Fan Senshi Corner: An Interview with Starfury

I admired Starfury so I wanted to draw my character with her in 2000.

Shai – or as I admired her, Crystalfury - started making Fan Senshi for the Sailor Moon universe more than a decade ago.  In the late 90s, her group of friends were known as the Crystalstars and they were one of the most popular fan senshi teams online!  As a new fan senshi creator, I really admired their character development and the awesome designs they had.   Shai took some time to talk to me about her relationship with fan character creation, the Sailor Moon fandom in general, and a bit about her writing.  You can see some of Shai’s work on her site,

Incyanity.

When and how did you first discover Sailor Moon?

My oldest piece of canon Sailor Moon artwork is from 1997, so it would have been around then. I was sixteen and in grade 10. Sailor Moon was one of those “after school cartoons” that aired on YTV and was probably a “this show is on before another show I want to watch, so I might as well watch it too” scenario. Then, one of my friends (who would later become Crystalfyre) randomly asked me one day, “Hey, have you been watching this show…?” Everything went from there.

How long after did you start making your own characters?

It couldn’t have been more than a few months. My oldest surviving piece of Sailor Starfury artwork is from 1998, but I know I did a few pieces before then which are lost. Starfury definitely showed up before school let out in 1997, because I specifically remember having a conversation in the girl’s washroom with Crystalfyre about our senshi and what might be good ideas for the rest of our friends if they were interested.

Probably no one knows this, but I did make an attempt to create a senshi before I created Sailor Starfury. There was a screencap we came across one day showing a close-up of Queen Beryl’s court and one of the shadowy figures looked suspiciously like she was wearing a fuku. This shadowy figure also looked like she had a curved spike coming out of the middle of her forehead (where the gem would be in the tiara). Obviously that character never went anywhere but I do believe I did at least one drawing of her.

Tell us a little about the Crystalstars and how they were formed into a team. How many of your friends were involved in the project and who owned which senshi?

Crystalfyre’s Sailor Starfyre came first, and my Starfury right after. At the time, Fyre was just starting to get interested in art and mimicking Sailor Moon (as well as a few other animes) was how she taught herself to draw (as did the rest of us). She doodled the character one day, and before I knew it, I’d done one too. The other senshi came very quickly after that.

Sailor Starfyre, as the first, became the de facto leader of the group. Like most people back then, at the beginning our knowledge of the series was limited to the North American dub and we wanted our group to be older, more mature and experienced than the inner senshi we saw on TV. Then we were able to get more information about the original series from the internet and our story took off. Looking back on it now, I suppose you could say we were a little like Star Trek’s TNG to the original Star Trek series—we didn’t want to be relatives, siblings, long-lost cousins or anything like that to the canon cast, just separate unique characters existing in the same universe and going about similar activities later on down the timeline.

There were really just the five of us involved. Who owned which senshi was easy:

Crystalfyre created Sailor Starfyre
Crystalfury (that’s me :p) created Sailor Starfury
Crystalfaith created Sailor Starfaith
Crystalfrenzy created Sailor Starfrenzy
Crystalflare created Sailor Starflare

The fact that all our senshi were “Starf___” was really an accident at first, and then we just kept up with it later.

When we needed more characters, we started to entertain applications from people online that we didn’t actually know, but really, everyone else (the Advisors, etc) were created by one or more of us, the original five.

Crystalfyre was our chief artist. I was our chief writer, and I contributed art too. Faith, Frenzy, and Flare also did some art. All five of us contributed ideas to the story, and Flare took over the writing after I left.

Starfury in her old form by Shai

The Crystalstars had really unique and outlandish outfits for their day. What inspired you and your friends to branch out with their designs?

Thank you! I don’t know that we specifically had any particular thought process in mind, other than thinking the canon senshi outfits were rather bland. Certainly we wanted to stand out and avoid potentially being considered lame copycats!

Crystalfyre went for the fire pattern on Starfyre’s outfight right from the start, which basically set the standard for the rest of the group to follow. Sometimes coming up with patterns that were still relatively easy to draw over and over was quite challenging!

A lot of the fan characters created today have very long and detailed profiles. Did you and your friends go into that much detail with your characters?

More or less. The profiles were probably long for their day, though I don’t think we saw any point in going into too many specifics like the characters’ favorite book, for example. We did want our characters to feel like they had a life before the story started, especially given they were adults.

The Crystalstars (and Sailor Orion!) were a huge source of inspiration to me. Did you guys think you were inspiring other fans to create fan senshi?

Maybe? lol It’s hard to say. Mainly I think we just set out to create something neat that could be enjoyed by us and other people. Certainly we were surprised at how strong a following the project generated and how passionate people were about it. While I can’t remember anyone specifically saying they were inspired to create their own senshi after discovering ours, I do know many people told us they were inspired to try drawing for the first time because they wanted to gift us with art. This was both exciting and humbling!

Speaking of Sailor Orion, were you friends with or did you know Meghann McCall (the owner of SailorOrion.com)? If so, did you keep in touch?

We are acquaintances, yes. In addition to her fanfic I read some of her early original work. At one point when I worked for a publisher I expressed interest in acquiring said work for publication. Unfortunately that offer didn’t go anywhere due to some unrelated events and she went on to get herself published with a different house. These days I follow her on LiveJournal and every time she gets a new title out I am jealous. : ) She’s a fabulous writer and very deserving of her success.

When you left the Crystalstars you mentioned that you were disillusioned with the fandom. Without getting into the specifics, what kind of things lead you to feel disconnected with it?

Over time the fandom became very demanding. The Crystalstars’ popularity was at an all-time high but some fans would post hateful messages in our guestbook if we didn’t update “on time”; our characters, art, and even the actual written story kept getting stolen, etc. By then we were also trying to keep up with art requests and commissions on top of going to university and trying to have real lives. The complete disregard some people had for our offline commitments was appalling.

We lost sight of the fact the project was supposed to be *for fun* and we didn’t actually owe anyone, or each other, anything. It became an obligation, which was very stressful. Being on the defense most of the time only added to it. I felt a huge amount of pressure to produce the story which only made me not want to do it. This (admittedly, along with some other things) had the unfortunate side-effect of ruining my friendship with the other Crystalstars, to the point where we didn’t speak to each other for years. That right there made being in the fandom—any fandom—not worth it.

After all that damage was done I just needed time to be away from fandoms, to concentrate on work that was solely my own. Ultimately the rest of the group shut the door on the Sailor Moon fandom too: Crystalfyre became fed up with all the theft and disrespect and offlined the project in 2003. That was the end of that for everyone.

Starfury in her new form by Shai

After taking a long hiatus from the fandom you made a partial return in the last few years. Did you expect people would remember your character? How has the response been?

It’s one of the reasons I came back. : ) Comments like, “Hey, aren’t you one of those Crystalstar people?” and “OMG I can’t believe I found your site again, I remember when you were a Crystalstar!” come my way from time to time. So, I always knew there were people out there who would be interested in a return. After a while I found myself rediscovering the good things about why I liked Sailor Moon so I thought, why not? For fun. It’s a good distraction from the “serious” writing I do, something I can work on when I need a break.

Response has been positive. Granted, it’s been so long that the “legions” (I use the term loosely) of fans the Crystalstars had are no more. Right now I wouldn’t even say I have a modest following of any kind, but that’s okay. : ) Some people squeed and that made me happy. I have been quite casual about posting new content so I know that directly impacts the amount of interest shown. I’m horribly out of practice writing Sailor Moon fanfic too, and I’m still not entirely sure about Starfury’s redesign, so those are additional challenges hampering the response I might otherwise be getting.

What would you tell fan senshi creators who are feeling like their characters aren’t getting any attention?

Attention is honestly not important. Don’t create and put a character online because you want attention; create and put a character online because it makes you happy. Sure, it’s still there to be shared with the fandom, but anyone who comes to like or even admire your character is icing on the cake. The validation that comes with attention is sorely tempting but it’s not worth getting caught up in a popularity contest. Do it for yourself first and foremost. The only expectations that matter are yours.

Sincerity, enthusiasm, and honesty in what you create will attract genuine affection without hardly any effort on your part. People recognize good work when they see it.

Lastly, ultimately it’s still a fandom. Have fun in it but don’t expend too much energy on it. If you are truly passionate about being creative, know when it is time to put your creative efforts into something truly original. The attention you might get from the fandom cannot compare to the attention you gain from something purely from your soul.

Even though your involvement in the fan senshi community has waxed and waned, do you think you’d be likely to create any new senshi in the future?

This is kind of a trick question. : ) Right now I am restricting myself to writing ficlets, which are each meant to be short and stand-alone pieces instead of chapters of a big epic story. This is how I hope to avoid getting burnt out on fanfic again. Yet, each ficlet will still contribute to a greater story for Starfury. This puts me in a position where I can spend some time crossing over into other people’s fics (if they’ll have me) or just writing something on my own. “Something on my own” may inevitably require more senshi, but I can’t say for certain just now. It depends on where Starfury ends up. : )

Tell us a little about the original stories you are working on and where we can learn more about the non-Sailor Moon aspects of your writing.

Everything I am writing is on my website, Incyanity. I post this in-progress work (behind login protection) online to help myself stay motivated and focused. Because a great deal of who I am entails being an editor, I often get trapped in the endless cycle of editing my work to death, which in the past has meant I never actually got any of it done. In this sense, a small bit of obligation is all right: knowing there is someone waiting to read the next chapter keeps me pushing forward to just get my stories written. I can indulge the editor in me later. : )

I enjoy soft (sociological) science fiction. This is the type of SF which remains character-driven instead of technologically-driven (hard SF). My original work centers around this (though I bring SF into Starfury’s ficlets too). My original work also has touches of fantasy. In this sense I try to write ‘galactic fantasy’; Margaret Weis’s “Star of the Guardians” series is my inspiration and best example of what galactic fantasy is (next to Star Wars).

My main project right now is titled “Heart of the Empire”. It’s about a technologically advanced draconic (dragonlike) race who get into all kinds of trouble with a neighboring alien race over the same kinds of things humans get into trouble over: lying, cheating, religion, disputes over territory, the tyranny of the strong over the weak, etc. In this case there’s just a bit more than the usual mischief; it appears the Goddess has taken a personal interest in what’s going on and is playing favorites…

I have another project called “Seeking Abraxas” which is in redevelopment. This story is a bit more fantasy-based than I usually dabble in, and while I know how the story ends, the beginning has eluded me for a number of years. It centers around a planet with five resident races which are all more or less attuned to a particular “element” (though not necessarily the traditional ones) and none of these races like each other. Racism plays a big part in this story.

Additionally, I am working on introducing a new section to my website in the near future which will feature original writing for my EVE Online character Sakaane Eionell. This will be pure SF content and will likely only make sense to people who actually play EVE Online. : )

You mention on your site that you think writers who intend to be published should dedicate most of their time and energy into their original works. Have you been published? What are your broader writing aspirations?

I have been published, though in a round-about way. I worked many years as a freelance editor and contributed to a number of novels which are commercially available. I’ve also contributed to some other professional projects online. Although these pieces do not specifically carry my name (though I am named in a few Acknowledgments), a piece of me and my writing is nevertheless in those works, which is pretty cool in and of itself.

Naturally I want to have something solely of my own published, and this is what I am working toward with “Heart of the Empire” and (eventually) “Seeking Abraxas”. Someday!

Thanks for taking the time to chat with us! Any last thoughts for the fans?

You’re welcome! It was my pleasure and I appreciate being considered.

: ) I am amazed at the strength, dedication, and longevity demonstrated by the Sailor Moon fandom. Certainly, I am touched and honored to still be remembered after so many years. I’m looking forward to making my second crack at the fandom much more enjoyable this go-round!