Female mammals have mammary glands (boobs).
That is sort of by definition what makes a creature a mammal.
If reptiles had breasts, they wouldn't be reptiles, they'd be mammals.
With me so far? Good.
Chen-Chen seems to be lizard/reptile, but she has breasts. From an earth biology point of view, this makes no sense whatsoever. I suppose we could over look this as they are not from earth and so work differently…but…
Its going to get worse later on. Nymus women have breasts as well!
Why would a species that have beaks on the front of their heads need breasts? How would a baby bird breast feed? And in the Nymus culture, they regurgitate food for their babies! This literally makes their own breasts unnecessary!

So there you go, Harkovast is all rubbish and makes no sense at all.
……..

……

………

Just messin' with ya!
Here is the actual explanation.
There are two reasons all the creatures in Harkovast (with the exception of the Knarl, who seem to always be the exception in these things, and a few other obscure ones) have females with breasts.
One reason is the actual Harkovast biological reason, the other is the reason for this stylistic choice-


Reason 1 - Half-Caste Biology, the biological explanation.
Every species in Harkovast can reproduce with every other species and in Harkovast there is no such thing as formula milk.
Babies need to be fed by their mothers and most of them need milk. Even if a species (like the Nymus) does not feed its young in this way, they need to have a function to be able to feed young from other species.
(On a personal note, I'm not going to invent a world where women can have babies, realise they can't feed their babies and have their babies starve to death. That's just horrible!)
Whatever devine powers created Harkovast, they obviously worked this sort of thing out in advance (perhaps they always intended for all the races to live together in peace and harmony, rather than form their own little factions.)
Nymus women view lactating as an unsightly thing that happens during or just after pregnancy but goes away after a while (because if women don't breast feed, they stop lactating after a while) They consider the practice of using this substance to feed babies to be utterly disgusting. By comparison, they think spewing up small amounts of half- digested food directly into their infants open mouths to be one of the delightful miracles of motherhood.



Reason 2- What Looks Weird, the stylistic explanation.
This reason that I drew all the women in Harkovast to have breasts is because in our world, women have breasts. If I drew women without breasts, they would look strange (to our human eyes anyway.)
It's funny that a green, scaly, talking lizard woman is less strange and off-putting than women without breasts, but there you go.
I am not saying I wanted the characters to be sexually appealing especially (they are, after all, talking animal people) but I found my attempts to draw them without breasts ended up looking weird. It was hard to make their figure clear and they often just ended up looking like funny shaped men.
I am sure other artists might have worked out how to draw breastless females that still look feminine, but for me it wasn't working.
Perhaps if none of the women in Harkovast had breasts it might not have been a problem, but since I'd drawn the Darsai females with breasts, the Tsung-Dao would have just looked bizarre by comparison.

So there you go, I'm sure no one reading that has given this issue any thought, but now you know the explanation to a problem you'd didn't know about.

harkovast
So there you go, I’m sure no one reading that has given this issue any thought, but now you know the explanation to a problem you’d didn’t know about.

I was just about to ask.

In typical Harkovast fashion there's a long-winded rationale for well-endowed lizards. I'd have just said “Cuz I wanted to draw em with boobs.” and left it at that. (I'm just busting yer chops, you know I love all these little details)

The truth is: breasts are like blue jeans, they look good with everything.

I thought Yaten was hot, but Chen-Chen…meow! (See what I did there?)

I have in fact always wondered why every species has mammalian breasts in this comic, AND NOW I KNOW.

Not even being sarcastic. I mean, seriously, I've wondered about it.

I think you'd have been able to get away with it most of the time in yor comic. Artistic style like Manga would be more difficult because the faces can be interchangable between gender.

I think you would have been able to tell who was a chick, but I think those chicks would have looked very odd!
This is just my opinion….but I think women are REALLY hard to draw! Even animal women (in fact they are even harder to draw, with those weird legs!)

I figured that all the races having breasts was a stylistic choice, but I do like your choice of including a biological reason for it too. I often dislike of adding breasts to creatures that normally would not have them for a ‘just because’ reason. However, you seem to have made a good stylistic choice and an even better reason.

There was an episode of House with a woman who had no breasts because she had them cut off. Except she grew a third one under her knee.

Sea Cow- I swear on House they just make conditions up to fit the plot!
On that show the story is basically the same every week.
Someone comes in with odd symptoms that they cant diagnose.
House and his incompetent lackies come up with a diagnosis for really weird condition.
Then the patient gets worse.
Then House has a break through and realises it was a completely different weird condition that was the problem. Note that the lackies contribute a lot more to the first idea (the wrong one) then the second (which is pretty much all House and thus right).
Just add in lots of very amusing angry ranting from House and thats pretty much the script to an episode.

You know whats great about having your own forum?
You can go off topic as much as you want.

If we have to be on topic, non-mammal mammaries. There, the pink elephant with humongous breasts is out of the way.

So, how about them Red Sox?

Mr Lostman, did you notice that I actually have a mention under that trope?

Maybe, maybe not …

I get hits from the link on that TV tropes page most weeks.
God bless peoples desire to see non-human women with a nice rack!

Frregurt had this to say on the topic of reptilian females with breasts…


I have to admit, he makes a persuasive argument!

Yeah, but crocodiles (or is it an alligator?) aren't supposed to be vaguely humanoid, are they?

The “are they” was rhetorical. I'm not that stupid. Stupid, maybe, but not that much.

Canuovea-
Are they?
or ARE they?

No, they aren't….

OR ARE THEY???

You know, your reasoning is so mammalo-centric. Seems natural when you and everyone you know is a mammal, but for the sake of all non-existent sapient avians let me say this:
You said Nymus feed their children by regurgitating digested food into their mouths. Therefore, if a Nymus was to write Harkovast, they wouldn't give breasts to everyone. They would give them ability to puke on demand (to put it bluntly)! After all, how are you gonna feed your Nymus-like babies there's a very remote chance you'll be having, not really, but it's a logical reason, no?

No, that's actually a good question. You seem worried about mammal half-castes getting nutrition form non-mammal mothers, but what about Nymus half-castes, to whom their mothers' breasts are useless and are left with no natural way to feed? That mammalism is just cruel!

As I mentioned, Nymus women can lactate, so could breast feed a child if they wanted or needed too.

But yes, if Harkovast was written by a species of boobless bird people whose women do not produce milk, they would make a fantasy world where everyone puked on demand.
Its an interesting little thought experiment, to be sure.
Curse my small minded mammalian outlook!

If you had to feed a Nymus baby the best bet would be to mush up food for it. If you cooked it down enough the baby would be able to manage it. I am sure Nymus midwives could give lots of advice on the correct way to do this.
Also it could subsist on breast milk, you would just have to get it into its mouth by a different means…possibly an eye dropper type device?

Give it up, Hark…. you just wanted to put boobs on ‘em.

Worry not. I happen to believe no sentient female creature, regardless of species, should be devoid of bosoms. It just ain’t natural. ;D

You do make a persuasive argument.
I wish to subscribe to your news letter.