v3: a journal headline stays readable when you point at it — over an image card the title rests white on the scrim and hovers in the theme's accent, which over a busy or bright thumbnail could sink into the picture, and in nyt's light scheme went black on black. A hovered title now picks up a backing plate of its own, grown around the text by padding that an equal negative margin cancels, so nothing shifts, and hugging the headline rather than spanning the card. The plate is a dark glass by default and each theme reskins it through --journal-title-hover-* properties: smooth frosts it in page colour so terracotta on cream and jasmine on Prussian Blue stay the pairs, kanagawa sets it on sumiInk with a selection edge, nyt in square flat ink, brutalist as a solid accent stamp with a hard offset shadow, geocities as a neon marquee, melange as a coffee pillow in warm shadow. nyt's unread dot, inked in the theme's black accent, goes white over a photo too.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

src/themes/melange.css

@@ -314,6 +314,16 @@
   color: var(--mel-dust);
 }
 
+/* A pointed-at headline over a photo sits on a pillow of roasted coffee —
+   the dark scheme's ground in either scheme, since the scrim under it is
+   dark in both — lit in the dark scheme's amber, in warm shadow. */
+[data-style="melange"] .journal-card--image .journal-card-title {
+  --journal-title-hover-bg: rgb(41 37 34 / 0.84);
+  --journal-title-hover-color: #ebc06d;
+  --journal-title-hover-radius: var(--radius-sm);
+  --journal-title-hover-shadow: 0 4px 14px -4px rgb(0 0 0 / 0.5);
+}
+
 /* ── A quote is a printed pull-quote: big soft mark, terracotta ──── */
 [data-style="melange"] .journal-card--quote {
   background: var(--color-surface);