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But framing it as "that would never happen" is unhelpful because it's both easily falsifiable ("yes, this literally happened to me") and it doesn't get at the reader's actual objection, which is about whether something feels *plausible* within the narrative, not whether it's literally possible.

2. On a much smaller scale, I've gotten a lot of "that would never happen"/"no one would ever do that"-type comments when writing stuff based heavily on my real life. As I've gotten older, I've come to understand that such feedback actually means "I don't understand the characters' motivation" . . .

Like, this is the difference between a protagonist and secondary character? I don't feel equipped to write a piece whose main focus is racism. And the sensitivity reader didn't want me to--she just wanted me to get rid of all mentions of transphobia, ableism, and trans/disabled rage.

1. I was told by a sensitivity reader that writing a white, trans, disabled protagonist experiencing ableism and transphobia and getting mad about those things was bad because I wasn't digging in as deeply to the experiences secondary characters of color were having with racism.