All jokes and personal biases aside, Calia is a terrible character on every level. Terribly introduced. Shoe-horned. Not logical at all. Everyone (or at least everyone who uses logical thinking) should hate her for how she behaved in Arathi.
She is not a good character. She is not a well-developed character. She was introduced (in her current Light manipulated “undead” state) in the same expansion as other well-developed characters like Katherine Proudmoore and Talanji. Calia does not hold a candle to any of the OG cast, Sylvanas included, or any of the better developed characters since then.
The conversation between Calia and Tyrande in the Shadowlands opening is pure cringe (I don’t like this word and I don’t use it but nothing else applies here).
The sooner Blizzard forgets Calia is a thing the better we all will be.
I mean, she forgot about Calia once (according to Taliesin) she can forget again.
Also, Christie is not on the Warcraft team despite multitudes of posts claiming she is. She writes and consults on dialogue for cinematics on all Blizzard properties and occasionally puts on another hat to write contracted novels for Blizzard. That’s it.
She does not make Warcraft lore decisions. Any implication she does is just wrong.
Baal you should really follow Christie on Twitter and get to know the people in C-Dev. Christie is not a “senior writer”. She’s an internal member meaning she’s an employee of Blizzard now, but she does not work on the Warcraft team. She never has. She is a consultant on dialogue for all Blizzard cinematics on all properties. That’s it.
For example, Terran Gregory just recently in the last few weeks joined the Warcraft team and he’s been making WoW cinematics for decades.
EDIT:
People need to realize, on the story forums if nowhere else, that Creative Development and the Warcraft development team are two different entities at Blizzard.
Fair, but that has nothing to do with the character per say. The writers are the ones who chose to have her as the sole representative of the Forsaken present. Again, I don’t think the character is irredeemable in of herself, but so far her implementation leaves a great deal to be desired.
If they unironically try to redeem Arthas and have him take up any sort of position in Forsaken society, I think Shadowlands will have officially dropped through the concrete floor of fanfiction-tier awful storytelling, and put itself on par with with DeviantArt photo captioning in terms of quality.
Executive no but she has a role, it is internal to Blizzard, the execs care about her a lot and already included various things that she suggested as per accidental TMIs from Taliesin
So long as she is there, Calia is likely going nowhere
Calia already is nothing like Sylvanas in that she’s not constantly stealing the spotlight. Even when she shows up she’s just like hey I’m here too, and Lilian Voss mostly does the important stuff.
I have no idea what MHP means so I can’t even respond to that comment.
I will say it is odd that people ascribe the moniker of stupid to Calia when they disparage her despite that not really being the case. I have no idea where this idea that she’s an “airhead” comes from, but you’re far from the first person who dislikes her to say she’s dumb. That’s not really shown in the game or novels and in fact she seems pretty intelligent.
…what? The entire point was that the original batch were so extremely few in number that they had to join the Horde or risk extinction. Cata+ Sylvanas is raising platoons of soldiers at a time.
Whether or not the OG Forsaken have more political power than the new ones has nothing to do with the reason I brought them up. Also…what? Lilian Voss was raised post-Wrath and she’s literally the leader of the faction right now.
This is why I still maintain that Calia’s in-game model is just an homage to Christie and that they didn’t really have any intention of making her the leader of the Forsaken, and if they ever did the public backlash against the character has changed their minds. The fact that they’ve clarified on multiple occasions that she does not represent the Forsaken is good enough for me.
We are going into a 9.1 that does not involve Calia for even half-a-second and we know that Blizzard said she is there in the Shadowlands because of her connection to Arthas, nothing to do with the Forsaken, so we’ll just have to see how it plays out.
It comes from the way she behaves in Arathi, like a naive child. She throws off her hood “come to me for freedom, I am the last of the family that murdered you and your families, but love me because I’m rich and blonde”
Naivety and stupidity are not the same thing. Especially when Calia is pretty ignorant to the politics of the world at the time she tries to help out the Forsaken who want to leave.
Everything after her very first failure in the Arathi meeting points to her figuring stuff out pretty quickly.
Again I’m no gigantic fan of her (I think she works fine as an interesting Forsaken characters not really leader) but can we just stop making stuff up out of wholecloth about characters we don’t like?
I realized something earlier today, relatedly to the lack of Calia, lack of Lilian, but the odd specific inclusion of Benedictus Voss in Helgarde Keep
Calia’s daughter was a young girl when Arthas did this thing in year 22
Young girl for me denotes Not Young Adult or Teenage Girl so anywhere from 5 to 12
Calia mentions Benedictus Voss and her were acquainted with each other.
Voss became part of the Scarlet Crusade trying to retake Lordaeron
Trauma, even as a teenager, can cause one to completely forget who they were. We see this in the cases of Indian Residential Schools where teens literally forgot their names, languages, and family
If the daughter was 12ish in year 22, she would’ve been 19ish in year 29 when Cataclysm happened.
When we met Lilian, who hated her “daddy” (a youthful non adult way to refer to ones father), she seemed mentally unwell. Layered trauma.
I think Lilian is Calia’s daughter, and Arthas’s niece, and thus the last Menethil.
No character has terrible input by themselves, the issue is indeed in how the writers usethem in the story they are building. And that IS the reason that makes Calia so ridiculously bad, cause we have seen and are alredy seeing the terribad use the devs are giving to her.
Yup, it would be the ultimate loss of quality, the “please hire some rando 12 year old dweller of Ao3 or Fanfic .net, they WILL make a better story”.
Suure? Let´s go actually check:
Pre-patch: which “Forsaken” character “consistently” appears in regards to Sylvanas literally opening the doors to Hell? Calia. Which character got worshipped as the next best thing with no actual narrative basis by characters that literally had never ever met her? Calia. Which “undead” stance Horde side got aknowledged? Calia´s.
Which Horde “Forsaken” got more prominence in the very FEW interactions between racial leaders? Calia. Who caused the spat between Talanji and the rest of the racial leaders? Calia.
Sure dude, that´s why it was Voss the one in Icecrown citadel in pre-pacth, amrite? And Voss the one to get Lor´s praise in pre-pacth, right? And Voss the one currently on Oribos representing the continuation on the story between the Forsaken AND Arthas, amrite?
Male Human Paladin. Related to a forum posting trope that consist on people obssesed with reclaiming Lordaeron´s Alliance theme. Usually looking to ERASE any trace of Forsaken thematics while at it.
She literally called people to defect to the Alliance in Before the Storm, getting even people not interested in doing so killed and going against the instructions of Anduin. After, she goes and mentions Voss father to her using “positive” descriptors. She mentions Derek Proudmoore as a positive thing in the nose of Talanji, the woman that got her father killed and her kingdom semi destroyed thanks to the Proudmoores.
She IS stupid. Usually makes the less apropiated comments ever and always causes trouble while at it.
Pretending to comment on stuff she is ignorant about IS stupid. Is like me pretending to be taken seriously while talking about genetic engineering or space travel.
Calia “Benedictus… What became of my daughter”
Lilian “Calia don’t waste your time with my father, he’s in the Maw for a reason”
Benedictus “My lady… Lilian… She is your daughter. I am not your father. I found you covered in blood in Southshore, your father’s corpse covering you”
Not the worst story beat I’ve heard, and definitely prefer Voss a million times over Calia (which isn’t saying much because Voss is not a logical choice to lead the Forsaken either), but has strong “Arthas is Anduin’s daddy secretly” vibes. They didn’t pick Voss for story reasons, they picked Voss because she was the only well-established Forsaken character that they could use in BfA because of her role in Legion.
If Blizzard could pull it off I could live with it. But I would expect Voss to step up to the plate, the Forsaken are unapologetically the Forsaken, Menethil or no Menethil.
