A problem with RPGs: RPG developers are not well-read in myth and fantasy/sci-fi literature

[Nikanuur]

Many Hugo awards winners have writing that makes Divinity Original Sin 2 writing look like Shakespeare in comparison. I do not see how one can argue the fantasy/sci-fi industry as a whole has better writing then the video game RPG industry.

This is 100% true. Fantasy is broadly a dogshit genre filled with crap upon crap. With only minor exceptions like LOTR. 50s-80s sci-fi literature is where it's at. Which is also why more RPGs should be sci-fi instead of dogshit, uninspired fantasy.

High-quality fantasy writing:

• H. Rider Haggard- King Solomon’s Mines, She
• William Morris- The Well at the World’s End
• W.H. Hodgson- The House on the Borderland, The Night Land, nautical horror stories
• Lord Dunsany- Various stories
• Abraham Merritt- The Moon Pool, The Ship of Ishtar, Dwellers in the Mirage, Creep Shadow Creep
• Eric Rücker Eddison- The Worm Ouroboros
• H.P. Lovecraft- Various stories (though primarily horror, secondarily SF)
• Robert E. Howard- Conan the Cimmerian stories, Solomon Kane stories
• Clark Ashton Smith- Various stories
• J.R.R. Tolkien- The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy
• Fritz Leiber- Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories
• Mervyn Peake- Titus Groan, Gormenghast
• Jack Vance- The Dying Earth stories and novels, Lyonesse trilogy
• Poul Anderson- Three Hearts and Three Lions, The Broken Sword
• Peter S. Beagle- A Fine and Private Place, The Last Unicorn
• Michael Moorcock- Elric stories (1961-1977, in publication order)
• Roger Zelazny- Lord of Light, original Amber novels, Dilvish the Damned stories
• Gene Wolfe- Book of the New Sun (originally published as a tetralogy)

Nice list!
I'd add my two cents with Robert Holdstock: Mythago Wood / Lavondyss, etc.

 

[Azdul]

Proper literature ended with Rigveda.

Old Testament is mostly fine. While Book of Esther has female protagonist, it teaches important lesson about trusting a woman. It may also be too jewish for some readers.

 

[Tyranicon]

Quite true, but what prevents the real men from keep writing good novels?

you're going to be fighting an uphill battle

I would have it no other way. You can't just talk the talk, you also have to walk the walk.

Besides, current media is a giant pussy waiting to be fucked.

 

[Iucounu]

And it makes me nauseous whenever a premodern-based setting is a structurally 100% exact copy of current-day society.

It's not done on purpose then, the assumption being that players are to ignorant to understand any other culture than their own? Can't be, now I remember that Skyrim lets you play as a werewolf, a cannibal or a necrophile, all of which are - hopefully - alien cultures to the player.

 

[The people of Duckburg]

I would have it no other way. You can't just talk the talk, you also have to walk the walk.

Besides, current media is a giant pussy waiting to be fucked.

If you're willing to do it, certainly don't let me discourage you. Still, there are a lot of people out there that aren't willing to do it because they believe that it's committing social suicide. Whether that's true or not is irrelevant because they'll still act accordingly if they believe that it is true.

 

[Tyranicon]

If you're willing to do it, certainly don't let me discourage you. Still, there are a lot of people out there that aren't willing to do it because they believe that it's committing social suicide. Whether that's true or not is irrelevant because they'll still act accordingly if they believe that it is true.

You can't do it within the existing structure. Establishments like the video game industry promote conformity. More than promote, they enforce it.

But conformity breeds weakness.

A few hundred years ago, a similiar situation would've played out with a decadent society that has lost its manly qualities and are at risk of being overrun by the barbarian horde.

For now... I'll just say that weakness is not competitive.

 

[gurugeorge]

We racists don't give a toss about skin colour per se, it's the whole complex of psychoilogical and physical traits that typically go along with certain skin colours that are the problem

How would you account for white woke liberals in this context? They sure bring down the European average.

The case of white liberals is interesting, what's happening there is that they're taking seriously what they've been taught about the world and about their own people (re. history of WW2 and since, and about how their own people are the most evil people who have ever lived) and they don't really look into it much because they're locked into those beliefs for social climbing. Particularly white women, whose job it traditionally was to promulgate and promote the society's ideals (it's just that the ideals they follow have been subverted).

If the society around them was Fascist they'd fall in with that (which of course from my point of view would be a good thing ).

 

[Iucounu]

We racists don't give a toss about skin colour per se, it's the whole complex of psychoilogical and physical traits that typically go along with certain skin colours that are the problem

How would you account for white woke liberals in this context? They sure bring down the European average.

The case of white liberals is interesting, what's happening there is that they're taking seriously what they've been taught about the world and about their own people (re. history of WW2 and since, and about how their own people are the most evil people who have ever lived) and they don't really look into it much because they're locked into those beliefs for social climbing. Particularly white women, whose job it traditionally was to promulgate and promote the society's ideals (it's just that the ideals they follow have been subverted).

I'd say their willingness to be subverted is noteworthy, suggesting flaws on a physiological or genetic level. Could autism have something to do with it? Some believe there's a correlation between the latter and vitamin D deficiency.

If the society around them was Fascist they'd fall in with that (which of course from my point of view would be a good thing ).

They'd just switch sides at any moment...

A bit offtopic: if you're a fascist, shouldn't you approve of today's US "liberalism"? It's clearly authoritarian (exploiting useful idiots like the wokeists, BLM and Antifa to divide and conquer), and its economic system appears to be a merger of state and big corporations. But maybe the US state corruption is a dealbreaker.

 

[Iucounu]

I would have it no other way. You can't just talk the talk, you also have to walk the walk.

Besides, current media is a giant pussy waiting to be fucked.

If you're willing to do it, certainly don't let me discourage you. Still, there are a lot of people out there that aren't willing to do it because they believe that it's committing social suicide. Whether that's true or not is irrelevant because they'll still act accordingly if they believe that it is true.

Social stigma didn't use to discourage writers, that were often mentally ill junkies. So why are not today's lunatics writing novels and posting them on the web? They can even do it anonymously!

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Damn thine name. I be thinking of Scrooge McDuck!

 

[Vormulak]

I would have it no other way. You can't just talk the talk, you also have to walk the walk.

Besides, current media is a giant pussy waiting to be fucked.

If you're willing to do it, certainly don't let me discourage you. Still, there are a lot of people out there that aren't willing to do it because they believe that it's committing social suicide. Whether that's true or not is irrelevant because they'll still act accordingly if they believe that it is true.

Social stigma didn't use to discourage writers, that were often mentally ill junkies. So why are not today's lunatics writing novels and posting them on the web? They can even do it anonymously!

They do, they're called trans authors

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Some more thoughts:

Earlier I was arguing that fantasy is mythic-symbolic. There is the contingent material transitory impermanent world of matter. There is the eternal immaterial world of the symbolic and mythic forms. Fantasy evokes the latter. But perhaps I should have qualified I'm talking about the sensibility that magical, spiritual, 'grand canvas' fantasy, so most fantasy nowadays, 99% of it, is trying to elict, as opposed to what pulp weird tales are going for. Fantasy like Tolkien is pointless without the eternal, whether you personally believe it or not, it clearly effects audiences deeply. So the metaphysical and symbolic stuff applies most to things aiming to be lofty experiences, reveal something beyond the contingent impermenant material. So Tolkien clones, Star Wars type stuff, or grand narrative RPGs. Most fantasy today would like itself to be Tolkien, spiritually effecting, hence they are missing the target, by not even noticing the mythic-symbolic veil due to their modernist author's pure materialism, being mired in the contigent world of becoming. Seeing only the contingent world of matter is why they are obsessed with social conditions. Sauron/Orcs/Palpatine are a not real, they are symbol, and thus giving them a biographical origin in social causes (as I bet some chucklefuck at Disney would like to do for say young Palpatine), is destructive to the purpose they serve, materialising the symbolic that exists on the other side of the veil.

However, we were also talking about the importance of going back to OG pulp authors before Tolkien.

Pulp authors were not of course, trying to be Tolkien, they were lovers of weird tales, fantastical concepts, exotic destinations. Purely for the chad enjoyment of it. Robert E Howard lived in Texas, at a time when Texas was a lot closer to it's history as a place of tough frontiersmen. Frontiersmen were hardy folk, who got things done, and cared not for the illusions of civilization, but had to abide by natural reality, or they end up dying under a tractor, or bleeding out in a ditch gored by a bull.



So Conan isn't going for some lofty attempt to reveal the eternal. You are not going to find some Campbellian Hero's Journey, or a wise Yoda figure talking about spirituality. It's pure adventure. Arguably the most life-affirming valuable genre there is. He is Neitzschean if anything, like the movie suggested. But it is still pre-modern in mindset, as Neitzsche was. Conan sees the world roughly the way that some bronze-age person like Agamemnon, Meneleus, Odysseus, or Achilles do. It's on the level of survival, protecting your property. I see there being two levels to a society/civilization. The barbarian level of survival, followed by more genteel civilization, allowed by the second layer of inner spirituality built atop it. You can't have that higher layer without the bronze age foundation of survival. The first should never be forgotten, or people become impotent ivory tower types, conned by those who want their property, and severed from natural truth-reality. Conan deals with the level of pure survival, of ordering the world by slaying threats, of carving a life for yourself.

Other weird tales cover different things than a savage bronze age world, but are united by pure love of exploration; say all those tales of scientists disiscovering lost civilizations inside a hollow Earth by Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Rice Burroughs, or planetary romance like John Carter of Venus and Carson Napier of Venus. I put together a few examples of pulp or pulp-adjacent stuff for notes a while back, I'm sure I'm missing some promiment ones:

• "Tarzan" by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1912)
• "John Carter of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1917)
• "Cthulhu Mythos" by H P Lovecraft (1928)
• "Kull of Atlantis" by Robert E Howard (1929)
• "Conan the Cimmerian" by Robert E Howard (1932)
• "Zothique Cycle" by Clark Aston Smith (1932)
• "Doc Savage" by Lester Dent (1933)
• "Carson Napier of Venus" by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1934)

Plus, some of the movie sci-fi serials:

• "Flash Gordon" (1936)
• "Buck Rogers" (1939)
• "Commando Cody" (1955)

It's from weird tales that you get fantasy that is weirder and more exotic than the standard post-Tolkien high fantasy that now dominates Western RPGs. That quote I made of JarlFrank's, was from a JRPG thread where he was explaining that the weird settings in JRPGs like airships, Final Fantasy, Xenogears, etc, were more common in pre-Tolkien weird tales. Stuff like the Neverending Story wouldn't feel out-of-place. One shouldn't look down on the pulp as being less elevated than grand canvas fantasy. Sure a concept like a jet pack with an analogue dial is out-dated technologically; but the concept itself, of donning a war suit and fighting an alien empire, isn't. That's why people here have been talking about the importance of reading authors like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E Howard and Clark Astron Smith, or watching early serials and B-movies intently. Pure Tarzan exhuberance for exploration and the exotic, is all too often missing in yet another Forgotten Realms or Pillars of Eternity type setting.

Someone already mentioned that many modern writers seem to be embarrased of genre material. It's a well known thing. Hence endless shite Netflix, Amazon and Paramount+ adaptations where the people in charge clearly have no love or respect for the original material. You can always spot a bad production, from the kind of 'changes' they have elected to make. Only through love can you create something good. You can't do something justice if you don't love it, it turns out mishapen. George Lucas, clearly, loved early sci-fi movie serials. He even named the Clone Commander who shot Obi Wan "Commander Cody". The Mandalorians are essentially all Sky Marshalls. I don't think Republic Pictures and the "Galactic Republic" is coincidence either. He also loved grander canvas sci-fi, evidenced by references to Foundation and Dune, like spice and an ecumenopolis as capital world. All he did was elevate those older pulp serials to be grander, more naturalistic, while also ingeniously giving them a non-naturalistic secondary mythological spiritual layer.

Again, the guy from the video identifies four types of adaptation, from the film scholar Thomas Leitch:

Obviously the first two are healthy, because they are done out of love. Love for the original book. Love for an older film adaptaiton. But the latter two involve contempt and subversion. If you need to "critically or ironically revise" something, why the fuck are you adapting it in the first place, other than to use it as a platform? I think you can more or less delete number 3 and nothing of value is lost.

Personally, I love the stuff that I grew up with, so repeats of 1960s and 1970s shows like Star Trek: The Original Series, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and Battlestar Galactica, plus 1990s sci-fi space opera series like Star Trek, Farscape, Stargate, and Babylon 5. But being obsessive I did go back to older works, and even things like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and Commando Cody serials. Seeing past the technology of early sci-fi, reasoning it, justifying it in modern scientific terms, can be pretty fun too.

 

[Ravielsk]

You're conflating the idea of loli, Japanese cartoon and comic girls that generally have little in common with real children anatomically or mentally, with real pedophilia. That's a common tactic used by people that want to ban drawings of cartoon girls (curiously never shota though), usually while pushing for "love is love" and portraying real pedophiles as victims. Unless your nose is longer than you want us to believe it is, you should probably reconsider.

A highly unpopular but unfortunately very true point. Most infiltration and sabotage operations in the last 2 decades followed this exact playbook. First enter with a mostly sensible preposition, then expand said preposition a little than a little more than a little more... until you have effectively supplanted the entire thing.

What in particular proves that its "the first Beachhead" and not a natural movement is that it happened all at once within a span of about a half a year or so. Sites like r34 had no issues hosting the content for over a decade. Hell, Shadman and his loli Hillari were initially making positive waves across the internet.
Then pretty much in a instant a whole army of dedicated white knights rose up and mass reported every, and by every I mean EVERY, major site to their host. Even the Russia hosts who usually could not be asked to give a fuck in regards to anything got spooked.
I could buy that normalfags going to r34 and getting shaken by loli could result in this sort of reaction. But this affected pretty much every site on the clear net within the same time frame. I highly doubt that all the degenerates just grew a consciousness over night because they watched Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. For that it was too organized and focused. Natural movements tend to defuse over time and disappear because of the number of people joining the band wagon.

And before anyone starts bitching remember that gun control also started with the very reasonable preposition of "maybe your neighbor does not anti tank weaponry against robbers". A very reasonable take that currently evolved into debated on whether you should be even allowed to defend yourself and your property from robbers.

 

[gurugeorge]

We racists don't give a toss about skin colour per se, it's the whole complex of psychoilogical and physical traits that typically go along with certain skin colours that are the problem

How would you account for white woke liberals in this context? They sure bring down the European average.

The case of white liberals is interesting, what's happening there is that they're taking seriously what they've been taught about the world and about their own people (re. history of WW2 and since, and about how their own people are the most evil people who have ever lived) and they don't really look into it much because they're locked into those beliefs for social climbing. Particularly white women, whose job it traditionally was to promulgate and promote the society's ideals (it's just that the ideals they follow have been subverted).

I'd say their willingness to be subverted is noteworthy, suggesting flaws on a physiological or genetic level. Could autism have something to do with it? Some believe there's a correlation between the latter and vitamin D deficiency.

It's not really a flaw in an absolute sense, but it's a flaw relative to subversive tactics. White cultures work on a relatively high level of trust, tacit acceptance and underestanding. That's fine when it's an "our affair" thing between our own social classes, our plebs, our elites, our priests, our merchants. But when an alien group with pretensions to world domination comes in and substitutes false ideals for true, while pretending to be your friend, that's a problem. It's not absolutely insurmountable - and in the long run the past 2000 years is just a blip - but it's a difficult problem to get over.

If the society around them was Fascist they'd fall in with that (which of course from my point of view would be a good thing ).

They'd just switch sides at any moment...

A bit offtopic: if you're a fascist, shouldn't you approve of today's US "liberalism"? It's clearly authoritarian (exploiting useful idiots like the wokeists, BLM and Antifa to divide and conquer), and its economic system appears to be a merger of state and big corporations. But maybe the US state corruption is a dealbreaker.

Fascism is based on the idea of a system of government/economics that's ideal for a particular people (a particular genetic mix, at a roughly national level) - ideal in the sense of aimed first of all at that group's survival, reproduction through time, and flourishing - so matters of economic systems, authority vs. liberty, etc., are secondary. (e.g. Mosley's British Fascism was more individualistic and liberty-oriented, National Socialism more socialistic, Italian Fascism more romantic and idealistic. Every large genetic cluster has some system out there in possibility space that "sits right" with them and wouldn't necessarily sit right with other groups.)

You mustn't be confused by the concept of "corporatism" as used in Fascism, it's a version of an older socialist use of the term, where "corporatism" refers to getting all the various interest groups in society to work together. (On the other hand, if you're just indirectly referring to the old socialist canard of Fascism being "late stage capitalism" that is of course complete nonsense, Fascist governments don't attempt to excise or get rid of markets, money, business, etc., all those things have a place in a fully functioning society; they just subordinate those interests to the prior interests aforementioned - survival, reproduction and flourishing of the folk - and are quite strict about it.)

But this is probably going too far afield for the thread topic now

 

[Iucounu]

I would have it no other way. You can't just talk the talk, you also have to walk the walk.

Besides, current media is a giant pussy waiting to be fucked.

If you're willing to do it, certainly don't let me discourage you. Still, there are a lot of people out there that aren't willing to do it because they believe that it's committing social suicide. Whether that's true or not is irrelevant because they'll still act accordingly if they believe that it is true.

Social stigma didn't use to discourage writers, that were often mentally ill junkies. So why are not today's lunatics writing novels and posting them on the web? They can even do it anonymously!

They do, they're called trans authors

Could it be that masculine writers were actually closet gays/transsexuals in denial, trying to overcompensate by writing masculine novels? But since the last couple of decades they no longer feel the need to hide and pretend anymore.

 

[NecroLord]

I would have it no other way. You can't just talk the talk, you also have to walk the walk.

Besides, current media is a giant pussy waiting to be fucked.

If you're willing to do it, certainly don't let me discourage you. Still, there are a lot of people out there that aren't willing to do it because they believe that it's committing social suicide. Whether that's true or not is irrelevant because they'll still act accordingly if they believe that it is true.

Social stigma didn't use to discourage writers, that were often mentally ill junkies. So why are not today's lunatics writing novels and posting them on the web? They can even do it anonymously!

They do, they're called trans authors

Could it be that masculine writers were actually closet gays/transsexuals in denial, trying to overcompensate by writing masculine novels? But since the last couple of decades they no longer feel the need to hide and pretend anymore.

Take Robert E. Howard for example.
Despite the sheer masculinity and testosterone overload inherent in his Hyborian Age works, he was a thoughtful and very intelligent man.
Also prone to fits of melancholia (made worse after the death of his mother, unfortunately leading to his suicide).
I think he longed for the primal and strong character forging aspects present in the brutal and harsh life during the Hyborian Age.
To have only your steel, your strength and your wits to rely on.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Anyone like the old GOR series? One series as a kid I liked was about space with shuttles and spacesuits attached via air-cords. Damn me if I can ever remember those small hardbound books from grade-school. I'm sure they were a children's type book but maybe they were aiming higher like say middle-school. It is one series I wish I could fucking recall. I barely remember there was sentience in the computer, planet hopping, a lot of near deaths and eventually reality shifting. It just seemed so fucking out of place in grade-school and I ate that series up.... then forgot most of it but my mind still recalls where in that tiny library it was located (far west north side wall about fourth row up near the corner. I want to say there were 4-6 books in that series but it was a small library.... who knows). This was early 1980s but I figure the books were older from maybe 70s.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Could it be that masculine writers were actually closet gays/transsexuals in denial, trying to overcompensate by writing masculine novels? But since the last couple of decades they no longer feel the need to hide and pretend anymore.

Why don't they still write about high adventure then?

To be honest man, it sounds like you are falling for a 20th century liberal trope. Which we have all been guilty of at one point or another, as we all get peddled this Freudian stuff by school and media. Some 1960s subversive tropes may have truth, but most, we now know, were invented by the same biased and often lying psychologists and academics that love to 'deconstruct' fiction other, better, people made, and pour scorn on their ideals. Such as how Margaret Mead has been discredited, having mis-represented Samoan society, despite being an ideological pillar of sexual revolution. The death of male friendship, as every positive impulse becomes homosexual, etc, is a programme.

Society has become more effeminate. More people identify as sexual minorities. To an absurd degree among Generation Z, in some polls (probably because it gives social standing to people with no other 'oppression points' to cash in), that would mean the end of Western reproduction. You would have to launch a decade-long study, that nobody wants to fund, due to it's uncomfortable implications, into why. Here is a suggestion: Hormones are not one-way. Neuroplasticity means the actions we do with our lives, effect the shape of the brain, and expression in the endocrine system. We have encouraged effeminised behavior such as valuing non-confrontational solutions like retreating from bullies, over truth or bravery. We have allowed women to become the primary educators of boys, depriving them of positive figures. Without masculine initiation rituals, men never develop appreciation for the transition into adulthood. Without healthy forms of competition, men don't develop as much testosterone and physical confidence. Lack of testosterone also results in higher cancer rates, as it is a molecule essential to health in men. Pagan societies, before Christianity, had critical words for effeminacy in society, such as 'knaidos' or 'argr/ergi'. In addition, there are potential chemical causes, such as the presence of microplastics, containing hormone-disruptors, as another potential explaination.

So were any pulp authors gay? It's possible. It's also possible none were. It's possible the question is a modern over-obsession with minority sexuality. I don't personally think there were that many closeted gays everywhere in pre-20th century society. There are people who would go further, on the Christian side of things, who would say that homosexuality is initiatory, and is transmitted by abuse. Someone gets raped in the ass, and involuntarily has an erection, so grows up doubting themselves; their endocrine system feeds back and further effeminises them. That would constitute a terrible twisting of a life, and we shouldn't joke about it. Anyway we are diverging from the topic.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

On a related note, perhaps a last component to this illiteracy in modern game writing, is the psychological angle we have hinted at.

Sigmund Freud, and his nephew, the propagandist Edward Bernays, were the people who "invented" modern manipulation of opinion. Also pop psychology, as a widespread phenomenon, the kind of "if you hate spiders, you must want to fuck spiders" stuff a schoolkid migth come out with, thinking they are edgy. I.E. the psychology that a modern graduate of English literature, are likely to write in their novel. Bernays, sometimes regarded as one of the most destructive and manipulative propagandists or advertisers in history, for example, got women to smoke, by applying the psychology of sexual deviance to the cigarette (it's a powerful, sexually suggestive, subversive, phallic symbol, that men are denying you), probably resulting in millions of extra deaths from cancer. For he knew:

"to sell to women, you must always promote it as something men are keeping away from you" - some guy on YouTube​

Thus the entire feminist-supremacism movement, how to direct a society toward it's own own splitting on gender lines, the collpase of it's fertility, collapse of marriage, collapse of childbirth, collapse of the family, and the idea that working as a slave for a corporation is better than having a family, is explained in one pithy quote lol. The psychology of a romantic epic is, I would argue, much more sophisticated and natural, than the materialist one without symbology. One that lectures it's points like a manifesto, mired in the subjective trauma of a single subjective human perspective. Fantasy of the grander kind is nessecarily spiritual, mythic, with it's dreamlike symbolism, competing "gods" representing all the trans-personal psychic forces that buffet us, and inner wisdom. So Jung is superior to Freud. Materialistic Freudian pop psychology is one of the reasons for the death of the pre-modern perspecive, among the less literate moderns that become writers.

 

[NecroLord]

So Jung is superior to Freud

Without doubt.

 

[Storyfag]

DarkUnderlord can we please get a "quality poster" for Louis_Cypher?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I hate rats. I do NOT want to fuck rats! I want to eradicate them.

 

[DannyRope]

I've always found the 'this' or 'that' is a phallic symbol of the Freudian school of thinking amusing. It's so hard (heh) for anything to not be a phallic symbol that is, frankly, ridiculous. I love horror movies and it has been stated in various books and essays how the Final Girl reclaims a male kind of power from the killer when she takes a weapon, a phallic symbol, for herself (ofttimes the killer's own) and empowered with that weapon she kills her tormentor (especially relevant if it was the killer's own weapon since in that case the Final Girl takes down the killer with 'his own cock', so Freudian!), all this academic theory is mocked in the very meta movie Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon.

But, again, exactly how a weapon can not be a penis? Anything with a handle is a cock, a machete? A cock. A pistol? A cock. Could even a killer's weapon be evocative of a vagina? The only kind of weapon that I think could evoke that imagery would be garden shears, which could be argued to resemble a pair of legs that can potentially castrate a male victim and even then, I have no doubt, there would be someone that would say "nay, the garden shears are also cocks, two crossed cocks!". It can get quite silly.

 

[Butter]

I hate rats. I do NOT want to fuck rats! I want to eradicate them.

Nice try rat-fucker.

I've always found the 'this' or 'that' is a phallic symbol of the Freudian school of thinking amusing. It's so hard (heh) for anything to not be a phallic symbol that is, frankly, ridiculous. I love horror movies and it has been stated in various books and essays how the Final Girl reclaims a male kind of power from the killer when she takes a weapon, a phallic symbol, for herself (ofttimes the killer's own) and empowered with that weapon she kills her tormentor (especially relevant if it was the killer's own weapon since in that case the Final Girl takes down the killer with 'his own cock', so Freudian!), all this academic theory is mocked in the very meta movie Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon.

But, again, exactly how a weapon can not be a penis? Anything with a handle is a cock, a machete? A cock. A pistol? A cock. Could even a killer's weapon be evocative of a vagina? The only kind of weapon that I think could evoke that imagery would be garden shears, which could be argued to resemble a pair of legs that can potentially castrate a male victim and even then, I have no doubt, there would be someone that would say "nay, the garden shears are also cocks, two crossed cocks!". It can get quite silly.

The answer is that Jews are, to a man, quite perverted. Everything is sexual to them, and they project that sensibility onto everyone else.