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Oct. 8th, 2004 05:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonchan_archiveMy computer currently has a keyboard which reads QYUIP FGHJKL ZXcVBnM. This can get somewhat annoying. Not because I can't find the keys, but because Dad always has to write the missing letters back onto the keys with felt tip, and it smudges off everywhere. Blah.
I seem to have a freaky amount of Sailor Senshi dreams sometimes. Last night, for one. But that's not what I'm really thinking about.
What makes a Sailor a Sailor? And where are the lines drawn?
Disclaimer: I'm not a hardcore expert. I haven't in fact seen past the R season, damn you for eternity Fox Kids and UK anime distributors. Most of what I'm going on here is web based facts and extrapolation, some of which I may remember wrongly. Just poke me if I do so, and tell me off if I do so embarrasingly.
But anyway. This Solar System is known to have 14 senshi. 8 of them are planet-based. One of them is a satellite. One of them is technically that satellite repeated somehow. The remaining four are large asteroids. This would seem like a pretty good spread, right? However, there are gaps.
Look at the Earth and Moon.
If we're going by the size of the satellite as a guide to whether it should give rise to a Sailor... Out round Jupiter, Callisto's bigger. Ganymede's bigger. Europa's only a teeny bit smaller. Io's the same size. Round Saturn, Titan is a heckload bigger. Neptune's Triton isn't far off. That's a lot of big moons. If they were out orbiting the Sun, these would be called planets quite happily. There are a considerable load more that pass the 1000 km mark - Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus have at least four each. Even Pluto's companion Charon - half the size of the planet. So - still damn big.
And to finish off, let's take a quick look at another solar system, that of Kinmoku. We have a planet that apparently has a Sailor of its own (I *think* Kakyuu counts there, doesn't she?) - yet its satellites apparently have Senshi of their own. We'd have had a Sailor Earth quite happily if it wasn't for the minor detail of Mamoru having a Y chromosome. There is no logical reason for a major satellite not to have a Senshi just because the planet it orbits already does.
But if we go for the long view, there are something like 100 moons in this solar system. Some haven't been named, admittedly. But they are still there.
And if it's a matter of how big the moon is compared to its planet, Charon beats The Moon on that score. And, as I remember it (can't remember the site I saw the screencap on!), the Kinmoku moons aren't that big compared to *their* planet, but it has never harmed the Starlights...
Now, into the asteroid belt. Ceres, Vesta, Juno and Pallas. These are big asteroids. But the only thing that really highlights them is that they were the first that our civilization knew about. Hygeia, Interamnia, Davida, Cybele, Europa, Sylvia, Patientia, Eurhrosyne, Eunomia, Bamberga and Psyche are all bigger than or the same size as Juno. Admittedly, the names are a bit of a mouthful. But, well, Uranus.
And then we have the recent hunks o' rock out past Pluto. Sedna, Varuna, Quaoar and Ixion are all pretty damn big. Took the astronomers a while to decide whether or not Sedna counted as a planet...
So. These all fall into the same category of world as the quartet. Prime sailor material.
So we've got far more potential Senshi than were ever seen in the series. At a minimum, something like twenty-four. At a maximum, hundreds. So where are they?
Okay, maybe they don't exist. That's the obvious answer. But it's no fun, now, is it?
Maybe they're not true Senshi, but related. Phobos and Deimos seem to hint at something like that. Then again, their moons are tiny things. The likes of Ganymede and Titan are full on planet sized.
Maybe they haven't trained sufficiently to use their powers.
Or maybe they were never needed. After all, the main planetary Senshi have handled everything so far without much outside help.
Or maybe they're not powerful enough to really play any role. I mean, we're mostly talking minor worlds here.
But it was worth a thought.
I seem to have a freaky amount of Sailor Senshi dreams sometimes. Last night, for one. But that's not what I'm really thinking about.
What makes a Sailor a Sailor? And where are the lines drawn?
Disclaimer: I'm not a hardcore expert. I haven't in fact seen past the R season, damn you for eternity Fox Kids and UK anime distributors. Most of what I'm going on here is web based facts and extrapolation, some of which I may remember wrongly. Just poke me if I do so, and tell me off if I do so embarrasingly.
But anyway. This Solar System is known to have 14 senshi. 8 of them are planet-based. One of them is a satellite. One of them is technically that satellite repeated somehow. The remaining four are large asteroids. This would seem like a pretty good spread, right? However, there are gaps.
Look at the Earth and Moon.
If we're going by the size of the satellite as a guide to whether it should give rise to a Sailor... Out round Jupiter, Callisto's bigger. Ganymede's bigger. Europa's only a teeny bit smaller. Io's the same size. Round Saturn, Titan is a heckload bigger. Neptune's Triton isn't far off. That's a lot of big moons. If they were out orbiting the Sun, these would be called planets quite happily. There are a considerable load more that pass the 1000 km mark - Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus have at least four each. Even Pluto's companion Charon - half the size of the planet. So - still damn big.
And to finish off, let's take a quick look at another solar system, that of Kinmoku. We have a planet that apparently has a Sailor of its own (I *think* Kakyuu counts there, doesn't she?) - yet its satellites apparently have Senshi of their own. We'd have had a Sailor Earth quite happily if it wasn't for the minor detail of Mamoru having a Y chromosome. There is no logical reason for a major satellite not to have a Senshi just because the planet it orbits already does.
But if we go for the long view, there are something like 100 moons in this solar system. Some haven't been named, admittedly. But they are still there.
And if it's a matter of how big the moon is compared to its planet, Charon beats The Moon on that score. And, as I remember it (can't remember the site I saw the screencap on!), the Kinmoku moons aren't that big compared to *their* planet, but it has never harmed the Starlights...
Now, into the asteroid belt. Ceres, Vesta, Juno and Pallas. These are big asteroids. But the only thing that really highlights them is that they were the first that our civilization knew about. Hygeia, Interamnia, Davida, Cybele, Europa, Sylvia, Patientia, Eurhrosyne, Eunomia, Bamberga and Psyche are all bigger than or the same size as Juno. Admittedly, the names are a bit of a mouthful. But, well, Uranus.
And then we have the recent hunks o' rock out past Pluto. Sedna, Varuna, Quaoar and Ixion are all pretty damn big. Took the astronomers a while to decide whether or not Sedna counted as a planet...
So. These all fall into the same category of world as the quartet. Prime sailor material.
So we've got far more potential Senshi than were ever seen in the series. At a minimum, something like twenty-four. At a maximum, hundreds. So where are they?
Okay, maybe they don't exist. That's the obvious answer. But it's no fun, now, is it?
Maybe they're not true Senshi, but related. Phobos and Deimos seem to hint at something like that. Then again, their moons are tiny things. The likes of Ganymede and Titan are full on planet sized.
Maybe they haven't trained sufficiently to use their powers.
Or maybe they were never needed. After all, the main planetary Senshi have handled everything so far without much outside help.
Or maybe they're not powerful enough to really play any role. I mean, we're mostly talking minor worlds here.
But it was worth a thought.
