You are Desired to Accompany the Corps of my free time, the late Deceased, from the Dwelling House of the Author, by Neocities, on Any Eventide, next being the Date of Any Month, Any Year. At Whatever Hour of the Clock of the Chime Hours precisely, to the Web-Comic of Dancing with the Dead, at dwtd1975.neocities.org/home;
And bring this Ticket with You.
But first...
Dancing with the Dead is for Adults Only. If you're under the age of 18, turn tail NOW!
As for those of you of age, this project depicts bizarre, disgusting and unsettling topics such as...
- Animal death
- Bigotry normal for the time
- Drug use
- Depictions of abuse, mental illness and trauma
- Depictions of homelessness
- Politics both human and inhuman
- Strong and outdated language
- Sporadic scenes of torture
- XXX rated themes and scenes
- Violence and gore
Notes
The warning on the first page covers the comic itself, and nobody enjoys being interrupted mid-read. So here is the fine print: a few more heads-up, filed in advance so that no one has to email the author to be a pain in the neck about something they were told about. Complaints will be ignored in favour of lying face-flat in my bed to Egg.
Adult Content
All sexual acts depicted on-screen are consensual, though a handful of character relationships imply histories of sexual violence. Besides Crystin's tendency to be nude for the entire comic, non-sexual scenes may suggest the author's hardly disguised fetish; what it is, is yours to guess. So, besides its moments of pornographic abandon, the comic has a consistent fetishistic streak that I will not attempt to downplay or ignore for the sake of your comfort and consent. As in, there is no such thing as a "Safe-For-Work" fetish.
Copyright policy
Dancing with the Dead has been released into the Public Domain. Do whatever the devil you feel like with it. If for some reason you are compelled to commit crimes with this information, I ask is for you to commit fun crimes like running a shadow library from a raspberry pi. In all seriousness, I would like you to link back to me so other people can see what's going on. The characters, while belonging to me, can be interpreted however one likes. The setting is by far the most open of all, and I encourage you to take whatever you like and re-interpret it. There will be writings provided on a later page elaborating the overall worldbuilding, but you're of course free to deviate.
Regarding Robots
No generative AI was used for Dancing with the Dead's concepts, visuals or ideas. All reference models used for the drawings originate from human sources and posable 3D models. How else would you be able to guess had I not said that one? The suspense would have probably killed you.
While this comic is drawn by yours truly, I also want to issue a loving thanks to my best friend Astroplasm for proofreading, tangent spotting and general artistic mentorship. His involvement started around episode 10, and this comic wouldn't be the same without him.
However, I, the author, do use robots for a variety of gruntwork. None of this veers near DWTD, but for the sake of clarity I use various doohickeys to scrape the web for archivable materials and make overly verbose lorem-ipsum text that I bulldoze over once the dissociative hazes wear off long enough for me to pull away from my terminal and write. You can consult my FAQ to see why that is, though keep in mind, any and all complaints will be ignored.
Schedule
This comic spits out whole chapters at once, followed by a round of extra strips. We call these Post Mortems. However, as of late I am experimenting with the possibility of written ones which will be hosted on a separate stories page.
Spoilers
The wiki pages, glossary and character biographies discuss the whole story. If you would like to be surprised, read the comic first.
Closing Regards
Every invitation ends with a few last words from the household, and this one is no different. Before you step through the door, the author would like a moment of your time, however little of it you may have left. Take a seat, mind the draught, and hear the final word.
This is the first and only warning you'll be getting. From here, things are completely uncensored and to be browsed at your peril. I'd rather not insult your intelligence, and let you be responsible for what you make of this work. You're free to leave any time you like, but save your browsing for after work, no matter the page.
By reading all of this, you're ready to start reading my way of enduring this mortal coil we call...
Credits
Dancing with the Dead is for entertainment purposes only. Any relation to people living or undead is purely coincidental.
This project in its entirety has been Released under the Copyfree Initiative. I don't make a penny off it, don't plan to and do this out of pure autism. Visit me, the author, over at my lair. It's got ASCII art, vampire books to read online and cool links!
- Borders:
- Broider, specifically the "Mold" borders and a skull border I made myself. Note for webmasters: The changing for browser themes is not built-in, nor can you recolour them in CSS as they're Base64 images. Instead, I suggest ripping from this site's stylesheet and observing its use of two different base64s via a media query.
- CSS effect:
- john-doe.neocities
- Cursor:
- mileshouse.neocities. I've been fascinated by their cursor for a while, and finally dug into the code to make my own. This uses a sprite-sheet consisting of 32 by 32 squares, in which you place your character's segments.
- Fonts:
- Alagard by Pix3M, Dico, HydratingLip by Zoo977 and Undead.
- Previous Layout:
- Rarebit | HTML Webcomic Template
- This Layout:
- Invitatio, a template by Pearlnight, itself a fork of Kalechips' Cardboard Box layout.
