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shellheadtm-a · 5 years ago

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i’m stealing the idea of a topical mcu/616 differences list from @suprnovas because while i know i’ve done them before, they’re scattered and scattered brain and picking through it by topic is a good idea. and this is more, obviously, for people who may not realize that 616 tony stark is an entirely different character from mcu tony, in terms of personality and the way his life has played out, and that’s important to me to point that out.

arc reactor / rt node - mcu tony had an arc reactor, a miniaturized nuclear battery, in his chest after afghanistan to keep the shrapnel out of his heart. no such creature exists in 616 - instead, tony wore the chestplate of the original iron man armors (which were much different than the first iterations of the mcu armors) under his clothes and it required charging every so often to function as a fancy pacemaker. there was a big to-do about tony getting the shrapnel out, using an experimental tissue transplant surgery ages and ages before anything glowy ever sat in his chest. later he had the rt node, which while visually similar to the arc reactor served an entirely different purpose. the rt node was also a nuclear battery/electromagnet combo, and served to power the iron man at the time (the bleeding edge), but it also served as tony’s brain in a lot of ways. tony had both wiped his own mind and been beaten so badly by norman osborn he had severe brain damage. the rt was the fine line between tony in a persistent vegetative state and tony upright and walking and talking. while not a part of his physiology any longer, he had it for several years, considering until his complete body reboot it was the only thing working as the automatic functions of brain and removing it would literally kill him.

alcoholism - tony’s alcoholism is background in the mcu, and quietly just whisked away (and while a lot of that has to do with disney...). however, in 616, tony’s alcoholism isn’t a once-mentioned deal and everyone goes on their merry way. tony didn’t just “handle” it, he took that plunge from grace and hit rock bottom face first. he spent some time broke. homeless. missing. it’s a prominent feature of his character, once he gets himself in aa and sober, and it’s tested multiple times. his sobriety is used as a bargaining chip. people try and have exploited it for their own gain (notably obadiah stane and justine hammer, the original justin hammer’s daughter). aa plays a big part in tony’s story, he does meetings, the steps, sponsors other people (notably carol danvers). it’s not a quiet, hidden thing, it’s very public and very honest, and something tony is very frank about being a daily struggle.

obadiah stane - mcu obadiah was a father-figure to tony. in 616, this isn’t even remotely close to the case, and instead he was absolutely villainous from the start, in the sense that he tried (and succeeded) to legally both maneuver tony’s company right out from under him and lay claim to everything tony had ever called his own. he manipulated tony’s need for love and problems with alcohol to secure that. he kidnapped literally everyone he could get his hands on that meant something to tony, from pepper to the baby of a friend he helped deliver. and after he took himself off the playing field he still had a minefield laid for tony, in the form of tony’s entire fortune (sure tony inherited the company from howard, but every penny stane took tony earned himself) behind a wall of failsafes to keep tony out if certain conditions weren’t met. tony ultimately succeeded, but it wasn’t a one and done deal, it was a massive climb up a mountain from the very bottom. later, obadiah’s son, zeke stane, also came after tony.

pepper potts - you know how the mcu story goes, tony gets the girl, they get married, have a kid. yeah, 616 didn’t happen that way. 616 didn’t happen that way so much that tony and pepper have literally never been in a relationship. they pined after each other for years, sure, and pepper is literally one of the people tony cares about most in the world and always will, but they’re not in love. pepper ended up marrying happy and while they had their issues ultimately they were still together at the time of happy’s death. tony and pepper have slept together ultimately a grand total of one time, and that’s been that. tony acknowledges that his role in pepper’s life is more overly protective best friend, not partner material. pepper is super, super important to tony, but she’s not and probably never will be his endgame. they aren’t like that.

extremis - in mcu, extremis is a mess. a literal, whole-ass mess. with a fake mandarin in the deal. so here’s how it works in 616: tony was the one (1) extremis enhancile that didn’t completely lose his marbles, and even then it can’t be said it didn’t cause some issues, as anyone who’s ever read the civil war storyline and his duration as director of shield will know. tony’s version of extremis rewired his body from the inside out, literally. he had a level of technopathy, a healing factor, he could literally tap into anything electronic he wanted to, connect to satellites, whatever. it also made him cold, distant, and more than a little less human, with less control over his already prodigious temper. it wasn’t a fun time. it essentially turned his brain into a computer’s harddrive, and he used it exactly that way, to the point he was backing himself up in the chance it was ever needed (spoiler: he did). pepper didn’t get extremis. in 616 you literally have to have a special genetic marker, or it will kill you. gruesomely. and, put another, easy to parse way: extremis basically made tony a technopathic steve rogers, a super soldier.

secret identity - the mcu has tony blowing off the idea of iron man as a bodyguard as ridiculous. 616 tony posed as his own bodyguard for years. he kept that secret so close to his vest only a handful of people knew for years and most of the avengers weren’t on that list. actually, the one who did know was thor, not anyone else you might think. or...that knew because tony told them so. lots of people caught a glimpse of it, or suspected. he’s revealed and then covered up his identity numerous times, finally coming out officially and staying out as iron man during the fight over superhero registration. while the whole world knows now that tony stark and iron man are one in the same, for the majority of tony’s time as the armored avenger, that simply wasn’t the case.

chitauri - chitauri were an mcu/ultimates thing strictly up until secret empire (which we don’t talk about in this house), when they were introduced into 616. that battle of new york? in the mcu? yeah that’s kinda...normal, for 616. it happens often enough that the world ending or aliens trying to invade or...look, 616 is entirely more perilous of a universe. the battle of new york is actually a conglomeration of several elements from several different 616 and ultimates battles, including the nukes. tony doesn’t have a fear in space because of things like that, he’s actually spent lots and lots of time in space, and notably with the guardians of the galaxy (of which he was one for a hot minute).

the avengers - mcu follows the ultimates storyline for the avengers, in that they’re formed by shield. in 616, that’s not so much the case. the avengers formed on their own, with an entirely different line up for the team, coming together as a group to fight loki and deciding that, overall, there’s something to be said about working together. originally it was janet van dye and hank pym (who are tony’s generation - hope van dyne does not exist in 616, instead we have nadia van dyne, who is hank’s daughter that jan has claimed as her own), thor, bruce banner, and tony. steve is not an actual founding member, he was grandfathered in and has all the perks because it’s captain america and you just don’t leave captain america in the cold. shield had diddly fuck all to do with them, and has worked with them in the past, sure, but it’s always been a very uneasy alliance. to the point that shield has tried to take over tony’s company at points. the avengers are a free-wheeling operation, funded largely through donations, the maria stark foundation, and tony’s own personal fortune. they’re peace-keepers, classified as a non-profit, and operate by their own by-laws and regulations, which if you’re really interested, you can find here. the only thing i’ve personally added to that is section five, and even that has some basis in canon itself.

ultron - ultron was created by hank pym (giant man, ant-man, wasp, yellowjacket, goliath), not tony. for very different reasons. and he’s been a thorn in the side of the world since his inception, having caused the destruction of the world more than once that’s had to be fixed. the living creature that is time in the 616 universe is so punched full of holes from having to do shit like this it looks like swiss cheese, let’s be honest here. vision did ultimately come from ultron, yes, but his personality is based off of that of simon williams, a superhero in 616 known as wonder man.

avengers mansion / tower / compound - the avengers used to operate out of tony’s childhood home, which he opened up to that cause, 890 fifth avenue. when that was destroyed, they moved to stark tower. that’s been destroyed about a hundred times at this point. currently the main team is operating out of the body of a dead celestial in the north pole. 616 tony stark would never lower himself to buying property in upstate new york unless it’s a cabin in the adirondacks, he’d buy (and has bought) property in new jersey first, and the avengers compound, such as it is, does not exist.

civil war - there is no such thing as the sokovia accords in 616. instead, 616 had what’s called the superhuman registration act (shra for short) which required all superhumans to register their identities with the us government. it was strictly us-based, for the record, and happened after nitro, a villain in 616 who can basically blow himself up like a bomb at will, did so in the town of stamford after being caught out by a group of superheroes known as the new warrirors for a reality tv show. it was the final nail in the coffin for a lot of people about superheroes (which are a part of daily life in 616) and people were scared and wanted something done. tony was pro-registration. steve was anti-registration, and was especially hostile after maria hill opened fire on him. they scrapped, and scrapped hard, in multiple public battles, until steve turned himself in when he realized not only was he literally about to murder a basically defenseless tony in the middle of a street (and what do you do when your best friend’s under you and tells you to “finish it” through his broken faceplate?) and that they, both sides, were just fighting to fight, instead of fighting for something. on the way to his arraignment, steve is assassinated. tony literally falls apart and loses his shit utterly and completely. there’s a lot of awful things that happen that can’t be contained to a blurb. and it all leads to the point where tony erases his brain and norman osborn lays siege to asgard, which is near the town of broxton, oklahoma. it’s a mess, both more contained, and bigger, because the stakes are bigger and the number of players are bigger, and there’s a skrull invasion taking place behind the whole damn thing. there are also approximately a million conspiracy theories, some people wondered if tony had something to do with steve’s death (he didn’t, it was red skull), and it’s since shaped the entirety of what it’s like to be a superhero in the world of 616 since, even if shra has been repealed.

captain america - is this really a tony blog without a special mention for steve rogers? the mcu, once again, defers to the ultimates storyline (which is not 616) for steve, with shield handling the thawing and reintroducing steve into the world. in 616, the avengers find him looking for the hulk and realize he’s still alive, and end up offering him a place with them, which obviously he ends up agreeing to. there’s a lot of differences even with steve himself which i’m not going to get entirely into but he and bucky didn’t grow up together, bucky had fuck all to do with civil war for the most part, and tony and steve are literally attached at the hip. tony literally has a captain america collection. the cap collection is a thing, everyone knows about it, it’s not a secret, because captain america was tony’s hero before tony ever became a superhero. there’s none of this tension right off the bat, steve ends up friends with tony and iron man before he knows they’re the same person. they fight so hard because they love each other so hard. they’re close, fullstop. tony and steve have been leading teams together since almost the very beginning, and that’s that. also steve and tony are literally almost the same age when steve is thawed from the ice; tony becomes iron man much earlier in 616.

bucky barnes - and while we’re at it: bucky is a super soldier in the mcu, and there’s that whole mess with civil war and tony trying to kill him. in 616 it’s the opposite: bucky tries to kill tony. tony talks him down and shows him the letter that was given to him from steve after steve’s death and offers bucky the shield. bucky agrees. bucky has intimate knowledge of the iron man’s inner workings and how to shut it (and effectively tony) off. completely. tony doesn’t remember any of this. bucky is not a super soldier in 616, he’s literally just a dude with a metal arm and a plucky attitude who has a very unique skillset and was frozen for long periods of time. he and tony have also been on a team together with bucky as captain america, and they’re friends outside of that. tony does the arm maintenance that bucky can’t do, knows where bucky lives, knows bucky’s cat. there’s none of this resentment there, they’re comfortable with each other.

physicality - this is a big one. it’s what makes him and mcu tony at a glance glaringly different, because he’s so much taller and differently framed. he’s huge and imposing in the suit, standing level with thor and at least half a head taller than steve. outside of it he’s still unfairly tall, but built lanky. he doesn’t build muscle mass the way other superheroes do, and tends to shed weight with a vengeance when he’s overly stressed. and while disney princess eyes are a thing they both share, tony’s got that bonus striking combination of blue eyes and dark hair. he’s also about a decade younger than mcu tony, and looks a bit younger than that bc of everything he’s done to his body to enhance it (which is mostly all moot at this point, for the record).

personality - this is really the main thing with this. the tony you see in the mcu is not 616 tony. at all. 616 tony is actually a fairly serious character; he’s only occasionally flighty about his company, and when he is there’s usually some iron man/avengers motivation behind it. he works. he works hard. and he’s known as a good man to work for, has good company morale, and takes a very micromanaging interest in everything his company does. he also occasionally hides out in his workshop for weeks on end and has to be dragged out to see sunlight again. he makes his jokes, he has some levity, but he’s more prone to rambling complete with flailing arms and technobabble with some philosophical footnotes than he is making nothing but solid pop culture references. he has interests outside of the iron man, outside of engineering, and whole those are his passion, he’s a student of history and philosophy and art, and when he has time he plops down in front of dog cops just like the rest of the 616 universe. he has unique vocal tics that are separate and distinct from mcu tony, that, while they both self edit, 616 tony is more obvious with it, stutters over words, gets stuck. and then has a hard time unsticking himself. he’s more sensitive; he’s less likely to give you an insulting nickname and reach instead for terms of endearment, and literally no one is safe. he calls steve rogers beloved, for crying out loud, and steve doesn’t bat an eyelash at it. he’s soft, and easily bruised, but he’s also steel spined and hot tempered. when he’s angry, you’ll know it. he’s also very kind, and very generous, and hates himself utterly and completely. anyone who spends any amount of time around him realizes very quickly that the plastic i’m king of the world act is a facade. tony will work himself down to the bone to make up for sins, real and imagined. he overreaches in making decisions for other people. and all around is probably a less appealing character in some ways - his flaws are very obvious and very human - but is in a lot of ways entirely more layered because there’s so much at work between his different masks and what’s underneath them all. he’s the first to offer himself up as a sacrifice if it’s needed, and reaches for the worst case scenario first. he’ll push people away because he thinks that will somehow save them, from himself and those he’s crossed. he’s complicated, and his complications are not always easy or appealing or fixable. there’s a truly ugly side to it that doesn’t get glossed over, and he’s willing to go so much darker if he considers it the right thing to do.

overall, there’s only some surface stuff between 616 and the mcu. there’s a guy named tony stark who does duty as a superhero named iron man, but how they both got to the present day is completely different, and their lives and experiences are also completely different. diving into 616 will be like...well. culture shock. and i’m gonna say it (even if i know the intake of breath on the 616 side is gonna be dramatic): for people wanting to find a characterization more closely related to the mcu? let me point you toward the ultimates runs. it’s kinda gross, but i have a soft spot for it and also it’s more narrowly related, you’ll see things that feel entirely more familiar, before jumping off into the crazy ass world that is 616, where things like steve rogers becoming a werewolf is just...tuesday. the mcu takes elements from both, sure, but you’re gonna see a hell of a lot more ultimates influence, and that’s a fact.

#constant //: ( about )#long post #long post for ts #// boy i know i missed a lot but #// i'm working off memory here #// and this is already entirely too long #// but here you go #// a friendly handy dandy guide to the differences that are #// the most obvious and the most important

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douchebagbrainwaves · 5 years ago

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WHY I'M SMARTER THAN FOUNDERS

If you ever got me, you wouldn't have a clue what to do: look at what happens to those who win lotteries or inherit money. Isn't the pointy-haired bosses. In OO languages, you can, even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world. There is a very sharp dropoff in performance among VC firms, because in many cases the language layer won't have to change at all. Then I'm worried. VC firm will not screw you too outrageously, because other founders would avoid them if word got out. Large-scale investors tend to put startups in three categories: successes, failures, and the distinction between the spikes and the average becomes sharper, like a digital image rendered with more pixels. And the big hits often look risky at first. The problem is, for the company to have a low valuation. In fact, if you have a browser on your cell phone? N elements.

But as well as Lisp, so they get the pick of all the parts, as ITA presumably does, you can make the search results useless, because the first results could be dominated by lame sites that had bid the most. If you want to work on what you like, and let people design whatever object systems they want as libraries. Will there be a phone in your palm pilot?1 So the total number of new shares to the angel; if there were 1000 shares before the deal, the capitalization table looks like this: shareholder shares percent—VCs 650 33.2 My guess is that the concepts we use in everyday life that you don't have time for your ideas to evolve, and b you're often forced to take deals you don't like it. I suppose I should learn Lisp, but it is a byword for impossibility.3 Though the first philosophers in the western tradition lived about 2500 years ago, and even have bad service, and people will keep coming. 5 are now widespread. That idea is not exactly novel. If VCs got de facto control of the company 2/4 2. You can start by writing things that are useful but very specific, and then think about how to make money, but what you'd like to be able to avoid the usual chicken and egg problem new protocols face, because some of the most important things you can understand about startups.

The difference between then and now is that now I understand why Berkeley is probably not worth trying to understand.4 Neither Bill Gates nor Mark Zuckerberg knew at first how big their companies were going to spend the weekend at a friend's house for dinner. VCs also insist that prior to the deal the option pool is down to 13. We were compelled by circumstances to grow slowly, and in particular, Internet startups are still only a fraction of what the finished product will do, but that dramatic peaks can only be achieved by people with certain rare, innate qualities; nearly anyone can learn to be a complete picture. Could you describe the person as an animal? That scenario may seem unlikely now, but Fortran I didn't have them.5 The goal is the same as intelligence.6 All they need is a language that actually seems better than others that are available, there will be no more great new stuff beyond whatever's currently in the pipeline for several years after, and finally issued in 2003.7 Don't hire people to fill the gaps in some a priori org chart. That's what happened with domestic servants. Partly the reason deals seem to fall through so often is that you get less dilution.8

So someone investigated, and sure enough, that patent application had continued in the pipeline for several years after, and finally issued in 2003. And yet this guy will be almost entirely overlooked by the press. These heaps o' boilerplate are a problem for small startups, because it's always the oldest it's ever been.9 If you work hard at being a bond trader for ten years, thinking that you'll quit and write novels when you have enough money to pay a little more equity, but being slightly underfunded teaches them an important lesson. This is understandable with angels; they invest on a smaller scale and don't like to get across about startups, that's it. So when I ran into the Yahoo exec I knew from working there in the late 1950s. I know a lot of people wish that hacking was mathematics, or at least to know what they want from me. Probably because the product was a dog, or never seemed likely to be smarter. Barely usable, I admit, this is true.

We might have to give definite if implicit advice will keep us from straying beyond the resolution of the words we're using.10 Maybe mostly in one hub, and it seems to consume all your attention. But I have a hunch that the main branches of the evolutionary tree pass through the languages that have the right kind of place for developing software. They're not pretending; they want to believe you're a hot prospect, because it is the cool, new programming language. And this tradition had so long to develop that nontechnical people like managers and venture capitalists also learned it. Some languages are better than either of them?11 At the very least, you're supposed to be working on their company, not worrying about investors. They'd rather lose the deal than establish a precedent of VCs competitively bidding against one another. Wall Street's language. Since people interested in designing programming languages, a lot of good publicity for the VCs.

Notes

Kant.

Even the cheap kinds of startups will generally raise large amounts of money from it.

There's a good plan in which internal limits are expressed.

And the reason the US. Bankers continued to dress in jeans and t-shirt, they're probably a real partner. Record labels, for many Americans the decisive change in how Stripe felt. You have to do business with any firm employing anyone who had died decades ago.

I find hardest to get going, e. Economic inequality has been decreasing globally. Microsoft, incidentally, that all metaphysics between Aristotle and 1783 had been Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard Business School at the end of World War II had become so common that their system can't be buying users; that's the situation you find known boring ideas intolerable. This has, like arithmetic drills, instead of crawling back repentant at the network level, because the illiquidity of progress puts them at the lack of movement between companies combined with self-imposed.

The wave of hostile takeovers in the country. This seems unlikely at the end of economic inequality is not to pay employees this way, they'd be called acting Japanese. This sentence originally read GMail is painfully slow. Geshke and Warnock only founded Adobe because Xerox ignored them.

That's the difference between being judged as a type of product for it.

If you actually started acting like adults.

The existence of people. Why go to college, you'll be well on your own mind. All languages are equally powerful in the sort of wealth—that startups usually lose money at all.

This includes mere conventions, like the intrusive ads popular on Delicious, but trained on corpora of stupid and non-broken form, that it killed the best in the sense that if the present, and FreeBSD 1.

And while they may try allowing up to the principles they discovered. Xxvii. Wisdom is useful in solving problems too, but art is a big change in the cover story of creation in the US News list?

Thanks to Chad Fowler, Patrick Collison, Dan Giffin, Geoff Ralston, Trevor Blackwell, and Stan Reiss for the lulz.

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fannishcodex · 7 years ago

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AU where Star is even more literally Eclipsa 2.0 and falls in love with a monster from Mewni, and they eventually have a half-monster/half-mewman child together (who physically takes after monster dad the most and doesn’t really look mewman, except for inheriting Star’s hair and eyes).

Quick OC intro before doing some more elaboration below the cut: the monster of Star’s affections is Kit, one of Rasticore’s nephews. (Wanted to toy around with the concept of look-a-like next gen/generation xerox--Moon’s look-a-like daughter falls in love with Rasticore’s look-a-like nephew. Also toy with the animosity between Moon and Rasticore, more intense and different in this AU.) Their daughter is Nimbus, whose cheek marks are narwhals. If Nimbus holds the wand--broken under different circumstances in this AU--it turns into a pale pink watering can, the broken wand crystal takes the shape of a raindrop and its green color reflects her monster heritage.

This is still a work-in-progress brainstorm for this AU. (It does have similarities with another AU for Star that I posted about before [x].)

Complete AU where a lot of the backstory on Mewni (i.e. for Moon, Toffee, Eclipsa, Heinous, etc.) is different, and an AU where season 3 definitely doesn’t happen, but neither do seasons 1 and 2. For example, Ms. Heinous is a full-blooded mewman.

I was working on this before canon “monster bash” personally disappointed me. (This is also what I had been showing WIP sneak peeks of earlier [x] )

Below is more about this AU, including even more of my salty af response to canon:

This is absolutely not MonsterArm!Marco or Monster!Marco. This is Star/OC. No Marco in sight.

No offense to anyone, but unpopular opinion: part of this AU came from the fact I’m honestly getting weary of all the Starco OC children, and Starco in general.* It’s too much of the same stuff for me. I want something else--and something that ties in more directly with the monster-mewman themes that I’m more interested in, and feel are more important. Also part of this AU is coming from me being salty AF about current SVtFoE canon developments wrt to monster-mewman themes, and just really focusing on what I would prefer over canon right now. (Again, I started making this post before the new episodes in November. I just felt even more salty af about all of this after those new episodes in November.) Other personal reasons behind why I made this AU, and this gets salty af too in some parts:

-I really am way more invested and interested in the monster-mewman themes in svtfoe, and expanding on that and focusing on that, even down to tying Star’s romantic arc to that, making her romantic arc more plot- and character- and theme-relevant through that IMO. Like if Star /has/ to have a romance, why not tie it directly into monster-mewman themes? Why not have her fall in love with a monster from Mewni?

-I literally keep wondering what if Star was even more like Eclipsa, down to romantic interest in a monster.

-I like the idea of monster-humanoid couples having children who take after their monster parent more. Of half monster-half humanoid children that don’t look that humanoid. (Because I feel like that’s happened too much, and it’s getting old; I’m tired of the idea that there’s this half-monster/half-humanoid kid, but she/he is still so humanoid-looking, and I’m like “what about her/his monster heritage??” and it turns me off; like, when the hybrid is too humanoid-looking, it feels like the monster heritage is barely present, and I don’t care for that. I want more half monster/half humanoid kids actually looking more like their monster parents. Also I feel like the face is like the most key part of the design--if the face looks too humanoid, then the whole design is too humanoid.)

-I like the idea of a half-monster princess--who physically takes after her monster heritage the most--having a claim to the Butterfly matrilineal throne. (Bonus points for Septarian monster heritage.) Even though I’d rather see the system torn down, I also can’t help but like the idea of a half-monster princess taking the Butterfly throne (before she eventually ends it after doing what she can do with it to help monsters--because ultimately part of helping monsters should have an end to the Butterfly kingdom itself, and/or its removal from the original monster homeland; or it /is/ completely reclaimed by monsters.) Or again, she just has a claim to the throne that conquered the monster half of her family--but that doesn’t mean she ever takes the throne, and may just help tear it down instead.

-I like the idea of mixed race half-monster/half-mewman children in general, especially if they’re members of the Butterfly royal family tree, and again if they physically take after their monster heritage more, if they don’t look so mewman/humanoid.

-Also tbh I keep enjoying the idea of throwing Star onto the Lizard Love/Septarian Love wagon.

- And I just finally wanted Star’s half-monster daughter way more than another Starco kid.

-I know in a previous post [x] I did say I didn’t like Starco being used for marriage and babies for Star’s endgame--but like I mentioned before, I’m interested in the idea of, if Star has to have a romance, let it tie more directly into monster-mewman themes. Let her romance arc have actual interracial themes that deal with a race oppressing another, and how individuals of those races can come together, and come to want to end that oppression. Just in this case, I find marriage and babies /as a part of/ Star’s endgame more interesting and meaningful to me if she chooses a monster for her love and has a mixed-race child with him, and who physically takes after monster heritage more than mewman heritage. I also feel like that ties more into Star’s individual life in a way, not just her romantic/family side--like it ties more into those monster-mewman themes where she feels more like an individual with her own goals. Just, it feels like it ties into Star having other concerns outside of romance, it feels like it ties into Star having increased agency and exerting power to change her world for the better, and having to deal with what her family history did. That’s something I just can’t really get out of Starco.

Again, this AU is still a rough work-in-progress. I’m still trying to figure things out, particularly more about the OCs/Star’s monster husband and half monster daughter. Below is what I have down so far that I feel like sharing, besides the designs I came up with. Also will involve a bit more WIP brainstorming on AU worldbuilding, including info on characters other than the canon/oc ship and their child:

-The monster of Star’s affections is Kit, one of Rasticore’s nephews and nieces. I literally thought of Rasticore having a large extended family through his multiple siblings each having their own offspring, and altogether giving him quite a few nephews and nieces for my AU started in between seasons 2 and 3, ‘wrong space wrong time’ [x] . I decided I wanted to combine that element with this AU (and to actually just make this part of an alternate continuity with ‘wrong space wrong time’ AU). Also my pre-season 3 AU has Rasticore and Moon personally loathing each other, like they actually know each other enough to really hate each other, which makes it even harder for me to resist the idea that Moon also has to conflict with Star falling for someone related to a monster she really /personally/ detests, combined with the racism that’s been ingrained in her. And again, I wanted to toy around with the concept of look-a-like next gen/generation xerox--Moon’s look-a-like daughter falls in love with Rasticore’s look-a-like nephew.

-Kit Chaosus Disastorvayne, son of one of Rasticore’s younger brothers--who shared a resemblance to Rasticore, and passes this down to Kit--is the same age as Star. He and his siblings have long been orphaned, and currently live with one of their aunts (one of Rasticore’s younger sisters). Like many other monsters, they’re impoverished and face mewman aggression.

-I’m not dealing with S3 canon directly, and going with my AU backstory in “wrong space wrong time” AU instead because tbh I prefer it, and it’s more fleshed out and ready for me to use--but more about that AU is another post for another day. Just to sum up one detail, I’ll say that Rasticore and Moon have different backstories in this and detest each other for some different reasons, and more intensely because they are more familiar with each other.

-In this “Star is even more literally Eclipsa 2.0″ AU, Toffee was captured and brainwashed along with Rasticore by Miss Heinous--who also has a different backstory and is a full-blooded mewman--and St.O’s after a savage battle with Moon (before Star or Kit were ever born). Both Toffee and Rasticore have been brainwashed into working for Ms. Heinous and her related interests, and that’s where they are while Star is born and eventually inherits the royal wand. (This does include Toffee/Rasticore ship because I like that ship.)

-In this AU, Moon chooses to focus more on personally training Star rather than sending her to Earth once she immediately screws up with the royal wand after first receiving it. Maybe just spend more time with your kid and teach her more about the magical artifact she’s been given with seemingly little prep beforehand, instead of immediately shipping her off to another dimension with still not much instruction on newfound power boost granted by said magical artifact. So Star is never sent to Earth when she’s 14, she stays on Mewni.

-Star continues to go around picking fights with monsters in her spare time, and this now includes fending off Ludo’s attempts to steal her wand. In this AU and with Toffee brainwashed and forced to serve St. O’s, the events of “Storm the Castle” don’t exactly happen--and it’s Star who finds the monster tadpole babies, instead of Ludo. After her initial disgust, Star watches them more closely, and finds their behavior adorable, and they actually look kinda cute. Instead of Buff Frog, Star takes the monster tadpole babies in, and secretly cares for them at Butterfly Castle.

-Through caring for the monster tadpole babies in secret, Star starts to realize the brutal truth about the upcoming annual observance of Mewnipendance Day, and hesitates with attacking Buff Frog when he tries to steal her wand again.

-When Mewnipendance Day actually comes, it’s the usual for Star: on Mewni, Star always makes public appearances with her parents celebrating the holiday, presiding over huge reenactments and festivities per their status as the royal rulers and heir to the throne. Star is much more apprehensive this year and worrying even more about the monster babies she left in her Secrets Nursery (codenamed Secrets Closet). Some of Star’s older cousins on her father’s side convince Star to join them for their own little celebration, thinking she’s old enough now that she has the wand and thinking this’ll be a treat for her; for once really thinking about appearances and actually realizing it’ll look strange if she resists this invite too much after years of behaving a certain way--last year she would have been immediately thrilled by such an invitation--Star agrees and sneaks away with them.

-Star relaxes with her cousins--their cheerful mood is infectious, and the corn milkshakes they’ve grabbed taste delicious.

-Star’s older Johannsen cousins take her to the edge of the Forest of Certain Death, to what ends up being her first meeting with Kit--locked up in a cage, in front of a decent-sized topiary maze. Star’s cheered up mood drops. Star stares at the caged monster, and he’s shorter than her, and she’s seen and fought shorter monsters before, like Boo Fly, but this--Star thinks this monster could be her age. Her cousins tell her they’re gonna let loose this beast later for a monster hunt, through this new topiary maze grown from this new line of magic seeds from Quest Buy. Unsettled, Star tries asking why, what did this monster do to end up like--her cousins get really confused by her line of questioning, wondering why she’s overthinking this.

-Star’s the only one to notice Kit move quickly but carefully, slipping a claw through the bars and take a key from one of her cousins standing too close and completely clueless. Too late, Kit realizes Star saw, and he catches her eye, looking freaked out--Star says in a loud voice that her cousins are right, but their topiary maze needs a complete makeover. Taking out her wand, Star goes to town using it to make the topiary maze bigger and thornier and with a million more flowers, all while her cousins watch in awe, sufficiently distracted from Kit unlocking the cage door and bolting into the deeper woods.

-When her cousins finally realize Kit is gone, they freak out and start to look for him. Star stops them, calming them down a bit, and confidently insisting she has this covered. She’ll just turn this topiary maze into a topiary bloodhound that’ll track that monster down--oh no, /oops/, what do you know, my spell backfired /again/, don’t worry, I’ll totally make the topiary hound spit you guys out, just give me a few...hours? Sorry, please don’t tell my mom--she’d doubly freak out if she knew you guys sneaked me out, and with me screwing up my spells /again./ Just, essentially Star feigns another spell backfire--like she’s been known to do--to further help Kit escape. It works.

-Back at Butterfly Castle, Star coos over the monster tadpole babies, but is still freaked out. Star’s certain that monster must have gotten away, her cousins didn’t get him--but there were a lot of mewmans celebrating, what if someone else had?... Star flips through her ancestral Book of Spells for some kind of locator spell, and asks Glossayrck for help, but acting cagey about her exact reasons. Glossayrck seems to consider, then seemingly unconcerned, he unlocks Eclipsa’s chapter without identifying who wrote it, and shows Star the spying spell.

-Star uses the spying spell for the image in her mind, of that monster… When Star finds him still making his way through the woods looking like no one followed him and looking unhurt, she reflexively audibly voices her relief, “Okaycoolyou’refine”. Star jumps back when Kit whirls around and spots her. They’re both startled and confused and freaked out, Star says she didn’t think he would notice her, Kit points out there’s a hole in the sky and she just talked, and Kit bristles, wary, is this some really sick mewman game, letting him go like this to track him down again, was this her own hunt but longer--Star, bug-eyed, insists she’s not hunting him, she just wanted to check to see if he was okay--and their strained interaction goes on. Kit remains tense and biting, and Star awkward and unused to dealing with someone like this. When Star says she was only trying to help, Kit asks why, and what does she want, his complete gratitude? Her mercy that still confuses him isn’t going to make him suddenly agreeable with any mewman, least of all their princess. And again, her mercy is confusing, doesn’t make sense, and he’s still wary of her, especially since she’s watching him through this giant magic hole in the air. But eventually Kit concedes that Star saw him take the keys and didn’t expose him like she could have, and did distract his captors, so he gives a small gruff thank you, but he isn’t charmed by Star, and she doesn’t feel any better. Star leaves Kit alone, deactivating the spying spell.

-Completely freaked out by Mewnipendance Day and what just happened because of it and hitting a new fever pitch in her fear of what would happen if her parents or the royal court or any mewman discovered she was caring for monster tadpole babies--well, Star realizes she can’t secretly care for them while living in Butterfly Castle and being the crown princess. So bundling herself up in a disguise made from old goth gear that had been on sale in Quest Buy--that she had got during her spiky leather phase with Pony Head before--Star secretly leaves the monster babies at Ludo’s castle for Buff Frog to find, and Buff Frog happily adopts them. Star gradually develops more sympathy for monsters and disillusionment with her own people.

-Star begins raiding the food hoards of mewman nobility for monsters while in a dark drab disguise cobbled together from Quest Buy goth gear, the same ensemble she used for when she secretly took the monster tadpole babies to Buff Frog, with some modifications. She continues to do this and other acts of sabotage against ruling mewmans while in disguise, and her alter ego comes to be bluntly called the Rogue, hated by most mewmans and appreciated by monsters, but both think the bandit is a monster. ( @lemonadesoda drew some images of this Rogue Star AU [x] )

-Wanting to check on the monster tadpole babies--and feeling a strange new loneliness in Butterfly Castle after growing increasingly wary of the main beliefs her ancestral home holds--Star uses the spying spell to contact Kit, and ask him to do it for her. He’s freaked out again and wary of her locating him like this again, but Star says it’s her only way to get in touch, and asks for another way to please reach him, because she has a request. Kit first wants to know what it is, right now. Star tells him about the monster tadpole babies and shows photos on her mirrorcell for proof; she asks if Kit could please check up on them for her, and she would compensate him with money, food. Star says she doesn’t want to use this spying spell to check on them, because she doesn’t want the tadpoles’ new family to know about her, and if Kit spotted her, they might too; it would be the same risk if she tried sneaking around there again. Star’s emotions and photos make Kit reconsider her, but he’s still not entirely certain. But the promise of compensation strikes a desperate chord with him, he and his family could really use food and money. Kit agrees, and he and Star plan to meet in the woods to exchange info for payment.

-For this, Kit goes to Castle Avarius saying he’s looking for a job--which would be nice, actually, really fulfill that job hunt he had started before insanely getting some help from the Butterfly princess. Kit had heard some rumors about Ludo, but none had been clear about his efforts in Avarius Castle; when he gets there, he gets confirmation of what they’re doing. If Kit could get some kind of paying position here on top of what he was doing for the princess, that would be beneficial; even more so if a steady position here would give him a steady business arrangement with the princess, if she continued to want to pay for this specific information. It works out, Buff Frog even seems to like him--seeing the babies in person made Kit warm up and admire their cuteness, and compare them to his younger siblings and cousins, and when Buff Frog asks if he ever looks after them, Kit says ‘yes’--and Kit has the job and the info. The job is really just babysitter assignment to Buff Frog’s babies, but it’s a job, and Kit had experience with his younger siblings and cousins. Buff Frog had shouted down Ludo and put his foot down, saying that though Kit was newly of age at 14 years old, he would still be the youngest; and the babies needed care for when he was away on missions. Kit could look after them, and also help with upkeep of castle, and generally free up the older monsters for more mission work while he tended to those things.

-Kit meets with Star afterward, and they do the exchange, of info for payment. They maintain this arrangement periodically, through texts after sharing mirrorcell numbers. Star takes more care to repel Ludo’s forces--Buff Frog among them--through less harmful and more benignly defensive spells. (Ludo, Buff Frog, and the other monsters notice. Princess Star’s spells remain quirky, but they also seem strangely less violent. They aren’t sure what to make of this though.)

-Star and Kit are the same age. At 14, Star is taller and thinner, Kit shorter and bulkier. Their size and shape difference are actually similar to young Moon and River in the comics. But as they grow, Kit sprouts and becomes more slender, while Star becomes bulkier, and still grows taller, and she and Kit end up at about the same height.

-Star knows most people either have disdain for her and then are charmed and soften up and they appreciate her in quick order, or people just have disdain for her. Star figures Kit was the latter, but still he was new--his disdain was more blunt, more than any other; and she didn’t entirely run from his disdain like others, or write him off as annoying and opposition to be safely ignored. How could she? Star felt he had every reason to dislike her, and it unsettled her. It unsettled Star, not only because she wasn’t used to this, but also because she felt she deserved it. She hadn’t directly done anything, but somehow that felt worse; to have his disdain (wariness) exist due more to her people--and how her people seemed to define her whether she wanted them to or not--felt worse. Sometimes Kit seemed to try to catch himself, and looked at her in a different way that made her stomach squirm, and then he’d try to act more careful and deferential in a way that made her feel gross and reminded her of servants back home in the castle (that made her think of a picture book where the pop-up flames now seemed ominous and the monsters terrified rather than terrifying). Star was grateful when those moments didn’t last long, and found that she preferred his blunt bite over his remembering that she was someone to fear and defer to due to her race and rank. She was unsettled, but Star found the latter unsettled her more than the former. Star preferred Kit’s disdain, his challenge to her, because it felt like he was getting less freaked out by her, that he wasn’t afraid to speak more of his mind with her, that he saw her, and not just her people and her rank; saw that she was someone who could listen to him, and not shut him down by any means necessary.

-But Kit wasn’t angry like Tom, to Star’s mind. In her mind, Kit felt angry-justified-and-truly-hurt, not angry-controlling-tantrum. And Kit could never be as explosively angry as Tom. But Kit’s anger made Star pay attention, it carried more weight (while she would often roll her eyes at Tom’s anger, and finally leave him partially due to that). And Kit was angry, but deep down Star thought he was soft, and wounded.

-There were little moments of something less strained between them, as time went on. Those moments grew more frequent. (They had always gushed over the photos Kit secretly took of the babies to show to Star. Their texts to each other had grown more relaxed outside of business terms.)

-To her surprise--and even gratitude--Star found Kit seemed to grow less wary of her.

-Kit didn’t know how to feel when he realized he felt a certain level of comfort and trust to be gruff with Star. That he could, in a way, vent with her like with some of his friends, though more gruffly, harshly. It grew less harsh as time went on.

-Star and Kit reached a crisis point when it occurred to them--the first time seemed okay, but were they just being creepers now with continuing to keep an eye on the monster tadpole babies like this? Star felt particularly like a creeper. Did she really not think Buff Frog would take care of them? She left the babies with him, she had to...really leave the babies with him. She probably shouldn’t keep secretly looking over his shoulder like this.

-Kit reconsiders a little, saying the babies get photographed all the time by Ludo’s other monsters, and they text the pix to their other friends, and Buff Frog is fine with it, he could do the same with Star, it’s not a big deal--

- “...We’re friends?” Star asks Kit, and for some reason, for a snap second, he feels completely doomed by this truth. (When had it happened? When had Star’s steadily increasing excess of text emojis brought a small smile to his face, when had her rambling and brightness and stumbling earnestness to listen and tolerate and even act nicer made him stop seeing her race and rank first?) After that, Star and Kit meet each other outside of the business arrangement they made, and text even more outside of it.

-Star eventually makes friends with the Alternative Monsters too.

-Things between Star and Ponyhead become more strained. Star is getting these other concerns about her kingdom, but Ponyhead isn’t too interested in hearing about this, and still just wants to party with Star. They start to drift apart a bit. But later, Ponyhead shows to be more loyal to Star, and while she’s not particularly interested or understanding, when it comes down to it, Ponyhead will stand by Star. They still have less to talk about and bond over as time passes, but Ponyhead remains loyal, and Star does appreciate this. (Ponyhead does whole-heartedly approve of Kit later, though she’s really just approving his superficial appearance.)

-Kit and Ludo develop an odd friendship.

-Eyepatch Bull Dog, Porcupine Warrior, and Turtle Monster still meet Buff Frog, eventually hired by Ludo through Boo Fly. Eyepatch Bull Dog clashes with Buff Frog /and/ Ludo. But along with Kit, Eyepatch Bull Dog inspires Buff Frog to be more firm with Ludo, and cause a shift in prioritization. Buff Frog starts to move from looking to loyalty to Ludo and the wand as an effort for monster survival and betterment, and back to the raids for food and supplies, and other means to resist mewman power. Boo Fly, Kit, Eyepatch Bull Dog, and the other monsters rally around Buff Frog, and Ludo becomes more of a figurehead, until he shapes up with Kit’s help and follows Buff Frog’s lead.

-Star eventually confesses to Kit she’s the Rogue.

-Star eventually loses an eye in a Game of Flags. Over the years since inheriting the wand at 14--and gaining and losing the monster tadpole babies, gaining Kit’s friendship, becoming the Rogue--her relationship to that Butterfly tradition has become complicated. She’s also started to challenge the value and nature of that too, but also grew to see it as a way to try to assert her authority as the future queen. (Throwing a guard into lava during her first Game of Flags both alarmed and hardened Star and made her more questioning. The guard had survived, Star had turned back at his pained yell and helped him out, but he had been grievously injured, and Star had been greatly impacted.) Star is vocal about her increasingly radical beliefs, especially about helping monsters and giving up mewman power to do so. Star still tries to be more calculated with how vocal she is about this, it’s a work-in-progress; see if going slower will help; act more benign sometimes to try to make sure no one suspects she’s the Rogue, and to also avoid Moon snapping and sending her to St. O’s. It’s a balancing act Star maneuvers a lot. Moon is a mix of alarmed, incredulous--and skeptical, not taking her daughter seriously and believing she’s too flighty and immature and it’s a phase she’ll grow out of, and refrains from genuinely threatening or even considering St. O’s as an option in response to this. The rest of the mewman nobility just steadily get angrier, and eventually this results in a more severe attack during Game of Flags that costs Star one of her eyes. Star still manages another victory, but there’s no saving her eye, it was cursed off through a mix of spells the healers and Moon can’t rectify. Star tries to be nonchalant, but this is now more ammo for her detractors in the royal court--they’re now attacking her marred appearance/beauty. But Star refuses any attempts to remake her image with two eyes in any form of royal portraiture of her after she’s been maimed.

-Star ditches the intricately embroidered eyepatch Queen Moon commissioned for her when Kit gives a simpler eyepatch he made for her. She wears it exclusively and lies to any mewmans who ask about it, saying she picked it up from Quest Buy.

-Kit convinces Star to come clean with Buff Frog, especially since there’s already been a weirdly silent confused understanding between them ever since she hesitated to attack him, and then continued to avoid aggressively repelling him and Ludo’s other monsters from wand theft. Just tell Buff Frog. After confession and discussion, a more formalized alliance between Star and Buff Frog and the other monsters is made--and eventually friendship with them. (Star can babysit the tadpoles with Kit now.)

-Ludo and Star grow to...tolerate each other. But they’re not exactly friends. They still dislike each other quite a bit.

-Star literally does not learn of Eclipsa’s existence, which is largely kept hidden in Butterfly castle, and becomes more of a fiercely guarded secret as Star grows more vocally radical. The concern grows that even telling Star about her as a cautionary tale will backfire and only serve to give her the wrong ideas, and so any word of Eclipsa is forbidden.

-Star tries to pass relevant info about the ruling mewmans to Buff Frog and his increasingly rebellious group, tries to provide a distraction for any of their efforts. On top of her continued activity as the disguised Rogue, Star generally tries to sabotage mewman power from behind the scenes while also publicly trying to diminish and reform it.

-Star only manages to get a handful of allies among mewmans--Ruberiot the Songstrel, Foolduke the Jester, and the genius Mime. They’re not much in numbers, but Star is grateful for them, and they ultimately also end up being the closest thing she has to friends that are actually mewmans, a first for her. (Ruberiot, Foolduke, and Mime proved more open, partly because they took to heart their partial outcast status--they all aren’t the highest ranking mewmans, and experience issues over their lack of rank, such as some mistreatment from the highest born mewmans they serve, i.e. Star’s uncle Heartrude, Ruberiot fearing Moon will execute him for any screw-ups because he heard the previous queen had done the same before; partly because their trained deference to higher ranking mewmans ends up taking the form of actually listening to Star and really acknowledging her role as their future queen, and thinking she must have a point, and hoping that she will be a good queen. The three also grow charmed by Star’s essentially eccentric, bright personaltiy.)

-Star both breaks away from and is forced out by mewman society, she rejects them as the majority of them reject her, and she throws her lot in with Buff Frog and Kit and the latest iteration of a growing monster rebellion. Ruberiot, Foolduke, and Mime join her.

-Moon and River stay with the status quo that upholds mewman power, and are estranged from their daughter. They feel as if Star is still an immature child whose mess they have to clean up, and they need their daughter back home to finally set her straight.

-Eventually Star and Kit become romantically involved, further estranging Star from her parents and mewman society, but ultimately giving her immeasurably more happiness. Their wedding is somehow small and crowded at the same time, packed mostly with Buff Frog and other monsters that are friends, allies, Kit’s family, as well as Ruberiot, Foolduke, Mime. (Ludo is grudgingly there and hates that Kit married Star; and Star is still confused about how Kit made friends with him.)

-When Star is pregnant with her and Kit’s child, she finally meets a brainwashed Toffee; and Kit discovers his uncle Rasticore hadn’t actually died in battle against Queen Moon like the rest of his family had believed, but had been brainwashed along with Toffee by St. O’s instead. Toffee and Rasticore are eventually freed from their brainwashing and start to recover, while taking refuge with the new monster rebels that include Buff Frog, Kit, Star, and others.

-Star and Kit have a daughter. They try to come up with names before she’s born, but Kit keeps drawing a blank, Star can’t decide on which adorable name she wants, there are too many. But when Star realizes she and Kit have a daughter, with cheek marks of her own, Butterfly tradition occurs to her, and even some concerns. Star actually really hadn’t let herself think she might have a daughter, because that would make things more complicated, that might make Star’s mixed race child seem like she might have the slimmest chance of inheriting the throne and make the Butterfly kingdom want to target her more; Star thought more she would have a son, and kept thinking of cute names for him. But it’s a girl, and Star considers Butterfly inheritance; she fears her daughter being even more of a target; but she really considers the idea of her mixed race daughter inheriting and becoming Queen, and it’s not an entirely unpleasant thought, in terms of personal and practical and moral reasons--it could be fitting, it may be good, it may be fair--but she really wants to put her daughter’s best interests first--and one of the ideas Star has grown to consider is that the line of Butterfly queens and mewman rulership as it is should simply end--she should have taken control and ended it, but she had failed, she hadn’t managed it yet--Star is still not sure what exactly to do, but she wants to keep and protect her daughter… But Star also considers the monster heritage of her daughter, and she’d like the name to reflect that in some way too.

-Star suggests to Kit to name their daughter Nimbus, rambling off her reasons: many names of Butterfly women have had some sort of sky/aerial quality, Star included; Nimbus fits in with that, and acknowledges Star’s like of clouds, and her Cloudy spell, and actually sounds pretty cute in her head. /If/ she ever becomes queen, she’ll have a name that could go well enough with that role. (But above all Star wants her daughter safe and happy. Her becoming queen is not a priority.) And a cloud sounds like an aerial object physically closer to the land that Nimbus’ monster heritage has a true claim to. After listening to Star’s rambling reasons, Kit agrees. Kit nicknames her Nim, and Star loves that. The ability to shorten it to Nim is even cuter to Star, and the sound of it and its three letters reminds Star more of Kit.

-(Princess) Nimbus “Nim” Chaosus Disastorvayne Butterfly (she knows she’s in trouble when either of her parents use her full name) largely resembles her father, but inherits her mother’s hair and the color/shape of her eyes. She has cheek marks like her mother and the rest of the Butterfly women. They’re the shape of narwhals, which delights Star and amuses Kit. And her cheek marks are red, like the markings on Kit.

-Buff Frog is essentially Nim’s loving grandfather. The aunt that raised Kit is essentially Nim’s grandmother, though is literally her great aunt. Ludo and Boo Fly and Ruberiot and others are some of her many uncles. Nim calls Rasticore and Toffee her uncles too (Ludo takes pleasure in pointing out Toffee would be her great uncle; Kit tells her Rasticore is his uncle, so that makes him her great uncle too; and sometimes Nim will use the full term with them). Some of her many aunts include Porcupine Warrior, Foolduke and others.

-With my AU world backstory, I have Star even more like Eclipsa--my AU continuity has Eclipsa fall in love with a Septarian monster, and together they have Toffee, their half-monster, half-mewman child. So, Toffee is a mixed race member of the Butterfly family tree too. This is eventually revealed while Nimbus is an infant. I also like the idea of adding this nuance to a bond between Toffee and Nimbus--they have very similar common ground that they can’t really share with anyone else, except each other. Mixed race Toffee also has a mewberty form, indicating that his mixed race is the cause, given that is a defining difference between him and other full-blooded Butterfly women and their mewberty forms. It may indicate that for this mixed race, female gender stops mattering to the unique mewman Butterfly bloodline, or the monster half does not read as male to the Butterfly blood, or something else. (This is based on this fantastic AU fanart of Mewberty!Toffee, half-monster son of Eclipsa [x].)

-Ever since she was little, Nim took comfort in Toffee having hair like her, the only Septarian monster she’s met who does. She took comfort in knowing Toffee’s half-monster/half-mewman like her. (Toffee never knew that comfort until Nimbus was born.)

-Star still has a brightness and goofiness around her, but she’s also grown more fierce and crafty after years of trying to undermine mewman power in battle and in royal court maneuvering. She’s developed a pretty good poker face, an evolution of what she demonstrated in her old family portrait made a few months before her 14th birthday, but she doesn’t use it that often. Yet Star has become kinder too.

-Nim’s personality takes a lot after Star’s--especially a 14-year-old Star’s--though in some ways she’s gentler. She keeps her quarters messy like Star had at her age. (Star keeps her quarters only a little messy now.) Nim loves to garden. She likes adventuring a lot too, and likes to combine it with gardening, discovering and studying new plants. Among her garden are Mewni carnivorous plants that she finds adorable and full of personality. Nim’s embarrassed by her allergy to corn, especially when her parents try to guard very seriously against it.

-Kit has become more warm over the years. But there can still be a bite to him after what he’s lived through.

-As Star grew more powerful, so did her mewberty form. Its appearance changed a bit too. It remains colored purple, with some yellow speckling. Her lower body has grown more spider-like, ending in many spiked legs.

-Nim has a mewberty form too. Though she was an example of mewberty being triggered by something other than discovering a romantic interest in anyone. At 14, when she accidentally took a bite of something that had corn in it, her face broke out--in many copies of her narhwal cheek marks. Her corn allergy triggered her first mewberty transformation. Her mixed race heritage may be the reason for why a large growth increase was demonstrated in her mewberty form as well as a more difficult time experiencing it--while in mewberty, Nim seemed to vocalize pain, and vomited many narwhal marks, as many as the amount of narwhal marks fell off her body and webbing. While in mewberty, Nim’s two legs merged into a unified tail-like structure, that ultimately was more reminiscent of an insect’s lower body.

-When (if) Nim holds the royal wand--broken under different circumstances--its shape isn’t a wand like her mother’s, or her grandmother’s, or many other Butterfly ancestors’. When Nim holds the wand, it turns into a pale pink watering can. Nim is told her ancestor Festivia was similar--when she held the wand, it turned into a goblet. The broken crystal on Nim’s watering can-wand resembles a (broken) rain drop; its green color reflects her monster heritage. Nim tends to come up with a lot of garden-themed spells, like Poison Ivy Bomb, Venus Fly Jawtrap, etc. Nim takes to carrying her watering can-wand around in a backpack.

-The above is more, “if Nim got the wand,” I’m still fuzzy on how the context of that would work to my tastes, if the wand would still even be around for Nim to use, or if it’s broken under different circumstances. But I do like the thought of her getting to use the wand too.

-Poetry makes me nervous, but I’ve even come up with a Mewman propaganda-fueled caption for Star’s tapestry in this AU:

Underneath the crown

Lied a fierce and wild girl

Who ran away with her monster lover

Acting just like another

-...I also keep thinking of silly mixed-naming for this Star/OC ship too, like just StarKit.

*Tbh for me, it’s getting to a point where it’s like ultimately all the Starco kids are kinda bleeding into each other, it’s started to feel all the same to me--though that sorta makes sense because it’s all variations of offspring from one extremely popular pairing that I’m now honestly feeling overwhelmed with. I can’t take the Starco overload anymore. I’m missing real variety. Also I feel like Starco keeps distracting from themes and plot in svtfoe I care way more about, and think are/should be far more important, i.e. monster-memwan themes. If Star /has/ to have a romance, I keep thinking I wish it was tied directly to those monster-mewman themes then, that she should fall in love with a monster from Mewni. And I just...don’t like Starco. I don’t really care for Marco tbh, I just...don’t. There are way more interesting characters than Marco in svtfoe, and more interesting themes. Star’s awesome, but I just don’t care for her Earth roommate and friend that much. Princess Marco and Monster Arm are more interesting, but they don’t happen enough. And Marco still just...rubs me the wrong way, tbh. It’s a gut dislike/apathy, I suppose. If I have to ship Marco with anyone, then Tom (and sometimes Jackie). I just...don’t feel the Starco ship. I don’t care for it. I’ve been enjoying brainstorming a Star/Septarian Monster OC ship and their half-monster/half-mewman daughter way more.

#svtfoe #star vs the forces of evil #star butterfly #svtfoe critical #my fanart #my fanfic

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katohz-blog · 7 years ago

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The Importance of Near In Death Note

The Death Note Netflix movie came out last week, and somehow as they always do whenever anything Death Note related comes out, people used the opportunity to shit on Near. Well, I'm gonna come out and say it. I love Near. He is my favorite character in Death Note. And today, I'm gonna explain why. Because let me tell you, this has been a LONG time coming. Near is actually my favorite character in the entire series, but so many people think he’s terrible, or an L-clone with no originality, or just a plain-old jerk, or that Mello should have won in the end. Well, let me tell you why you’re all WRONG about Near. But before that, let's examine some of the problems that people have with Near.

There are a lot of complaints about his personality. Frankly, I can't argue with that, because if you don't like his personality, I can't get you to like it, unless you blatantly misunderstand what his personality traits are. I think one misunderstanding of his personality that gets thrown around a lot is embodied in this scene. Here, we see the SPK headquarters is being stormed by rabid Kira supporters being led by Demogawa. Near has a contingency plan to use money that he inherited from L to create a distraction so that he and the SPK can escape. People point to this scene as evidence that Near is wasteful and he disrespects L. This is a huge misunderstanding of Near's motivation here, and of what this scene represents. Near believes that there are good people in the world who agree with what Kira's doing because they think it'll lead to a better world. However, he also believes that there are people who just want to jump on the bandwagon because they're too stupid or too weak-willed to examine Kira's philosophy for themselves. He knows that those people are the ones at his door, and he wants to demonstrate their lack of dedication to Kira, which they use as an excuse for violence, by proving how easily distracted they are by blinding them with money. He uses the last remnant of L on this Earth to display how worthless these Kira supporters are. From a thematic standpoint, L's battle with Kira was all about defending himself from Kira's attempts to kill him. If there was ever a move that Light was about to make that could prove dangerous to L, L foresaw that move and took action to stop Light from being able to make it. And here, the last remnant of L is blocking Kira's attack. With all of that in mind, this moment should be celebrated, but instead it's pointed to as evidence that Near has a bad personality by people who don't understand what the point of this moment is. It's a testament to Near's respect of L. By showing everyone that Demogawa and his army of blind followers are greedy and not noble, he challenges Kira's very philosophy that the people who oppose him are the ones who are truly evil, and that good people would inevitably support him. This moment is evidence that Near is a perfect foil for Light's own belief of himself as a God. But we'll get to that later.

The next point that I want to combat is the ideas that Near is a clone of L. Near and Mello are both like L in their own way, because they were both raised to be L. Near is the intellectual side that has an out there way of thinking that leads him to make connections that no one else really sees and Mello is the emotional side that is driven to act, and will do whatever is necessary to achieve victory. That's the idea behind the theme that the two would have to work together to beat Kira. The most iconic Mello scenes are him speeding down the highway on a motorcycle with a hostage, or blowing up his headquarters to escape capture. He even attains a position of power that allows him to combat Kira through violence, namely finding a mafia boss that even Kira couldn't identify and cutting his head off Jason Todd style, while Near attains a position of power through more bureacratic means. Near outsmarts and Mello acts. This makes Mello stand out more as being different from L than Near does, as he's even more radical than L was. The contrast distorts people's perceptions of the character, causing them to view L and Near as being too similar despite their many differences, simply because they're both understated personalities and socially inept geniuses. Really, people simply overestimate the actual similarities between the two characters when all that they really have in common is their possession of genius level intellects and general dismissal of social norms. And of course, their childish nature.

Finally, we have the claim that the final arc of Death Note, the battle between Near, Mello, and Light was the weakest in the series because of Near. Even if that is what you believe, it doesn't make a lot of sense that people seem to pin that on Near. What people love about L's interactions with Light is how he confronts and challenges him almost constantly, often coming out and saying that he's suspicious of him and trying to catch him off guard. If these interactions were something that really pulled you into their conflict, then that's all the more reason you should love Near, because he is constantly doing the same thing. The very first sentence he ever says to Light is accusatory and throws him off from the very beginning. He's the character that keeps the cat and mouse element of the series alive. The characters that cause the biggest tonal shifts are Mello and Takada, as Mello's actions elevate the level of spectacle we're used to and Takada's involvement with Light add a romance element to the series. Personally, I think the Yotsuba arc is the weakest in Death Note, and I'd even say the dynamic between Near, Mello, and Light made the show more interesting and less predictable than the dynamic between L and Light, just by adding another major player. My favorite arc in the show is the first 9 episodes, when Light and L are both making moves to reveal each other without being in direct contact. It's the most interesting part of the show because being unable to directly speak to each other forces them to be creative regarding how they try to get to each other. Light leaving coded messages in suicide notes and L televising what can essentially be called a diss track are two of my personal favorite events. Don't get me wrong, I think every single arc in this show is a masterpiece, but the specific set up of two anonymous forces subtly working against one another was the most interesting part of the show for me. In that sense, Near's battle with Light feels like a return to form. They are able to speak to each other directly, but Near still has to figure out who Kira is and what he's up to, while Light also has to try to figure out ways to kill Near. It's different enough that it's not a complete rehash of what we've seen before while also having the same allure of the earliest episodes of the show, and it's all thanks to Near.

Now that I'm done defending him, let's get into what I like about Near.

Looking at all of the major players in Death Note, you'll see that most of them have an identifiable quirk. Specifically, the ones related to Wammy's House. L has his iconic sweet tooth, Mello has his penchant for chocolate, and Near has his toys. One of the things that I like about Near is that his toys actually mean something, contrasted from L's sweets accompanying him in most scenes as just another way to make him a weird character, or Mello's chocolate pretty much meaning nothing to the character at all, every single time we see him playing with his toys, it's a metaphorical representation of his thought process. For example, take this scene from the final chapter of Death Note, the flash forward one year after the conclusion of the Kira case. Here, we see Near surrounded by an impossibly huge house of cards. The metaphor here is that he's been spending the last year building something incredibly intricate and substantial: his career as L. There's also the scene where Light and Near speak for the first time, and Near is tossing darts at a dart board while he explains his thoughts on the case. With each comment, he tosses a dart at the board. He suggests that Kira might have killed Mello's hostage, which would suggest that he's someone with access to the Japanese police force's information. He's correct, but he doesn't have all of the details. At the conclusion of his statement, he misses the dartboard. He's not quite on the mark. Then, there's the moment when Near calls Light to tell him that they'll be meeting in the near future. During the call, Near is building a model of a tower. Then, we see imagery of Light and Near standing face-to-face in a similar tower. This metaphorically foreshadows that Near is in control of this confrontation. For a less subtle example, there's a scene where many of the SPK members are killed by the Death Note, and later the scene where Aizawa first calls Near. At the same time that the first SPK member falls, a stack of dice that Near had been meticulously piecing together falls. It all comes tumbling down as the organization that Near had built from the ground up is dismantled by Mello. When he talks with Aizawa, he begins building a new stack of dice. Clearly, like the house of cards in the one shot, these stacks of dice represent his career as a detective, or more specifically, his Kira investigation. These metaphors are abundant in the series and they add a level of insight into Near's world view that's pretty interesting to me. He uses his toys to represent the world, and plays with them the same way that he plays at life. This is consistent with him referring to L's death and Light's defeat as having "lost the game". Life's a game, and Near's Yugi Moto, baby.

Now, for the most important point in this entire video. Not only is Near a cool character, he is also the perfect person to succeed L, and to defeat Kira. The rivalry between L and Kira is elevated to absolute importance in the series, but what L and no one in the show seems to acknowledge or even realize is that this rivalry actually deifies Kira. L’s very introduction proves beyond a doubt to the entire world that Kira does exist, that someone out there actually is punishing the wicked. He puts a huge spotlight on Kira and their rivalry from the very moment that he becomes known to the world. A man with godlike power versus the greatest mind in the world. L states multiple times that stopping Kira is a cause that’s worth his life. This not only deifies Light in the eyes of society at large, resulting in cultist followers like Teru Mikami forming around the world, but it especially does so in the eyes of Light himself. This dude really starts buying into his own hype like crazy, to the point that by the time he does meet Near, he calls him “far inferior to L”, and dismisses him as a threat. The reason that this makes Near a great foil to Light is that Near does not think Light is special, allowing him to humble him in unique ways. Near says something to Light that I, as a viewer, had wanted to say to him throughout the entire show, and something that I guarantee you L would never say. Near calls Kira, Light Yagami, nothing more than a crazy serial killer. Light, who had defeated the greatest detective on Earth, his greatest personal challenge, is bested by a child who doesn’t even grasp the importance of what’s at stake. This is what goes through his mind in his final moments, and it’s the ultimate reality check. While Near tells Light that he’s nothing special, he holds up the Death Note as the most dangerous weapon of mass murder in history. The spot light isn’t on Light for Near. He instead identifies the truly unique evil and the real remarkable detail in this case, the Death Note itself. Light isn’t special to Near. The Death Note is. This, I think, is what makes Near the only character in the show that actually grasps the truth of the situation. The reason that Mello wouldn’t be as good of a foil as Near was, despite the fact that he’s in the same position of being L’s successor, is that he has the same problem that Light and L had, but regarding Near. To him, his rivalry with Near is the most important thing. Rather than denouncing Light as Near did, he’d probably have said something like “Beating you was the best way for me to beat Near.” All of this made him an even more perfect candidate for the final victor than Mello or even L himself in my opinion. Light believes that he is a God, and that it takes the greatest man he's ever known to even pose a challenge to him. Near defeats him, basically saying "I'm not as great a man as L was. I'm not as experienced a detective or as righteous as he was. However, I'm still enough to beat you, because you, Light Yagami, are not special." That's what I love about Near, both as a character and as a part of the plot.

#near #death note #anime analysis #character analysis

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monkeyjeff4 · 5 years ago

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Why Literature Professors Turned Against Authors — Or Did They?

JANUARY 13, 2019

SINCE THE 1940s among professors of literature, attributing significance to authors’ intentions has been taboo and déclassé. The phrase literary work, which implies a worker, has been replaced in scholarly practice — and in the classroom — by the clean, crisp syllable text, referring to nothing more than simple words on the page. Since these are all we have access to, the argument goes, speculations about what the author meant can only be a distraction. Thus, texts replaced authors as the privileged objects of scholarly knowledge, and the performance of critical operations on texts became essential to the scholar’s identity. In 1967, the French critic Roland Barthes tried to cement this arrangement by declaring once and for all the “Death of the Author,” adding literary creators to the long list of artifacts that have been dissolved in modernity’s skeptical acids. Authors, Barthes argued, have followed God, the heliocentric universe, and (he hoped) the middle class into oblivion. Michel Foucault soon added the category of “the human” to the list of soon-to-be-extinct species.

Barthes also saw a bright side in the death of the author: it signaled the “birth of the reader,” a new source of meaning for the text, which readers would provide themselves. But the inventive readers who could replace the author’s ingenuity with their own never actually materialized. Instead, scholarly readers, deprived of the author as the traditional source of meaning, adopted a battery of new theories to make sense of the orphaned text. So what Barthes’s clever slogan really fixed in place was the reign in literary studies of Theory-with-a-capital-T. Armed with various theoretical instruments — structuralism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, to name just a few — critics could now pierce the verbal surface of the text to find hidden meanings and purposes unknown to those who created them.

But authorship and authorial intention have proven not so easy to dispose of. The most superficial survey of literary studies will show that authors remain a constant point of reference. The texts upon which theoretically informed readers perform their operations continue for the most part to be edited with the authors’ intentions in mind, and scholars continue to have recourse to background information about authors’ artistic intentions, as revealed in public pronouncements, private papers, and letters, though they do so with ritual apologies for committing the “intentional fallacy.” Politically minded critics, of which there are many, cannot avoid authors and their intended projects. And this is just a hint of the author’s continuing presence. All the while, it goes without saying, scholars continue to insist on their own authorial privileges, highlighting the originality of their insights while duly recording their debts to others. They take the clarity and stability of meaning in their own works as desirable achievements while, in the works created by their subjects, these qualities are presumed to be threats to the freedom of the reader.

Fortunately or unfortunately, it is impossible to get rid of authors entirely because the signs that constitute language are arbitrarily chosen and have no significance apart from their use. The dictionary meanings of words are only potentially meaningful until they are actually employed in a context defined by the relation between author and audience. So how did it happen that professors of literature came to renounce authors and their intentions in favor of a way of thinking — or at least a way of talking — that is without historical precedent, has scant philosophical support, and is to most ordinary readers not only counterintuitive but practically incomprehensible?

The question would take a volume to answer, but any sketch, like the one I offer here, would have to begin by admitting that authors certainly had it coming. In modern culture — specifically, since the late 18th century — authors acquired a status and importance that was entirely new. For the most part, authors of the past, like other artists, relied for the content of their works upon familiar stories and publicly accepted truths. In the European West, that meant the truths of the Christian religion and of classical, aristocratic culture. Literature was always a servant, never a master. Its messages and meanings were not in doubt and did not depend upon the author alone, though many authors — Dante and Milton come especially to mind — approached inherited truths with the boldness of personal insight. Their grand vernacular works signaled a growing rupture in the Christian consensus.

It was, of course, traditional for religious authors to invoke divine inspiration, but this only marked the author’s secondary role as the mere vehicle of higher intentions. When the consensus about those intentions gradually dissolved between the 16th and 18th centuries, authors were cast adrift from their higher authorities, but they benefited from the very forces that signaled the change — individualism in all its manifestations, the rise of Lockean empiricism, which privileged immediate experience over metaphysical insight or tradition, and the emergence of a middle-class audience of literate consumers. Freed from the encumbrances of church and patron, authors could address a general audience directly in print. Authorship became a profession, and authors became the beneficiaries and privileged observers of the new freedom of modern life, while inventing a great literary form, the novel, to express it. Poets were slower to react to the new conditions, but eventually they found an untapped source of moral authority and wisdom in Nature, to which their poetry could give vibrant expression.

Once the natural world and the life of individuals in society replaced traditional truth as the source of literary meaning, novelists and poets found themselves in a remarkably elevated position. It became the very definition of the artist to be closer to the key elements of experience — Nature and Life. Divine faculties like creativity, vision, inspiration, and the power to create living symbols now became the possessions of individual writers. In America, Ralph Waldo Emerson took this doctrine to its extreme. When the poet, he writes, takes up the

great public power on which he can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him: then is he caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals.

The elevation of the literary author as the great purveyor of experience had profound effects. Now the past history of literature could be read as the production of superior souls speaking from their own experience. In the minds of Victorian readers, for example, understanding the works of Shakespeare involved following the poet’s personal spiritual and psychological journey, beginning with the bravery of the early histories and the wit of the early comedies, turning in mid-career to the visceral disgust with life evinced in the great tragedies, and arriving, finally, at the high plane of detachment and acceptance that comes into view in the late romances. Not the cause of Hamlet’s suicidal musings but the cause of Shakespeare’s own disillusionment — that was the question that troubled the 19th century. This obsession with Shakespeare’s great soul was wonderfully mocked by James Joyce in the library chapter of Ulysses.

It was not only literary history that could be reinterpreted in the heroic manner. For the boldest advocates of Romantic imagination, all of history became comprehensible now through the biographies of the great men who made it. Poets like Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton were no longer spokesmen for their cultures but its creators; as Percy Shelley famously put it, poets were the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.” To be a Romantic poet was to enroll in this prophetic company, which included spiritual giants like Buddha, Socrates, and Jesus, the imaginative men who set the vocabulary and meaning for the rest of us. Emerson and Nietzsche brilliantly embroidered the theme; a Freudian variant of it was still being championed in recent decades by Harold Bloom.

Unfortunately, the role of legislator, increasingly acknowledged and increasingly demanding, was a tall one for authors to live up to. Even Life and Nature as sources of experience turned out to be limited resources for the artist because experience, in order to be interesting, demands novelty. The traditional accounts of truth offered by religion and philosophy made severe demands on the reader; they were inherently inexhaustible and subject to endless repetition. Modern accounts of experience, on the other hand, are simply consumed and thereby exhausted. This consumption thus requires endless new products, new horizons. So modern literary authors found themselves in competition with each other for novelties of experience. By the late 19th century, they were reaching for more and more extreme sources of inspiration — insanity, perversity, intoxication — and moving into the less explored regions of the world — the colonies — in search of variety and adventure.

With the increasing pessimism and skepticism of the late 19th century, the most scrupulous authors were struggling to impose meaningful shape on experience; as a result, they felt compelled to make the very problem of storytelling a central concern. Another artistic strategy was to leave the rendering of Life to more popular authors while pursuing artistic experiments that would appeal to a literary elite. The French Symbolists took refuge in the eccentricity of private or mystic symbolism, while the practitioners of “art for art’s sake” stressed style and form as substitutes for meaning. “Life imitates Art more than Art imitates Life,” Oscar Wilde decreed, giving a last salute to the legislator-poet while pulling the rug out with the caveat that “Art expresses nothing but itself.”

So, to return to the “Death of the Author,” not only did authors have it coming; they largely enacted their own death by making the renunciation of meaning — or even speech — a privileged literary maneuver. They set themselves above the vulgar garrulity of traditional forms to pursue subtle but evanescent sensations in an almost priestly atmosphere. Not all artists, of course, took this path. At the same time that Gustave Flaubert was downgrading the subject matter of literature to the status of a mere excuse for style, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was developing the realistic novel to its fullest polemical potential. But the avant-garde of the future would see itself in Flaubert and the Symbolists more than in the realistic works of Dostoyevsky, Dickens, or Zola, and it was the former conception of literature that would hold weight for literary critics in the 20th century. This was especially true of poetry critics, the most influential being T. S. Eliot.

Eliot took his turn at deflating the legislator-poet. “Poetry,” he wrote, “is a superior amusement.” At the same time, he offered a new and grand image of the poet as participating in the creation of an “ideal order” of masterpieces, a “tradition” held together not by a common doctrine but by a certain rightness of feeling achieved by the suppression of self. The poet’s job, according to Eliot, was not to express his own personality but to find in words an “objective correlative” for the feelings demanded by the work. Poetry is not an expression of but an “escape from personality.” Its quality is due not to the intensity of the poet’s emotions but to the intensity of the artistic process. What moves us in poetry is not ideas, not meanings, but words properly chosen for an artistic end. In Eliot’s formulation, the great soul of the Romantic legislator-poet is replaced by an impersonal craftsmanship of verbal impressions.

The poetic form in which Eliot expressed his impersonality set a further challenge to the familiar stance of the author. In the dense collage of The Waste Land, he broke the authorial “I” into multiple voices floating unsteadily among borrowed words. It was as if the broken fragments of Eliot’s tradition were speaking all at once. Beneath this texture of suggestion, of course, the myth of the Grail Quest loomed as a structuring metaphor. Meaning was by no means banished, but it had become elusive, with an epicenter buried deep underground. Here the story takes an interesting turn because the implantation of a mythic substrate under the surface of The Waste Land — a method borrowed from Ulysses — was itself indebted to psychoanalysis, the glamorous new psychology of the time.

Psychoanalysis gave a new lease to authorial biography and provided a new stance toward authors. Instead of viewing artistic works in the Romantic manner, as the exhalations of great souls, psychoanalysis claimed to uncover in them an array of incestuous and aggressive fantasies, the disguised symptoms of neurosis and childhood trauma. It should not be forgotten that Freud originally introduced his theory of the Oedipus complex in an act of literary criticism directed at Hamlet — the quintessential great soul — whose problem turned out to be not that he was too good for this world, as Romantic readers believed, but that he was struggling with hidden incestuous desires. Psychoanalysis thus offered a way of continuing the modern obsession with biography while inverting its stance from hero-worshipping to unmasking. No wonder the great modernists like Joyce, Eliot, and Lawrence were so hostile toward it. From now on the critic, instead of genuflecting to the genius-author, would take the upper hand, uncovering the hidden and embarrassing sources of a decidedly non-divine creativity. Joyce called this critical process “blackmail.” It is one of the puzzles of recent criticism that scholars insist on the inaccessibility and irrelevance of authors’ conscious intentions while exhibiting such confidence in the discovery of unconscious ones, even long after Freudian “science” has been thoroughly debunked.

So the author’s role in the creation of literary meaning suffered a long decline, partly because that role had been inflated and personalized beyond what was sustainable, partly because authors found value in the panache of renouncing it, and partly because critics welcomed the new sources of authority offered by Freudian, Marxist, and other modes of suspicious decoding. Up to this point, the dethroning of the author centered entirely on the relation between authorial psychology and the creation and value of literary works; it did not question that the author’s intentions played an important role in determining a work’s actual meaning. That step was taken in a famous article called “The Intentional Fallacy” by the distinguished literary critic William Wimsatt and the philosopher of aesthetics Monroe Beardsley. Wimsatt and Beardsley argued that authors’ intentions are “neither available nor desirable” in understanding or judging a literary work, that all the critic needs is a dictionary and whatever historical information is necessary to comprehend the words and allusions in the text. Biographical information, under which they placed authorial intention, was completely irrelevant. Since that time, the phrase “intentional fallacy” has become a watchword for the taboo on intentions that protects the sacred autonomy of the text.

On one level, the “Intentional Fallacy” offered a beneficial corrective to biographical reductionism, one that should have applied to unconscious as well as conscious intentions. Wimsatt and Beardsley were right to say that an author’s personal associations with her subject matter are irrelevant to the public meaning of her work: an author’s private papers, however interesting in themselves, need not be authoritative for critical understanding. They were also right to say that our standards for judging a literary work need not be the same as the author’s. Unfortunately, however, Wimsatt and Beardsley made a crucial mistake when they missed the distinction between an author’s artistic and her communicative intentions. For the most part, literary works aim to achieve artistic effects by saying something — telling a story, describing a scene, expressing a thought. When we interpret literary works, we are trying to understand which among the possible meanings of the verbal text are the ones actually being transmitted. Such communicative intentions succeed simply if the audience recognizes what they are. Transparency of meaning is enough. Wimsatt and Beardsley got this right regarding what they call “practical messages,” but they denied that this method applies to literary works because, in their view, literary works do not actually say anything and because their authors’ minds are inaccessible outside of the text.

They were, in effect, conforming to the Wildean maxim that “Art expresses nothing but itself.” What they missed is that texts, like other verbal utterances, are composed with the understanding that the reader will be able to infer what the author means; the text cannot be considered a free-standing avatar of meaning. As Paul Grice later explained, it is the knowledge that the speaker has chosen the utterance with the intention to be understood on a particular occasion that enables the audience to infer a determinate meaning. It is only because you know I have chosen these words to mean something definite that you bother to figure out what it may be. Few sentences in natural languages have only one possible interpretation regardless of context, and the possibilities for interpretation increase as sentences are joined together. So the collaborative, mutually anticipatory efforts of authors and readers cannot be eliminated.

Only by grasping what a work is saying do we access what a work is actually doing. The distinction between communicative and artistic levels of intention, between saying and doing, is easy to grasp in the case of an oral genre like the joke. Jokes fail on the communicative level if we don’t get them, if we are unable to determine what the joker means to say or even that she is making a joke. But the joke can succeed on this level and still fail as a joke if the audience, while getting the meaning, does not find it funny. Being funny requires more than communicating the intention to be funny by saying a certain thing; the intended meaning has to satisfy an aesthetic requirement — that it be, in fact, worth laughing at. But that will never happen if the intended meaning doesn’t get across in the first place. Seven decades of critical confusion could have been avoided if Wimsatt and Beardsley had recognized the distinction.

Authors’ intentions are of special interest to critics because critics want to know which among the text’s possible meanings were intended by the author and which were not. To determine this, they need the most sensitive possible grasp of the author’s context and expected audience. The author’s larger artistic designs do also have an undeniable interest, but recognizing what they are is not crucial to deciphering the work in the same way that communicative intentions are. Wimsatt and Beardsley were right: poems and novels, like jokes, have to do more than communicate. They have to work. But in order for them to work, we have to grasp what they are in the first place.

Just as the Symbolists and decadents of the fin-de-siècle sought to purify their writings from the vulgarity of didactic meaning in pursuit of a certain decadent spirituality, so there was a tinge of religious asceticism among the motives of major literary theorists during this period. Their aim was to marginalize both authorial intention and literary statement in favor of something higher. For C. S. Lewis, the most openly Christian among them, leaving behind authorial intention allowed an escape “from the vulgarity of confession to the disinfected and severer world of lyric poetry.” There was also a positive aspect to this process, since the claim that literature does not make statements — that it works by dramatic tension and internal irony rather than by offering a view of the world — provided a new defense of literature. Indeed, it provided a new literary ideology, which came to be known as the New Criticism, the key claims of which were that literary language is too complex and ambiguous to be reduced to a simple statement and that such irreducible complexity and ambiguity are not drawbacks but give literary language its special value. To state the meaning of a poem or a novel would be to deflate its tensions though the “heresy of paraphrase”; the critic’s job is to discover the poem’s internal riches — its ironies, ambiguities, and tensions — not to resolve but to rehearse them in a somewhat ritual fashion.

Unlike the languages of science and practical life, literary language teaches us to hold opposing positions in mind, to avoid easy conclusions and simple solutions. One of its rules, promulgated by Wimsatt and Beardsley, was that “even a short lyric poem is dramatic, the response of a speaker (no matter how abstractly conceived) to a situation (no matter how universalized).” This rule is upheld in literature classrooms to this day. Poets can never be said to speak in their own voices. There is always a “speaker,” a character internal to the situation of the poem. Some years later, Wayne Booth invented the novelistic equivalent of the poetic speaker in the “implied author,” an apparent authorial presence that is actually a function of the text itself.

Many poems, naturally, do have speakers recognizably different from the author, and many novels do have narrators who are also characters in the story. Other poems and novels do not, and readers have to figure out, on a case-by-case basis, which is which. But the New Critics suppressed such distinctions. For them, all literature became dramatic, voiced by dramatic speakers and therefore subject to the same method of interpretation — the teasing out of multiple ironies and ambiguities. The ability of the New Critics to provide a single, clearly delineated procedure was one of the chief reasons for their success. That method depended especially upon “close reading,” focusing minutely on linguistic texture to the exclusion of history, biography, and intellectual controversy. New Criticism thus came as a relief from Cold War ideological tensions, and it launched a grand project — the irony-oriented reinterpretation of all previous literature, which in the United States furnished a neatly streamlined task to a professoriate rapidly expanding under the G. I. Bill. However esoteric the conception behind the New Criticism, its effects were strikingly democratic.

It is interesting to note that the figure of the poet marginalized in the New Criticism was not necessarily a generic practitioner from the distant past. Since the 1930s, poetry criticism in American periodicals and academic journals had been dominated by a distinguished cadre of poet-critics, some of them offering their own brands of close reading — figures like John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Yvor Winters, William Empson, Marianne Moore, Randall Jarrell, Robert Penn Warren, R. P. Blackmur, and W. H. Auden. The label “New Criticism,” invented by Ransom, originally referred to this trend toward close reading, but once “The Intentional Fallacy” established that it was not poets but poetic speakers who speak in poetry, non-poet-critics were no longer at a disadvantage. Poets would henceforth be debarred from their legislative office even in the realm of poetry.

New Criticism offered a standardized method for everyone — poets, students, and critics alike. Eliot called it the “lemon-squeezer school” of criticism. His grand, impersonal stance, which governed the tastes of a generation, had undoubtedly done a great deal to shape the detached attitude of criticism that emerged in the wake of “The Intentional Fallacy,” but his influence as a poet-legislator was also one of that article’s targets. Not only were Eliot’s critical judgments the expression of an unmistakably personal sensibility, but he had inadvertently stirred up trouble by adding his own notes to The Waste Land, the poem that otherwise offered the ideal object for New Critical decipherment. In order to short-circuit the poet’s attempt to control the reading of his own work, Wimsatt and Beardsley argued that the notes to The Waste Land should not be read as an independent source of insight into the author’s intention; instead, they should be judged like any other part of the composition — which amounts to transferring them, implicitly, from the purview of the literary author to that of the poetic speaker. Thus, rather than providing an undesirable clarification of its meaning, the notes were to be judged in terms of the internal drama of the poem itself. Few scholars of Eliot took this advice, showing once again the difficulty of abiding by the intentional taboo.

The marginalizing of authorial intention in favor of the empirically concrete text was part of a wider mid-20th-century intellectual trend — the suspicion of mind itself. Since the 1920s, philosophical critics like John Dewey and I. A. Richards had been looking for ways to explain art, including poetry, in vaguely evolutionary terms, as a homeostatic mechanism for maintaining the balance of the psyche. In the United States, the 1930s and ’40s were dominated by scientistic philosophies — logical positivism, pragmatism, and behaviorism — which sought not just to explain mental processes but to explain them away. Not till the late 1950s, with Noam Chomsky’s attack on behaviorism and the development of Grice’s account of intentionality in conversation, followed by the rise of Speech-Act Theory and cognitive science in the 1960s, would the concept of mind make a comeback.

In literary studies, however, the return of mind and the study of language as a communicative medium were largely thwarted, first by the delayed arrival of structuralism and then by deconstruction as instigated by Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man. Deconstructionists, in a spirit akin to the New Critics, discovered necessarily elusive and paradoxical qualities not just in literary language but in all language — often accompanied, in canonical texts, by a knowingness about language’s essentially figurative and myth-making qualities. Deconstruction thus provided another author-marginalizing way of decoding literary and philosophical works. Though Derrida’s own attitude toward authorial intentional was complicated, professors of literature leaned heavily on his saying, “There is nothing outside the text”: both authorial intention and reference to the extra-textual world were short-circuited by an analysis of linguistic function.

In hindsight we can see that the long-term result of the trend Barthes called the “Death of the Author” was that meaning emigrated in all directions — to mere texts, to functions of texts like poetic speakers and implied authors, to the structures of language itself apart from speakers, to class and gender ideologies, to the unconscious, and to combinations of all of these, bypassing authors and their intentions. While following these various flights, critics have nonetheless continued to rely upon authorial intention in the editing and reading of texts, in the use of background materials, in the advocacy of political agendas, in the establishing of their own intellectual property, and in many other ways. The persistence of the author has been vividly in evidence during the last year, for example, in the bicentennial discussions of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Not only have Shelley’s personal politics been a focus of attention, but her personal experiences, especially the experience of motherhood, have played a great part in the reading of her famous work even though they are not among its explicit subjects. This is just the kind of “intentional fallacy” that Wimsatt and Beardsley were determined to squelch.

While they were in the ascendant, both New Criticism and deconstruction had a leveling effect on literary interpretation. All works of literature turned out to be either demonstrations of literary ambiguity or of the referential instability of language itself. These practices have left their mark upon current critical attitudes, but few scholars and teachers are still reading strictly by their lights. So why does it matter at this late date if literary scholars continue to reject the notion of intention in theory, given that they no longer avoid it in practice? Of the many reasons, I will note four.

First, the simple contradiction between theory and practice undermines the intellectual coherence of literary studies as a whole, cutting it off both from practitioners of other disciplines and from ordinary readers, including students in the classroom. In an age when the humanities struggle to justify their existence, this does not make that justification any easier.

Second, the removal of the author from the equation of literature, even if only in theory, facilitates the excessive recourse to hidden sources of meaning — linguistic, social, economic, and psychological. It gives license to habits of thought that resemble paranoia, or what Paul Ricoeur has called “the hermeneutics of suspicion.” Just as the New Critics feared the stability of meaning they associated with the reductive language of science, so critics on the left fear the stability of meaning they associate with the continuing power of metaphysics and tradition. Such paranoia is a poor antidote to naïveté. It puts critics in a position of superiority to their subjects, a position as unequal as the hero-worshipping stance of the 19th century, giving free rein to what E. P. Thompson memorably called “the enormous condescension of posterity.”

Third, the question regarding which kinds of authorial intention are relevant to which critical concerns is still a live and pressing one, as the case of Frankenstein suggests.

Fourth and finally, objectifying literary authors as mere functions of the text, or mere epiphenomena of language, is a radically dehumanizing way to treat them. For a discipline that is rightly concerned with recovering suppressed voices and with the ways in which all manner of people can be objectified, acquiescence to the objectification of authors is a temptation to be resisted. As Hegel pointed out long ago in his famous passage on masters and slaves, to degrade the humanity of others with whom we could be in conversation is to impoverish our own humanity.

John Farrell is Waldo W. Neikirk Professor of Literature at Claremont McKenna College and the author, most recently, of The Varieties of Authorial Intention: Literary Theory Beyond the Intentional Fallacy. His website is www.johnfarrellonline.com.

Banner image by CCAC North Library.

Source: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/why-literature-professors-turned-against-authors-or-did-they/

#read more #see more #check it out #interesting #learn more

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perfectackeracy · 8 years ago

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Shingeki no Kyojin chapter 91 review (+ theories)

First of all I’d like to apologize for the delay of the review due to me starting the week on my new internship, which meant getting used to the job.

Second thing, I now added another page called Masterpost. Its purpose is to gather the links to every single review I’ve done and a couple of other information. Meaning if some post gets linked in my asks too often, it might end up in the index, so it can make the navigation much easier. That also allows me to check my previous points back and correct assumptions or laugh from total embarrassment.

That’s all for the changes! Now for the chapter itself...

Second part of why it took me so long is because of the content of the chapter. When the first spoilers came out, I didn’t have any head to begin, or tail to finish. It all felt like a huge infodump and exposition of many new characters whose introduction was too late in the series and the feeling Isayama is close to the burnout, since many emotional arcs are left... abridged. Let’s face it, the chapter is a mess. It’s almost like I’m reading a complete different manga. Same feeling that happened with chapter 86 but worse since the only character known (Reiner) was featured in a cameo.

Making a timeskip at the beginning of the final arc is pretty weird too. When I read manga, authors often make their significant timeskip (several years) in the middle of the manga instead of the end, and that’s usually to show a change of atmosphere in the second phase. In One Piece, it was to train and be prepared for the New World. In Death Note, it was to show how the world became without L, in Claymore, it was after the old generation has been wiped out, etc...

In this manga, it’s to show the consequences of discovering the truth behind this world and to show how losing shifters affected Marley’s loss. I had my suspicions new characters would be introduced like Flocke was in the last arc, but I didn’t expect at all they would overshadow Reiner or Zeke, which makes the chapter painful to read, because if time was to be saved, it would’ve been easier showing flashbacks of Reiner and his comrades instead. Even so, it’s not unreasonable the final arc is taking place on Marley’s territory. According to last chapter, Eren needs to crush them, remember?

Now, to examine the chapter point over point... Follow me under the cut!

The new warriors

The situation in Marley

The shifters

There wasn’t really any WTF CR moments this time... except at “Cartman”. Now I really can’t help but picturing the Cart Titan as Cartman and it burns my eyes...

The new warriors

Okay so... about the warriors themselves... It looks like most of them are made from elements found in other characters, except for Zophia who’s the most original of the batch.

I mean seriously look at this...

Too many similarities with characters we know. I’m praying for some of them to die or their designs to be modified along the way. Now that I think about it, wasn’t Flocke progressively revamped?

In any case, the biggest offences are Jerwin or Steve “Cole” Rogers and his brother mini-Grice. Gabi’s design looks too much like Tsubaki from the pilot and a mix of Frieda’s and Eren’s but for some reason she gets a pass. Probably because she combines traits of Eren, Mikasa and Armin’s.

So far she was the most prominent cadet alongside Falco due to her high spirit. She shares that trait alongside Eren and Marlowe in the sense she believes one side is completely in the wrong and the other must be rescued. This is what keeps her moving forward, in an attempt to go against the flow. And like him, she uses her cutesy girl act to get a pass, like him when he murdered the kidnappers. Not only that but like Mikasa, she’s at the top of her peers, indicating a good physical ability and her similarities with Armin is her wits, especially during the grenade scene. Though if you want to compare her to her respective side, she combines traits belonging to Reiner, except the conviction thing, because we have no idea how he felt when he was her age.

And one thing is clear with her: war has never been so moe. I find the genki girl act kinda unnerving and if she wasn’t introduced at the end of the manga, there would be a nice, non-rushed growth of her character because keep in mind she, among all warriors, has been fed lies by Marley and has yet to discover the true nature of the Eldians on the island.

In any case it’s clear most of these characters are going to die in one way or another, probably due to a sudden attack by the newfound Eldian Army so one of them can experiment the sad fate of becoming a warrior. There’s potential with Gabi to either let her heart falter and have some pity for the citizens of Paradis or see their despicable actions and reinforce her black and white view... or die because big talkers are losers and let Falco inherit Reiner’s armor instead, because there isn’t really anybody else left.

And I’m one of these people who doesn’t think Cole is going to inherit Zeke’s power and debut on Paradis. He’s either going to die in the assault or much later.

The situation in Marley

“We’ve been at war for four years but... we’re finally reaching the end” - Ch. 91

Since the warriors’ defeat at Shiganshina, the Middle Eastern forces launched an attack on Marley and it’s kind of a shock to see what made Marley a superpower really was the control of the shifters.

“The power of the titans is an absolute. That is how it must be...” - Ch. 91

Indeed, here we are witnessing the consequences of Bertolt’s death. Not only Reiner, Zeke and Pieck failed to retrieve Eren but on top of that the Middle Eastern alliance attacked Marley since their forces were diminishing. If Bertolt was alive, all they had to do was digging for an opportunity to drop him from the sky and their fortress would be annihilated. Hell, they wouldn’t even dare to attack since they’re aware the Colossal is doing mighty damage, which would’ve spared Marley from going at war.

Marley surrounded themselves with nothing but enemies: first the Eastern nation, then the Middle Eastern alliance. Because of the power of the shifters, Marley manages to keep other countries tame, but the moment that power is fading away, it’s becoming a target for opportunists.

That goes to show the whole world hates Eldians because they fear their abilities to turn into giant monsters.

It is pointed as soon as the battle is over, they’ll go through the warrior replenishment process to get the successors of Zeke and Reiner, to attempt another assault on Paradis. That either means Reiner and Zeke’s times are almost up or they’re trying to fish for more competent warriors because of their failures from four years ago. The first one is more likely since having a vet is still more useful than a batch of young recruits. That would mean Reiner received his power at 8 and Zeke at 18. So yeah, pretty damn young for Reiner. Meanwhile it’s been a decade for Zeke since Grisha left and the time he got his power. Makes me wonder what REALLY happened for him to get drafted.

The shifters

Now that Annie has been frozen, Bertolt dead, Reiner and Zeke close to their limit, the army is seriously lacking resources to attack Paradis, especially with a shifter who developed the Coordinate visions in the meantime.

So far, Marley, who initially started the mission with seven shifters, is now reduced to five shifters. These are...

The Armored Titan: Reiner

The Beast Titan: Zeke

The Cartman Titan: Pieck

The Jaw Titan: Galliard

An unknown titan/Ymir’s Titan???

The identity of the last shifter is still a mystery to me, but this chapter didn’t mention anything about some girl’s titan, so I assume Ymir is very well dead. Note how neither Galliard and Pieck were put to execution so I’m assuming they’re fairly recent. Well, we’ve seen Pieck four years ago and I assumed he ate Ymir in order to test his abilities here. After all, why waiting for her expiration date when we can have more warriors at hand?

Unless they’re keeping her as the Test Titan or something but I doubt it.

Anyway, Galliard looked kinda cool. He’s probably the same age than Pieck and from the same promotion. That’s up to be determined, still. But if Pieck started at 11/12 in Shiganshina, he must be 15/16 now. From what we’ve judged, he’s quite fast, surprising Levi, Hange and Eren but “coming out of nowhere”. Kinda useful for a hit and run assault, despite being smaller than Ymir’s titan.

But if Pieck was sent on the battlefront, why wasn’t Galliard sent with them? Has he been made a shifter only after the battle? Cole refers to him and Pieck without suffixes to Magarth while Gabi refers him to ”ガリアードさん” , which implies a degree of superiority over the cadets but probably not over Cole, so he’s probably (but the evidence is light) 15-18.

Now about the literal shifter vets, Reiner and Zeke...

While we haven’t seen Zeke we caught a glimpse of Reiner, now over 20 and done with everything, having caught the Levi syndrome. It’s probably his last mission before being eaten since his 13 years are probably coming to a term. Aside from me discussing non-stop about headcanons of Reiner in Marley the saddest thing in everything is him thinking his mission in Shiganshina would be over and he would end his life peacefully alongside Bertolt and the rest of his comrades. Instead of that he got thrown into another conflict and turned into titan food for the next generation. Interesting note, the four shifters are present on the battlefield. It happens Reiner and Zeke are on the plane, ready to jump when the signal is given.

The reason why I doubt Reiner and Zeke are going to die giving their titans is because Zeke must meet Eren at least once and confront him and Reiner keeps escaping death, even in situations where he accepts it, which leads to all his loved ones to suffer and die before him, namely his promotion. If Zeke dies, Reiner follows behind. If he gets eaten, he’ll find peace somehow, because the manga is supposed to end badly, meaning he’ll join Bertolt in the afterlife.

Yeah I can feel the Eldian invasion being on point.

Oh and also the other nations have anti-titans artillery. Keeping the blueprints for Marley might be useful just in case. The SL only has two shifters and probably spent their 3 years adapting their military tactics now the 3DMG is useless when the enemies are humans.

#snk 91 #snk spoilers #snk #attack on titan #snk meta #reiner braun #zeke yeager #meta #gabi #cole #falco #magath #pieck #galliard #cartman titan #jaw titan #this is probably one of the messiest analyses i've ever done

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just-mythyk · 4 years ago

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Whatcha thinking about? What idea have you beem kicking around for awhile?

when i read that first sentence my brain was like “well now i can read in benrey’s voice and that mildly concerns me that i get his speech patterns + sound”

but uh yeah, writing. that’s what that second part means.

mostly my jahl’kin/mythos/freakshow story that just loves adding on things and details in the weirdest ways and i’m *pretty* sure i’m at like, 3 aus at this point of what happens “now” though i want to stick to a single, more rational canon.

i believe the jahl’kin is my latest topic. they actually originated from @a-piece-in-time, a story blog i made that i’ve kinda let die due to current circumstances.

anyways, the whole deal with jahl’kin is actually doing my best to limit their abilities. they’re a bit like... if a dnd spellcaster that “stocks” spells but instead it was basically tattoos on their arms.

so, tattoo spells they can dispel at any time they wish, and use just about anything to draw them on (then ~magic~ to turn them into these “tattoos”). i drew inspiration from The Inheritance Cycle, in that they have to draw the energy from somewhere and can gain more energy with practice. oh, and then i added on a discernment between “precision” and “intention” for how they can use their magic (which might also be inspired by the aforementioned series).

in addition, my brain’s decided it wants to figure out some reasoning to have a character that can reincarnate for generations which leads to being super powerful.

and then in that specific freakshow, there’s some au in this lil’ head that there are places where time is strange and people live for much longer due to... something.

and then my personal universe i don’t really talk about having “children of elements” because i binge-read the webtoon comic Urban Animal.

I have a lot of thoughts.

#mythyk chat #anon #mythyk writes #jahl'kin #ask mythyk #thanks for asking me about this #it's kinda nice to just ramble a bit #go ahead and ask details for anything #i don't mind #in fact i encourage it #it helps to ramble so i can worldbuild #Anonymous

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suzanneshannon · 5 years ago

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Using Custom Property “Stacks” to Tame the Cascade

Since the inception of CSS in 1994, the cascade and inheritance have defined how we design on the web. Both are powerful features but, as authors, we’ve had very little control over how they interact. Selector specificity and source order provide some minimal “layering” control, without a lot of nuance — and inheritance requires an unbroken lineage. Now, CSS Custom Properties allow us to manage and control both cascade and inheritance in new ways.

I want to show you how I’ve used Custom Property “stacks” to solve some of the common issues people face in the cascade: from scoped component styles, to more explicit layering of intents.

A quick intro to Custom Properties

The same way browsers have defined new properties using a vendor prefix like -webkit- or -moz-, we can define our own Custom Properties with an “empty” -- prefix. Like variables in Sass or JavaScript, we can use them to name, store, and retrieve values — but like other properties in CSS, they cascade and inherit with the DOM.

/* Define a custom property */ html { --brand-color: rebeccapurple; }

In order to access those captured values, we use the var() function. It has two parts: first the name of our custom property, and then a fallback in case that property is undefined:

button { /* use the --brand-color if available, or fall back to deeppink */ background: var(--brand-color, deeppink); }

This is not a support fallback for old browsers. If a browser doesn’t understand custom properties, it will ignore the entire var() declaration. Instead, this is a built-in way of handling undefined variables, similar to a font stack defining fallback font families when one is unavailable. If we don’t provide a fallback, the default is unset.

Building variable “stacks”

This ability to define a fallback is similar to “font stacks” used on the font-family property. If the first family is unavailable, the second will be used, and so on. The var() function only accepts a single fallback, but we can nest var() functions to create custom-property fallback “stacks” of any size:

button { /* try Consolas, then Menlo, then Monaco, and finally monospace */ font-family: Consolas, Menlo, Monaco, monospace; /* try --state, then --button-color, then --brand-color, and finally deeppink */ background: var(--state, var(--button-color, var(--brand-color, deeppink))); }

If that nested syntax for stacked properties looks bulky, you can use a pre-processor like Sass to make it more compact.

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That single-fallback limitation is required to support fallbacks with a comma inside them — like font stacks or layered background images:

html { /* The fallback value is "Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" */ font-family: var(--my-font, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif); }

Defining “scope”

CSS selectors allow us to drill down into the HTML DOM tree, and style elements anywhere on the page, or elements in a particular nested context.

/* all links */ a { color: slateblue; } /* only links inside a section */ section a { color: rebeccapurple; } /* only links inside an article */ article a { color: deeppink; }

That’s useful, but it doesn’t capture the reality of “modular” object-oriented or component-driven styles. We might have multiple articles and asides, nested in various configurations. We need a way to clarify which context, or scope, should take precedence when they overlap.

Proximity scopes

Let’s say we have a .light theme and a .dark theme. We can use those classes on the root <html> element to define a page-wide default, but we can also apply them to specific components, nested in various ways:

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Each time we apply one of our color-mode classes, the background and color properties are reset, then inherited by nested headings and paragraphs. In our main context, colors inherit from the .light class, while the nested heading and paragraph inherit from the .dark class. Inheritance is based on direct lineage, so the nearest ancestor with a defined value will take precedence. We call that proximity.

Proximity matters for inheritance, but it has no impact on selectors, which rely on specificity. That becomes a problem if we want to style something inside the dark or light containers.

Here I’ve attempted to define both light and dark button variants. Light mode buttons should be rebeccapurple with white text so they stand out, and dark mode buttons should be plum with black text. We’re selecting the buttons directly based on a light and dark context, but it doesn’t work:

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Some of the buttons are in both contexts, with both .light and .dark ancestors. What we want in that case is for the closest theme to take over (inheritance proximity behavior), but what we get instead is the second selector overriding the first (cascade behavior). Since the two selectors have the same specificity, source order determines the winner.

Custom Properties and proximity

What we need here is a way to inherit these properties from the theme, but only apply them to specific children. Custom Properties make that possible! We can define values on the light and dark containers, while only using their inherited values on nested elements, like our buttons.

We’ll start by setting up the buttons to use custom properties, with a fallback “default” value, in case those properties are undefined:

button { background: var(--btn-color, rebeccapurple); color: var(--btn-contrast, white); }

Now we can set those values based on context, and they will scope to the appropriate ancestor based on proximity and inheritance:

.dark { --btn-color: plum; --btn-contrast: black; } .light { --btn-color: rebeccapurple; --btn-contrast: white; }

As an added bonus, we’re using less code overall, and one unified button definition:

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I think of this as creating an API of available parameters for the button component. Sara Soueidan and Lea Verou have both covered this well in recent articles.

Component ownership

Sometimes proximity isn’t enough to define scope. When JavaScript frameworks generate “scoped styles” they are establishing specific object-element ownership. A “tab layout” component owns the tabs themselves, but not the content behind each tab. This is also what the BEM convention attempts to capture in complex .block__element class names.

Nicole Sullivan coined the term “donut scope” to talk about this problem back in 2011. While I’m sure she has more recent thoughts on the issue, the fundamental problem hasn’t changed. Selectors and specificity are great for describing how we build detailed styles over top of broad patterns, but they don’t convey a clear sense of ownership.

We can use custom property stacks to help solve this problem. We’ll start by creating “global” properties on the <html> element that are for our default colors:

html { --background--global: white; --color--global: black; --btn-color--global: rebeccapurple; --btn-contrast--global: white; }

That default global theme is now available anywhere we want to refer to it. We’ll do that with a data-theme attribute that applies our foreground and background colors. We want the global values to provide a default fallback, but we also want the option to override with a specific theme. That’s where “stacks” come in:

[data-theme] { /* If there's no component value, use the global value */ background: var(--background--component, var(--background--global)); color: var(--color--component, var(--color--global)); }

Now we can define an inverted component by setting the *--component properties as a reverse of the global properties:

[data-theme='invert'] { --background--component: var(--color--global); --color--component: var(--background--global); }

But we don’t want those settings to inherit beyond the donut of ownership, so we reset those values to initial (undefined) on every theme. We’ll want to do this at a lower specificity, or earlier in the source order, so it provides a default that each theme can override:

[data-theme] { --background--component: initial; --color--component: initial; }

The initial keyword has a special meaning when used on custom properties, reverting them to a Guaranteed-Invalid state. That means rather than being passed along to set background: initial or color: initial, the custom property becomes undefined, and we fallback to the next value in our stack, the global settings.

We can do the same thing with our buttons, and then make sure to apply data-theme to each component. If no specific theme is given, each component will default to the global theme:

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Defining “origins”

The CSS cascade is a series of filtering layers used to determine what value should take precedence when multiple values are defined on the same property. We most often interact with the specificity layers, or the final layering based on source-order — but the first layer of cascade is the “origin” of a style. The origin describes where a style came from — often the browser (defaults), the user (preferences), or the author (that’s us).

By default, author styles override user preferences, which override browser defaults. That changes when anyone applies `!important` to a style, and the origins reverse: browser `!important` styles have the highest origin, then important user preferences, then our author important styles, above all the normal layers. There are a few additional origins, but we won’t go into them here.

When we create custom property “stacks,” we’re building a very similar behavior. If we wanted to represent existing origins as a stack of custom properties, it would look something like this:

.origins-as-custom-properties { color: var(--browser-important, var(--user-important, var(--author-important, var(--author, var(--user, var(--browser)))))); }

Those layers already exist, so there’s no reason to recreate them. But we’re doing something very similar when we layer our “global” and “component” styles above — creating a “component” origin layer that overrides our “global” layer. That same approach can be used to solve various layering issues in CSS, which can’t always be described by specificity:

Override » Component » Theme » Default

Theme » Design system or framework

State » Type » Default

Let’s look at some buttons again. We’ll need a default button style, a disabled state, and various button “types,” like danger, primary and secondary. We wan’t the disabled state to always override the type variations, but selectors don’t capture that distinction:

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But we can define a stack that provides both “type” and “state” layers in the order that we want them prioritized:

button { background: var(--btn-state, var(--btn-type, var(--btn-default))); }

Now when we set both variables, the state will always take precedence:

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I’ve used this technique to create a Cascading Colors framework that allows custom theming based on layering:

Pre-defined theme attributes in the HTML

User color preferences

Light and dark modes

Global theme defaults

Mix and match

These approaches can be taken to an extreme, but most day-to-day use-cases can be handled with two or three values in a stack, often using a combination of the techniques above:

A variable stack to define the layers

Inheritance to set them based on proximity and scope

Careful application of the `initial` value to remove nested elements from a scope

We’ve been using these custom property “stacks” on our projects at OddBird. We’re still discovering as we go, but they’ve already been helpful in solving problems that were difficult using only selectors and specificity. With custom properties, we don’t have to fight the cascade or inheritance. We can capture and leverage them, as-intended, with more control over how they should apply in each instance. To me, that’s a big win for CSS — especially when developing style frameworks, tools, and systems.

The post Using Custom Property “Stacks” to Tame the Cascade appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

Using Custom Property “Stacks” to Tame the Cascade published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

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recruitmentdubai · 5 years ago

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Using Custom Property “Stacks” to Tame the Cascade

I want to show you how I’ve used Custom Property “stacks” to solve some of the common issues people face in the cascade: from scoped component styles, to more explicit layering of intents.

A quick intro to Custom Properties

/* Define a custom property */ html { --brand-color: rebeccapurple; }

In order to access those captured values, we use the var() function. It has two parts: first the name of our custom property, and then a fallback in case that property is undefined:

button { /* use the --brand-color if available, or fall back to deeppink */ background: var(--brand-color, deeppink); }

Building variable “stacks”

If that nested syntax for stacked properties looks bulky, you can use a pre-processor like Sass to make it more compact.

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That single-fallback limitation is required to support fallbacks with a comma inside them — like font stacks or layered background images:

html { /* The fallback value is "Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" */ font-family: var(--my-font, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif); }

Defining “scope”

CSS selectors allow us to drill down into the HTML DOM tree, and style elements anywhere on the page, or elements in a particular nested context.

/* all links */ a { color: slateblue; } /* only links inside a section */ section a { color: rebeccapurple; } /* only links inside an article */ article a { color: deeppink; }

Proximity scopes

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Proximity matters for inheritance, but it has no impact on selectors, which rely on specificity. That becomes a problem if we want to style something inside the dark or light containers.

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Custom Properties and proximity

We’ll start by setting up the buttons to use custom properties, with a fallback “default” value, in case those properties are undefined:

button { background: var(--btn-color, rebeccapurple); color: var(--btn-contrast, white); }

Now we can set those values based on context, and they will scope to the appropriate ancestor based on proximity and inheritance:

.dark { --btn-color: plum; --btn-contrast: black; } .light { --btn-color: rebeccapurple; --btn-contrast: white; }

As an added bonus, we’re using less code overall, and one unified button definition:

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I think of this as creating an API of available parameters for the button component. Sara Soueidan and Lea Verou have both covered this well in recent articles.

Component ownership

We can use custom property stacks to help solve this problem. We’ll start by creating “global” properties on the <html> element that are for our default colors:

html { --background--global: white; --color--global: black; --btn-color--global: rebeccapurple; --btn-contrast--global: white; }

[data-theme] { /* If there's no component value, use the global value */ background: var(--background--component, var(--background--global)); color: var(--color--component, var(--color--global)); }

Now we can define an inverted component by setting the *--component properties as a reverse of the global properties:

[data-theme='invert'] { --background--component: var(--color--global); --color--component: var(--background--global); }

[data-theme] { --background--component: initial; --color--component: initial; }

We can do the same thing with our buttons, and then make sure to apply data-theme to each component. If no specific theme is given, each component will default to the global theme:

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Defining “origins”

When we create custom property “stacks,” we’re building a very similar behavior. If we wanted to represent existing origins as a stack of custom properties, it would look something like this:

.origins-as-custom-properties { color: var(--browser-important, var(--user-important, var(--author-important, var(--author, var(--user, var(--browser)))))); }

Override » Component » Theme » Default

Theme » Design system or framework

State » Type » Default

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But we can define a stack that provides both “type” and “state” layers in the order that we want them prioritized:

button { background: var(--btn-state, var(--btn-type, var(--btn-default))); }

Now when we set both variables, the state will always take precedence:

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I’ve used this technique to create a Cascading Colors framework that allows custom theming based on layering:

Pre-defined theme attributes in the HTML

User color preferences

Light and dark modes

Global theme defaults

Mix and match

These approaches can be taken to an extreme, but most day-to-day use-cases can be handled with two or three values in a stack, often using a combination of the techniques above:

A variable stack to define the layers

Inheritance to set them based on proximity and scope

Careful application of the `initial` value to remove nested elements from a scope

The post Using Custom Property “Stacks” to Tame the Cascade appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

source https://css-tricks.com/using-custom-property-stacks-to-tame-the-cascade/

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#web developer #web development #website developer

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meditationadvise · 7 years ago

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Tonight`s Halloween New Moon In Scorpio Is The Most Powerful Of The Year. THIS Is The Time To Manifest Your Wildest Dreams

Abracadabra! On Sunday, October 30, the Scorpio brand-new moon does an effective vanishing act, burying our globe in darkness-- in the best way possible.

As la luna shrouds us in a shroud of mystery, we plunge into the darkness of the hidden universe within ourselves. As our external eyes, as well as our internal vision, change to the darkness, it is right here we could begin to see the light. New moons are generally unnoticeable to the nude eye, yet we could want to the dark evening skies as if it were an empty canvas-- symbolic for new beginnings and also intention setting.

There's nothing midway about the intensity of Scorpio energy, which can often drift to the extremes. While Scorpio is associated with control, prominence, and intensity, it births an exceptionally powerful and spiritual power, as well. Scorpio is the leader of makeover, making this lunation additional effective when it concerns changing components of our lives that have been-- until now-- previously blocked.

Sunday's Scorpio new moon could be absolutely alchemical. Are you all set to turn a leaden element of your life right into pure, shimmering gold? Obtain the round rolling on those metamorphic initiatives. Actual change takes job-- as well as it never ever simply occurs overnight. However this is a NEW moon, so it's everything about establishing clear intents then jumping off the beginning block. We have until May 10, 2017-- the date of the matching moon in Scorpio-- to break out of limiting routines as well as replace them with routines that give us life.

The Scorpio brand-new moon will certainly rest at a close level to calculated Mercury, so operating from a specific plan is the way to win. Mercury is the social butterfly of the zodiac, so ignore having a hard time alone making change. Sign up with a support system, online and in real-time, to champion each other as we rise from the ashes!

Here are a couple of routines you could do to alchemize your life at the Scorpio new moon:

1. Transform garbage into treasure.

Scorpio is the regenerator of the zodiac: the typical Phoenix, the best recycler. Its alchemical powers can transform metaphorical introduce gold. Today, you simply might discover something in a dump worth salvaging. A connection, a pair of shoes, a journal entry that turns into a prize-winning short film ... there's something you've deserted that's ripe for reinvention. Discover it. Re-spin it. Make something old shiny and also new again.

2. Inspect beneath 'the hood.'

Scorpio is the indication of interior wellness, and the Scorpio new moon is a golden time to restore your inner well-being before the winter. Ruled by Pluto, god of the underworld, Scorpio is consumed with exactly what's occurring on the in. Have not had your blood attracted for some time? Make a consultation for a little needling. (Scorpio is specifically connected to hematology, so if you're feeling worn down, you could find a need for more iron at this new moon.) Befalled of touch with your gyno? Come by for a tete-a-tete with the ol' speculum. Cleans, detoxes, colonics, severe facials (think: aestheticians pressing the s *** outta your pores) will certainly siphon out all the cruds, rejuvenating and restoring your glow.

3. Rebirth your sexual prowess.

Scorpio is best referred to as the 'sex indication,' as it rules the reproductive organs. However, sex is much from leisure under Scorpio's reign. It's a way of getting to greater airplanes of euphoria, consciousness, and spiritual understanding. The Scorpio new moon is an excellent time to up your libidinous literacy. T is for tantra, so start your sex-related alphabet lessons there. Back up a few letters to O, and clean up on climaxes as well as oxytocin. Oxytocin is the 'bonding hormone' that's released when ladies nursed, so look adoringly at a baby/kitten/puppy as well as (drumroll) at a climax. Scorpio rules perma-bonding, so this hormone is of unique rate of interest today. If you do not desire to wind up fixated with a no-strings fling, find out about your inner drug store and its transformative chemical powers.

4. Embrace the urge to merge.

So you're generating income, however what are you truly doing besides spending it? Scorpio comprehends that true riches originates from possession: actual estate, assets, intellectual home. Scorpio guidelines joint resources, whether it's a residence that you co-own (with a partner OR the bank), money that you've borrowed from a financial institution, or intellectual legal rights to an item of work that pays you passive income.

Today, look at your portfolio as well as count your properties. Perhaps you have actually got a varied spread of stocks, a lodge, as well as aristocracies from an optioned flick. Perhaps you've just got your great-grandma's wedding ring ... or nothin' a lot at all.

Whatever the situation, the Scorpio new moon is ideal for establishing your mind on making your money job harder for you. If you're in financial obligation, develop a settlement strategy or decrease your rate of interest by changing to a zero-percent equilibrium transfer card. You might also hock some things on eBay as well as put the profits right into an interest-bearing account. Reduce your carbon impact AND ALSO your costs creatively: Bike to work (or carpool), host meals to lower the grocery store costs, or begin an investment club with some wise friends.

5. Harness your psychic powers.

Scorpio has a track record for being uncannily intuitive, even downright psychic. This brand-new moon will certainly open up a powerful website, producing sixth sense as well as recognizing flashes. In this uber-practical, material globe (the domain name of Scorpio's OPPOSITE indication, Taurus), the majority of us might have the tendency to brush these messages apart, never ever giving much support to our inner assistance. However in Scorpioville, absolutely nothing is also freaky, psychedelic, or astonishing to be explored.

What would take place if we spent the whole day communing with the little voice in our heads? If we did 5 to ten minutes of free-writing on top of each hr, allowing our hand dancing throughout the web page, revealing the inner workings of our minds? What may look like crazy-talk could in fact be the kernels of brilliant thought. Shush the inner movie critic and also let it move. We guarantee that you'll be surprised on your own at least when throughout this brand-new moon.

An eyes-closed, lights-off meditation might also yield brand-new 'view.' You might also position a crystal on the area in between your eyebrows, that little location called the third-eye chakra which is the physical factor where greater awareness as well as intuition circulations. Battering out an ancient rhythm in a drum circle could get you in a close to trancelike state also, quieting the mind and also awakening your extrasensory assumption. Allow go and let it stream. Deep space is your psychic hotline now.

6. Take a digital detox.

In maintaining with Scorpio's 'tune in, activate, leave' ethos, circle the Scorpio new moon for a 24-hour media diet plan. Silence social media and give on your own a breather from the blogosphere. You might not understand what does it cost? you're zombie-walking with life, absorbing the ads, feeds, as well as hundreds of images you see daily. In the words of Scorpio thought leader Terence McKenna, 'Stop consuming images and also begin creating them.' Paint. Draw. Develop a collage ... and don't be amazed if your images manifest into kind in the days ahead under Scorpio's effective influence.

7. Fan the flame of desire.

To allow sex-related power to training course with our bodies is to touch the force of life-- this is something Scorpio well recognizes. Although this indicator obtains a representative for being vampy and also compulsive, in its highest expression, Scorpio could evoke a sacred sexuality. Believe: tantra, mind-body-soul links, a timeless as well as timeless appeal. Our sexual triggers never head out, yet we must maintain the pilot burner lit.

Forget just what the style mags have announced as attractive as well as stop obsessing in the mirror. Sexuality does not live there. It stays in our link to eros, which originates from being incredibly present and fired up about life. Relocating your body in a manner that makes you feel sensual is the method to obtain this magnetic pressure moving. Who cares if Sunday is a college night? Welcome the evening owl vibes of this new moon as well as dancing 'til way previous your going to bed. (For extra on this, look into the sacred seduction mentors of Cat Cavalier.)

Scorpio is the indication that is also connected with fatality and renewal. Sometimes, inescapable finalities must occur in order for us to come to life-- and right into our sexuality-- once again. This eclipse might hint 'the start of the end,' as we muster the nerve to claim bye-bye to scenarios (or limiting ideas about ourselves and also others) that are deadening, draining, as well as downright unsexy.

Of course, farewells are not always a fatal issue. The French refer to an orgasm as 'La petit mort,' translated straight as 'the little death.' May this new moon bring you such, ahem, delighted endings.

8. Reveal economic abundance.

Scorpio rules our larger, swelling sum material resources (commissions, aristocracies, incentives, inheritances) in addition to the loan we share with others. How finest to shake that moneymaker during the brand-new moon as well as sow the seeds of success? Not by jumping in the daily grind, playing a ruthless video game of shark-eat-shark. That would certainly be the reduced power of Scorpio in activity ... which always comes 'rounded to attack us in the ass in the end.

Instead, we ought to fly like the eagle-- the secondary icon representing Scorpio. Manifesting wealth from a visionary place is as a lot a matter of confidence as it is skill. We could enroll in workshops as well as courses till the cows get home, however if we don't believe that we actually deserve this loan, it will stream out of our lives like water via a filter. In her publication The Law of Divine Compensation, miracle-maven Marianne Williamson (a Cancer) schools us in shifting our state of mind so we can open up to the miracles as well as success the universe has to offer.

Simple mantras could be effective, also. Make a listing of the limiting thoughts you have concerning your sources ... for example, 'There's insufficient cash to go about.' When these limiting beliefs have actually been lit up, reframe them as positives, as in 'I am well dealt with by the globe as well as my enjoyed ones.' Tape that mantra to your mirror and repeat each morning. Soon enough, this credo will certainly become extra than a platitude ... it will certainly be the way you watch the world.

9. Revenge is a meal finest acted as success.

The mention of Scorpio sends out shivers down some people's spinal columns, however that's because they just know component of the tale. Scorpio in fact has 3 stages, or energetic resonances. The most affordable is the ground-dwelling Scorpion, the conveniently endangered animal with the dangerous, malevolent sting. Above that is the rising eagle, the wizened Scorpio who's learned his life's lessons and also keenly observes whatever with laser understanding. The greatest indication is the Phoenix az, the mythological bird that rises from the ashes of devastation to create new life.

At the Scorpio new moon, we could pick to access any type of one of these energies-- consisting of getting back at. If you need to stir a wish for payback, do so proactively. Keep in mind the adage that success is the very best revenge. Win the fight AND the battle by making your personal life incredible rather compared to taking someone else's happiness down.

#meditation #meditation quotes #spiritual

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