It's a well-known fact amongst tabletop players that Pathfinder is the system for autistic DnD 3.5 minmaxers and ERPers (the two often overlap because autism). The writers themselves are degenerate coomers and it shouldn't be a surprise that they shoehorn their fetishes into the lore, e.g. Desna, Sarenrae, and Shelyn are in a lesbian threesome and Pharasma is an all-powerful mommy Mary Sue waifu of a writer. I have no doubt that the tranny stuff was written by her SJW eminence Amber E. Scott herself since she was one of the main writers for the base tabletop adventure path. Paizo isn't called Pozzo for no reason. Hell, we should be grateful that Paizo has been hands-off so far despite Owlcat's success.
Yeah, the minmaxing was something else I've been noticing, ever since I picked up the Owlcat games. I still remember when D&D books had sections telling kids NOT to roll 18s for their stats, since it was more interesting to play flawed characters, and if everyone was 18, then "the value of 18 would diminish". But now in WotR, I'm seeing loading screen tips that lecture new players on the importance of dump stats and build optimization. I thought maybe that was just the vidya games, but that's a structural feature of Pathfinder now, I take it?
Also, while digging through the online archives, I did notice a ton of ERP content too - like spells of horniness that take the place of Suggestion and Charm Person, at least a dozen deities with some kind of incest story, and of course that bard spell that makes everyone coom themselves. Again, wasn't really thinking too much of it - after all, even the succubusses have no tits, so how degenerate could it be? - but I guess when the main writers for the setting have no hetero fetishes, but every middle-aged cryptolesbian fetish, then banning "normal" sexiness while encouraging "weird" sexiness is going to be the inevitable result.
This might be autistic as fuck, but it's also reminding me of a notorious Neverwinter Nights mod from way back in the day, called Dance with Rogues. It was basically a Harlequin romance novel reworked into a mod that was as long as the base game; you play a beautiful princess who gets abducted and raped by a hunky Fabio pirate, and then slowly rises through the roguish ranks to become a beautiful redhaired pirate queen who gets all the dick she wants. iirc, rumor was that the mod's author was a Woman's Studies professor.
I played that mod when I was in highschool, specifically because it was tagged "Adult Content". Young kid, full of hormones, horny 24/7, you'd think an overlong porn mod would be right up my alley, yes? But bizarrely, the mod was actually
really boring. Except for the occasional bikini armor, there was almost nothing in Dance with Rogues that would hold the interest of a cishet guy. It may have been because, despite the rape pirates (or maybe because of the rape pirates?) Dance was very obviously written by a woman, for women; it put far more focus on the intrigues of romance and relationships, than it did on the practical business of going out and killing monsters.
Wrath seems the same way. Irabeth and Anevia, for example, their story hinges on them ditching the crusade to go play Sex in the City together. To me, that seems insane, maybe even a little insipid. But to a middle-aged woman writer, Irabeth's decisions might make sense: who wants to die in the Abyss, still clutching your grandfather's sword and surrounded by the corpses of a thousand demons slain by your hand, when you could instead have a nice apartment, in a trendy city, where you can just sit around all day with your NB femmeboifriend, doing fujoshi stuff on a Church pension?
