#fandom tokenization

A book I’ve seen a lot of criticism with this issue is “We are Totally Normal” in which there’s a story about the main character, Nandan, who is struggling with popularity, internalized homophobia, and a variety of other issues. He is not always the best person because of this, sometimes using people to his own wants or advantages, or rejecting then accepting then rejecting his queer identity so on and on. That’s led to a lot of criticism of the book, because not only does it paint a queer character with toxic personality traits, but also a character who doesn’t have an easy journey (if you can even call it a journey?) accepting his sexuality. 

Historically cis/het/able bodied romances have been given so much room to be as creative as they like, Romeo and Juliet, Dracula, not to mention so many popular tropes that would be toxic in real life.

Personally I think it's important to be conscious of stereotypes/issues affecting marginalized groups, however I don't believe that you should never follow through or create something on the basis of not portraying a certain individual in a bad light- that bad light is not supposed to be a reflection of the whole community that character is from. I think if someone sometimes falls into a negative stereotype with their media it's more important to consider how they execute that rather than the fact that they did it.

I seen a post recently talking about how characters can fall into clichés or “bad tropes” so long as it is a part of active choice on their end and is self-fulfilled. The post (which I can’t find) specifically talked about how never killing off any marginalized characters was also bad, and served as a deficit to those characters; in my example I’ll use the bury your gays trope. If the gay character isn’t being killed in a way that’s framed as a punishment for their sexuality, you’re probably doing okay. The issue is that in certain storylines where the possibility of dying is really high provides stakes the character has to beat, which causes the audience to empathize more with their choices, and care more fully about the character. If this character dies in an act of saving the world or something similar, like saving the life of a sibling, etc, as an active choice on the part of the character- you’ve subverted the stereotype by giving the character the power of their own narrative back. In order to make a more complex 3D character sometimes you do have to play into “negative” stereotypes of commonalities, not only does this do more for the message of the story (See how “Love, Simon” portrayed a stereotypical cis able bodied white male as “just like anyone else”, which plays into a 2D personality for the characters, but also only allows Simon such a high level of comfort in his sexuality because he checks so many of the boxes for an acceptable member of society he’s ‘allowed’ to be gay... (X)),  not only does this do more for the message of the story, but it also has the potential to increase empathy in an audience for people they might otherwise write off as “weird” or similar. 

Recently though there has also been more pushback against straight ships.

As for the rising instances of this with straight couples, in which they have to be depicted holding a healthy and stable relationship- it becomes toxic as well. There’s a modern problem online with toxic positivity, and also in the idea that a relationship has to be healthy or else it’s “wrong” has a lot to do with current purity policing issues in fandom specific spaces. Just because someone ships something that doesn’t mean they want that same thing in real life, and just because someone ships something “bad” they don’t constantly have to renounce what they ship by discussing their knowledge of how harmful it is. It’s good to be aware of whether or not a relationship being shipped is healthy or harmful if enacted in real life, but it’s not necessary to constantly discuss that, to discuss that in equal measure as shipping the ship, or even to discuss it at all if the person shipping doesn’t want to. 

People are often complex and messy and relationships can sometimes turn toxic or a partner can overstep a boundary, but not letting that happen because it's bad rep ultimately just ends up with people getting less interesting and diverse stories and let development in their relationship.

Yes! And the issue that happens here is also that by depicting a “perfect” relationship, you end up once again removing characterization from the people in the relationship. This leads to certain relationships/characters being put on a pedestal, and if being done to a marginalized character becomes tokenizing.