#anti-indigenous racism cw

[rainbowsky]

Sorry I've taken so long to address this, I've had a very busy day and didn't have time to finish this post (which I started yesterday).

I'm talking, of course, about the incredibly controversial situation surrounding DD right now. I've gotten some messages about it so I figured I'd give my thoughts in a bigger post so that I don't have to keep repeating myself.

(CW: racism, spoilers FPU)

I know that by now most people are aware of the situation, but I'm going to start from square one for those who are just catching up on the topic.

There is a scene in Formed Police Unit where Chinese UN peacekeeping troops need to rescue a group of citizens who are surrounded by terrorists. In order to accomplish this they disguise themselves as people from the community. This being Africa, the troops were disguised using blackface.

Yes, I am saying that DD and his castmates appear in the film in blackface.

I am not going to post a picture of that here. It's just something I can't post on my blog. I understand that many of you will want to see for yourself so I'll link a clip of the scene, which was posted on Weibo. Please be aware before clicking - this is full-on blackface. Always take care of yourselves, and if you think it might be upsetting to you don't click. You don't need to see it to be a 'good fan'.

Background

For those who may not know, this movie was filmed years ago, in 2021. During those years I have seen many anti attacks against DD, claiming that he is racist and has worn blackface. Here's the photo that was circulating back then.

At the time I thought the makeup that he was wearing was likely anti-reflective black paint or camouflage paint such as is used by snipers (which he played in the film). I assumed that he was wearing his own hoodie over part of a military costume, because he was wearing a cammo shirt and what might have been combat trousers.

I was certainly not expecting full-on blackface from this movie.

There's no getting around it - this is extremely difficult to look at.

Blackface is widely viewed as offensive and racist. It shouldn't be hard to understand why. Putting on another person's ethnicity like a costume is deeply insensitive, particularly when you consider that BIPOC (black, indigenous, and other people of color) are so frequently targeted, exploited and marginalized. For those in positions of privilege and power to put on the appearance of the people who they oppress and exploit... it's just shocking and awful.

Blackface is most frequently talked about in an American context, but it's actually a problem globally - including in China. More on all that here.

The film

I have not actually seen the film, so I don't know much about the context beyond what is being discussed in the fandom. As I said earlier, in the film a group of UN police officers need to infiltrate an area in the community, and they take on disguises in order to do so.

In promotional media this film is being presented as based on true stories from real missions*. It seems the situation in question really happened on a Chinese peacekeeping mission, and the UN troops disguised themselves as black citizens in order to infiltrate and extract the endangered captives.

*I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt on this because it doesn't change how I feel it should have been handled.

This is important context that is being conveniently left out of much of the backlash about this situation. People are outright claiming that DD plays a black person in the movie - that he wore blackface to perform a role that a black actor could have played. This simply isn't true, and people making these claims are antis and liars. There's simply no excuse for not knowing the full context.

Having said that, I don't really think it matters how it ended up in the film. I do not think there is such a thing as a palatable or appropriate use of blackface. In this day and age it is nearly universally understood to be racist, and it's extremely controversial.

I can understand if they were trying to be accurate to the mission that they were portraying, but surely there are other ways they could have accomplished this scene (perhaps with the clothing but not the blackface). 'Historical accuracy' isn't as important as cultural sensitivity, not by any stretch of the imagination. In the interest of respecting audiences they could have adapted the scene to make the use of blackface unnecessary.

I really see no excuse for anything like this in 2024.

Audience reactions

Chinese sensibilities around these topics are very different from what we are used to in the West.

According to fan repos audiences initially didn't recognize any of the actors, and once it became apparent that they were in disguise, laughter erupted around the room. In fact, most fans are laughing a lot at the photos and video even on social media (although some Chinese netizens have been upset by it and have voiced complaints to various stakeholders).

It is also being widely discussed on Chinese social media as an exciting scene of heroism in the film.

I feel the need to point out that the laughter and mockery is a huge part of the harm, here. As if it's not bad enough that these actors are performing in blackface and presenting a perversion of black ethnicity, it also becomes an opportunity for audiences to mock and disrespect black people. It's become an opportunity for social media to be filled with racist jokes and mockery.

Roadshow statements

There have been some clips circulating of PR and roadshow moments with black cast members and some black audience members who have spoken up in support of the film and to thank the cast and crew for telling the story. Here's one example.

International fans have been dismissing those statements as ignorant or coerced, which I think is offensive and deeply fucked up. There's no planet on which I'm going to - with a totally straight face - say that a black person's response to the movie is not legitimate just because it doesn't comport with my own view.

This is a complex issue and there are inevitably going to be a lot of different perspectives. I hope people won't exacerbate the problem by supplanting black voices on this issue with their own, no matter what's being said. If there's any manipulation going on, let's assume it was in their choosing supportive black figures to speak for the film rather than claim that the black spokespeople are insincere.

China has a lot of issues with racism, there's no doubt about it. It's a huge part of why so many people try to whiten their skin, or why they mock each other when their skin gets tanned/darker. There is a lot of sinister, fucked up stuff going on in China around race - both in the country and in their dealings with other countries.

But we can't claim to speak for black people in China, particularly when they are speaking for themselves! I would hope this is extremely obvious!

Where's DD in all this?

It's understandable that bystanders will react to what they're seeing and might immediately deem it unacceptable - and DD along with it. Their reactions are valid, but as fans I hope that we can look at him with a bit more empathy. I hope that we can take a moment to try to see things from his perspective.

DD has been interested in and an avid fan of black culture since he was a small child. We've all seen how much he immerses himself in hip hop, street dance and the accompanying music and fashion. And yes, he's been accused of cultural appropriation in the past for wearing locs and durags.

However, I think fans need a bit of perspective here to get a sense of where DD might be coming from. Here's a guy who loves black culture, who has close friends who are black, who regularly works with black artists and who supports black artists, in a culture where racism against black people is prevalent and often extreme.

I think DD would probably be amazed to hear the accusations of racism against him. He likely has very few people in his orbit who are anywhere near as supportive of or as closely connected to black people as he is. He likely stands out in his circle as being particularly into black culture and connected with black artists, and probably regularly faces ignorant questions or digs from people around him about his close association with black artists and culture.

Not just because of racism alone, but also due to the racist parallels the government tends to draw between black culture, street dance, hip hop, etc. and criminality/moral degradation*. It's likely that ignorant people in his orbit have expressed concern or wariness toward him because of these associations.

*That is, until breakdancing became an Olympic sport, then they were suddenly onboard with some of it.

I'm not saying that he doesn't have a lot of learning to do (and if this situation becomes what I think it might become, he'll have a big opportunity to do so), I'm just saying that his ignorance isn't mean-spirited. He's coming at this from a totally different angle than any of us are, and he is immersed in a totally different cultural perspective than our own. In his world, his interest likely makes him a bit of an anomaly.

So those painting him as a horrible racist... it's just not how I see it.

The element of choice

I've heard many people say that DD 'didn't have any choice' about this role, that turning it down would not have been an option or that he would be under some kind of threat if he didn't take this role. I don't agree with that characterization of things. I don't think it's quite as 'gun to the head' as a lot of fans paint it.

I think it's more likely that he simply didn't realize that the role would involve blackface when he accepted it, or that he thought that blackface in this context - to infiltrate a terrorist cell and save civilians - would be fine. We don't need to depict China as forcibly compelling actors to take unwanted roles if we want to make sense of this. There are simpler, more logical explanations.

DD wouldn't have been the one deciding how to depict the scene - he didn't have that power in 2021 - but I also doubt he would have had a major problem with it given everything we know.

We must overcome our Western tendency to see things only from our own perspective. This has a totally different cultural context in China, and the voices we listen to about it should not be issuing exclusively from white faces that are not at ground zero of this situation.

Final thoughts

This film has had me worried from day one. I think most people have been expecting it to be full of offensive portrayals and propagandistic fuckery. There are so many ways in which a Chinese film about the UN is potentially a sticky, tricky mess. This blackface thing is likely just one problem on a towering pile of problems.

However, I'm not going to sugarcoat this - this has the potential to be a real shitshow for DD, and I am concerned. Especially if this film gets an international release.

We need to brace ourselves, because I don't think this is going to just disappear. DD has endorsements with international brands, and this could definitely cause backlash for those brands unless the issue is addressed and the scenes removed. There's no planet on which brands like Chanel and Lacoste can afford to have one of their spokespeople plastered everywhere in blackface.

If this film gets an international release and those scenes are left intact, it's possible he will lose some brands.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that, but let's face it - things like this have consequences, and that's why it's so important for producers and artists to be sensitive about what they're portraying.

While I think there's some endorsement risk here for DD, and the potential loss of some international fans, I want to be clear about one thing: I don't think this will threaten his career overall. In China this just isn't an issue in the way it is internationally.

I do hope the film team addresses this issue in some way, ideally by removing the scenes. They just finished doing a massive edit to remove ZZH from the film, surely they can handle something like this. But let's not hold our breath...

Everyone has the right to make up their minds about DD. As I've often said, being a turtle isn't for the faint of heart. That's not just because turtles are frequent targets for bullies, or because we have to constantly live with uncertainty and doubt.

Being an international turtle also isn't for the faint of heart because there are a lot of cultural and political minefields to navigate, and many ideological differences to adapt to. There's a huge learning curve and a lot of unknowns, and turtles who want to survive have to make peace with the fact that we and the boys are from different worlds in many ways. We may never know where they really stand on issues that are important to us.

However, in this case I feel confident that I know where DD's heart is on this issue. He simply doesn't hold hatred, disrespect or disdain for black people. Quite the contrary.

I think we'd all just feel a lot better if he had a good grasp on how to be a better ally.

And while we're waiting for that, I think we should put our money where our mouths are and learn more about these issues ourselves, both in China and locally at home. We want DD to be a better person; let's be better people too.

Edit: more on this here.

[lemon-etiquette]

CW: Mentions of a hatefic containing a possibly bad-faith and variously setting rule breaking depiction of the Affini, real-world atrocities and imperialism, and how it relates to a wider problem in the hdg community (racism). I also wrote it while angry, not at the author of the hatefic, but at a tendency I see within the community. I think HDG fans should read this little rant I wrote if they're in the headspace to do so, and if you're unconvinced by it, go read the hatefic itself.

The Affini are not imperialist. Florets are not a means of production, they are not bought and sold, and they are not commodities.

Florets are some combination of a petplay and a CG/L dynamic. Florets are also the people who need help. Florets are a metaphor for disability. Florets are people recieving truly benevolent, unconditional help. Florets are what all of us are in the end, because florets are people who rely on others.

Today, I read the first chapter of a beautifully written anti-HDG hatefic. I went looking for an HDG fic with a Black protagonist as I realised I had never read one before, and found this. I use the term "anti-HDG" to denote how truly anathema to everything HDG is this fic is. However, I believe it (perhaps accidentally) has a good point to make.

With that out of the way, the fic is titled Drapetomania. For those familiar with the history of that word, its use here should already ring alarm bells. For those who are somehow still unfamiliar with that word (I'll get to that later), it is a proposed mental illness that white slaveowners proposed that would give themselves a casus belli to further dehumanise the captives under their control. It would pathologise slaves wanting to escape from their slavers. Succintly, it is a conjectural mental illness related to scientific racism.

Now that we are all on the same page regarding the title, anyone who has read this far should be immediately, painfully aware of how that word applied to this setting would be a poignant criticism of the culture around the setting.

The anti-HDG fic is a bleak, harrowing, suffocating experience, pointing fun at white authors flippantly proclaiming, "Yes, the affini are imperialist, and we're kinking off of it!". It is essentially a story of "Rhodesia" (notably the Terran settlement's name is New Salisbury), of apartheid South Africa, of the Zionist entity, of any settler-colonial state that raped and mutilated and dehumanised and murdered the indigenous nations, just with the white coloniser-slavers given a green "Affini" coat of paint and hyper-advanced technology. To reiterate, it is not an HDG story.

It also contains a rape scene. Oh, well, you might be thinking, that's extremely common to the setting - it's non-con after all. No, that isn't what this is. In those scenes, the action taking place between the characters exists for kink purposes in a kink setting. The character being raped is described as barely 18, bleeding down her legs and screaming and biting and thrashing and urinating on herself. Fittingly to the general themes, she is a Black girl experiencing colonial violence on her body. The author steps even further into this metaphor by having the Affini give the character artificial, piercing blue eyes and a biomod monkey's tail.

Now perhaps you are starting to understand why, while I had been contemplating making a post like this beforehand, this hatefic prompted me into action. This is in no way an endorsement of the hatefic itself; to reiterate I believe its whole existence is mean-spirited and the practice of hatefics targeted at the HDG community is an ugly one. However I cannot condemn the author themself for the point they are trying to make, as for all its flaws, they are correct about this: HDG is a very white community. I am writing this post as a white trans woman, as the vast majority of the community is, and as the vast majority of HDG protagonists are.

The hatefic attempts to insert itself into the continuity of the canon by simply claiming that the white populations were favoured for more closely fitting an Affini idea of civilisation, which while textually absurd if you attempt to apply it to the actual setting, is metatextually an incredibly pointed critique. Of course white people are kinking off of imperialism, they've done nothing but benefit from it, including in terms of sexual pleasure. It's entitlement to indigenous peoples' bodies.

What the HDG community has not written is an empire of slavers like those of Earth. The HDG community have written a benevolent race of liberators who bring equality, liberation and borderline supernatural abilities, wherewithal and willingness to take care of people. If the (again, predominantly white) HDG community is going to write a society like that and compare it to the actual empires of Earth who used that very rhetoric to justify their colonisation of other territories, then we deserve to be ruthlessly and mercilessly criticised as the hatefic does.

Do I commend the author for writing it? I wouldn't be so quick to, no. I believe the motivation behind making it may have been (at most partially) transmisogyny. It targets a community of predominantly transfems, and would not look out of place in a full-blown TERF's arsenal of bad faith criticisms of transfems, if it weren't for the fact that it's such a poignant criticism of racism, imperialism and colonialism which I have yet to see a TERF produce.

Does it succeed in what it intends to do? Also not entirely. While I believe it had the intended effect on me - getting white people to engage in self-criticism by making us uncomfortable - the comments are people again missing the point: "I love HDG, but it's important to remember that the Affini would be bad in real life.". No, they would not, and on some level you know that.

I won't attempt to psychoanalyse the urge to distance oneself from the utopian fiction we as a community share, but it seems to lie somewhere between ironic detachment and just pure cope. More to the point of this little rant I decided to go on for no good reason, about a topic I don't even really have the right to speak on except as a member of the community being criticised, these people are still openly admitting that they think a benevolent, sexy, kinky, fun transfem utopia run by hot alien plant mommies is comparable to real-world empires and imperialism. Why? Because they expand? Or is it because you believe on some level that that's what empires are like? Or do you just not care? Has the thought ever fucking crossed your mind? I'll be the first to admit it didn't seem like a pressing issue until the hatefic brought it to the forefront of my mind. Don't get me wrong, I identified the problem but have kept mostly quiet about it until now. This has devolved a little but hopefully I'm still getting the point across.

A friend of mine who isn't on tumblr pointed out this issue too but she's also a white transfem. I guess this hatefic or something like it was inevitable given the festering issue in the community. Material conditions and all that. I'm going to bed. Enjoy this unedited stream of consciousness mess where I change my opinion halfway through.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

[cws: violent ableism and fantasy racism, anti-indigenous racism mention, dehumanization, abuse culture, implied SA/CSA which did not happen but sure would have looked like it to outside parties.]

-

every single time i see someone talk about how the ancients (more specifically the amaurotines, because they always mean the amaurotines) weren't that bad--sure, their society had a few little problems, but overall they were responsible and compassionate and knew what they were doing, and had a good thing going that shouldn't have been interfered with even internally--i think about them turning the violent death of a grieving coworker's disabled daughter, the events of which they mock him for, into a funny story to share around the water cooler.

i think about how someone in a high position of authority, who was in charge of the legal aspect of her existence--of deciding whether she should be euthanized or not, in fact!--ignored blatant red flags for her being sexually abused when he was fully in a position to help. obviously, as fucked as what was happening with meteion was that was not the case. and hermes, i love you. but holy shit is 'haha yeah i made a little girl servant i have complete power over, and didn't register or approve her existence with the government like i'm supposed to. which also would have involved people looking her over. because she's my pet project :)' a REALLY bad look. people should have been investigating him, and the person whose primary job it was to investigate him went 'oh okay, you're an authority figure and i know you so i'll take your word for it :)'

i think about how that authority figure barely remembered she died or even existed, and thought the idea that she could be murdered or should be grieved at all was an odd little thought her quirky dad was self-harming by making such a big deal out of. i think about the fact that these people preen about their ~vigorous intellectual debates~ and ~constructive free exchange of ideas about society,~ and yet after untold thousands of years this idea is such an utterly unthinkable fringe position that supposedly no one has ever heard of it.

(no shade on hythlodaeus enjoyers but holy shit i do NOT like this man, and this is one of the biggest reasons why. jesus fucking christ.)

like i'm sorry but no amount of pretty parks and sharing and being polite and paying lip service to responsible creation, and speaking nicely to children (sometimes) and meaning well (sometimes), and just generally not being a bunch of malicious mustache-twirling cartoon villains, changes the fact that amaurot was a society of cruel evil selfish bastards who had the power to treat the world like their personal toybox and get away with it. and who are also strongly implied to have been colonizers long before the final days, no less. and it horrifies me how it sails over so many people's heads that the entire point of the Nicey Nice Everyone Shares and Gets Along and is Happy is that it's absolutely fucking terrifying how effective they clearly were at stifling any meaningful accountability, opposition, or reform.

(don't get me started on the take i keep seeing everywhere that the amaurotines are analogous to real-life indigenous genocide victims, oh my god do NOT get me started, jesus wept)

like. this isn't just annoyance over incorrect or kind of insensitive takes. the vast majority of the time when i see people try to defend the ancients, they say with their whole chests a mountain of absolutely horrible things--implied or mask off--about real life issues, and seeing things like this reduced down to 'having a few little problems, but really what society doesn't' is just. upsetting. it is really upsetting and i wish it was not such a constant, and that i could find more people actually talking about the nature of amaurot's fuckery without at best getting immediately derailed into SO YOU'RE SAYING THEY SHOULD ALL BE DRAGGED OUT AND SHOT IN THE STREET, IS THAT IT

all this is to say: setting aside any wider-scale events, it boggles my fucking mind that just for that passage alone the fandom as a whole wouldn't cheer hermes on if he started setting people in his vicinity on fire lmao

[zaryathelaika]

Came across this documentary [archived, 28:26] (CW: recreational hunting, reindeer butchery, subsistence pastoralism, anti-Indigenous racism) about Sámi people's struggle against the Swedish state broadcasted by Deutsche Welle (owned by the German state). ... And ... Found the perfect still unintentionally explaining why Sámi people are Indigenous but Swedes, Finns and Norwegians are not. This non-Indigenous person believes in the authority of the state. (You should read James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State and The Art of Not Being Governed!)

There are an awful lot of racists from Nordic countries pulling out genetic studies, anthropological records, eugenicist beliefs, ableist views and the whole nine yards rationalizng about why Sámi people are not Indigenous.

But being Indigenous is largely defined by the colonial relationship [archived, 87.1 kb, PDF] with the state which is repressive. The screenshotted frame above encapsulates everything about why Sámi are considered Indigenous. The person preaches about being good neighbours yet is willing to use the might of the state to obtain what he views as his rights instead of attempting to build long-lasting relations out of good faith.

This video "What Does It Means To Be Indigenous?" [archived, 21:57] from Saint Andrewism explains succinctly what it means to be Indigenous:

[efangamez]

Hey beauts! This will be the last time I post anything about these two today.

I want this to be an educating moment, and white/non-queer followers, please don't react in rage. I'm safe and fine. 💛

CW // Racism, Ableism, Anti-Communism

I want you to look upon these messages.

What do you see?

No, I don't see helpless, non-educated people. The first commenter is clearly educated at the surface level!

What I see is grief. Horribly rooted, paralyzing grief. And it makes me so sad.

I've lived and thrived in WSC culture my entire early adulthood. I listened to horrible people about horrible things, and because of my OWN fragility and INSECURITIES, I fell deeper and deeper.

Until I found love. And art. And music. And hope.

After liberating myself (not quite there yet at all, however, it was an eye-opening moment), I've found in recent months by the teachings of Kokayi Nosakhere (links to his site are here) that I must use my white body as a shield and to soothe white people like me and use my PRIVILEGE of communication to help others go on their own healing journey. Not in a white savior way as if I'm going to save racism as a whole, no. In a way that uses my own body to protect others because I want Black, Brown, Indigenous, People of Color to exist in a world where white supremacy is dismantled. And with BIPOC creators' TIRELESS, and I say TIRELESS efforts of giving free education, it's the absolute LEAST I can do as a white person.

Here's the lesson. If you're white, give money to BIPOC creators when able, and use your privilege as a tool to help decolonize and help others go on their healing journey. Break the taboo of talking about race, racism, and whiteness within your community, and take action when necessary.

I love you all. I'm safe, and I'm PRIVILEGED to be safe. Think about the lives of BIPOC. They don't get a "break" from white supremacy.

Love y'all.

[danikriatura]

TW, CW; Dehumanization, degradation, extreme blatant anti-Black/Indigenous racism.

i have Selk'nam ancestors who were stolen from their homeland by kkkolonizers to be put on display human zoos in europe as "missing links", including many who perished in the ships en route.

"Often touted as "missing links" between man and apes, these Native peoples were harassed and demeaned. Their public display was arranged with the enthusiastic support of the most elite members of the scientific community, and it was promoted uncritically by American's leading newspapers. This award-winning documentary explores the heartbreaking story of what happened, shows how African-American ministers and other people of faith tried to push back, and reveals how some people today are still drawing on Social Darwinism in order to dehumanize others. The film also explores the tragic story of eugenics in America, the effort to breed human beings based on Darwinian principles."

[theshadypodcast]

In this episode, we spend a long time packing for a trip with Eragon, and unpacking whatever Paolini is doing with the Urgals. CW for anti-indigenous racism.

neocities | spotify | twitter

[fictionkinfessions]

I expect there's going to be more posts about the election soon: would it be okay to ask for an election cw tag? Or a politics cw tag? /genq /nf

the black list tags page https://fictionkinfessions.tumblr.com/b

Politics cw Referring to mentions of politics, usually that of real life politics. May also be used in conjunction with racism cw, anti blackness cw, anti indigenous cw, and so forth.

We already have a tag for that so feel free to block it? I can't imagine people would talk very much about it here, on a confession blog. Idk seems odd.

Connie / mod party cat

The tone of this post / reply is completely neutral, please do not assign emotions or read that deeply into it.

[thecottageinthedark]

#this is...... magical. this is like a fine wine. i am sitting back and savoring it#there's so much to unpack here. So Much#i don't even know where to start#a) it is beyond parody that a Whole Essay about how if you like [media with Problems] you're a bigot#includes lecturing a transfem for being Ignorant(tm) about how a show handles 'the female body part: vagina'#b) it is beyond parody that a Whole Essay about how your morality is determined by what media you're into#and if you continue liking it in any way you're Supporting the Creator and don't care enough about bigotry not to do so#defines this as media with 'problems that cannot be *ignored'*#'i can excuse racism [with measurable negative real-world impact on the indigenous tribe subject to the racism]'#'but i draw the line at [whatever media is getting called cringe on my dash this week]'#amazingly enough i'm pretty sure the way things played out with twilight mattered quite a lot to the people it affected!#which like. i am eternally bitter as a person who lives in the US; post-roe being overturned#and where there is a wave of genocidal legislation being targeted at queer people#that there is zero (0) of this energy toward fnaf whatsoever; and never has been that i've seen#after the whole thing where people found out the creator had secretly been using the massive amounts of money his fans gave him#to fund right-wing queerphobic anti-abortion politicians. there was a scandal for a little while and then Everyone Conveniently Forgot#and turned right around and hyped up and bought security breach and have continued buying his shit ever since l o l#there are people walking around with corpses rotting inside them right now thanks to where y'all put your money!#hope the cutesy animatronics were worth it!#anyway i had more to say but i'm just upset now lol#people Desperately want an easy out so they don't have to actually do the work re: social issues/self-education/unlearning biases/etc#sorry buddy there's no skip cutscene button on this one no matter how many cartoons you put on your dni#needing to take a break from examining problems with a given piece of media for your own health =/= material support for the creator#=/= having less Strong Emotional Reactions to the problems in a piece of media =/= those problems being less worth examining and discussing#the salt files#antis cw#racism cw#transphobia cw#forced pregnancy mention cw#body horror mention cw

Sorry, it was unfair of me to send that to you without proper context since you might not be aware of these issues. Irredeemable media refers to any thing with a creator or content  that is harmful and/or bigoted. Of course every piece of media has problems, but irredeemable media is when those problems cannot be ignored and are an indicator of someone's beliefs. 

For example, Harry Potter is irredeemable media because every one knows that JK Rowling is a transphobe, but some other piece of media like Twilight would not be considered irredeemable because even though Stephanie Meyer has done some bad things, they are not as widely talked about, so someone who posts about Twilight on here isn't completely likely to be a bigot, but a Harry Potter blogger would. Also, I know the "to be cringe is to be free" people like your blog, but a lot of the time, what is considered cringey on here is actually based on what is irredeemable. No progressive person or reputable blogger genuinely makes fun of My Little Pony fans any more, however plenty make fun of Hazbin Hotel fans and the such because that content is irredeemable and shows someone's beliefs. So usually, a piece of media being considered embarassing to like on here usually indicates that it is irredeemable.

As for why the other pieces of media are irredeemable, Hazbin Hotel is made by a woman who has many well-documented accusations of bigotry against her and has drawn zoophilia art, not to mention how her work leans into stereotypes about gay people (having a gay man character be a sex addict, a lesbian be named after the female body part Vagina, etc.) or at least that's what I've heard. Attack on Titan is created by a known fascist and many illusions are made to nazi imagery and nationalism in the anime. Captive Prince has a racist premise that sexualizes slavery and non-con. 

People can tell you that liking irredeemable media doesn't say something about who they are, but that's fundamentally false. If someone is uncaring enough to still post openly about these types of media, it's clear they don't care enough about not supporting bigotry. Yes, even if they don't give money to the creators, because they are still willingly exposing themselves to bigoted or harmful content and enjoying it.

The previous ask was not meant to be accusatory. Rather it was meant as a concerned question. Believe it or not, there are still some users on here who indulge in these pieces of content, a few of which hide behind the excuse of being part of a minority (Black, trans, whatever) or simply deny how bad their media consumption is to escape accountability. I wouldn't want you associating with those types of people and have that ruin your reliability on this website.

Hopefully this ask has educated you more on these issues and you'll be able to spot irredeemable media in the future and block it out.

incredible essay, you get a C for Creativity