About this Lair

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Pearlnight’s Lair (English pronunciation: pɜːrlnaɪts lɛər) is a small hobbyist website. It is a lightweight, low-latency static website with minimal JavaScript. It lacks a backend and a database, instead prioritising a text-heavy layout. Its total size is no larger than 700 KB, half a standard 3.5″ floppy disk and a tiny fraction of a USB flash drive. The site is responsive, able to be read on all screen-sizes. It is accessible for disabled readers and their assistive tools. Visually it uses the Dracula Dark Theme and its corresponding Alucard Light Theme. It is currently hosted on Neocities, with a mirror on Nekoweb.

The name Pearlnight derives from me, its webmistress, but you can call me Pearl. I'm an autistic queer and webcomic author since the winter of 2021. My primary work is the webcomic Dancing with the Dead, it's a 1970's period piece and my love-letter to the vampire genre. Besides this, I lurk in quiet holes in this web, play old computer games and prod at other niches with equally shy creatures. My art is derived from my love of darkness, my experiences with mental illness and my own repressed feelings. I invite you to interpret me through my pieces and make of me as you will.

So back to the Lair. It identifies as a personal archive, a Digital Garden, and an adherent of Web Revivalism. As a result, it adheres to a particular set of rules in order to maintain its aesthetics, values and all-around feel. These go as follows, listed below.

Rule 1

1. I like to make simple things.: They make me feel more creative and this should reflect in the Lair.

Rule 2

2. I appreciate slow living.: As a result, it doesn’t demand your attention with constant updates, live feeds, or whatever “thing of the month”. You can come and go as you please, satisfied you won't be missing out on anything here.

Rule 3

3. It must be text-focused.: It must conjure vivid images through description alone. To me, it makes websites feel more immersive to their readers. Though this must also balance out with anchor links, summaries and precise formatting for maximum accessibility.

Rule 4

4. It must feel enclosed.: No trends, no bandwagons, no snarl-words and absolutely no unprompted political rants. While the websites I intended to simulate were no stranger to painfully-dated political referencing, I find it to be a total drag. If I am going to talk about an issue, it must be deeply meaningful to me. Ableism is a given as I'm autistic (and some other things), as are my loved ones.

History of the Lair

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|     __     _______                                ______________                      /            |
|     \ \   | STUFF |  _________        _______    |  MORE STUFF  |         ___  _     /             |
|      \ \__|_______|  \        \\//   _   .'  __  |______________|       /__   \  n_n               |
|     __/     =(o o)=  |          |   __ (0.0)  |_  |  STUFF   |           )__    ( ; ;)             |
|___ (____.---.  \ \   | STUFF    |  __  [   ] ___  |__/\--/\__|             )__    /         .---..---.
|   \____      \_)_)   |_____ /\/\    __  \_/ __|_  /   0  0 /            ______ m m __      /    /     \
|        \______      (      ( o o)=   _____|___   /        /             \    _____/  )     \/ n  n  \_/
|  o o          \____  \___    \ \     ___|____   -.     .--               \  (__      (      ( Y _)   \
|       o o          \     |__\__)_)     |____      /.--./                 /___(        )      (__) /__/
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Part 1: Discovery

My time online is shrouded in long periods of lurking, but I've persisted here since the Dot-Com crash. It first started with a typical consumer copy of Windows XP, and a handful of CD-ROM games. Petz 4 and 5, two Scooby Doo games and my sister's Barbie games (too frilly for a tomboy to enjoy out loud). Then, I turned my attention to the Internet Explorer, and experienced nothing short of wanderlust. When I wasn't playing outside with bubble swords and grass-nests, I took to the homes of child-friendly games online. If we'd pored through all the papers of Club Penguin that day, it was time to read the educational sites and fill the gaps left by our encyclopedias. I'll admit I was lucky with so wonderful and terrible as a rapidly-expanding internet. I was frankly, spared from its dangers, though not without a few scares. But as you can see, we like scares now, don't we?

The internet of my childhood is both notorious for its lack of rails, and celebrated for its proliferation of hobbyists. Yet I feel a kind of love radiating from it and its surviving remnants that I rarely see addressed. The slow dance kind of love, letters and postcards, the embrace of a transatlantic friend. It’s a tactile love; perching before a belaboured machine as it strains to wake itself. Glancing at the speakers that flank it, then the wooden shelf that looms over you, followed by the armchair and the tower that you’re careful not to knock with an errant limb. These things, alongside the machine itself, carry an extra weight. Literal weight, of course, but then it’s a psychological weight. The presence this altar of progress held in the room carried this grandeur and its internet felt grand too. It was weighty, corporeal and alive. It, no matter how strange it could be, felt truly grounded, unlike the ensuing mass fever-dream of Instant Net.

Am I simply overwrought, or did a young girl realise she was in a once-in-a-millennium event? Were we the first land-fish to see the stars? Whatever this was, I know this can be felt again.

Part 2: Rediscovery

I first found Neocities in late 2019, from a post I'd seen during one of my lurking sprees. I was ecstatic at my discovery, and after sorting some other affairs, I made Pearlnight's Lair in July of 2021.

It was a pleasant summer, and I'd learned a lot about myself, so I was brimming with ideas. I used a drag-n-drop site-builder at the time, too unconfident with HTML and doubly so with CSS. I wasn't sure how much I was going to commit, nor did I know what I wanted to host. Nonetheless, it was ridiculously fun at first. Watching everything happen so instantaneously made me feel productive. I belted out dozens of pages before sagging somewhat at my engine's 100-page limit.

Then with a pile of the things on my lap, I realised I had no idea how to lay them out. Even when I did, it felt woefully unsatisfying. I resorted to quick fixes like adjusting the same navbar a dozen times, or reeling because it had a separate mobile mode and now I had to fix that. This grew so unwieldy that I neglected a page for two years. In general I'd compare this format to a glob of clay: I can bend it any way I see fit, but I am not a sculptor.

Two years later in 2023, I tired of this tedium, and further incentivised by the explosively-popular Sadgrl layout, took to Neocities for a proper bout of coding.

I've flayed it half a dozen times since, but it's mine!