It seems like people sort of subconsciously pick up on Shisui's suspicious behavior (especially if they've read the manga, I don't remember how it goes in the anime). Because I've seen posts floating around that compare Shisui to Itachi with Itachi to Sasuke, specifically I'm thinking of the one that's like "Shisui lied to Itachi that everything was going to be alright, he lied to the very end to 'protect' Itachi and then Itachi did the same thing to Sasuke because that's how he'd learned to 'love.'"
And when I first saw that I remember thinking it was BS lol, bc literally the first thing Shisui told Itachi in canon was that nothing was alright, everything was a disaster, and he was leaving it all to him. And then yeeted himself off a cliff for no damn reason. Actually scratch that, we know why he did it, it was to give Itachi MS. Which seems "sweet" until you remember that he said the coup could no longer be avoided and asked Itachi to protect the village. What's MS useful for? Killing.
Anyway, at the time I was like, "Shisui never lied that things 'could be alright' ... unless he was never actually planning to use Kotoamatsukami to prevent the clan from attempting a coup." But back then I wrote it off as just a conspiracy theory.
Koto could have worked if it was used on Fugaku. The issue is the assumption that Shisui ever had the intention of actually using it that way. If he had the WoF/had been in ROOT since whatever age, he would have had the exact same mindset as Danzo (same nindo, cough), so Danzo's reasoning that "the Uchiha are too much of a threat to be left alive" based on the Kyuubi attacks, etc. would have been something he'd have ended up internalizing. Just like Kagami was on board with whatever Tobirama was spouting, enough to be handpicked as his student.
ROOT's creed was something like, "You have no self, you have no past, you have no future. The only thing that exists is the mission."
And indeed it was very much like Shisui had no individuality. He never mentioned, and the series never depicted, any family. The only known connections he had were with Kagami (who was already dead), Danzo, and Itachi, and his professional reputation which was known to the clan police, Ao, Killer Bee, etc.
It's never explained how he got his Mangekyou. It's reasonable to expect he could have seen the death of someone close to him while fighting in the war. But ROOT also forces two "best friends" to fight to the death, and combined with Shisui's glaring lack of personal connections besides Danzo and Itachi, it's kind of ... too convenient to ignore. Especially now with everything else on the table.
Then there's his suicide note which states "There is no future for this clan." Could Itachi have written the note? Sure. But it's very reminiscent of ROOT, and remember Shisui's own last words were, "The coup can no longer be avoided ... please protect the village (and the clan's name)." The two statements in isolation aren't very damning, but combined, they're effectively saying that the only thing about the clan worth preserving is its reputation for the history books.
What I find ironic is the way the repetition of some of this behavior by Itachi - lying to Sasuke, planning to use Koto on him with the same order - is seen by a lot of (especially anime-based) fans in a "romanticized" light. As in, "that's how Itachi learned to love from Shisui, isn't it horrible and lovely at the same time?" Because it's not a romantic thing in any sense. It's literally using deception and jutsu, which are tools of aggression, weapons used on enemies, to force people to act in ways they wouldn't of their own free will.
It has nothing to do with love, rather it's tying Sasuke back into a chain of gross violation of autonomy. In one way the chain starts with Shisui, but since ROOT itself also acts like this, and it seems Danzo was being used by Obito, who was in turn acting with a seal on his heart at the direction of Black Zetsu, in another way the chain starts with Kaguya I guess.
Either way, it's like fans pick up on this and twist it into something nearly the opposite of its original significance. I'm not exactly surprised by this because of the way the series ties Shisui into Naruto, and frames Naruto as a "hero" for brutalizing Sasuke into submission. Coercion, violence, and intimidation, on Naruto's end, are not only portrayed as justified, but even a "beautiful expression of [reciprocated] love." So any fans that buy into that portrayal are also likely to extend the same mode of interpretation to the Shisui-Itachi-Sasuke chain of abuses.
Whether they're seen as platonic, or through a "shipping" lens, the problem is still that the very interactions that denote hostility are interpreted as loving.
You could make an argument that some of these interactions are farces. Actually some of them clearly are. Sasuke being pressured to gain the Mangekyou is what leads him to try to kill Naruto. But a lot of the time he ends up backing out - leaving him unconscious at the VoTE, for example. Likewise, he doesn't make serious attempts to kill Itachi, until their final battle when he feels his own life is in danger. Itachi's being forced make Sasuke hate him. But doesn't seem to want Sasuke to hate him, based on his attempts to avoid conflict, his forehead pokes and apologies. And he shows his reticence to actually harm him by sticking mostly to genjutsu. Naruto clearly feels something for Sasuke, though in my opinion it seems more shallow than Sasuke's feelings toward him, because a lot of it seems to come from projection. But he still repeats he doesn't want to kill Sasuke, he wants to stop Orochimaru from taking Sasuke's body, and he's torn between him and the village. Shisui's a lot less clear and honestly in canon I don't see evidence of anything but manipulation and violence from him. He may have had some affection for Itachi, but there's no clear evidence of that, unlike with Naruto toward Sasuke where he at least seemed to think he was acting in Sasuke's best interest by trying to being him back. Shisui doesn't really attempt to do something to Itachi's benefit, despite claiming they're best friends. Even killing himself to give Itachi the Mangekyou is inextricable from asking (ordering) him to use it to protect the village. So it's only really about the village in the end. Even the argument that "it would prevent a war which would make Itachi safer" is null, because killing the clan to protect the village would make Itachi a missing nin/criminal by default. :/
Anyway, while these point are important to note, because they seem to be one of the underlying motivations for people to read past the aggression, they still don't negate the aggression itself. And my issue is that usually the effect ends up being that the aggression is conflated with affection, instead of something unfortunate that happens in spite of it. If the two are conflated then there is no limit to the former past which a relationship becomes unacceptable/unsalvageable. It's a limit that should absolutely exist (especially contextually).
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