Am I the only one that likes Calia Menethil?

[Aucald]

Matters of perspective are opinions.
So, that includes your own subjective opinions regardless of your attempts to connect it to such...shifting perspectives that is woefully referred to the "Chronicles" as such is seen today. And by Blizz's own words.

And they've already referred to such "canon" as perspective based.
So cease trying to make it what it...isn't. Blizz gave themselves a way out of "canon." Sure, it stinks. But Blizz writing has been meme-worthy in that regard.
If you desire to call such canon... "opinions," then we actually do agree on something.

And in-game perspectives, as well as character opinions, are also canon. I'm not making anything more than what it was. In the case of Chronicle, there was a change from reference material to Titan-based PoV in terms of the objectivity of the books, but they were and remain fully canon to the Warcraft universe. What doesn't matter, however, is your take on Blizzard writing being "meme-worthy" or whatever else - as I said before, your subjective distaste doesn't alter the nature of what canon is for a given IP. Even before Chronicle was clarified as PoV-based, it still wasn't the end-all and be-all authority on WoW lore, either. It left such things as the nature of the Shadowlands as well as the Emerald Dream open to speculation and conjecture. If anything, it's a handy timeline of the story of Warcraft, and being based on the PoV of the Titans doesn't change that.

TL;DR: You don't determine what is canon, and neither do I for that matter. Canon is determined by which sources Blizzard endorses and authorizes as such. No one else gets a say on the matter.

[Piamonte]

What you're not accounting for is the sheer numbers of the Scourge put to both blade and torch in the closing of the Third War, exhausted at Hyjal when the Legion used them as cannon fodder against the Alliance, Horde, and Night Elven forces defending Nordrassil. And that's discounting the fact you can't use real-world analogs in an attempt to patch in demographics because you don't account for both the schizo-tech and the proliferation of magic in all of Azeroth's various cultures, something that cities in the Middle Ages of the real world wouldn't have had access to. Equally unknown is exactly how many Forsaken Sylvanas raised across the years between Cata and BfA, you're confining yourself entirely to Cata, and even then not accounting for scale, either.

We'll probably never know exact numbers, but given the givens, it's very possible and probable that Sylvanas raised a *lot* of new Forsaken in those intervening years, and factoring in the losses to the first generation of Forsaken over the close of the Third War and the battles in both TBC and WotLK, it's equally easy to see how these new Forsaken may dwarf the first generation in terms of population.

What happened in Hyal doesnt matter, Hyal is in Kalimdor, Undercity is in the Eastern Kingdoms.

yes, there is magic in wow, but as i said, im being extremely generous here, im cutting undercity possible population in half to account for whatever effect the scourge had in reducing their numbers and im taking best case scenario to say that the army of the undercity must has been 15% of the entire population, which in reality it must been like 5% tops, even if i am more generous and i say that the forsaken Silvanas raised are the double of what i said before, there would be 2000 new forsaken raised against the 10k that already were in Undercity, and that is not counting other stations around the world.
You can try and say that the forsaken lost some numbers from wow classic to cataclysm, but there is still a huge gap to fill. Thats why i said the idea of there being more forsaken now is preposterous.

And i already answered the thing about the amount of expansions, remember when i said how ridiculous it would be to think that she continuosly raised forsaken after Cataclysm?? with all the questions that opens?? was she in Wod we just never saw her?? are there undead orcs, tauren, trolls we dont know about, etc.

It's shit like this that makes debating with you such a laborious and often feckless undertaking - any even cursory read of what I said above would very obviously and pointedly demonstrate that I'm not saying the Forsaken can do a 180 - I'm saying it did the exact opposite of pulling a 180. It changed slowly but surely over time, organically and understandably as its role changed, first due to Sylvanas' own changing prerogatives, and then due to the realization of their own prerogatives due to her prolonged absence and that absence undermining the cult of personality she controlled them with. The Forsaken always looked to Sylvanas to provide them with their purpose, which I'd pretty readily call a core value - they were a shiftless and lost group without her guidance, and she very quickly established herself as their Banshee Queen and a tyrant who ruled by sheer force of her personality.

So no, the identity of the Forsaken didn't and won't change overnight, but it has been changing over time, even more so now that Sylvanas is finally out of the picture and the Forsaken are left to govern themselves and grapple with the existential questions of their purpose and continued existence. You can't get a more fundamental upheaval than that, to be honest; and the repercussions of Sylvanas' departure continue to change the character of the Forsaken in the modern era.

So i thought about this and realized that all the arguments about Silvanas are unproductive towards your claim, because your claim isnt just "forsaken's identity changes over time", your claim is "fosaken's identity changes over time towards a specific destination", that destination being that the new identity of the Forsaken is about choosing to be one.

So, if i try to make sense of your stance here and of the rest of the discussion, i suppose you will want to claim that the Forsaken Silvanas raised chose to be Forsaken and that counts as a milestone towards a new identity, the same with Calia choosing to be Forsaken and i suppose you can add Lilian voss in there.

but (again following your own logic here), if people's identity change over time and if that change happens at a very slow rate and if a nation have a stable identity over time (they have core values), then you are biting your own tail here, because we are back to square one:

If the change is a slow process then we can only talk about a new identity as something that will happen in the future, because it will need time to solidify. Right now the recognizable core values of Forsaken are that they are forsaken (rejected) and you can add that they worship Silvanas if you must. It remains to be seen if the new identity about choosing to be a forsaken will stick, Blizzard in the future could just forget about all of this and take the forsaken in a completely new direction. Whatever the case is, as things are right now, Calia choosing to be a forsaken is meaningless when we want to assess whether or not she truly fits with the rest of the Forsaken because choosing to be one isnt an integral part of Forsaken society yet.

"I can't telescope the claim to cover the whole of the Alliance, but I'm going to telescope the claim the cover the whole of the Alliance anyway."

I mean, you can go ahead and think everyone in the Alliance is hunky-dory for Calia if you like, but this is nothing more than a feeling on your part, with little to no actual support in the narrative itself. "Vibes" aren't evidence, though; so you can't make a positive claim here. If neither position A nor B are in evidence and cannot be supported objectively, it's illogical to assume either of them is right, which is pretty much all I need to point out to demonstrate your argument is founded more on feelings than fact. What we do know is that several Alliance leaders such as Genn and Turalyon have shown a continued distrust of the undead, despite positive experiences in some cases - so assuming they'd be just fine with Calia is suspect. And that's above and beyond Calia's other associations such as being a Menethil, and the sister of Arthas, the former Lich King. That alone could make a lot of people suspect her regardless of her status of being undead to boot.

Aucald if i say A and you say B, and we cant prove either way, that doesnt mean that im being driven by feelings, or that my argument is weaker or yours stronger, because thats not how logic works, at most it means we are at a stalemate. do you know what a stalemate means?? hint: it doesnt mean you won the discussion.

Calia being a Menethil is meaningless to the discussion, because you can only prove that your claim is true if you prove that Calia is hated for being an undead, not for any other reason you can come up with.

Turalyon has been leader of the alliance for 5 years, he hasnt show any prejudice towards any race of horde because he is a pacifist, he only has a problem with the void and i discounted Genn from the start because he has his own particular reasons to hate Silvanas and the undead. I thought you understood that.

What you are doing here is grasping for straws, you are doing this because you know that my evidence weak as it is, still gives me something while you are left with nothing.

With my evidence i can still (as you like to say) make a case, i can say that what the leaders think is a reflection of what a portion of the alliance thinks while the rest are indiferent towards Calia (an option we didnt consider), i can do this because you cant prove they hate her.
I can also say that Anduin and Jaina being the leaders they are, have a lot of influence and so, they can make public events to convince people to like her. That gives Calia a lot more in terms of acceptance than what any random forsaken has or will ever have in the future.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

What happened in Hyal doesnt matter, Hyal is in Kalimdor, Undercity is in the Eastern Kingdoms.

Hyjal would matter for the population size of the WC3 forsaken as the legion took the majority of the undead with them to Kalimdor which all died.

The population of the forsaken wouldn’t reflect lorderon it would be the token force left behind by the scourge and then splintered further by the theee way split between sylvanas the dread lord and arthas.

[Piamonte]

Hyjal would matter for the population size of the WC3 forsaken as the legion took the majority of the undead with them to Kalimdor which all died.

The population of the forsaken wouldn’t reflect lorderon it would be the token force left behind by the scourge and then splintered further by the theee way split between sylvanas the dread lord and arthas.

as i said im being generous and splitting forsaken population in half to account for whatever effect the scourge had in reducing their numbers.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

as i said im being generous and splitting forsaken population in half to account for whatever effect the scourge had in reducing their numbers.

It likely wouldn’t be a half split though it would be like 80-90% going to Hyjal as the legion has no reason to leave that behind and then Another 3 way split.

This is all also before any actual fighting and forsaken dying.

Edit, checked chronicles to see if they mention any numbers or %’s, when Arch showed up and took command it says they only left “some” undead before, and when Arthas gets back it says he only hand “thousands” left.

So while we don’t get clear numbers the total undead would be under 10K and then splitting 3 ways with I want to say Sylvanas geting the smallest number which is why she need Garthios but I’d need to check novel to be sure which I can’t do at the moment.

[Piamonte]

It likely wouldn’t be a half split though it would be like 80-90% going to Hyjal as the legion has no reason to leave that behind and then Another 3 way split.

This is all also before any actual fighting and forsaken dying.

its a long time since i played the campaign but Silvanas took control over many of the scourge that Arthas had under his control (the short story about Nathanos is a proof of this), the same probably happened with the undead under the dreadlords control, so its not like it was a cut dry split between the undead forces. Also we dont know exactly how many undead traveled to Hyal.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

its a long time since i played the campaign but Silvanas took control over many of the scourge that Arthas had under his control (the short story about Nathanos is a proof of this), the same probably happened with the undead under the dreadlords control, so its not like it was a cut dry split between the undead forces. Also we dont know exactly how many undead traveled to Hyal.

See my edit for a bit of a clearer picture from chronicles.

Assuming the forsaken were able to take over most of the dead lords force and Arthas still had good numbers going to Northrand id guess there would be likely 5-6000 forsaken given that the number of scourge was under 10k before breaking free.

With the quest dickman linked from cata where it says they are raising hundreds of undead daily it would only take a few weeks to a month match and surpass that number

[Piamonte]

See my edit for a bit of a clearer picture from chronicles.

Assuming the forsaken were able to take over most of the dead lords force and Arthas still had good numbers going to Northrand id guess there would be likely 5-6000 forsaken given that the number of scourge was under 10k before breaking free.

With the quest dickman linked from cata where it says they are raising hundreds of undead daily it would only take a few weeks to a month match and surpass that number

"Raising hundreds" is a vague statement, Silvanas is raising people from graveyards and graveyards don't have an infinite number of corpses, let alone corpses that are more than just dust by now.
So yeah the valkyr could raise 100 forsaken every day and by the fifth (to make up a number) day they would be left with no more corpses to raise.

If you say that undercity started with 6k forsaken thats still a huge number to get to, even raising "hundreds per day".

[Lorgar Aurelian]

"Raising hundreds" is a vague statement, Silvanas is raising people from graveyards and graveyards don't have an infinite number of corpses, let alone corpses that are more than just dust by now.
So yeah the valkyr could raise 100 forsaken every day and by the fifth (to make up a number) day they would be left with no more corpses to raise.

If you say that undercity started with 6k forsaken thats still a huge number to get to, even raising "hundreds per day".

As we see by Derek as stupid as it is a body in wow can still be intact what about 20 years after its dead and raise able. With the first and second war there would likely be thousands if not tens of thousands of corpses in the ground between between 4 kingdoms once they got into gilenas.

If we assumes hundreds meets 100+ but lower then 200 that’s only 2 months to match 6k and if it’s 200+ that’s a single month.

[Piamonte]

As we see by Derek as stupid as it is a body in wow can still be intact what about 20 years after its dead and raise able. With the first and second war there would likely be thousands if not tens of thousands of corpses in the ground between between 4 kingdoms once they got into gilenas.

If we assumes hundreds meets 100+ but lower then 200 that’s only 2 months to match 6k and if it’s 200+ that’s a single month.

I dont think Silvanas had acccess to all those corpses, many of those people must have been buried in SW for example.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I dont think Silvanas had acccess to all those corpses, many of those people must have been buried in SW for example.

What? Stormwind was destroyed in the first war and still being rebuilt in the second.

And even if it wasn’t why would soldiers and citizens from Lorderon Stromgard Gilneas and alterc be berried there.

[Piamonte]

What? Stormwind was destroyed in the first war and still being rebuilt in the second.

And even if it wasn’t why would soldiers and citizens from Lorderon Stromgard Gilneas and alterc be berried there.

well, going this far put us in muddy waters, did Silvanas raised people from alterac? did she raise so many forsaken when she invaded gilneas?? Are Lordaeron graveyards that full of people??.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

well, going this far put us in muddy waters, did Silvanas raised people from alterac? did she raise so many forsaken when she invaded gilneas?? Are Lordaeron graveyards that full of people??.

After the first and second war yes the graveyard would be so full as I don’t believe the scourge ever raided them.

We knowh that she was actively raising people in both strom and Gilneas and given that she held the territory for years there’s no reason to think she’s stop when her whole thing was repopulating the forsaken.

Alterac is the only case that is actually muddy as I haven’t actually done all the quest on the horde side to know if any Valkyir show up there, but it was taken over and held by the horde in cata so if they were running low there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t head there.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

The Desolate Council were not a fundamentally bad idea and I don't mind the idea of Sylvanas being replaced. I was completely sick of Sylvanas and just wanted her to hurry up and die by the time Shadowlands rolled around, and the Forsaken are in the advantageous position of being one of very few races for which a council system actually works: they're explicitly led by bureaucrats and military officers and could easily shift into a junta.

Calia's problem is also not being a Light-aligned undead. I think having a force of Light-worshippers in the forsaken could be very interesting; take, for instance, undead penitents with an ash motif whose primary interest is the redemption of the forsaken race while still being more than on edge around the Alliance and interested in the security of their people. It could fit with the identity of the race and be pretty aesthetically-evocative along the way. The main reason an idea like this, which I've talked about at greater length (much to the comically disproportionate vitriol of the more ardent knights of Blizzard), might work is because it would be inserted into the race with the objective of fleshing it out and building on existing elements of the race as opposed to being inserted to cleanse the race of its identity.

Calia is bad for her race not because she's an outlier — the existence of outliers is in itself perfectly fair — but because she was put in that position precisely to diminish the existing forsaken identity and replace it with something more palatable to the then-current writing team's palette. While I'm all for adding more conventionally heroic elements to an otherwise villainous race, and my taste for antiheroes has faded over time, Calia fails in that objective because she fails to represent or preserve most of the identity of the race as a heroic element and is accordingly entirely superfluous.

That said, if there is something about her being an outlier that is inherently bad, it's the differing conditions of her undeath. If she were raised as Forsaken by Sylvanas or broke free from the Scourge and then returned to the Light as part of some divine plan to bring redemption to the Forsaken people, that might work because she was still living with them, sharing experiences with the people she's leading, and can be in any capacity considered a Forsaken character. However, the conditions of her undeath weren't being unconsentingly thrust into servitude to a malevolent undead faction: she was resurrected directly by a naaru and filled with the Light.

These different conditions of undeath also rob her of anything that might make the "light undead" angle interesting, such as having to struggle with her current state being an abomination to her faith or the power she channels being painful to her. You can't get, say, an arc where she struggles with the idea that she's a fundamentally unholy creature trying to cleave to holy ideals, or any kind of interesting deviant theology like "we're all sinful creatures, undeath just brings it to the forefront and the Light being painful allows us to purge ourselves of that sin more easily." In her current state, Calia's undeath is such a non-factor that she might as well just be a little paler than normal.

The fact that she is, for all intents and purposes, an Alliance character doesn't help matters. She spent most of her time in BfA among Alliance heroes. Aside from her first experience dealing with the old regime being a skewering with arrows as an outsider coming in to stage an ill-advised defection on behalf of the Alliance, Calia spent most of her time in BfA convening with their leaders.

[Aucald]

What happened in Hyal doesnt matter, Hyal is in Kalimdor, Undercity is in the Eastern Kingdoms.

It definitely matters. If 90% of the Scourge in Lordaeron was brought to the slopes of Mount Hyjal only to die as a result of the Legion's failed push to take Nordrassil, that means the first generation of the Forsaken would only be a fraction of a fraction of the total that were raised as Scourge in the Third War. No matter what the exact numbers are, you're still vastly overestimating the size of that first generation of Forsaken freed when the Lich King was losing his powers during WC3: TFT.

yes, there is magic in wow, but as i said, im being extremely generous here, im cutting undercity possible population in half to account for whatever effect the scourge had in reducing their numbers and im taking best case scenario to say that the army of the undercity must has been 15% of the entire population, which in reality it must been like 5% tops, even if i am more generous and i say that the forsaken Silvanas raised are the double of what i said before, there would be 2000 new forsaken raised against the 10k that already were in Undercity, and that is not counting other stations around the world.
You can try and say that the forsaken lost some numbers from wow classic to cataclysm, but there is still a huge gap to fill. Thats why i said the idea of there being more forsaken now is preposterous.

And i already answered the thing about the amount of expansions, remember when i said how ridiculous it would be to think that she continuosly raised forsaken after Cataclysm?? with all the questions that opens?? was she in Wod we just never saw her?? are there undead orcs, tauren, trolls we dont know about, etc.

There's no need to fill any existing gap for the post-war Forsaken to outnumber those raised as a result of the Third War and the formerly Scourge. You need only factor in the appalling attrition of the Scourge's use in Hyjal, as well as the accounts given in Cata, the Sylvanas novel, Legion, and BfA. Hell, one of the main plot points for Sylvanas and the Forsaken during Legion was Sylvanas looking for a way to bring the Val'kyr of Odyn under her sway so she could raise even more Forsaken by swelling the ranks of her Val'kyr. Do you think she was just sitting on her haunches the entire time with the Val'kyr she already had? She probably had them scouring Lordaeron and the rest of the Eastern Kingdoms raising more and more Forsaken under her banner. It'd be kind of stupid to assume she was doing nothing the entire time, all the while going on about perpetuating "her people" and her overriding need to use them to defend herself against true death, to the point she'd try to actively poach Odyn's Sunborne Val'kyr with the Soulcage.

So i thought about this and realized that all the arguments about Silvanas are unproductive towards your claim, because your claim isnt just "forsaken's identity changes over time", your claim is "fosaken's identity changes over time towards a specific destination", that destination being that the new identity of the Forsaken is about choosing to be one.

So, if i try to make sense of your stance here and of the rest of the discussion, i suppose you will want to claim that the Forsaken Silvanas raised chose to be Forsaken and that counts as a milestone towards a new identity, the same with Calia choosing to be Forsaken and i suppose you can add Lilian voss in there.

but (again following your own logic here), if people's identity change over time and if that change happens at a very slow rate and if a nation have a stable identity over time (they have core values), then you are biting your own tail here, because we are back to square one:

If the change is a slow process then we can only talk about a new identity as something that will happen in the future, because it will need time to solidify. Right now the recognizable core values of Forsaken are that they are forsaken (rejected) and you can add that they worship Silvanas if you must. It remains to be seen if the new identity about choosing to be a forsaken will stick, Blizzard in the future could just forget about all of this and take the forsaken in a completely new direction. Whatever the case is, as things are right now, Calia choosing to be a forsaken is meaningless when we want to assess whether or not she truly fits with the rest of the Forsaken because choosing to be one isnt an integral part of Forsaken society yet.

That's not my claim, so unfortunately your long thoughts on the matter turned out rather unproductive. An appeal to tradition falls a bit flat if the tradition in question is one in constant and continual flux, as is the case with the Forsaken. In this case, you've gone back to square one in assuming that the Forsaken have been an unchanging monolith that has only recently made a heel-face turn, which is the exact opposite of what I explained (multiple times now). And this is on top of the already spurious claim that Calia is herself "not rejected by anyone" and thus ineligible to be a Forsaken, which is both a claim I've successfully shown isn't in evidence, nor a stipulation I ever agreed to in the first place. Your take on the Forsaken is directly rebutted by the story of Thomas Zelling in BfA, a Kul Tiran who like Calia chose to become Forsaken as opposed to succumbing to illness, and was exhorted by Voss to "carve his own path" among "those who [will] accept you for what you've become." Calia isn't the first person to actively choose undeath and be accepted by the Forsaken as a result, and she likely won't be the last.

Aucald if i say A and you say B, and we cant prove either way, that doesnt mean that im being driven by feelings, or that my argument is weaker or yours stronger, because thats not how logic works, at most it means we are at a stalemate. do you know what a stalemate means?? hint: it doesnt mean you won the discussion.

Calia being a Menethil is meaningless to the discussion, because you can only prove that your claim is true if you prove that Calia is hated for being an undead, not for any other reason you can come up with.

Turalyon has been leader of the alliance for 5 years, he hasnt show any prejudice towards any race of horde because he is a pacifist, he only has a problem with the void and i discounted Genn from the start because he has his own particular reasons to hate Silvanas and the undead. I thought you understood that.

What you are doing here is grasping for straws, you are doing this because you know that my evidence weak as it is, still gives me something while you are left with nothing.

With my evidence i can still (as you like to say) make a case, i can say that what the leaders think is a reflection of what a portion of the alliance thinks while the rest are indiferent towards Calia (an option we didnt consider), i can do this because you cant prove they hate her.
I can also say that Anduin and Jaina being the leaders they are, have a lot of influence and so, they can make public events to convince people to like her. That gives Calia a lot more in terms of acceptance than what any random forsaken has or will ever have in the future.

Ah, I see now you are laboring under a misunderstanding - "winning" is an act that requires stakes, and there are no stakes to be won or lost here. This is simply an exchange of ideas - point and counterpoint, argument and counterargument. I'm not trying to "win" the discussion because you don't "win" discussions, you simply explore and illuminate the truth of ideas, preferably with sound reasoning and ample evidence. If you approach a discussion like it's a thing to be won or lost then you've already lost before you even began. Even in terms of a debate neither of us can truly assess our arguments and claim "victory," as that's for the audience to decide. Our own biases preclude us from having the required objectivity.

Given the prevailing opinion of the undead in general following the traumas of the Scourge and the legacy of the Third War, I'd say it'd be relatively easy to find people who hate Calia simply for being undead. Add on to that the general mistrust and the tainted legacy of the Menethil line from whom the Scourge's own Lich King descended, and you've got a great recipe for hatred on demand, more or less. Again, you try hard to dismiss an argument without really considering it, when pretty much the entire setting supports it. Hell, even Commander Belmont calls Calia out on being a Menethil, expressing deep distrust of her lineage - and he's one of the Forsaken leaders. Imagine what the sentiment of others might be.

I've also not just made a case, I've made multiple cases, a practical ambuscade of cases surrounding your evidence which you've already admitted is weak. You accuse me of clutching at straws, but it actually appears more like you're shoving your fingers in your ears and chanting "I can't hear you" like we're having a playground spat.

[Snowfunk]

I like her. She brings a different nuance to the Forsaken faction, not that she's necessarily a part of it.
I can definitely see her playing a part in the Forsaken story, a strong character that can build bridges to other factions, and events.

But I think it would be a huge mistake to attempt to move her into a leadership position, but I really like her as a supporting Forsaken character.

[Piamonte]

i think you are not following the logic of the conversation, so i will have to explain it for you:

we are arguing as to whether or not Calia fits as part of the Forsaken, we assess that by determining if Calia fits the Forsaken identity or not. A key component of the Forsaken identity is that they are rejected for being undead, hence the name "Forsaken" and hence their particular history of being persecuted by humans and treated like monsters. You can add that they worship Silvanas, but that is irrelevant to the discussion to be honest.

To determine if she fits with the Forsaken identity we are discussing two separate subjects that dont necessarily contradict each other:

One subject is whether or not Calia is rejected by the rest of the humans. If she does, it means she does fit the Forsaken identity (your position), if she doesnt, it means she doesnt fit the Forsaken identity (my position).

The other subject is as to whether or not she fits the Forsaken identity of choosing to be one.

The thing is that as i said, those two things dont necessarily contradict each other, the idea of the Forsaken choosing to be one could simply be added as a third core value of Forsaken identity (one being that they are rejected, second being they worship Silvanas, third being they choose to be one). If thats is true there are 3 possible scenarios:


The discussion goes my way, which means i can prove that she isnt rejected and prove that the idea of choosing to be a Forsaken isnt a core value of the Forsaken.

The discussion goes your way, which means you can prove she is rejected, in which case if whether or not choosing to be one is part of the Forsaken identity becomes irrelevant or if you cant do that, you have to prove that the idea of being rejected is no longer part of the Forsaken identity and that the identity of the Forsaken shifted towards the idea of choosing to be one. Because in this case, whether or not Calia is rejected stops being important.

There is obviusly a neutral point in which neither of us can prove neither of those two things, neither of us can determine whether or not she is rejected and neither of us can prove whether or not choosing to be a Forsaken is part of the Forsaken identity, which would end in another stalemate.
Even if i prove to you that choosing to be one isnt part of the Forsaken identity but we cant determine whether or not Calia is rejected, this also ends up in a stalemate and if i prove to you that she isnt rejected but you prove to me that choosing to be one is part of the Forsaken identity it also ends in a stalemate, because in this case Calia both fits and doesnt fit with the Forsaken.


The first discussion we are having, the one about the number of Forsaken raised after Cataclysm, now that i realize it, isnt that important to be honest, because even if there were more forsaken raised after Cataclysm, meaning even if there were more forsaken that chose to be one, that doesnt necesarilly mean that the identity of the Forsaken changed towards that idea. Because these new Forsaken dont have an identity of their own, its not like they come into the fold with their own ideas as to what it means to be a Forsaken, because the Forsaken condition is something new to them.

No, as you said, identities take time to change, so the only discussions that actually matter are the other two. The one about as to whether or not Forsaken identity changed towards the idea of choosing to be one and the discussion about whether or not Calia is rejected by the humans. The fact that these two are the only discussions that matters go hand in hand with what i have already said so far.

And here comes the problems, because in:

That's not my claim, so unfortunately your long thoughts on the matter turned out rather unproductive. An appeal to tradition falls a bit flat if the tradition in question is one in constant and continual flux, as is the case with the Forsaken. In this case, you've gone back to square one in assuming that the Forsaken have been an unchanging monolith that has only recently made a heel-face turn, which is the exact opposite of what I explained (multiple times now). And this is on top of the already spurious claim that Calia is herself "not rejected by anyone" and thus ineligible to be a Forsaken, which is both a claim I've successfully shown isn't in evidence, nor a stipulation I ever agreed to in the first place. Your take on the Forsaken is directly rebutted by the story of Thomas Zelling in BfA, a Kul Tiran who like Calia chose to become Forsaken as opposed to succumbing to illness, and was exhorted by Voss to "carve his own path" among "those who [will] accept you for what you've become." Calia isn't the first person to actively choose undeath and be accepted by the Forsaken as a result, and she likely won't be the last.

and in the rest of your previous responses in this particular discussion you are both claiming that a) identity changes at a slow rate and b) the identity of the Forsaken already changed towards what you want it to be (choosing to be one), this is problematic because you cant have it both ways, you cant pretend that the phrase "X is becoming Y", means the same as "X is Y", because that is simply not true.
In other words, you can refer to any NPC you want, but those NPCs are just milestones towards a specific destination we havent arrived yet. The idea of choosing to be a Forsaken may very well be the Forsaken identity in the future, but it isnt the identity they have now in the present.

And no, im not treating the Forsaken as a monolith, i already answered this, im.. WE are speaking in general terms, we are refering to what the majority of Forsaken think.


Now for the other discussion:

Given the prevailing opinion of the undead in general following the traumas of the Scourge and the legacy of the Third War, I'd say it'd be relatively easy to find people who hate Calia simply for being undead. Add on to that the general mistrust and the tainted legacy of the Menethil line from whom the Scourge's own Lich King descended, and you've got a great recipe for hatred on demand, more or less. Again, you try hard to dismiss an argument without really considering it, when pretty much the entire setting supports it. Hell, even Commander Belmont calls Calia out on being a Menethil, expressing deep distrust of her lineage - and he's one of the Forsaken leaders. Imagine what the sentiment of others might be.

I've also not just made a case, I've made multiple cases, a practical ambuscade of cases surrounding your evidence which you've already admitted is weak. You accuse me of clutching at straws, but it actually appears more like you're shoving your fingers in your ears and chanting "I can't hear you" like we're having a playground spat.

As i said before, this particular discussion is about whether or not Calia is rejected because that determines whether or not she fits with the rest of the Forsaken, but its not about being rejected for any reason, its about being rejected for being an undead. So no, she being a Menethil simply doesnt matter.

And just so we are clear, you are shooting your own foot with the comment about Commander Belmont, because if you prove to me that the Forsaken themselves dont accept Calia, it means she doesnt fit with them and you are essentially conceding the argument.

Now this is the first case you have made that actually makes sense in the context of this discussion:

Given the prevailing opinion of the undead in general following the traumas of the Scourge and the legacy of the Third War, I'd say it'd be relatively easy to find people who hate Calia simply for being undead.

But you cant really prove this, that is simply your interpretation, while i can prove for a fact that Jaina and Anduin accept her.

Ah, I see now you are laboring under a misunderstanding - "winning" is an act that requires stakes, and there are no stakes to be won or lost here. This is simply an exchange of ideas - point and counterpoint, argument and counterargument. I'm not trying to "win" the discussion because you don't "win" discussions, you simply explore and illuminate the truth of ideas, preferably with sound reasoning and ample evidence. If you approach a discussion like it's a thing to be won or lost then you've already lost before you even began. Even in terms of a debate neither of us can truly assess our arguments and claim "victory," as that's for the audience to decide. Our own biases preclude us from having the required objectivity.

Now, this is besides the discussion, but you cant make statements like this:

that's for the audience to decide.

and also make statements like this:

a claim I've successfully shown isn't in evidence

you cant say that its for others to decide and declare on a whim that you are right at the same time because those two things contradict each other.
You cant pretend to be humble and act petty.

[Shadowferal]

...hey...if they're no longer forsaken, as in "gods' forsaken," then what are they calling themselves now?
"Unplayable?"

[Syegfryed]

i think you are not following the logic of the conversation, so i will have to explain it for you:

we are arguing as to whether or not Calia fits as part of the Forsaken, we assess that by determining if Calia fits the Forsaken identity or not. A key component of the Forsaken identity is that they are rejected for being undead, hence the name "Forsaken" and hence their particular history of being persecuted by humans and treated like monsters. You can add that they worship Silvanas, but that is irrelevant to the discussion to be honest.

I add that appearence and design are also key factors that determine if a character fit or dont forsaken identity.

And by that alone, Calia DOES NOT fit.

About the rejection part, we know she wasnt rejected by anduin Jaina and other alliance leaders, so that already makes her not fitting. It doesnt matter what other people from stormwind rly care, cause i doubt they even know she is alive.

[Piamonte]

I add that appearence and design are also key factors that determine if a character fit or dont forsaken identity.

And by that alone, Calia DOES NOT fit.

About the rejection part, we know she wasnt rejected by anduin Jaina and other alliance leaders, so that already makes her not fitting. It doesnt matter what other people from stormwind rly matter, cause i doubt they even know she is alive.

To be honest i dont think that appearance matters but this is something that it is impossible to know either way.

The alliance not knowing she is alive is a good point though.