#contextualizing them and sometimes pointing out real mitigating or at least... explanatory elements maybe

[kyliafanfiction]

Boiled down to an overly reductive binary, there's really two approaches people can take to 'spicy toxic problematicness' for a character.

Either it's the starting point for the character, or it's the ending point for the character.

That is, for some people, the real fun is in detangling a fucked up mess of a character and bringing them to some level of... if not 'okay', then at least 'more okay' compared to before. It's not about turning them into a fluffy harmless woobie that barely resembles themselves, all the rough edges filed off, but it definitely does ultimately involve them ending up somewhere more functional than they began.

For others, the toxicity is the goal, the draw, the end game. They want the characters to get... well, worse implies a moral judgement that doesn't always apply, but to borrow a phrase I heard someone use a few weeks ago, they probably want to accelerate a character's fucked-upness. That end point may involve them still being better off in terms of their lived daily reality, maybe even involve them hurting less people, or even helping people, but they're more fucked up than they were before, even if in different ways.

Obviously, this is, as I said, reductive, but separating out the two trendlines when it comes to fandoms for the kinds of characters or ships that attract this kind of binary can be hard, and can result in intrafannish issues, because people may tend to see one as the only acceptable approach, or at least the only form of approach that involves real appreciation for the character.

But neither one is solely valid, even insofar as this binary really holds water in lived reality.

Hard to keep in mind sometimes.