About

An optimistic lark, a meandering virtuoso. i: @kozimiuu ~ h: pixiv:84209886

A gamer / writer / programmer / composer / otaku | Dev @ParadoxLabs | Webmaster @LinksHideaway | i: @nyamiyuart | h: pixiv:72218158 | ref.st/aurora-ti

Novice Otaku「オタク」, Mediocre Nerdist, Master Creator, Ultimate Optimist | Co-Webmaster @LinksHideaway | Admin @NintendoCastle | #anime #japan #music #zelda

CS/Creative Writing Student & Otaku | Co-Webmaster of @LinksHideaway & Admin of @NintendoCastle | こんにちはなのにオタク？

A gamer/author/composer/artist/otaku. To sum it up, I'm a Nerdist.
http://note.mu/larketwelve

My username came to be around 2006/2007 while I was still in private school. I had no idea what the internet really was beyond school research and my main escape from reality was video games. I remember being enamoured by the concept of light and darkness, most prominently from Jak 3 if I recall correctly. So when thinking about how my dad had a unique name in some of our old PSX games, I wanted to give myself a nickname, too. This was before I knew what portmanteau’s truly were (would later become part of why I adore Lewis Carroll’s works), but I was a huge fan of the concept of mashing words together to get something new. So with the words light and dark (and related), I tried lark and dight and a few other mishmashes…but none of them felt right, aside from “lark”. So I decided upon two variations, Lark and LKS. I knew when I was making the name that some games only accepted three letter acronyms so I came up with that on a whim and it’s stuck ever since. If I never need to slap a quick acronym onto something, LKS.

After that came several years of workshopping changes as I moved back to public school, learned about the internet, learned more about the existing word “lark”, and eventually ended on “Larke”. The 12 had significance at several points (different numbers had different meanings for me from 7-14 years of age for some reason), but I’ve long forgotten those reasons. 13 is actually my lucky number, as 12 has had a number of unlucky occurrences ever since. For the most part, the 12 is just an identifier now.

Given all this, it’s clear the pronunciation of my username was intended to be “Lark” but as I’ve encountered more and more people I’ve heard different ways of pronouncing it and I adore each one. I remember in part why I added the e (initially stylised é) was to move it away from the common usage of it being a girls name. Anyway, based of of how friends from various parts of the world pronounce it, the general way it goes is:

• In North America it’s often pronounced “Lar-key” or “Lark” (most common all around).
• In Europe it’s often pronounced “Lar-kay” (how I mentally sounded the original é).
• In SEA it’s often pronounced “Lar-key” or “Lar-ku” (more people do the latter than I expect).

I have no preference, it’s all the same. I will, however, respond to any of these IRL more often than my real name (which is much more common to hear and thus easier to ignore).