SME began as a whim of Andy Combs in the Spring of 1996. He had just released his first major solo fanfic, Rabbit Test, and was thinking about what to do next in telling the story of the Black Moon War. Around this time, Mark Latus was also releasing his excellent Dark Kingdom Renegades fanfic. Upon reading it Andy realized that they both had similar ways of handling the established Sailor Moon continuity: both were expanding it while doing their best to avoid conflicting with the established story.

Andy had an interesting idea, about having his next fic describe the fate of the Renegades at the time of the Black Moon War. He talked with Mark about it, and Mark was receptive to the idea so Crystal Renegades was created.

It was around this time that the "Sailor Moon Expanded" name occurred to Andy, but with only two authors, it wasn't much of a shared universe. So he didn't mention it to Mark.

Late in the summer of 1996 he started having ideas for a major story line set after the BMW. The idea of mankind having colonized the solar system during the time of Silver Millennium has been postulated in several fanfics. In each, the other colonies fell along with the Moon Kingdom itself. What Andy was interested in was the question, "What if an effort was made to resettle the planets after the BMW?" For that to be answered, he needed an idea of what the planets were like. He could go about forming his own ideas of what colonies on each world would be like, or...

Why create his own Moon Kingdom, when there are others spending a lot of their own energy doing just that? He E-mailed the authors of two of the fanfics that were writing major descriptions of the Moon Kingdom and other colonies (SMZ and Trenchcoat Mask) to see if they might join up with he and Mark. One of the SMZ authors was not interested in linking up, so Andy quickly turned his focus to Frank Barr, author of the TMask series. Frank, like Andy and Mark, turned out to have the same "Expand on Sailor Moon, but don't violate continuity" philosophy. There were things to be worked out, integrating three volumes of already existing fanfic into a whole, but any differences were quickly settled.

It was then that this enterprise was truly born. When Frank joined, Andy proposed the name, "Sailor Moon Expanded". All thought it was a good idea.

Around the time Frank joined, Mark brought in Sam Ashley, who had been working with Mark on fleshing out the Dark Kingdom, especially the native flora and fauna. Sam was composing the highly humorous Dark Kingdom Cookbook.

Shortly after they added Douglas Helm, a new author, to their roster. Then, Christian Gadeken, credited with the first Sailor Moon fanfic on the web, was added to write origin stories for the Younger Senshi of the 30th century. Sadly, real life consumed Christian and he has been unable to expand on his tantalizing vision.

Not long after that, Ben Harrison wrote in saying he had an idea for an organization in the Silver Millennium and a reincarnate in the present day. Thus the Star Hunters were added to the past and Ben to the Roster of Sailor Moon Expanded.

While it is not unusual to have fanfics based on anime, it was a surprise to Mark when one day Becky Malsin contacted him about joining and writing a fanfic in the vein of one of his fanfics. Rhi and Ti's Excellent Adventures further expands on Mark's "Titanite's Bogus Journey" and adds a few characters of her own. Further, Becky is of the same age group as the target audience of Sailor Moon and our first female member. She seems to be unduly proud of those two facts and views herself as a catalyst of some sort. Whatever she means by that.

It was while we were trying to make plans for the Young Senshi that Sherlyn Lim showed up and said she'd like to write about Young Uranus. She also volunteered a few ideas about how the Senshi's sailor fuku came into existence that grew into the story "Dressed To Kill (...)." Not only that, but after the addition of the Keeper of the fanart gallery, Sherlyn's own artistic muse began to sing.

Berk' Watkins then approached us and wanted to add another Renegade to the roster. His idea for Chrysolite fit and his plans for writing about the world outside of Crystal Tokyo looked interesting. Sadly, he too was consumed by real life and his uncompleted works will be on display in the hall of the unfinished works.

Rachel Herndon had run into Frank during his Power Rangers fanfic days and when Andy said Rachel had approached him with the idea to run a Fan Art Gallery, it really made the Tmask author's Millennium. Rachel brought her own sprightly humor to the Sailor Moon Expanded universe. After she'd created the Art Gallery, she branched off into her own fanfic, "The Road to Earth" which tells of the Silver Millennium from a perspective outside the royal circles.

Mark was in the midst of "Thy Kingdom Come" when Aponar Kestrel said he'd like to lay out the language of the Dark Kingdom: Youma'shak. His work in linguistics has been an important, if understated, addition to the Sailor Moon Expanded universe. His words and translations find their way into many works from the Planetary Compendium to the Dark Kingdom Cookbook. We are constantly amazed when we ask him such questions as, "How do you say, "I think, therefore (I) am" in Youma'shak?" And he'd almost immediately come back with, "Why, it's, "ech kin'sh'ta, chw uyrez'ta," of course."

Another person to come forward with ideas of writing the world outside Crystal Tokyo was Matthew Campbell. His "Ghost Story" is aimed at exploring the places never written about in Sailor Moon fanfic. He will be answering the question, "What happens when you bring the magic back?"

Magnesite is a popular character from Mark's "Dark Kingdom Renegades." So much so that not only did the erstwhile one-shot villain get his own story from both Mark and Frank, but others wanted to write about him as well. Inspired by a contest Mark was holding about a partially finished story, Ron Inn stepped up to write "A Decent Dive." After completing that project, he's been heard muttering something about "cats" and "There's only so much sleeping in the sun a lazy-bone cat can do before even _he_ gets bored and starts looking for trouble ..."

Mark was later contacted by another author wishing to expand upon the Earth Beta world created in "Thy Kingdom Come." Thus, Craig Beard joined Sailor Moon Expanded.

We'd hit a bit of the doldrums when we were simultaneously contacted by two authors wanting to write about the Silver Millennium. Strangely, they were coming from opposite sides of the fence: one wanted to write from the perspective Beryl and the Seven Shadows and the other from the eyes of the less well known characters of the Silver Millennium.

And there's the past of Sailor Moon Expanded. Lord only knows what we have in mind for the future.