PHASED AND INTERFUSED PT. 1

 In algebra, the phrase "phase shift" is defined thusly:

The phase shift of a function is when a function moves to the left or right a certain number of units. It can also be called a horizontal shift.

As I haven't worked with algebra since high school, I don't know if I encountered the phrase back then, picked up the phrase from some secondary source (like a science fiction novel), or if I only recently whipped up the phrase myself for my literary project and only accidentally paralleled a bit of existing mathematical jargon.

Regardless, "phase shift" is my term for the process by which a function in literature-- which parallels my term "icon"-- shifts from one state of being (within the "horizontal" world of its purely fictional existence) to another state of being.

I have undoubtedly described phase shifts many times without having formulated a term for the process, though for now I'll confine the application to one department of my lit-crit project: that of crossover-ology. For instance, here's a passage in which I described a phase shift without using the term, from the 2023 essay INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE STATURE:

AVENGERS #16 changed its [Inclusive] template to that of the Semi-Inclusive when the new lineup consisted of one Prime with strong stature, Captain America, and three that had only been charismatic Subs within the universes of other featured heroes. Since Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch only accrued stature once they'd been in one AVENGERS story, the first appearance *alone* was a charisma-crossover. From then on, they all possessed "collective stature" due to their continued membership in the team, and the more they appeared in the team, by the principle of escalation they quickly progressed from being Charisma Dominant Primes to Stature Dominant Primes.

In the same essay I touched upon a different type of phase shift, that of Primes whose stature arises from being the sole stars of a continuing feature-- the example being Ant-Man/Giant-Man and his partner The Wasp-- to having a stature arising from being members of an ongoing team in a continuing feature. I elaborated on this type of phase shift last month thusly:

Therefore, Henry Pym and Janet Van Dyne benefit from their association with the better stories of AVENGERS, as opposed to those of their own feature, and "qualitatively" their Collective Stature supervenes their Individual Stature. And of course, this is also true given that these two icons made many more appearances in AVENGERS in the ensuing decades and so they remain best known to comics-fans as members of that team, not as solo acts. Even stories that may be dramatically bad, like "Henry Pym, Wife Beater," have become inextricable to the cosmos now designated as "Earth-616" in a limited mythopoeic sense. 

There are many other phase shifts I've described, sans the special term, in other earlier essays. However, my next post on the subject will pick up on a new subject for the time being, one that makes the above shifts seem pellucid by comparison.