You know, people go on and on about pile-ons and heartless raging PoC and wah wah feelings and wah wah why can’t they be nicer in their criticism and whatnot. Right? Right.

What they don’t get is that it is FUCKING HARD to call a friend out on the racist bullshit in their fiction. It’s hard. I’ve been sitting here feeling vaguely ill for the last hour or so wondering if I should tell this person that this story of theirs is full of racist tropes, but I keep getting overwhelmed by thinking about how they’ll react and how their friends will back them up and is it worth it when they won’t learn anything and here are my principles but reallly whatever people will read it and react as they will but I keep seeing it get praised by other friends and I think WHAT REALLY AM I THE ONLY ONE and I know I’m not and augh whatever.

It’s out there. It’s available. I have as much right to my reaction as anyone else. But because it’s a friend I have to measure my honesty against how much energy I have to deal with the fall-out of critically discussing this friend’s story in public and I am so busy and it’s probably not worth it but goddamn it I can’t think of anything else.

In short, bah.