new forsaken leader spoilers

[Super Dickmann]

Skipping the bits about Saurfang, since I agree that we've veered off-topic from comparing his relationship to Anduin with Calia's and the difference between the two to instead rehashing his being or not being an Alliance patsy.

Calia is a form of undead that has never been seen before, who has no easy comparison. She's definitely an outsider to the Horde, as you've made quite plain in your own argumentation. I'm not sure what other criteria you need to define Calia as an outsider in any real context here. She's joining the Horde because she considers the Forsaken her own people and wishes to minister to them, and it appears as though at least some of the Forsaken (Voss, Derek, and Delaryn) desire her inclusion as well. What other values are you looking for?

Calia is an outsider to the Horde, yes. This stands in contrast to the original Forsaken who were outsiders away from the Horde and joined because they were rejected elsewhere. That's the difference between the two. It's her status as an outsider in the same sense as them, the blood elves, Darkspear, etc. that I am disputing, that she's outside the Horde is I think self-evident and agreed upon by both of us at that point. As for what other values I'm looking for to make her viable to the Horde, I've already gone over this, but given your final paragraph I might as well cover it there, not that I didn't multiple times already.

You have a very strange notion of what constitutes a nation-state, and the idea that an organization cannot contain cultural diversity seems both wrongheaded and almost comically insular to me. As for "failing to answer time and again," that would be because I find your argument nonsensical and thus impossible to answer in any cogent fashion considering I think you're entirely wrong about Calia's character and general purpose within the narrative, wrong about the nature of the Horde, wrong about what the Horde values, and wrong about the narrative's ultimate trajectory. Your views don't square in any way with my understanding of the narrative, and I can't assemble the things you claim into anything approaching a cohesive argument on their own. Given your repeated attempts to re-frame the argument into something entirely else I'm assuming you're aware of this and trying in vain to move the goalposts into something easier to argue, but I can't be sure. Either way, I think we're at "agree to disagree" territory once more and I'll just leave it at that.

While I appreciate you ditching this argument and almost appreciate the brass balls of trying this spin after agreeing with my assessment on the Forsaken's belonging in the Horde in the very previous page, it simply doesn't fly. This radical, difficult to grasp concept that I am proposing and that you are unable to assemble, let me do it for you again in one sentence: Races and characters that have more in common with the Alliance than the Horde should be in the Alliance. Far from an insular version of the Horde, my very first answer on this point was to gauge Calia with the descriptions of the factions in Mists of Pandaria and then go down the list of all broadly agreed upon traits in the topic about the values of the Horde. I then went over every single incarnation of the Horde, and she has less in common with any of them than with any of the Alliance. At the end of that I broaden my definition of being Horde to essentially amount to not having as one's purpose to brings its people in line with what they were in the Alliance, and she fails even that test. In lieu of belabouring this again, I'll just copy the bits over:

Compare the Mists of Pandaria blurbs and do you think "struggling to keep aggression in check" "monstrous" and "values strength (and honor)" fits Calia better or maybe "nobility, faith, honor and sacrifice". Or to go over the list of the traits mentioned in the other thread - Calia is not militaristic in any sense, she's never been in a fight and dislikes it, she's not evil, she's honorable, but so is literally everyone on both factions so that's not a qualifier for anything, she's not monstrous, but beyond human perfection and she's never been rejected by anyone but is loved by every character who encounters her who isn't Satan incarnate. Add that to being the hereditary princess of the pre-WoW Alliance kingdom, with all the trappings thereof and explicitly aiming to restore its identity in contradiction with what it was for its entire tenure in the Horde. She is neither a noble, shamanistic and tribal character, nor a reject joining out of convenience. There is absolutely nothing about her that's Horde.

@Zulkhan @Nymrohd

I'm arguing that she doesn't fit with the Horde operating from the standpoint that she's already taken over the Forsaken and that her rewriting their identity is a non-issue that's already taken place. I.e, the Forsaken are already like Calia for the purposes of her not fitting the Horde.

When the Forsaken joined the Horde they had jack to do with the WC3 Horde, and instead had the different uniting trait of being monstrous rejects, overlapping on no other point with the Horde. But they overlapped on basically no point with the Alliance and were indeed explicitly refused by the Alliance. Ditto the blood elves were explicitly set up against the Alliance, and had things like fel use, a mind-controlling autocracy and a light god in a basement. They stood to gain from being in the Horde, but had no opportunity/motive to join the Alliance. This is no longer the situation for the blood elves since TBC, was never the situation for the nightborne and is especially not the case for Calia-led undead. That's what that point for point comparison with the worgen was about - that there's already a race exactly like the new undead on the Alliance and they fit in well. Previously, the Forsaken may not have had much to do with the Kalimdor-Horde, but they had little in common with the Alliance. Now, from their character roster to their ethos, they have some traits in common with the Horde, but far more in common with extant Alliance races. Ergo, the only reason they don't just go to the Alliance is gameplay contrivance.

[Aucald]

Calia is an outsider to the Horde, yes. This stands in contrast to the original Forsaken who were outsiders away from the Horde and joined because they were rejected elsewhere. That's the difference between the two. It's her status as an outsider in the same sense as them, the blood elves, Darkspear, etc. that I am disputing, that she's outside the Horde is I think self-evident and agreed upon by both of us at that point. As for what other values I'm looking for to make her viable to the Horde, I've already gone over this, but given your final paragraph I might as well cover it there, not that I didn't multiple times already.

Not just to the Horde - she's a unique specimen of undeath, and as such doesn't really belong to the Alliance or the Horde in a thematic sense. The Alliance doesn't count any undead beings in its ranks that I can think of - any Alliance member who's become undead has either joined the Horde or functions as an independent operator or outfit. I mean Bolvar had a lot of connections to the Alliance himself, he was once the Regent of Stormwind after all, but following his ascent to being Jailer of the Damned I think it's safe to say he's not Alliance anymore (or Horde for that matter).

While I appreciate you ditching this argument and almost appreciate the brass balls of trying this spin after agreeing with my assessment on the Forsaken's belonging in the Horde in the very previous page, it simply doesn't fly. This radical, difficult to grasp concept that I am proposing and that you are unable to assemble, let me do it for you again in one sentence: Races and characters that have more in common with the Alliance than the Horde should be in the Alliance. Far from an insular version of the Horde, my very first answer on this point was to gauge Calia with the descriptions of the factions in Mists of Pandaria and then go down the list of all broadly agreed upon traits in the topic about the values of the Horde. I then went over every single incarnation of the Horde, and she has less in common with any of them than with any of the Alliance. At the end of that I broaden my definition of being Horde to essentially amount to not having as one's purpose to brings its people in line with what they were in the Alliance, and she fails even that test. In lieu of belabouring this again, I'll just copy the bits over:

My "agreement" with you was only based in the sense that the Forsaken and the Blood Elves didn't fit with the Horde of WC3, which is something I agree with - the problem with that argument, and especially your use of it, is that it's not applicable anymore. It *was*, back in the balmy days right after the Third War, when the nucleus of the Horde all shared the same thematic riffs, but the nature of the Horde changed when it brought the Forsaken on board, and changed again when the Blood Elves were added to the roster. We can argue all day long as to whether or not this should have happened, or if the thematic core of the Horde should've been preserved in proverbial amber, but it wasn't - therefore the argument is useless outside of "what if" speculation. The Forsaken, the Blood Elves, and the Nightborne now exist within the Horde as a kind of second way, most cosmopolitan and urbane, more refined, with aesthetics closer to that of the Humans than those of the Orcs. The more subtextual elements that link the Horde races are still there, of course, but the substantial ones are quite different. I would argue that your view of the Horde remains fixedly traditional, refusing to budge from the mold of WC3, where the narrative itself as well as the circumstances of the Horde have left that model behind. Even the way you treat the Forsaken as a wretched parody of what you think they should be points to this, but things have moved on.

[zlygork]

I could see Calia being a good leader by establishing a "round table" type of government along with other notable forsaken characters to make up for her inexperience.

I'm not sure how her ties to the alliance are relevant when it comes to leading a nation of former alliance members, many of which have been shown to still wish to close that gap. How they would trust a Menethil of all things, after like 20 years of absence is an entirely different question, although it seems they just do judging by before the storm.

[Super Dickmann]

Not just to the Horde - she's a unique specimen of undeath, and as such doesn't really belong to the Alliance or the Horde in a thematic sense. The Alliance doesn't count any undead beings in its ranks that I can think of - any Alliance member who's become undead has either joined the Horde or functions as an independent operator or outfit. I mean Bolvar had a lot of connections to the Alliance himself, he was once the Regent of Stormwind after all, but following his ascent to being Jailer of the Damned I think it's safe to say he's not Alliance anymore (or Horde for that matter).

That's a very narrow reading of what makes an Alliance theme, ironically enough. Undeath is not out of place because it's undeath, the worgens have a curse and they're fine. The reasons all prior undead didn't mesh with the Alliance is because the core components of undeath before BFA - that being the soul-body disconnect, the new reaction to the Light and the moral decay contradict core Alliance beats. Calia has none of these downsides - she's in fact, more holy than anyone in the Alliance except the Lightforged.

My "agreement" with you was only based in the sense that the Forsaken and the Blood Elves didn't fit with the Horde of WC3, which is something I agree with - the problem with that argument, and especially your use of it, is that it's not applicable anymore. It *was*, back in the balmy days right after the Third War, when the nucleus of the Horde all shared the same thematic riffs, but the nature of the Horde changed when it brought the Forsaken on board, and changed again when the Blood Elves were added to the roster. We can argue all day long as to whether or not this should have happened, or if the thematic core of the Horde should've been preserved in proverbial amber, but it wasn't - therefore the argument is useless outside of "what if" speculation. The Forsaken, the Blood Elves, and the Nightborne now exist within the Horde as a kind of second way, most cosmopolitan and urbane, more refined, with aesthetics closer to that of the Humans than those of the Orcs. The more subtextual elements that link the Horde races are still there, of course, but the substantial ones are quite different. I would argue that your view of the Horde remains fixedly traditional, refusing to budge from the mold of WC3, where the narrative itself as well as the circumstances of the Horde have left that model behind. Even the way you treat the Forsaken as a wretched parody of what you think they should be points to this, but things have moved on.

Your argument doesn't hold water both because I have little fondness for the WC3 Horde of noblesavages myself and because I explicitly note the common denominator between the blood elves, Forsaken and the rest of the Horde after their introduction - those being rejection, necessity and an incompatible morality, traits absent from the Alliance, hence why they fit one better than the other. While they don't share the exact same traits as the WC3 Horde and thank Christ for that, you can still find a common throughline in the Horde both of us have named before and reasons are given for why they are not Alliance.

These reasons are no longer present for the undead or the two types of elves, I can't really oppose that there's this growing side-mass to the Horde that are more like the Alliance in it, and that it's still part of the Horde, but what I can say is that its existence is inexplicable. The writers take a similar track with it as you do. Take Bob - who never spoke with Thrall, had his way in the Horde secured by Sylvanas, then would have refused to support the Horde militarily in Northrend if he wasn't threatened. He later tried to defect during Garrosh's reign. Now he's saying that he and his people always looked up to the Warchief. It's an unearned story beat that's insufficiently explained, and even when there was an explanation - like how there was say, in the Purge of Dalaran, for why they would still stick with the Horde despite their distance from it thematically, that thematic incompatibility still stands. The characters claim they fit and talk like they fit, but that doesn't make the square a circle in the same way that a horse that quacks isn't a duck.

As for the Calia and the new undead being a parody of the Forsaken, that's simple fact. I don't see how that matters though, since I'm arguing from the standpoint that the new undead do exist and that given their qualities, they are thematically an Alliance race due to sharing more traits in common with the Alliance than the Horde.