Ybymarã and the three layers of perception

    The story of Ybymarã will consist of five volumes in total, the first of which (Ybymarã – The City on the Other Side) is the central volume. The complete story (all five volumes) was planned and is being written on three levels, which can be called “layers of perception.” These “layers” can already be perceived in “The City on the Other Side.”

    The first layer is the story itself, the dramatized romance of the family (Ana, Tobias, Rafael, and Bruna) and the 17 researchers at a particle accelerator who, after a strange event, find themselves lost in an unfamiliar city called Ybymarã. This layer dramatizes the interaction between the travelers (as the researchers and the family are called) and the local natives, where one side attempts to assimilate the other’s culture, resulting in several conflicts due to the clash of cultures.

    The second layer consists of the references that are woven into the story. A simple example is the subtle reference to the four horsemen of the apocalypse that permeates the entire dramatization of “The City on the Other Side,” which, in the end, ends up meeting in an unexpected way. Another reference is the meaning of some of the characters’ names. Rafael, for example, comes from the Hebrew term “rapha,” meaning “he who heals.” And Rafael does this more than once, as if “fixing” complicated situations. In another situation, Kerana, as in Tupi-Guarani mythology, is “kidnapped” by TAU, in a more or less hidden reference, and so on.

    The third layer is the foundation that supports the entire story. It represents Ybymarã’s connection to our world through scientific concepts or hypotheses based on them. The story was built from the third layer to the first, inspired by the idea of ​​what would have happened if humanity had made slightly better decisions, a fact inherent to the third layer. This idea was the basis for the many references contained in the story, and finally, it was transported to everyday life with the dramatization of the family and the researchers.

    Furthermore, it’s worth noting that Ybymarã is a post-apocalyptic story, but utopian and told in a different way, where the apocalypse is just the beginning of a new life.

Edison Antonio Pires de Moraes