Hello there!
Proship is a discourse-related opinion but it also exists without the discourse, it just doesn’t have that label applied. Basically, ship and let ship, even if they are ships with problematic elements is the original version. Lots of people have their own personal definition such as anti-harassment or allowing problematic fiction (given that you know it’s bad) deserves to exist.
It is not a coping mechanism as once again, proship (and using proship as a verb or noun is a bit silly) is an opinion. Yes, there are ideas related to it such as people should be allowed to use fiction to cope or people shouldn’t be shamed for their taste in fiction given they know it’s bad.
I made a post on some reasons for the appeal of age gap ships and shipcest and others can provide their reasons. Someone else also made a word document on the discourse. And for the reasons, common ones I’ve seen and also have are those dynamics (or problematic fiction) is/are interesting such as “how would this relationship go with they were in this [dynamic], “what if” in regards to how a character or characters would react to [x] subject, and much more! Most people outside of proship vs antiship discourse would agree that problematic fiction should exist.
For example, some people (myself included) are interested in serial killers as main characters to see their perspective on the world. Some examples of popular fiction regarding this would be Patrick Bateman, Dexter Morgan, and Norman Bates. There’s also horror which in general has tons of problematic elements.
I Spit On Your Grave has a noncon scene and is a rape revenge story. Despite the fact that murder is morally and legally wrong, it feels powerful to be able to enact justice on those who have wronged “you” (you in the context of being a viewer to a character’s trauma and feeling happy when they get justice).
In general, fiction, problematic or not deserves to exist given it doesn’t hurt anyone with the creation’s production and the creator(s) don’t support bigoted things. People are allowed to be uncomfortable with problematic fiction such as lolicon and shotacon (on a different note, it is a whole legal issue in some places with gray areas) and non-problematic fiction for any number of reasons. Given they don’t harass others for it, their feelings are okay and valid.
I hope this helped you! Have a good day or night.
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