[RFC] Sailor Senshi: The A-Team

[Black Aeronaut]

Thoughts about Sailor Atalante's elite squad.
The name, A-Team, was a joke somebody cracked when they were first putting the team together because it was well established at the time that the leader of this team would be the newly established Sailor Atalante (A-Team = Team Atalante).  Of course, things being the way they are in Fenspace, the name stuck.
A-Team is comprised of the best skilled or gifted of the Senshi's ranks.  Those that have biomods are classified as Aces.  Others could have easily been OF-6 field operatives.
I don't have much on the others as of yet, but I now have the framework of a backstory for Sailor Atalante.
Mary was orphaned at the age of seventeen along with her twelve year old sister.  Rather than be seperated by the State, she ran.  After a chance run-in with some fen, she procured some wave for herself, and handwaved the car her parents left behind.  Of course, she wasn't fully up to speed about the needed safety requirements, but she got off lucky.  Her little sister, being very fond of the Disney animation, The Little Mermaid, had been watching the film while helping her sister wave the car.  It had the effect of granting them both mermaid-like traits.  They are both fully amphibious and possess very fine scales in their skin (they're so fine that you think they're wearing glitter until you look at them -very- closely).  They can also withstand extreme cold and have retractable webbing on their hands and feet.  They can spend as much time on dry land as they like, but they'll start to miss being out of the water after a week or so.
More to come on the others later.  Gotta run.

[Dartz]

Note to self... do not make 'A-team firing' jokes in the general vicinity of heavily armed Senshi with machine guns and glitter cheeks.

Otherwise... Mermaids. Interesting.

Oh.. if we're still going with Jet joining the Roughriders sometime in 2019, Jet'll build them each a spaceflight capable hardsuit.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Black Aeronaut]

Our Mulan/Sailor Mercury look-alike is a young lady who came up with her family on the infamous escape of the Galaxy Express from China. Her family had a school that taught kung-fu. However, a few words whispered in a few ears brought the family under suspicion of making treasonous remarks against the government. The school has been reestablished (at a location to be decided on later), however they long to return to their Motherland.

This young lady, however, has decided to soldier on and fight for love and justice. In addition to the family's kung-fu style, she also possesses some very nice sword skills and is not to be taken lightly for her gentle looks.

Name to be decided on once I find a decent Chinese name generator.

More to come later.

[robkelk]

and possess very fine scales in their skin (they're so fine that you think they're wearing glitter until you look at them -very- closely)

They must absolutely hate the Twilight Fen.

Name to be decided on once I find a decent Chinese name generator.

http://www.mandarintools.com/chinesename.html]Here's one. (It doesn't give the same name twice in a row, and it tells you why it chose the names it did...)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Black Aeronaut]

Thanks Rob! Internet on my ship is acting wonky so I'll check it out later.
EDIT: Actually... it seems all better now!  And you're right!  This is an awesome name generator.  I wonder if they have one for Japanese...
So, Mulan-girl's name (written in the traditional fashion of surname-first) will be Tai Angmeng.  Written in Mandarin it would look like this:


And yes, Twilight Fen in general are among the few minority factions that really have to prove themselves at 36 Atalante. It helps keep interfactional tensions low if you're not a emo-tard.
More character stuff:
The Bell look-alike is the Second-in-Command.
She was a girl born with a horible disfiguration, but she was intelligent and sweet natured. Astonishingly, despite her physical state, she was also absurdly strong. Think Hunch-Back of Notre Dame sort of disfigurement-and-strength. Her parents, hoping for a miracle, hoped a flight out and arranged for a medicle biomod to correct her disfigurement. Astoundingly, it is a success for the books as she takes on the likeness of her favorite Disney character, Bell from The Beauty and the Beast. Of course, there is a quirk and it's a bit of a Joker-Ace: the scent of a rose causes her to transform into The Beast. Looking into a mirror, oddly enough, causes her to revert.
In Beast mode, our heroine possesses an even greater measure of the strength she had before, as well as enhanced senses of scent, taste, touch ('feels' walls through minute air currents, also feels sound through foot-pads) sight, and sound. Her claws are noteworthy as well as they can carve through nickle-iron like it was butter, and her pelt can stop most rounds fired from conventional small arms. Coil-guns can prove to be a problem, though.
It doesn't bother her the least, though - even as a beast she feels she is more attractive than she used to be. ("Well, Mom, at least I'm symetrical this way. You couldn't say that about me before.") For this, she sees her biomod as a whole as a gift from the Fen and has sworn to repay it as a debt of honor. Thus she joined the Senshi and the rest is history. Addendum: it is rumored that she is actually in line to become a Named Senshi herself, but she has asked to be allowed to gain more experience before she accepts such a position, hence her assignment as Second-in-Command of the A-Team.
Name to come later, though suggestions are welcome.

[robkelk]

I wonder if they have one for Japanese...

All I can find are random-name generators.

If only somebody here was in Japan, and had a Japanese girlfriend to ask about the proper way to translate names...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Foxboy]

Hmm. Too bad we don't have one. *dramatic shrug*

But I do seem to remember somewhere that while Japanese names do have meanings, they're ultimately as important as the "Virtue" names in English, like Faith, Hope, Chastity, etc.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Bob Schroeck]

I recall one set of advice to fic writers somewhere -- not mine -- that suggested just working with an English-Japanese dictionary to come up with names that have appropriately symbolic meanings for their owners, on the grounds that Japanese names are barely one level of abstraction above things like "He Who Runs Fast". After all, "Ichiro"/"Jiro" basically means "first son" and is traditionally used for first sons (for example). So following this advice, you would name a character who's going to be in fistfights a lot the Japanese equivalent of "Strong Arm" or maybe "Easy Anger", whatever they might be, and you'd build the family name much the same way, unless you have a "stock" name you've already decided with. I can't see that you can go too far wrong with this method.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Proginoskes]

To be fair, many European names are similarly meaningful: Peter means "stone", Theodore means "gift of god", all the "Virtue" and "Gift" names (Faith, Hope, Joy) and their Greek or Latin synonyms (Felix means "faithful one"), Victor aught to be obvious, Sylvester comes from the Latin for "of the woods", plant names (Rose, Rosemary, Daisy, Lavender), months (almost exclusively April, May, and June)…

[Bob Schroeck]

True, but most names are effectively nonsense sounds to English speakers unless they know enough about other languages to decode them.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

I recall one set of advice to fic writers somewhere -- not mine -- that suggested just working with an English-Japanese dictionary to come up with names that have appropriately symbolic meanings for their owners, on the grounds that Japanese names are barely one level of abstraction above things like "He Who Runs Fast". After all, "Ichiro"/"Jiro" basically means "first son" and is traditionally used for first sons (for example). So following this advice, you would name a character who's going to be in fistfights a lot the Japanese equivalent of "Strong Arm" or maybe "Easy Anger", whatever they might be, and you'd build the family name much the same way, unless you have a "stock" name you've already decided with. I can't see that you can go too far wrong with this method.

Ah, if that's what BA's looking for, then the http://www.incompetech.com/named/multi.pl]First Names Reference Database will be useful. It isn't a complete database of all given names, but it's a darn sight better than nothing.

Let's see... Sex: "Female", Language/Origin:"Japanese", and Meaning contains: "beautiful":

Name Origin Sex Meaning Variations
Machiko Japanese Female Child who learns truth; beautiful child
Maciko Japanese Female Beautiful child
Miyo Japanese Female Beautiful generations Miyoko
Sumiko Japanese Female Child of goodness or Beautiful child
Yoshe Japanese Female Lovely, beautiful
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

That works, too.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

(blows dust off thread)
(coughs)
(uses duster to get the rest of the dust off thread)

I was reminded of this by the release of a dozen Poser/Daz-ready Princess dress morphs... BA, if you can tell me who the rest of them are, I can now do an image of them in formal wear for the wiki.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Black Aeronaut]

(Coughs)
(Hacks)

Wooo! Nice threadcro, Rob!

Honestly, I haven't given it too much thought lately, but I'll go ahead and put this one back on the burner.
EDIT: don't expect anything too soon.  Easter holiday is wreaking havoc over at the temp agency, between Walmarts everywhere doing remodeling on top of summer season stocking and the other temps getting drunk before noon on the holiday weekend.  I'm gonna need a weekend from my weekend.  >_

[HRogge]

I hope they don't get a "group quirk" that they cannot hit anyone lethally (and cannot be hit lethally either)...

[Proginoskes]

I dunno, that sounds pretty useful and desirable to me (provided that they can do as much nonlethal damage as they please). They can always outsource it if something really, really needs killing.

[HRogge]

I dunno, that sounds pretty useful and desirable to me (provided that they can do as much nonlethal damage as they please). They can always outsource it if something really, really needs killing.

A-Team (the TV one) has LOTS of experience dealing non-lethal damage of all kinds... they are the MacGyvers of non-lethal weapons!