I'll be the first to tell you, I had serious misgivings about making a Sailor Soldier up. First of all, I know that they're generally accepted among the people who make them, but a lot of people think they're right up there with self-insertion fics. And seeing as I've done a few of those (shamelessly), I figured, what the hell, what can I lose? I need something creative to do, and this should be a nice little challenge... so I set about making up my very own Senshi. I knew there were plenty of things I didn't want to do in making her... for one thing, I wanted to avoid all possible flames (which is hard enough with something like this). So right from the start I knew I didn't want to do anything that would tread on anyone's toes. That meant no siblings to original senshi (or other charcters, for that matter) and especially no love interests. Nothing makes people have a lesser opinion of you than if you make an already established character fall in love with someone you made up... and believe me, Sailor Arcturus is no avatar. She's not like me in the least, except for the whole glasses thing... And besides, as some of you know I am a proclaimed optimist. Rusui-san is definately not. But I'll get to that... It's really a lot of fun to make up a character who is so different from yourself. The challange to make them interesting is great ^_^ After deciding on her personality, I went onto her looks. This was one area where I knew I had to really get the old creative juices going, so to speak, so that she would be really original. I didn't want to have to get into image-altering (I suck at coloring on the computer) although I understand why some people do it, and I've seen some that are pretty darn good. But since my artistic skills are fair-to-middlin', I figured I could come up with something half decent anyway. Some of the fan senshi's artwork out there is absolutely spectacular, and while I can't hope to be that great (yet ^_^ ) I was fairly pleased with a few of my ventures. After about eighty tries, that is... Anyway, to the point. I decided that since I was making up a character here, why not go crazy with the details? Hair color always comes first when I think of physical appearance, and aside from Chibi-Chibi and the Yam-Haired Wonder, Michiru is the only one with a really odd hair color. I'm a giant fan of the anime style of wild, unnatural hair colors, and giving my senshi a strange color would just go along with my trying to make her different than the normal ones. I also wanted to do something style-wise that was different from the original senshi. I debated for a while, and when I finally picked the color and style I wanted, it was easy to pick the color of her eyes and other details I would need, all of which you can read about in her bio ^_^ Picking a name was the hardest part of this creation for me. When creating characters, I almost always make up their personality and looks first and leave the name for later, but with a senshi character, you had to take their Sailor name into account when deciding their powers, civilian name, and usually parts of their personality, too. I had had some other ideas, inspired by footnotes in Hamlet of all things, like Sailor Lethe and later (and more in depth) Sailor Mnemosyne. Unfortunately, after lots of searching, I found out that someone had already made up senshi with that name-- Naoko Takeuchi *giant sweatdrop* Both Sailor Lethe and Sailor Mnemosyne had been characters from the Sailor Moon manga who had either just been mentioned or who had had bit parts. I didn't know either of them even existed until I read a list on someone's page of every senshi that had been created in the manga and the show. The only Sailor I knew about who was in the manga and not the show was Sailor Metal Papillon, or something to that effect ^_^ Obviously, I ditched that idea (and the character design that went with her) until I came up with the idea of what role my senshi would actually play in the BSSM universe. I felt that was the most important part, and that I had to figure something out that would make sense in the original idea. Most of all, I wanted to create an otaku senshi that would plausibly fit into the continuity of the show (I didn't worry as much about the manga, because I know considerably less about it.) What I wanted was that I would have the chance to write fanfic that would fit into the continuum without messing up the real storyline. That meant that my senshi could have little or no relation to any of the original characters. I mean, of course it's possible that something might happen which wasn't talked about in the show, but nothing overly exciting or important to the Sailor Moon universe wouldn't be addressed. And Sailor Moon really is pretty good with the continuity, so if something major happened, Usagi and gang would be apt to discuss it later on (unless it took place after the show ended, which many fanfic writers have done, but I wanted to avoid.) I also didn't want to go in the direction of creating a whole new Sailor Team, for which you don't really have to worry about continuity. But that was mostly because I couldn't think up that many Senshi, or a team, that hasn't been done already ^_^ Once I figured out what her purpose would be, I set about finding a name that went with it. Well, I couldn't. I didn't find one name that I liked that went with her duty, so I just decided to pick a name I thought sounded good. And I thought Sailor Arcturus rolled off the tongue pretty nicely, so I looked around to find out what that particular star's name had to do with mythology. I wasn't very successful until I found out that Arcturus is derived from Arcas, who was the son of Callisto. She was turned into a bear, and one day Arcas was out hunting with a spear and almost killed the bear, but the gods took pity on them and turned Arcas into a bear as well, then put them into the sky as constellations. The spear part is where I got the idea for a lot of Sailor Arcturus's attacks. Making them up wasn't that hard at all... I just came up with stuff I thought would look cool. Going along with my idea that I didn't want to upstage the real Senshi, I didn't make Arcturus' attacks all that powerful. She doesn't have any purifying attacks like Sailor Moon, or any real powerful ones like Pluto's Time Stop attack and the majority of Sailor Saturn's. A lot of those really powerful attacks end up killing off all the characters, and I didn't want to do that. That happens too much in the show already ^_^ The next thing to do was think up a civilian name for my senshi, which was actually harder than it seemed. Since Arcturus's duty was to chronicle the adventures of Princess Serenity and her soldiers, I wanted something that had to do with that. Unfortunatly, there wasn't any Japanese word for "scribe" that I thought sounded good. I initially wanted her name to mean "Keeper of History," so I looked up those words and found a bunch of options. Here are some of the words I found that meant "history"... Iwaku, yurai, rekishi, yuraisho, and shijou. While wanting to be different than the original senshi, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to do one of those "something-of-something" style names, so I had to make sure the name I picked would look good with a "no" after it. After sticking a bunch together, I decided on Yuraino. I liked "rekishi" because it was in a duel song from Utena, but it also means "death by being run over" so I didn't think that would be too good ^_^ And I liked the way "Yuraino-san" and "Yuraino-sempai" and all those things sound, so that part was fairly simple. A given name was a little harder, though. Here are some of the words found to get the message across... Yotogi- watching, vigil, watcher Shikan- chronicler Shuei- security gard, doorkeeper Rusui- caretaker or keeper (official post in the Edo era) Needless to say, Rusui was absolutely perfect for what I wanted. The word was even archaic ^_^ So, I put them together and got Yuraino Rusui, Keeper of History. Perfect ^_^ Next in line was personality. It wasn't too hard, considering what Rusui's history and duty was, and it was pretty clear that I could go one of two ways. I could make Rusui be either the optimistic humanity-lover a la Treize Khushrenada, or she could be jaded and cynical because of all the things she's seen. I decided on the latter simply because that was my preference at the time. Besides, the former is too much like me ^_^ After that, it wasn't too hard to get the particulars down. I gave Rusui her little quirk of being afraid of animals because I wrote her profile according to Sailor Orion's Sailor Generator, and there was a section on the Senshi's guardian. I didn't want her to have an animal guardian, because I figured that since Usagi (being the moon princess) and Minako (being the leader of the inner senshi) were sort of "special," that they were the only ones to have guardians. I wanted Rusui to be less important than the real characters, and since she remembers her past every time she is reborn, she had no need for someone to explain her destiny to her, which was the main function of the guardian cats. And that's about it... I came up with her history according to what role I wanted her to play in the Sailor Moon universe. If she was the scribe of the Moon Kingdom, she probably would have been trained, etc. etc. Most of the things I came up with were based on the fact that I wanted her to be different than the original characters and the majority of otaku senshi. Therefore, she wasn't the princess of anywhere, and she was just generally less important in the scheme of things than the real characters were. I did go far enough as to decide who I would want her voice actor to be if she were ever animated ^_^ Kawamura Maria has a very subtle, calm and beautiful voice. The first time I heard her was when she played Mamiya in Shoujo Kakumei Utena, and even though Mamiya was a boy, I marvelled at how beautiful his voice was. There were times when Mamiya would say "But, I'm a boy!" and I would think, "Yeah, but you don't sound like one!" Kawamura Maria's voice is calm and mature-sounding, which is exactly what I would want Rusui to sound like. She sounds young enough to play a fifteen-year old, but not squeaky or too hyper and cute. Here are some other roles that Maria has played... Lady in 3x3 Eyes Seima Densetsu Miyagawa Sakurako in Ayane-chan High Kick (Ayane's High Kick in English, I think) Cleopatra in Cleopatra D.C. Interpreter in Compiler Sakimi no Hime in Eden's Bowy (Boy) Ifurita in El Hazard (OAV 2) Asuka's mother in Evangelion Eluza in Gall Force Onuma Shizu in Guyver II Madoka's older sister in Kimagure Orange Road Tamasaburou in Saber Marionette J, J again, and J to X Eudial in Sailor Moon (Sugoi!) Flair in Saint Seiya Naga in Slayers (Aack... Rusui definatly sounds more like Mamiya ^_^;;) She's done even more stuff than that, and she can be found in most seiyuu databases if you want to look up more stuff on her. And there you have it! An Otaku Senshi is born... Back to Konseki