One of the things I struggle with re: the "let people like toxic ships" (or like toxic published romances, etc.) discourse is that I find it makes it difficult to have meaningful conversations about the content of those stories.
If I look at, for example, dark romance, it is a true statement for many dark romance stories to say that the story is portraying abuse as romance. That's not saying the story is evil or bad or shouldn't exist or is tempting women into abusive relationships or whatever, but it is factually accurate that, by most modern definitions of abuse, the story is portraying abuse and calling it romance.
Similar things can be said about some subset of "toxic ships" in fandom.
It is also true for both some subset of romance/fantasy/romantasy stories and some subset of fanfiction that they present fascists, war criminals, mass murderers, people espousing hateful beliefs, etc. as sympathetic, romantically appealing, and at times justified in their actions.
I read a book once where a love interest admits to the main character that he has an anger issue that creates magical deadly fire, and to handle this and keep him from hurting people he cares about, his staff set him loose on criminals for him to murder instead. This moment is presented sympathetically towards the man who talks about committing extrajudicial killings.
This is not universally true, I'm sure, but a lot of the "let people enjoy toxic ships" discourse I tend to see has an element of shutting down people talking about the "toxicity" of said ships. In my experience, people who like those ships generally don't actually want to engage with the fact that the story is presenting abuse as romance, or that one or more of the characters espouses hateful beliefs, or whatever. And while sometimes that means avoiding those discussions, other times it seems to mean going "let people enjoy toxic ships" whenever other people try to talk about the toxicity of said ships.
And maybe this is controversial of me, but I think if someone's ability to like a "toxic ship" requires them to not engage with the abuse or the war crimes or the fascism or the bigotry or whatever, that's not actually the problem of anyone who wants to talk about those things.
Obviously I'm not advocating for harassment or specifically targeting people who like these ships to bombard them with negativity, etc., but I think if you want to like a "toxic ship" you have to learn how to deal with other people talking about how toxic the ship is.
yousharknotpass
pixelskylines
stormborns
titsay
izzy806
tangentwithtanner
germansingergirl
