About the Grotesque

(Will answer to "Pearl", "Night", "Pearlknight", Sanguine and anything about intimate relations with the undead...)

I am Pearlnight, 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.

(Depicted below) Me!

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General Likes

Cats
Dungeon Synth
Glow-in-the-dark things
Old monster paraphernalia
Scooby-Doo
Terrariums
Vampires
Web 1.0 media
1990s Computer Games

Oddly-Specific Likes:

The Windows 98 “Mystery” screen-saver.
Internally narrating everything in a Vincent Price voice.
Fantasising about being able to sleep in a casket.
The Real Ghostbusters cartoon but especially Egon.
Dungeon synth, especially if it’s Vampiric dungeon synth or anything by Ekthelion. In a pinch, most forms of dark ambient will suffice.
The fact that Christopher Lee refused to say his lines for most of his Hammer Dracula roles because the scripts were according to him, “unsayable”.
Those drawings of haunted houses where it looks like you've cut it in half like a cake. Then you get to see all the monsters squirming about inside.
Screeching Angry Video Game Nerd quotes at my friend Alex, who proceeds to scream them back.
And Rhubarb.

About this Lair

Pearlnight’s Lair (English pronunciation: pɜːrlnaɪts lɛər) is a small hobbyist website. It identifies as a personal archive, a Digital Garden, and an adherent of Web Revivalism. 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.

Design Tenets of the Lair

1. I like to make simple accessible things with simple accessible tools.

They make me feel more creative and this should reflect in the Lair.

2. I appreciate slow living, and the Lair agrees.

As a result, it doesn’t demand your attention with constant updates, live feeds, or whatever “thing of the month”.

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.

4. It must feel enclosed in its conventions, speech and affiliations.

No trends, no bandwagons, no snarl-words and absolutely no unprompted political rants.

5. Above all, this lair hopes to soothe your weary bones.

Even if we're nothing alike, I want you to feel comfortable browsing here.

History of the Lair

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.

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!

General FAQ

“Do you do commissions?”

No, I don't need the money. However, I buy plenty from my best friend Lutzbug. They're a stunningly good artist; quick turn-around times, reasonable prices and the skills to make the wait worthwhile.

"How can I contact you?

I am not to be reached right now. Comments are welcome in the meantime, if you're on Neocities.

“What does your name mean?”

It's a word I use to describe Blue Hour, which is emotionally meaningful to me. I love the night in general. I find black a blank canvas for all sorts of phantasmagoria, but Blue Hour exists with a spark of magic. When every Blue Hour happens, I become a part of the pre-dawn haze, a fantastical glittering thing. I will always love living in a Blue Hour. Even if it pours past my fingers into yet another dawn. Even if all I can do is trap it in a name, like a letter in a bottle.

“What else do you like?”

I try to lead through observation as my shyness inclines me, but I especially like dungeon synth, internet archeology, old monster paraphernalia, Scooby-Doo and terrariums.

“Why a Grotesque?”

I identify with Grotesques for my love of chimères and Gothic art. I adore vampires, but I don't see myself as one. I'd say I'm an onlooker, a prop to the vampire set. Their bombastic personalities and lurid backstories, while fun to watch, clash with my own. Instead, I'm more akin to a Castlevania enemy or a creature you'd see in a 70's toy line. It's modest, and some may say overly so, but it's right for me. Also note the absence of "fursona", "furry" or even "funny animal" as I speak. Sanguine and I are furry-adjacent at most. Back when I was a furry, I couldn't relate to other furries. I felt like something else.

“Why don’t you use many sites?”

Ignoring honest business pursuits, I find them to be mires of thought-terminating cliches.

“Why do you like vampires?”

I’ve loved vampires ever since I was small. I was first charmed by the various vampire disguises on Scooby-Doo, the Real Draculas that appeared after and then a relative decided this was an excellent time to show us his pirated copy of The Fearless Vampire Killers and then things coffin-bobsledded from there.

I find the vampire to be an enduring tool of conversation, storytelling and self-expression. The criteria is simple; it’s an often parasitic hemophage that likes to play sommelier with the living. The ubiquitousness of an evil hungry spirit means almost any person can speak of Vampires, thus turning a seemingly-simple topic into a cultural wellspring.

A vampire can be the yearning husk of someone from times past, skin condensing in the heat of your fire. A vengeful echo of aristocracies past, desperate to keep itself glutted at all costs. In its opposite it can be a victim of circumstance, socially and spatially consumed by its elders. A human mind buckling under the implications of eternal life, only stopped by violent death or slow starvation. A slave to hunger, akin to the notion of a zombie that so many are depicted as. It can be a kitschy, neon-skinned caricature of the former groups with a thing for puns and interior design. Or it is a small, flittering thing that is eccentric at worst, and wants to be left alone to peacefully wiggle its ears and eat worms.

Admittedly I identify the most with the very, very, very last of this list. Though cartoon animal vampires like Nyanpire don’t tend to have thumbs, and I need those.

Site FAQ

“Can I use your code?”

This site was made with a Kalechips layout, which according to its license, lets you do whatever the hell you want with it. So yes, of course!

Does it get lonely here?

No, the love for my craft keeps things warm here.

“What fonts are those?”

Spectral for the headers and Special Gothic for the body.

"What happened to some of your other projects?"

Back in 2021, I was going to write a Vampire Review blog called "Fangs a Lot!". This was exclusively for movies, but I only managed one review before the reality of Drawing A Webcomic set in. In short, Dancing with the Dead cannibalised its kin and all I could do was stand there and watch. At one point I made a webring, but I gave it to one of its members and went off to do some other things. While it's highly unlikely that you'll recall these, this bit's been on my FAQ for years and I like being transparent about these things.

"What sites inspired you?

When I started this project, I was most inspired by The Tower. I still love the way it looks, but its compact design works better for simpler sites. After all the redesigns, I turned my attentions to Etymonline and the Phronistery.

They're sophisticated (for their time-periods) but still very clearly dated. They genuinely strive to be readable, but the Phronistery's airbrushed logo and grainy low-contrast textures clash with its flat-coloured body section in this fascinating way. It wants to be frilly and formal, but it betrays itself with this endearingly janky graphic design. My site does strive to have more visual harmony than this, but the contrast between well-sourced information and old-web asymmetry is one I'll always hold very close to my heart.

“Why don’t you have a tip jar?”

I really don’t need the money.

“Why don’t you have guestbooks or comments?”

I’m too busy to moderate them and even if I wasn’t, it’d be a fool’s errand.

Glossary

For accessibility, some pages have their own glossary. This goes as follows:

Assistive Tools: Hardware or software that helps people with disabilities. The most well-known examples are screen readers, used by low-vision individuals. Websites can include specialised code to support these tools and improve accessibility.
Backend: The hidden side of a website that handles its data and logic. Its opposite is the frontend, which is the part users directly interact with.
Digital Garden: A website characterised by the continuous, indefinite upkeep of its pages, comparable to the pruning of plants in a garden.
Dot-Com crash: A term for the bursting of the Dot-Com speculative bubble, which happened in 2000.
Dracula Dark Theme: A dark theme created by Zeno Rocha in 2013, originally designed for code editors and terminals. Despite its high-contrast palette of deep purples and pastel highlights, it is widely praised for its readability. Since its creation, Dracula has expanded to many other applications, including browsers, chat clients, and more.
Grotesque: A statue on the side of a church, chapel, or cathedral believed to have protective qualities. If fitted with a water spout, it is called a gargoyle.
Instant Net: A term for the modern internet, highlighting its fast-paced nature. A play on “Instant Noodles” and a reference to the essay The Slow Web by Zach Cheng.
Low-Latency: Software that responds swiftly to user inputs. A website that loads quickly can be classed as Low Latency.
Phantasmagoria: A strange and unsettling sequence of images, like those seen in a dream.
Thought-terminating clichés: Fallacious phrases designed to discourage critical thinking or end conversations. These “thought-stoppers” use appeals to emotion, loaded questions, minimisation, tu quoques, and other deceptive tactics to do so. An example is “Let people enjoy things.” By saying “Let people enjoy things,” the speaker casts their adversary as a habitual contrarian rather than a thoughtful observer. This phrase is fallacious because it uses a Strawman Argument, misrepresenting the other party’s argument to make it easier to attack. The term “Strawman” refers to a literal straw figure, and like its corporeal counterpart, it lacks a solid body. The term was first coined by Robert Jay Lifton in 1961.
Sadgrl Layout: A static website generator created by the eponymous Sadgrl. Its ease of use made it especially popular with less experienced coders, most prominently on Neocities.
Snarl Words: Words designed to override counterarguments and provoke strong emotional responses. A snarl word is a type of ad hominem fallacy: an attack on a person’s character rather than on their argument. An example is “Puritan,” in reference to Protestant Puritans and their strict religious practices. By labeling their opponent as a “Puritan,” the speaker casts them as censorious, prudish, and potentially religiously motivated. The term was first published by S.I. Hayakawa in 1949.
Static Website: A website comprised of HTML, CSS, and uncomplicated JavaScript. A website stops being static when it uses anything beyond these three, such as backends or databases.
Webcomic: A comic that is published online rather than in traditional print. Webcomics are often drawn by individual authors and can take years, if not decades, to complete.
Web Revivalism: A term for the adoption of millennium-era web design. Web Revivalists create simplistic static sites, use period-appropriate software, and attempt to emulate the lifestyles of early internet users. It was first coined by MelonKing in 2022 in his essay “Intro to the Web Revival #1: What is the Web Revival?”.