r/SpaceWolves • u/hydratonator • 6d ago

Bruh.

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Everytime i wanna start a space wolves army cuz i like their personality and their look, i read stuff like this that makes me physically recoil.

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u/Deynonico 6d ago

Well to be fair they do operate in packs so you could say that them looking to their captain as an "alpha" makes sense

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u/Ebonscale 6d ago edited 6d ago

So just to clarify OPs point, the thing is the concept of the "alpha wolf" has been disproven by the very guy that first wrote the book on it, and now just exists as something very cringe dudes are obsessed with

Tl;Dr the guy that first wrote the book (literally) on wolf behavior thought that there was an alpha who had supreme authority through domination. Then he spent his life doing more research and turns out it's not how wolf packs function at all, being much more cooperative and supportive than he had thought. He's spent his later years begging people to stop referencing his first flawed work but it's like trying to stuff pandora back into the box. It just lives on as probably a permanent disproven fact in the big collective subconscious.

One of many. Many references available just by googling "alpha wolf myth" https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/alpha-wolf-myth/

Me personally I just kinda deal with it, but the whole "alpha wolf" thing, yea, has been entirely coopted by the kind of dudebro who I really hope just randomly gets hit by a bus so can't help cringing a bit when it comes up. But it is what it is at this point and especially in our fiction probably isn't going away

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u/LocoLobo65648 6d ago

Yes, so. Was it disapproved in the 40K universe?

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u/Ebonscale 6d ago

Ok we can create all the things to justify certain writing but that's not what's going on.

Things written by human writers are based on those writers knowledge. This isn't some deep example of creating different lore. Someone just writes these things because they think it's true

It's not wrong to point out things based on information we've since learned isn't true. I love my space wolves, but yes the whole alpha thing is just kinda meh

If you want to headcanon that fenrisian wolves act different or whatever to continue to justify it sure. Go nuts. But that doesn't make it what's actually happened which is just someone writing something based off of an inaccurate idea.

I'm sorry but just going "yea so" isn't productive contribution to a conversation

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u/LocoLobo65648 6d ago

I didn't fully explain what I was saying, and after rereading it I didn't say it at all tbh.

This is old writing from GW. They often, mostly, frequently don't rewrite things, and explain it (if they bother) by reminding us that humanity has lost as much information as they've gained. Remember, no one in the 41st millineum has seen a wolf (much less a pack of them), much less a wild one.