Alright, to make things clear, I will acknowledge that after comedy, sexual/romantic stuff is my weakest point as a writer.
As for why in terms of sexual stuff, breasts are mentioned, it is because they can be both sexual and non-sexual depending on the context while penises and vaginas are more sexually charged so writing them feels like blatantly sexual rather than mildly sexual with breasts. If I was trying to write blatantly sexual stuff with breasts, I would be mentioning the nipples because those are only mentioned in highly sexual contexts in my experience.
I suppose part of it is that I've had people, including my own sister, argue to me that breasts shouldn't considered sexual organs like penises and vaginas and it is sexist to women to consider them that since it forces them to cover up their chests while men don't have to. Combine that with overhearing both of my sisters and their friends have casual conversations about their breast sizes and the cup sizes of their bras, sometimes including my mum, and I guess I just don't associated breasts with sex as much as I do with penises and vaginas.
For me, breasts are sexual depending on the context so if mentioned in a non-sexual context such as describing the appearance of someone, I don't consider at all sexual. Especially since the breasts of a woman can be one of their more obvious features.
Which brings me to one of the complaints. Some of the female characters get the size of their breasts mentioned when I am describing their appearance. For me, it is just like saying that they have blue eyes or long blonde hair or they have a long scar on their cheek and there isn't nothing sexual about it because in those contexts, I don't any sexual connotations from mentioning their chest. This is a description of one of their more obvious physical features as I personally find the chest and hair of a woman more obvious at a glance than smaller and slightly more hidden features such as eyes or scars.
This in turns leads to me just doing things like casual describing the goddesses as having large breasts and hips because for me, that is a mundane descriptor of their physical appearance with no sexual connotations due to the context being used.
Now I'm going to get to where all of this started in the quest, which is when I came up with Vryn. For Vryn, I had her a fit and healthy huntress who was a Martial Hero. That meant she had a muscular built for strength and stamina, but also a large chest and wide hips to make it easier for her to both survive childbirth and raise the kid afterwards.
Since a large chest and wide hips are considered attractive in the Neolithic for exactly those reasons (alongside a large belly to represent fertility), that made Vyrn an attractive woman.
Then her granddaughter inherited the appearance of her grandmother when I was rolling for her traits. Since it was still the early game and I was still finding my footing, I relied upon the dice rolls for a lot of things back then such as the appearances of characters.
Next was Arthryn who was formed by, actually, I already got a post on this:
You don't get to vote. The initial religious beliefs of the People have already been shaped by the actions and events of the early turns along with background dice rolls.
First of all, Arthryn is basically Arth and Vryn getting fused together and turned into a deity in the stories of the People. There are three main reasons for this, the first one being that Arth is a major figure in the tales of the People. A double Hero like him would have ended up being significant in the mythos of the People and having a Diplo-Culture Hero like Wyrn only ensured that he and Vryn would become prominent. The second reason is also due to having Wyrn as a Diplo-Culture Hero, she ended up creating a lot of stone carvings that accurately depicted Vryn's appearance. The third reason is due to Arth and Vryn being mentioned together with a lot of regularity in the stories, they eventually got mutated from 'Arth and Vryn' to just 'Arthryn'. (I rolled to see if it would end up getting shorten or if they would get remembered as two separate individuals)
The main factor for getting a goddess instead of a god was due to Wyrn's stone carvings and the mutation of the name. Due to all the carving of female Vryn and Arth & Vryn getting mistaken for the single figure that is Arthryn. Since all of this widespread imagery of Arthryn shows her to be female, she is clearly a female goddess. And since Arth and Vryn have got merged together to become Arthryn in the stories, Arthryn gets credit for the deeds of both Arth and Vryn.
Due to Arth being a Diplo and Admin Hero and Vryn being an attractive Martial Hero, Arthryn is effectively viewed a beautiful Diplo Genius/Admin Genius/Martial Genius. If it wasn't for the fact she is a goddess, she would be something of a Mary Sue because Arthryn is a beautiful, charismatic super-intelligent genius who always knows what to do whilst also being the mightiest of hunters who safeguards the People against threats. She is also viewed not as being the goddess of an element or a concept, but as being the People's goddess. So rather than be the Goddess of Love like Aphrodite or the Goddess of the Hearth like Hestia, Arthryn is the Goddess of the People the same way that Britannia was the Goddess of Britain except Britannia is more location-based while Arthryn is more people-based.
It is due to being the Goddess of the People and based off of multiple Heroes that Arthryn is viewed as being a jack of all trades rather than being good at a particularly area like many deities or specialised in the concepts that she is goddess of. The People are currently henotheistic rather than monotheistic or polytheistic or even monolatristic as they worship their goddess Arthryn as she is the Goddess of the People while acknowledging that there may be other deities out there. This may change once Wyrn has an accepted place within the mythos of the People.
Right now Wyrn's relation to Arthryn is undetermined. While accepted that she exists, her level of divinity and her connection to Arthryn is still debated by the elders and proto-priests of the People. While the main debate use to be whether Wyrn was Arthryn's daughter or granddaughter, it is now commonly accepted that she was the direct daughter of Arthryn. Now the debate is whether Wyrn is just a demigoddess or a full fledged goddess, a lesser goddess to Arthryn's greater goddess. If the latter option is accepted as being the case, the People will shift away from being henotheistic to being polytheistic as they will have two goddesses and may gain some more in the future.
Appearance wise, Arthryn's physical look is determined by a mixture of Vryn being a huntress, the stone carvings that Wyrn made of Vryn and the current expectations of beauty. In the stone age, good health and fertility were prized as being attractive and desirable traits in a woman so large hips, breasts and bellies are viewed as being beautiful. However, Vryn was a great huntress who was physically active and made sure to stay fit even into her old age (her healthiness and fitness are part of why she lived so long IC). So while she was well-off and well-fed, she didn't get fat and was instead muscular. This in turn resulted in the stone carvings made by Wyrn having her be shown as fit and healthy with muscles rather than fat. Combined with how living huntresses amongst the People are too active and fit to be fat, it is generally accepted that Arthryn didn't have a big belly except when she was pregnant with Wyrn.
Because of this, Arthryn is depicted as being a tall, healthy woman with muscles, large beasts & hips, but an average waist & belly. While the stone carvings of Vryn were made when Vryn was old and an elder, she is known for being a huntress and you don't get elders out in the field as huntresses as they are too old for that. Together with how the stone carvings weren't detailed enough to include wrinkles, Arthryn is pictured as a young, healthy woman in the physical prime of her life. (I rolled to see if Arthryn would get pictured a young & fit huntress or as a wise & matronly elder and got the former)
That said, Arthryn does get given an overly large belly when she is pregnant with her daughter Wyrn, but only when she is pregnant with a child. As Wyrn looked like her Vryn, stories of Wyrn inheriting her grandmother's beauty got turned into Wyrn, the goddess/demigoddess daughter of Arthryn, being identical to her mother when it comes to her looks.
Then you got the Blessing of Arthryn. This worked by linking the spirit of the blessed person to Arthryn herself and lets some of her spirit flow into theirs. This gives the person some of Arthryn's features such as improved intelligence, toughness, strength and stamina and in the case of women, makes their appearance more like the goddess. It also allows the offspring of a blessed person to get the blessing as they inherit the spiritual connection to Arthryn from their blessed parent. It is also through this connection to her that Arthryn can track her blessed. To make it clear, if Arthryn had been a male deity, it would be the men who would look like him due to the blessing, but since she is female, it is the women.
While I have put it as large breasts, that isn't something ridiculous or super large, but rather than having A and B cups with like the majority of women in the region, the blessed women have C and D cups. The exact up sizes are subject to change as I don't properly understand the system around them. Put similarly, they are the same size as many women today having including all of the women in my immediate family. So while large, they are still within the range that you can naturally get.
As for the breast support spell, that was due to Veekie pointing out to me that potential troubles that the women would have due to their breast sizes, which made me feel sorry for them. This hadn't come up earlier since as a man, I didn't realise those sort of chest trouble existed so I decided to invent bras for them.
But since you didn't exactly have the tech for good conventional bras, I decided to go with magic bras. In the end, I made it Arthrynite magic because I figured Arthryn would feel responsible for the trouble and obligated to help fix it.
In hindsight, I can see how that spell might seem sexual nature and unnecessarily so. This wasn't intended to be the case as it was meant to be what amounts to a magic bra to help with a problem I only recently realised existed.
As for the mentioning of large breasts, I don't feel it happens that often and while I said it was only in a fifth of the posts at most, I am also of the opinion of only half those mentions are sexual in nature due to the context of them getting mentioned. Furthermore, I feel like I am in a bit of Catch 22 situation. I am being told that it is happening in every update or every other update and I should dial it down. However, I am being told at the same time and I am using little enough detail and letting it fade into the background that it feels creeping, has disturbing undertones and feels sexists. So what am I do to? Well, I know the answer, but I just want to point out that I felt like I was being put into a position where I could only give the wrong answer.
Also on the topic of mentioned breasts and other sexual stuff, I'm afraid that is due to the nature of Arthwyd society. They are a communal-based society that is tolerant and accepting and as a result they never developed the sexual taboos of our society. The lack of importance of family and bloodlines means you don't need to worry about who marries who or who has sex with who or who the parents of the kid is. Combined with the Arthwyd being accepting and tolerant of others and their behaviour, you get a society that doesn't care about sex beyond consent (partly because Arthryn and common human decency and partly because of SV's rules) and no incest (there an IC reason, but the real reason is I don't like the 'wincest' meme).
Because of this, sexual activities are a common pastime amongst the People in the same way that computer games and book reading are common pastimes amongst modern society. This is because of both the lack of taboos and simplicity/easiness of sex as sex only requires another willingly partner while other activities require knowledge or equipment.
As a result, the Arthwyd are incredible sexually open due to the things that make them unique with their tolerant and communal society. This is in turn leads to them being crudely sexual and lewd because they go for simple and easy crudes over being more refined and subtle innuendo. On an somewhat-unrelated now, that the Ymaryn from PoC were the latter as when I re-read PoC during the start of this quest, AN put a lot of hidden sexual references into his work which you could only uncover via knowledge of Ymaryn society (such as a woman asking a Blackbird if he want to plough her fields).
What I have decided is mixture of what I feel comfortable writing, the Arthwyd culture and what has already been mentioned in the updates of the quest. This is that the Arthwyd will generally go for lewd and crude remarks that the same way that modern people swear and blaspheme. So rare in formal settings, but more common in informal or private settings. They will also often reference the breasts of women for both OOC and IC reasons. The IC reasons being that pretty much all of their women are busty thanks to the blessing while men are still hit and miss so you can't reliable describe the features of a man because they won't all have pecs while all women generally have a large chest. As a result, it is easier to reference a woman's 'mountains'.
OOC it is because I am not good at writing sexual stuff. I am particularly wary of writing romantic/sexual stuff regarding males due to bad past experiences so I refrained from doing that. Furthermore, I feel confident referencing breasts in a sexual manner while I refuse to do so with the more blatant sexual organs, the penis and vagina. That said, I understand how this is can be off-putting and feel sexist so I will try to branch out and mention stuff like hair and eyes in addition to trying to have things less focused on women and include more men in being sexualised. However while I will be trying to do that, it will still be a new thing so I will be sticking to what I know for now for the most part. I will also firmly state that I will only go into mildly sexual at most so stuff like erect penises or wet vaginas will not come up at all.
So while I do how the past sexuality can feel sexist due to being focused on the breasts of the women, I'm afraid there is no easy change or solution to the problem even if I will try to work on the matter.
This means that the Arthwyd will be making on-screen lewd remarks in the form of referring to someone's mountains. For example, someone will reference the side of the mountains or saying that they have been trying to climb her mountains or reaching the submit. This is because I can work it in for both genders as a man being asked "Have you been climbing her mountains?" while a woman would be asked 'Has he been climbing your mountains?'. There will be other references as well, but for now I am sticking to the whole mountain theme in terms of expressing Arthwyd sexuality. As I said, I will be trying to be more inclusive, but for now that is the sort of thing you should expect to see the most, especially in causal off-hand remarks.
Speaking of lewd stuff, it will be mainly coming up when you see the perspective of an in-universe character, especially one from the People. With more overview stuff, there won't be sexual stuff through since I have already been doing that, but others have been claiming otherwise, opinions may vary on that.
Another thing to bring up is that some characters will be lewd. For example, Elyn was flirty, confident and seductive while Wyrn is an outright pervert with Evalyn and Bronwyn also being perverted to a lesser degree and Bronwyn is still proud of her beauty.
Finally we get to the catgirls. You got cat as a sacred animal as a player vote so I refuse to take the blame for that, especially since you had options that several posters were claiming were better. Evalyn became a part of a prank by Wyrn upon becoming a goddess. It was meant to be a harmless joke by Evalyn to help Evalyn adapt to her new situation and help welcome the previous ostracised outcast-turned-larger than life leader into a family of equals. Cat ears and tails were featured due being the sacred animal of the Arthrynite pantheon and Evalyn was a member of the Cateyes before forming the Catclaws.
Evalyn liked them and willingly kept them since as a goddess, she can just get rid of them on a whim when she once to. Since she enjoyed the prank and likes her new family, Evalyn keeps them as a sign of sisterly affection and is fond of them due to viewing them as a sign of love and acceptance she didn't have in her mortal life.
If she didn't want them, Wyrn would have gotten rid of them for her with Arthryn forcing her to because while Wyrn is willingly to prank, she doesn't make long term changes like that without consent nor does she make major changes without consent such as sexual orientation changes.
As for why Bronwyn got them Arthryn felt bad over killing her. Since Bronwyn desired them to be more like her divine ancestor Evalyn, Arthryn gave her cat ears and tail like Evalyn and when Bronwyn joint the pantheon she kept them.
In regards to the claims that they are Anime, I will ask you to look at the Egyptian gods and goddesses. That is where I got my inspiration from and not form anime for reasons I shall cover latter in this post.
With the catgirl paladins, I came up with that idea due to wanting the paladins to have a clear connection to the goddesses. Since the cats are the sacred animal of the Arthrynite pantheon, I figured that giving them cat features would be a good way to obviously mark them as divine warrior. Do note that this doesn't necessarily mean ears and tails nor does it exclude males despite the term 'catgirl'.
Finally, I feel that there is a lot of readers projecting stuff into my writing when the read it that I didn't intent to include when I wrote stuff. I don't intend this in any offensive manner, but I do feel it is there after looking at the comments in the thread and what I have wrote. I personally put this down to my high functioning autism and the unconventional cultural interests as a result. Because of my autism, I don't always get social stuff and often miss out on implications.
In particular, I have found this particularly prevalent in regards to sexual stuff as I learnt that quite well in secondary school and college, sometimes to my expense. Because of this, I believe it is entirely possible that I am writing things that would be read in a sexual content with the right reading without realising it. In that case, I can't do much about it. However, if you want to say that something is being too sexual, you will need to quote so I know what you are talking about. If you don't, I'm going to have to dismiss you because I am unable to respond to your point if I don't know what you are talking about.
The second bit about my cultural interests also relates to the claims about the quest having random anime and harem moments. I have only watched three animes beyond the odd snippet here and there. Those are Sword Art Online as the first, the second was Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and the last is Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works. The first I have dismissed as something I'm not too much of a fan off while the second I enjoyed, but haven't gotten involved in the fandom. With Fate, I am a big fan of the Nasuverse as you can tell by my activity on SB through my interest waxes and wanes overtime. In regards to the Nasuverse, I like the well-thought out and consistent setting mechanics alongside the theming and the character arcs. In regards to all the fan service, I like the Nasuverse in spite of the fanservice and not because of it. If I could, I would remove all of the blatant money-making fanservice to focus on the plot, characters and theming.
Because of this, the claims that I am including anime and harems and anime catgirls are projection by the readers in my opinion. This is because I simply don't watch enough anime to include those things into my writing and have never attempt to deliberately include those things into my writing unless you consider polygamy to anime harems, which case you are doing actual polygamy as undeserved disservice.
My own interests are either hard sci-fi, superheroes or historical cultures/legends/mythologies with the odd fantasy setting here and there with most of those fantast settings being some form of game. Of those, I incorporate the historical cultures, mythologies and legends into the quest. As I mentioned before, the catgirl goddesses were inspired by Egyptian mythology and not some anime that I have never watched. I particularly take interest from the Arthurian legends and it is that interest why you are in the Not!British Isles area of the world and Welsh is used for the basis of the Arthwyd language.
So this is my stance on matter. If you don't like it, then tough luck I am afraid. I feel this is a reasonable and fair position on things and if you dislike it, then you can either leave the quest or skip over the bits I dislike. While I will work on the problems I agree exist, I won't be excluding sexuality from the quest, not with the sort of culture the Arthwyd have. However, I won't try to make it blatant or too overwhelming, but it will be seen when the perspective of the writing is from an in-universe character's view point.
I haven't proofread it so there may be spelling and grammar mistakes.
