Kharaku.com

For about 15 Years I have been using the word kharaku as an online handle.

I’ve often been asked why,

Firstly let me explain who/what/etc kharaku IS.

Kharaku is the name of a character in a story that at the time I was writing. While derivative works are still being paid at least some attention that particular story will likely never be completed. Basically the work was a side story/origin for a major character in a planned set of novels I was working on, to create a tie in with a new character. Kharaku was a ‘long last half brother’ of said character. I am still working occasionally on these novels (Tales of Death & Vengeance) but I’ve shifted almost all of what little time I have for writing fiction to working on a trilogy involving Natya (one f the main characters from Tales of Death & Vengeance).

The first of the planned Trilogy is being posted at A Portrait of Frozen Existence. The 3 novels will be titled “A Portrait of Frozen Existence”, “The Gallery of Sinful Emotions”, and “Our Water-Color Decadence”.

Originally these were planned as a prequel to Tales of Death & Vengeance but as I’m no-longer certain I will bother completing it, I have given priority to plots involved in the new book over unreleased canon.

What’s this have to do with kharaku? Well frankly he is about as irrelevant unreleased canon as you can get. For those wondering in the context of the story Kharaku was a templar which in the culture of the Khar’ Sus’ (Харь Сусь) was essentially a mid level military general. He without knowing almost killed his half brother. He also made problems for a one off romantic interest who was a main character in the side story. (Usual stuff like destroying her entire nation and leaving her the last of her race sort of stuff).

Now one may wonder why the heck I would choose as my online handle the name of a not really interesting side character, in a novel I wasn’t even certain I was going to complete, who on top of it all was something of a jerk and a not particularly relevant one at that.

Well here’s how it all happened.

You see I was getting access at an ISP named Capital.net.

They asked my what I’d want for a login.

This was during a time when ISP’s actually called you up as they created accounts (I doubt anyone does that now), and so I really had to come up with something quick. The character in Tales of Death & Vengeance is named Samus (though he is a guy, I was a big Metroid fan at the time and it was before all the Metroid sequels so it wasn’t common knowledge per se that Samus was a chick, and either way in the old game she definitely looked like a dude and it sounded like a dude’s name… so yeah, anyway). Being a big Metroid Fan, and having a main character in the book I was writing who was a pretty cool guy named Samus I wanted to use that as my screen name. (This would have resulted not only in confusion but also being one of at least 10s of thousands of folks who used Samus as an online handle).

Surprisingly Samus was taken.

So, given the ‘come up with something now’ problem Kharaku was the first thing that came to mind.

Unfortunately Kharaku (which was derived from the name of the Khar’Sus’ race; itself derived from their word for knowledge) is not an invention of mine. There’s cities named this in a variety of ranges and different ethnicities. It however was obscure in all of those so typically when one searches for Kharaku they happen upon me.

Now this was all long before anyone thought seriously about Search Engine Optimization. It was in fact long before Google or search engines likely to fine what you wanted to find.

So I never really got a chance to ponder the impact of having a word that almost always showed my name, posts, ramblings, etc, as a search result. I only kept using the name so I would have a consistent log in and password (as this was before I wisely stopped using the same password everywhere). My friend Ryk Spoor also has an almost excessive claim to his handle Seawasp (a handle he was using on the internet before ither myself or the world wide web had been born).

I rather prefer G3 as a handle as it was both a revolutionary Macintosh computer at the time, sounds cool, and like myself is advanced but aged. Also it is my first and last initial.

But fate has left me as kharaku. It has also left me with people always asking ‘why kharaku’.

And now I have a page to explain it.

Thanks for stopping by.