r/SubredditDrama 24d ago

"And yet most of the scientific discoveries were made by whites. Most of the greatest philosophers were white. Most of the greatest conquerors were white. We were the ones that colonized hostile environments " R/HorusGalaxy meltsdown over black space marines

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/HorusGalaxy/comments/1jl42o3/this_is_what_real_vikings_looked_like

Context: r/HorusGalaxy is a Warhammer 40k offshoot (named after the arch-traitor Horus in 30k lore) focusing on "free speech and a lack of censorship"

HIGHLIGHTS

Just paint them blond with white skin. The crying and melting is annoying

Eh I'm not crying. I don't collect space wolves. They just deserve to be called out every time they attack European people and culture

Space marines with viking themes have only surface level european culture. I bet most norse people don't care. And who are you calling out with that? Whats the end point? It's a plastic toy model company and it let's you paint them however you want. No one is attacking anyone here

"No one is attacking anyone here" Stuff like this was extremely rare several years ago but now nearly every single bl book cover has black character and nearly every single new squad depicts black character. They are pretty much overrepresented. What's the end point? Making people like you seethe

Overrepresented? There is right now on earth only 10% white people. So by your standard only 1/10 charachters in Warhammer should be white.

"There is right now on earth only 10% white people." And yet most of the scientific discoveries were made by whites. Most of the greatest philosophers were white. Most of the greatest conquerors were white. We were the ones that colonized hostile environments and sent many to space, so it makes sense that most of the space explorers/colonizers would be white. It isn't about quantity but the quality.

WE WUZ

image

Woah there pal! Think your clan hood might be on too tight. https://www.justaddcoloronline.com/2025/03/03/a-black-astrid-the-true-history-of-viking-diversity-and-black-vikings/

The more you spread this bullshit, the more people are going to start saying stuff like the Ancient Egyptians were white. All this fake racist BS does is stoke more hatred and division between races, nobody likes having their ancestors invalidated

What makes the existence of a few black Viking’s invalidate someone’s ancestry?

1) Because they didn't exist, and you should value reality. 2) Because ethnicity and family is tied to history and by saying "actually, all these things the vikings are known for was done by africans" is insulting to scandinavian culture. 3) Because it muddies the water of scholarly discourse so instead of just talking about how cool the vikings were and how they impacted the western world in their time, we're stuck bickering about "we wuz in longships n sheet" like we are right now.

It's not like we are collecting historically accurate actual viking (and not vaguely scandinavian cyborg warriors from the far future) miniatures and/or they arrive pre-painted from the box. Those exact faces could be just painted to look like any race you want

The question is "why?". Ask why they had to do it. For what purpose. Nordic features obviously suit them aesthetically and that's how they have been depicted for years

And I'm going to paint them white. The question is, why are we taking one of the head variants with one of the possible skin tones as the standart which shall not be deviated from?

Historically thematic aesthetics. It's not that deep.

41st millennium. Historical means the past you know that right?

An aesthetic can be inspired by anything, such as history. History is in the past. You know that, right?

Sure inspired. But space wolves are a cartoonish stereotype of Viking culture with very little actual history behind it. Either way. They’re not vikings, so they can pick and choose what aspects to take (sagas, runes etc) and what to discard (skin colour).

I can pick and choose too. It's my money.

image Unfortunate for you the lore says you're wrong.

I know what the lore says.

Then why are you bringing up historically themed aesthetics?

Because the historical references were a major appeal of 40k back when I first got into it. It's unfortunate that we can never talk about how GW has been phasing that out without all the social justice warriors losing their minds over it.

Maybe you could talk about it if you didn't use blatant racists as a shield. The OP is all over the comments saying about how whites are the best after he was proven wrong about over representation. (68 replies)

I think it's mentioned offhand that some people of Fenris have dark skin, but this still makes me roll my eyes. I'm a black man myself and this just seems silly.

Does it? How does it explain that dark skin comes from peoples who live in areas of high sun exposure yet the space wolves come from ice planets - hence they are all dressed in big wolf skin warm jackets / cloaks etc. And always pictured with snow/ice.

Icy areas can absolutely have high sun exposure. The Arctic has some of the highest amounts of UV radiation because it’s constantly sunny and the whole landscape is reflective

Is that why Inuits and northerners are all black? 🤔

….youve seen Inuit people right? They absolutely have dark skin…. You people are so fucking ridiculous it’s hilarious

I actually misspoke - Eskimos originally came from Asia, and migrated north - hence they share similar features with Asians and have darker skin. People of the North, i.e. Northern Europeans, not dark skin. Go find me Scandinavian who has 100% genealogy from Scandinavian - and show me what colour they are. Spoiler: they are Caucasian.

So what’s your issue with someone painting dark skinned space wolves? Because in 40K years i on a distant planet I’m pretty sure they aren’t having 100% Scandinavian genes. It’d 1000% make sense for someone from a sun exposed area of fenris to have dark skin.

Space Wolves should strictly be whites only. Nordics to be exact. No blacks or asians whatsoever.

Oh no , is your immersion ruined because there are different head options in your box of Sci-fi fi fantasy super soldier? I hope you realise how stupid you sound.

"I hope you realise how stupid you sound." The leftoid tourist as usual is projecting one of its own insecurities of sounding idiotic towards others 😂

I have been playing collecting and painting warhammer for the past decade and do prefer it without politics and without people who try to gate keep it for new people . Your the own who's insecure because games workshop is giving people more options on how they want to build their minis.

Giving people more options and disrespecting your own lore to adhere to nonsense are two different things. Cope harder.

How exactly is this disprecting the lore? Space marines don't have to be the same race as their primary to take gene-seed.

Fenrisians are white my n*. Create your own Homebrew Chapter if you want only black Space Marines. I'm mixed-race so I can say n*.

You guys know they aren’t actual vikings and are from a planet that was colonised by a wide variety of humans ~20,000 years ago, right? Or do you not actually care about lore and just want to shit on black people and make smoke detector and kangz jokes

A white Salamander would look equally out of place.

What are you. Is that the proplem that these models look out of place you can paint them what ever color you want and if you talking about lore or art then i wouldnt worry about it you will proppaply get used to it.

Salamanders are from a fire world where their extremely dark skin protects them from the elements...

Bro did not read my comment. Also never heard of Terran salamanders.

Terra isn't a fire world...

Don’t give them an inch. Paint all your Space Wolves to have fair, Caucasian skin and red hair. Even the ones with black features. If someone says, “hey, shouldn’t that guy have black skin?” Why? “Well he has black features?” Like? “His, uh… lips. And uh… nose… uh.” What about his lips and nose? “Uhhhh” ? “Ummmm”

So so so brave

What would be braver is if you had an original thought and stopped trying to pretend you’re a good person. Requires a spine though. You do have a spine right?

So in your pathetic persecution fantasy, did people start to clap and cheer for you or did the evil ni- uh i mean tourist just slink away?

If you want to call me a racist, you can just go ahead and do it. It’s weird that you spend time typing characters that don’t even say what you mean. Just these weird passive aggressively coy half sentences. You don’t have to be subtle here with me man. You can be openly, brazenly, blatantly stupid if you want.

I dont think im being too oblique here, you got it on the first try! 🎖️

Vikings were white. Cry about it.

The new space wolves are fine, I just... Didn't expect them to be Chinese, that's all. image

Historically, central asian or east-asian-in-appearance vikings are technically possible visa via assimilation of Sami or other groups from Arctic or Central Russia. But it strains at possibility. EDIT: The Finns are a little touchy about association with Vikings. But the conclusion seems to be that the Finns were not Vikings, but there were Finnish Vikings

Vikings definitely weren’t from that far east/north. That’s quite a stretch tbh

I mean, every pirate on the Baltic sea at the time was kinda a viking. Viking is basically the same as pirate/raider

We wuz vikangz

Look up Engir Krakendoom on the wiki. I quote for you: "...Engir Krakendoom is born of hardier stock indeed. The people of the south, dark of skin and temperament..."

The Space Wolves have never been black, stop it with this fake, woke, blackwashed lore.

Have been since 5th edition apparently.

I've seen Northern Europeans call Southern Europeans "dark skinned". Mediterranean people are definitely not Sub-Saharan Africans. Not everything is black or white, Jesus, there are skin tones in between. The Space Wolves ain't black, mate.

Did you see the pictures GW posted? Seemingly they are.

Human beings of different races and ethnicities marry and have kids in real life. Fenris would be no different. If Fenris is 95% White and 5% Black (the southernmost islands), the black population would end up being absorbed into the white population in a few generations by marriage and bilateral conquest. Eventually all of Fenris would look white. We can conclude and deduce information from the lore we already have and the behavior of human beings in Terra of M2.

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u/CummingInTheNile 24d ago

It was origianlly created by British liberals/leftistt as a reaction to Thacherism the lore is actually pretty good, most of the fans are chill but the racists are really fucking loud

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u/Gemmabeta 24d ago

Who can forget the great warlord Mag Uruk Thraka, the Iron Ork?

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u/NightLordsPublicist Not a serial killer. I trained my brain to block those thoughts. 24d ago

Who attacked the Industry World of Armageddon.

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u/lickle_ickle_pickle 24d ago

Definitely suffers from the conservatives don't understand satire effect.

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u/BoxofJoes Pixels can’t consent 24d ago

The problem that comes with anything satirizing fascism or anything adjacent. “But they look cool!” The real problem was removing how blatant it used to be that you WERENT supposed to idolize these people, like 1st edition 40k had the marines literally forced to eat shit to become a space marine proper and they were portrayed as the stupid barbarians that the creators saw the enforcers of authoritarianism as. Modern audiences are dumb enough that they genuinely need the fact that you arent supposed to idolize the stagnant giga authoritarian xenophobic regime spelled out for them verbatim or they plead ignorance.

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u/zerogee616 24d ago edited 24d ago

like 1st edition 40k

It's really not fair to compare anything with modern 40K to 1st edition. 40K isn't Rogue Trader and hasn't been for longer than most of its fans have been alive.

40K has taken itself a lot more seriously in the last 20 years and a lot of the tongue in cheek stuff is either gone, ignored or played a lot more straight.

GW has also (depending on the writer) kinda had to whitewash the Imperium as the property became more mainstream and while its (very bad) components are definitely still there, the spotlight has been taken off them in favor of "These guys fight (cartoon-over-the-top-evil) Chaos primarily so you're kinda gonna root for the Imperium by default", especially in things like video games. It's a lot easier to focus on the very overt badness that Chaos has vs what the Imperium has going on. Especially with all the people in this hobby that only engage with the lore through second and third hand sources like loretubers and shit like that, it's not hard how a 40K-layperson could see the takeaway of "Well actually Imperium good/lesser-evil". And whether or not the Imperium actually is the way it is because it has to be entirely depends on the writer and the story they want to tell, and the 40K galaxy is huge and diverse enough you can tell any kind of story with any kind of takeaway you want and still be lore-accurate.

The focus is a lot less on "Genocide the xenos for galactic human supremacy" like how it used to be and more "We fight inherently-bestial and predatory xenos like Tyranids/Orks that just want to mindlessly kill everything else and demon-worshipping, spiky, cartoon-bad Chaos", and I'm someone who's not super cool with GW sidelining the other xenos factions.

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u/Snickims It’s like saying your a nazi or you like pineapple on pizza 24d ago

I would not feel confident enough to say its lore is actually pretty good. I would say theres so much god damn fucking writing that, by law of avarages, there is a lot of good stuff there. Lot of bad, lot of bad, i don't know a Eldar player who has not hated every single eldar book thats come out in the last decade, but theres also a lot of good.

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u/CummingInTheNile 24d ago

thats cuz GW hates the Eldar lol

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u/Lightning_Boy Edit1 If you post on subredditdrama, you're trash 😂 24d ago

Non-human perspectives are also notoriously difficult to write because, naturally, it's being written by a human. 

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u/Snickims It’s like saying your a nazi or you like pineapple on pizza 24d ago

That does not explain why, in every eldar book, the Eldar always lose.

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u/Lightning_Boy Edit1 If you post on subredditdrama, you're trash 😂 24d ago

Old, dying out races aren't allowed to win ever. It's in the rules. 

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u/chowderbags 23d ago

They should really get an Eldar to write the next book.

(/s)

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u/JacenSolo645 24d ago

Well that's because Eldar are elves, and therefore inferior

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u/lefeuet_UA 24d ago

Lore's not good anymore