What’s the relation between irony* and cuteness? Why is there a whole aesthetic category – ‘twee’ – that means 'cute+ironic’? Is it cause the alchemy of fusing opposite affects – if cuteness stands for innocence and irony for knowingness –  is neat enough to mark a genre, like the Gothic is the fusion of the beautiful and hideous? Or is it cause relating to something as cute is in itself a stance of both immersion and superiority toward the thing, so to be cute in one’s own eyes entails an irony-relation to oneself? Or cause weak irony, the kind amounting to admission of contingency but without pushing further**, is akin to cuteness in employing vulnerability as self-defense?

*I’m talking irony as distance here, not irony as actually-I-mean-the-opposite. 

**The contrast class is irony pushing for sublation, so Hegel-strong-irony, or irony pushing for diffusion into the field of possibilities, so Schlegel-strong-irony, or irony pushing for having a comeback for everything, so Fichte-strong-irony.