You face the North, Mictlampa, the place of rest. Mictlantecuhtli, lord of violet obsidian, keeps what has been lived. The scene turns nocturnal, deep.
Teyolía · Memory
Teyolía, one of the three entities that, in Nahua thought, make up a person: it lives in the heart, carries memory, and it's the one that travels to Mictlán after death. This page isn't a blog: it's an epitaph. What didn't survive building this site, kept rather than erased.
The walk
The stag advanced with the scroll, a technically correct stride cycle, unreadable over the few notches of a real scroll. Removed rather than tuned a third time: it added almost nothing for what it cost.
The tree that wasn't from here
A first accent of flora, photoreal texture, oversized, clashed with the rest of the scene, flat and vertex-colored. Replaced by a procedural ocotillo, truer to the pre-Columbian flora of central Mexico.
The serpents
Two attempts at a Xiuhcoatl for the loading veil, two admitted failures: a polyline too thin with no recognizable head, then a still-flawed trace. Removed while waiting for a real hand-drawn silhouette instead of one more procedural pass.
The intro that dissolved
The Piedra del Sol and the text dissolved into a cloud of embers before revealing the scene. A real vector technique (sampling around 250 SVG paths), but the effect didn't serve the story. Removed the day after it shipped.
The calendar glyphs
Five hybrid glyphs — Nahui Ollin for Center, Tonatiuh for East, Xochitl for South, Iztli for West, Ollin for North — drawn to animate cardinal transitions. Technically successful, but their codex fidelity made them sacred. Removed without regret, out of respect.
The 2D petal curtain
First attempt at inter-page transition: 1800 solid ellipses in mix-blend screen crossing the screen like confetti. Fast to code, cheap to watch. Replaced by native View Transitions API, more elegant.
The slicing blade
An HTML overlay that cut the screen into horizontal slices and slid them in the cardinal direction, like unfolding origami. Too mechanical, too readable as an effect, not organic enough for the site's cosmology.
The 3D petal storm
A rain of Three.js particles ejected from the stag during transition. Strong signal but confused reading: no clear focal point. Duplicated the existing petals' dispersion. Removed when View Transitions API took over.
The brutal fade
First iteration of transitions: router.push without burst, sharp WebGL canvas cut, next page appearing instantly. Technically correct, narratively disastrous. The stag teleported between worlds instead of crossing them.
The sticky cursor
First custom cursor attempt: lerp 0.02, a ring that took two seconds to catch up with the mouse. "Chewing gum" feel. Fixed to 0.15 to let the trail breathe without gluing it.
The axial jade flame
First Center Xiuhtecuhtli: a three-meter fire column crossing the stag. Strong signature, but it blinded the subject. Reduced to modest embers rising in a circle rather than a single dominant axis.
The photorealistic god-rays
First East Tonatiuh: GodRaysEffect post-processing shader with full volumetric sampling. Gorgeous at 60fps on dedicated GPU, catastrophic on mobile (30fps). Replaced with additive triangular planes, mesh-based, free to render.
The cardinal motifs on this site (sun, flower, blade, spiral, quincunx) are stylized evocations inspired by Mesoamerican iconography, not reproductions of sacred glyphs. A family tribute to the living Nahua culture, for Elda and our daughters.