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(Versión en español) Originally, I created this blog for another project (which in the end I'm working on in analog format). As I still feel like blogging, but not in the same way as before (before before), I'm going to use this space to write about the projects I'm working on right now, to get my head in order and also in case anyone is interested in reading why I said I was about to publish one thing or the other and after two months the thing is still unpublished and unmanifested. And no, it's not because I forgot or because I'm too busy with work. It's the opposite, I'm kind of obsessed with this lol (and with little work, calculatedly, to focus on this).
In case anyone reading this doesn't follow me on my other account (“Puka 2” at @puka_muriska@easymode.im), everything I do, let's say, artistic, is part of an inner spiritual work of mine that sometimes is quite long, and sometimes is more spontaneous (and whether it will be one or the other is out of my control haha). My spirituality and my art are the same for me, because for both I use as raw material my imaginary world, my dreams and everything that arises in the intersection between the two.
Having cleared that up, I'm going to tell you about what I'm doing, and the work I have to do behind the scenes. The thing I'm most anxious about for not having ready yet, is the letters project. I'm writing (and rewriting, and rewriting, and rewriting, and...) a series of zines in analog letter format (postal zine?) to send to anyone interested in participating, anywhere in the world. The real origin of the letters is, of course, my imaginary world. More specifically, they are written by a Mysterious Character, telling their adventures in the U3P (that's the name of my imaginary world, “Universe of the Three Portals”, because I couldn't think of anything better). The first prototype was sent to a friend in Sweden and received successfully, but after having overcome at least most of the technical difficulties (basically the mailing of the common letter here in Argentina comes at a surprise price, and I had to juggle to lower it as much as possible), I encountered another difficulty, deeper, that arises for the first time in 29 years of having an imaginary world.
And, it seems, having an imaginary world is not the same as having a well-arranged story, by no means. Until now, I never had the need to have the time of the U3P “more or less organized”, although the organizational need is not new, a few years ago I came up to order the space (mostly the buildings and places of the White Desert). Because even though in my imaginary world there were always Events, these Events happened again and again and again, when I was 12 years old, 14 years old, 16 years old, 22 years old, and so on; always subtly different, rewritten as I grew up and matured, with more or less characters, new places, etc. The U3P is a sort of giant patchwork, full of holes and loose ends and with an extraordinary amount of layers (it looks like when they paste posters on the street over other posters, and over time they peel off). In fact, I wrote and illustrated the first zine-game without even considering the remote possibility of putting together a story with everything I have. Because I didn't feel like it, but now I do (I'm not sure that whatever comes out of this will be stable and not mutable, after all it's all about writing myself, although it's possible that after I do this work, a new Event will happen that has never happened before).
The deep reason why I feel like doing this and not another different thing, would already be too long to put in a post, which is supposed to be just to explain what the hell I'm doing. But, to synthesize, in my spiritual work, when I was writing the first zine-game, my inner child (that I call “The Prince”, and yes, sometimes he is more of an inner teenager haha) wanted to play hide and seek, and that's what the first zine was about. This time around, The Prince wants to play detectives, and so do I. It's about looking with a magnifying glass, walking comically close to the floor, for something that looks like a clue and makes me feel an exciting “!”. Something like a thread, maybe.
Doing this archeological ant work, detective research, oniric diving and organizing introspection is indispensable to be able to give voice to this new Mysterious Character who writes the letters, for inexplicable reasons (that is, I could explain them in more detail if I really wanted to, but I would have to do a lot of brain force and I better keep it for my diary :B).
This inner work is also extra essential to be able to give life to the other project that is related to the postal zine, which was also going well and that now from time to time is getting out of hand: the “CEM” (what's up with me naming imaginary existences with acronyms like that, anyway? It's only named like that in Spanish, though, English version is shorter, after having written a long name too many times in my diaries, I start to acronym). That's the “Starfish Collective”: a group of dreamers that at the moment consists of exactly 13 people with 14 bodies and 15 heads, aliens to the U3P (or almost aliens) that explore this universe for a series of reasons and with another series of objectives. One of these objectives is to create zines that serve as travel guides for those who want to visit the U3P. I have published the first volume of this one (free, in my Itch.io), which is quite primitive, because I rushed it to participate in the “Fuck Capitalism Jam” of 2023.
So, in case anyone reading this follows me on my other account (“Puka 2” at @puka_muriska@easymode.im) and doesn't understand what the fuck I'm talking about there, it's this: I'm sewing the quilt together, with all the patches I have available; joining loose ends, connecting the dots, establishing relationships, arranging the temporal dimension of the U3P; basically writing a coherent story made with all the tiny little stories I have in the Anís File. And finally, all this is making the basis for my next project, which is not even sketched yet (and still has some pages finished, my creative process is simply chaotic like that), which is going to be the second zine-game. I want to do it in visual novel and zine format, we'll see how, and obviously it's going to be about detectives.
Internally, too, it is a crazy change for me. The need to give a valid “space-time” in the U3P to this Mystery Character who writes the letters made it essential that, on the one hand, I organize the time of the U3P and, on the other hand, build/configure/insert another verb here a door that would actually give access to others to my imaginary world and, in turn, allow beings from my imaginary world to come out and wander around in human worlds and matters. A door like that is something completely new to me, and I find it super fun, an adventure, but it's a bit of a messy job, magically speaking. And well, I'll see what comes out of it ٩(๑'ᴗ'๑)۶.