became rather offended and I wanted to blow up, but somehow I just went on Facebook and attacked C.S. Lewis and that stupid Lion of his. I viewed my former friend, who shall remain nameless as that idiotic LION. I had no idea how to respond other than the fact this person just could not get it through their head that he is utterly misplacing the characters' identities for what he sees on TV or stereotypes.
While I was hurt and not entirely sure, he was saying that I was focusing on an adult audience which I shouldn't be doing. He said as I am a person with a learning disability I should focus on CHILDREN as an audience and abandon Dragon's Library for a has-been story.
"You should consider writing something like Captain Underpants, or something more toward your mental strengths," of course that wasn't exactly as he said it, but it certainly sounded like it. My brain was shot, I mean I literally just could not handle it anymore. I had enough!
While I just took a break from the friendship and basically just put him down as, "yes, someone I know, but don't associate with." He made me out to be feeble-minded, this broke my heart, I was now just not sure how to handle it. His wife who is a friend asked me what was wrong because I had ignored her husband's critique entirely and blew up. I don't even care if he sees my blow up, he just ruined my views of my own work.
As of late, I have replied, "It's complicated, I don't want to talk about it." I am not taking the posts down, but my heart is broken. I want to write my book MY WAY! And to be told my characters need to be removed because oh my gods they're gay is freaking awful.
Forcing me to gender my nonbinary characters who by the culture I designed don't pick their gender for themselves until adulthood, has not to be discussed yet even on here. I have been waiting on that. I am now just not sure how to deal with it.
Now that I wrote it out, I am still pissed, I'm beyond angry with the people who discuss this like its a joke!
