SC Controversial Topics and General Shitposting Thread
- Thread starter Mr Oak
- Start date
Frayhua
[14] Master
Triggering that Setsuka account was so much fun. The Setsuka drama on Twitter is very entertaining especially when you trigger people complaining about Setsuka not being announced yet.
sytus
[14] Master
WuHT
Premium Moderator
who is dis fellow ?
RyujiSakamoto
Premium Member
Project Soul would never settle for some generic grounded design. They go big and wild with anime esque deisgns now. People asking for representation solely for representation should be careful of what they wish for. It could end up really bad in some anime misfire......
Besides we already have Zasalamel as you said....
DanteSC3
[14] Master
I want an Eskimo representation. 
WuHT
Premium Moderator
Its embarassing because he seems to be an active contributor to the ivory coast soul calibur scene
LisaK
[14] Master
sytus
[14] Master
Zasalamel is pretty much a Nubian from the ancient kingdom of Kush located far up the river Nile, he's as grounded as they get but what people seem to have a fetish for is a sub Saharan Bantu in every form of media because 'wokuss'.
LisaK
[14] Master
citation needed.
sytus
[14] Master
The Kingdom of Kush is an ancient civilization that has Pharaoh iconography, plus statues of their monarchs with what we would associate as black facial features. Everything about Zasalamel points to this area.
Kingdom of Kush - Wikipedia
List of monarchs of Kush - Wikipedia
Cushitic-speaking peoples - Wikipedia
DanteSC3
[14] Master
I think you mean Triple H, sledgehammer and all.Tell this to Conan the Barbarian..
RyujiSakamoto
Premium Member
I'm sorry I meant current Project Soul with their Groh and Azwel designs, complete with hot pink hair for legit Scandinavian representation
sytus
[14] Master
Azwel is basically a Druid, a corrupt Merlin if you will with the way the Arthurian mythology is written around him. But when it comes to Groh, yeah there was definitely some magic mushrooms taken when they did his design. Actually the Druids were known for their recreational use of them so in a way his design is definitely grounded in all it's psychedelic glory.
LisaK
[14] Master
I think this is a good opportunity to summon the @Rusted Blade. In this specific case I prefer to read what he has to write.. 
sytus
[14] Master
Yours is a different case because of colonialism. When it comes to Zasalamel, and the cast at large, extensive travel around the world was a luxury to the few, most people and civilizations stayed within a few hundred miles. Everything changed with global travel 500 years ago and especially now where most people can take a commercial flight to the other side of the world in 24 hours. Also I didn't say he was black, I said the statues of the Kush monarchs have what we would associate as black facial features and their civilization has pharaoh iconography. Everything is there in the links that shows the region, history, genetics.
Because he didn't create Edge Master. I asked the creator who's also on Twitter but he never got back to me. Also if I recall correctly, I think I also asked if he was Nordic because of his 2P costume due to Thor being known for having a fiery red beard like his temper.
LisaK
[14] Master
Yo No Hablo Español leave me alone 
sytus
[14] Master
Hey no fair with your bilingual supremacy.
Rusted Blade
[14] Master
Well, I'm not 100% on which of the multiple recent subject matters I am meant to be commenting on, so I'll make a quick response as to each:I think this is a good opportunity to summon the @Rusted Blade. In this specific case I prefer to read what he has to write..
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Personally I have no problem with a call for another black face in the roster: there are any number of historical cultures and traditional armed fighting style that could be candidates for such a style. The one important caveat there was already touched upon by Dissidia: whenever you ask a Japanese producer of any kind of pop media (especially an anime-adjacent property) to develop an African character and you may, it's going to be a crap shoot in terms of cultural sensitivity. I've always said my concern with PS making an expressly African warrior would be that you may very well end up with something that looks like this. But in general, I think a return to basing characters in the diversity of real world cultures and fighting arts would be much welcome: whether the concern is 1) that the newer chraracters over recent games have been almost exclusively white (minus the SCV analogs--and even some of those are cases of a white characters replacing earlier characters of colour), or 2) they are just too anime and goofy and ungrounded, tying the characters to real world cultures would solve the tonal issues. And one such new character might as well be expressly African.
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I guess it's possible that Zasa could hail from Kush, but I'm not certain why Sytus is so convinced that he would hail from there, unless there is some reference in the lore that expressly suggests as much: the iconography and aesthetics in his costume design look more straight up Egyptian to me, and I think that's an artistic culture that was more likely to be in the minds eye of a concept artist/character designer. Sytus can correct me if I am inaccurately describing his perspective here, but if I remember his argument from the last time this topic came up (and as represented in some comments immediately above) correctly, he seems to be assuming Kush is the most likely candidate for Zas' kingdom of origin because Sytus is convinced that Zasalmel looks 'black, but not like a Bantu' (I'm paraphrasing here) and yet has attire/accoutrements which look vaguely Egyptian, and Kushite culture was heavily influenced by Egypt (he's not wrong about this last part certainly: in fact, there were times that the dynasties of both nations overlapped).
But there's several major problems with this theory. For one, there were a large number of contemporary cultures in North Africa and the Near East with people of darker complexions, and there's nothing about Kush in particular that screams out as the likely candidate: again, the imagery is vaguely suggestive of Egypt more than anything (his 1P Sythe for example seems to be making reference to Osiris), and this seems much more likely to be the aesthetic inspiration when we're talking about PS, who aren't known for their deep dives into factually accurate and realistically-rendered history but rather very balatant adoption of generic representations of well-known cultures, mixed together with high fantasy elements. And Upper Egypt, like all of Nubia, was home to very dark skinned peoples (as indeed was Lower Egypt for most of its history).
But there's a more significant reason why I think Sytu's reasoning faces some challenges, and it concerns a piece of lore that I think he may not be familiar with: it is my understanding that while Zasalamel is immortal, his body is not: in other words, he reincarnates in new bodies. If I'm remembering that detail correctly, there's no reason to assume that we need to explain both Zasalamel's skin colour and his wardrobe choices with one culture: if we presume that his clothing choices reflect an ancient Near East origin, it still doesn't tell us if the 'original' Zasalamel was a black Egyptian, white Egyptian, black Kushite, or any other combination of physical phenotype and historical nation of the time (and since we don't know when Zasalamel's first life began, we can't even isolate for time period). It's also possible that Zasa's clothing doesn't even reflect his original culture: it might just be an affectation he adopted somewhere along the way (say, when he first began to get a hold of his powers and became a mystic of sorts). But in any event, presumably his current body is just the one he was most recently born into, and does not tell us anything about his origins: he/his new body could be from anywhere that black people hailed from in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries, which is a lot of places.
Again, that's if I am remembering that piece of lore correctly about him reincarnating into new bodies: @TresDias and @DanteSC3 should be able to confirm as much or sink that line of thought. In any event, I'm quite certain that we are all putting a lot more thought into the question of Zasalamel's exact origins then probably anyone at PS ever did: I think that's the real vital piece of information here when it comes to trying to make heads or tails of his visual design!
So all factors, and Occam's Razor combined, I'm going to say the simplest explanation is that Zasalamel is meant to vaguely parrot Egypt in his visual design, but as a cannon matter, we have no way of knowing what his ultimate origin is. Not that I think it has much bearing on the question of whether we should have a/another African character: we've got scores of characters from Eurasia (and like a dozen from Japan alone, plus half a dozen from fake Germanic states): surely two African characters would hardly be topping the scales of diversity.
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For what it's worth, I think Edge Master is specifically meant to be a cypher: I don't think we are meant to have a clear notion of where he originates from so much as "from the ancient mysteries of the mists of time". But, for what it's worth, New Legends of Project Soul does take the time to specifically note he has blue eyes: which is one of the few details in his design that gives any concrete suggestion to European ancestry over asian. But again, I think he very specifically is meant to be ambiguous in this regard.
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Anything would be better than another Azwel, Groh, or Zwei. Enough with the emo-anime hybrids and goofy wizards. The question of whether they represent a kind of whitewashing trend in the roster put to the side for the moment, these designs are just lame. I hope that the feedback has impressed one thing above all others on the devs: many of us yearn for a return to more grounded weapon choices.
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sytus
[14] Master
My speculations are not about where characters are born specifically, but more about what region they are potentially from. Project Soul puts a lot of effort into it's character designs so what I try to do is unravel that inspiration to give these characters real world history that otherwise wouldn't be expanded upon. Edge Master for example has blue writing over his body, Celts covered their bodies with blue paint with patterns and writing, but the writing isn't something that I would say comes from western Europe. If anything it looks like Gujarati, an Indo-Aryan language located around India which is reinforced by the fact that Edge Master/Kilik's stage is located around this region. Then you've got his 2P outfit that makes him look like Thor putting him in the Nordic region and considering Excalibur is supposed to be related to Soul Calibur, the Aval(on) organization is around Scandinavia (Denmark, Sweden, Norway) and Edge Master's immortality (SC5 shenanigans), it appears this gives him a bit of history here. If anything, Edge Master comes across as Conner MacLeod who's from lots of different places. But with regards to his 2P outfit, Hideo Yoshie told me that the design is what an evil embraced version of Edge Master would look like so the Nordic speculation about that design was debunked.
Also there is this.
Also there is this.