Despite her popularity, some have criticized Tiamat for having a lot of negative female stereotypes that have been frequently used to vilify women and keep them in their place in patriarchal systems: shallow, lying, scheming, treacherous, envious, gold digger, etc. And if you wanted to try and address this, how would you do so?
For me, depending on the setting, I've done one of two things.
1.For my own personal setting, Axeoth, I've reinvented Tiamat as a Goddess associated with chaos and femininity. She is neither good nor evil. Rather she is wild, chaotic, unpredictable, and a patron of women who are oppressed by Axeoth's often patriarchal nations. She teaches women to seek freedom and equality among men, and to express their femininity and sexual pleasures. Additionally, Chromatic Dragons in Axeoth are not all evil, but they are all chaotic. While some Chromatic Dragons are very much CE, there's an equal amount of CN and CG's among them. Because of this, the evils of Tiamat and Chromatic Dragons from other settings, is turned into propaganda in Axeoth.
2. For official settings where she is evil, that part I'm still working on. But I have made a start by revealing that not all Chromatic Dragons are evil, and that they were not created evil. But I wrote that when Tiamat BECAME evil in the official settings, many Chromatics chose to follow their goddess down the same path. But I try to make sure that there's at least one good Chromatic Dragon in a Tiamat/Chromatic themed campaign. But I'm still working on Tiamat herself... especially for Dragonlance where she's the ultimate Big Bad. I'm even considering revealing that the War of the Lance is a false flag operation.
Honestly, I just tell them to form their own opinions and leave it at that.
I don't say that to minimize/marginalize the argument, but to bring people back to the fact that if we're introducing Tiamat into a game, we're introducing a literal deity whose aspirations, whims and fancies are far beyond the realm of mortals. Her history as a deity is also complex. She is by her nature, someone of many personalities because of the representation of multiple types of dragons. Even then, she has also been sundered, split into multiple personalities against her will and at points mortal and faced mortality as a deity and then of course imprisoned in Hell.
In other words? It's complicated. I don't presume to know how people will imagine Tiamat because I don't know their connection to the lore, which is extremely fragmented and sometimes contradictory.
Separately, all of the negative words that you used in the beginning are words that people can just describe "dragons" in general. That's the trope. It's not Tiamat specific. Smaug hits all of those buttons with the biggest of hammers. Despite with the wikipedia article says about Tiamat(because the string of words there is literally verbatim from it up to gold digger), and while people can say that about her? They can say that also about....all the evil deities? That's just how they roll in the classic sense.
I trust the people in my games in 2024 to be able to have a nuanced conversation about the topic
Frankly, I address it by ignoring it. You can apply most of those same characteristics to various male-coded Evil deities or comparable beings- lying, scheming, and treacherous is pretty much every Evil deity or comparable figure (and also somewhat redundant, which pads the list a bit), "gold-digger" and "envious" would also apply to the head of the Duergar pantheon and Gruumsh, and I'm not really clear what "shallow" is supposed to mean in this context. Really Llolth would be a better one to accuse of bad representation, but the counterpoint there is that tropes are tools and there's nothing inherently wrong with occasionally using the classic Evil Matriarch figure so long as you're not pigeonholing a significant demographic under it, and the existence of Eilistraee and a lot of material regarding non-Evil Drow neatly highlights that while Forgotten Realms Drow culture has been shaped by a toxic female in a position of power neither female nor Drow inherently predetermines an individual will be toxic.
Being dishonest, traitorous etc is villain-coding, not female. I can say I've never considered those as specifically female traits at all. I mean, sure, there are females who happen to be villains and have those traits, but that's because those characters were villains, and only incidentally female. You're not going to have any female villains if you refuse to let them have such traits, because villains have them.
Just write good villains. Let them have evil traits. Let them be whatever gender makes sense. Don't write them to be nasty to [insert person or group of people here], just make a three dimensional BBEG. When done in good faith, the biggest problem comes when you write caracatures or one-dimensional characters. Those can easily get offensive.
Well written villains though? Generally, that tends to iron out the problems automatically.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Despite her popularity, some have criticized Tiamat for having a lot of negative female stereotypes that have been frequently used to vilify women and keep them in their place in patriarchal systems: shallow, lying, scheming, treacherous, envious, gold digger, etc. And if you wanted to try and address this, how would you do so?
Tiamat is a five-headed dragon the size of a castle who's a walking juggernaut of destruction. If someone's reaction to seeing her in the game is "what a female stereotype," they probably need a better shrink.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The reality is that Tiamat probably was intended as a sexist caricature of certain feminine stereotypes - because Gary Gygax was a sexist who regularly bragged about how sexist he was and how he thought women ruined tabletop gaming. Like so many things he said, his ideas were wrong and repugnant… but he inserted them into the game It is no secret that Gygax often designed by looking at bigotry and stereotypes first, then constructing game elements around his unsavory ideals.
The best way to counteract that? Just do the opposite of what Gygax did. Instead of first looking to stereotypes and trying to build a villain to fit those stereotypes, create the villain first. Ask what makes a compelling bad guy - generally someone you love to hate or you hate to love - and use that as your foundation.
For Tiamat specifically, you have the chromatic dragons, each which have their own villainous personalities. Take those as your villainous base and work out from that. No need to even take her gender into account. Do that and you will probably be fine.
Frankly, I don't think this is a Gygax thing. She's a giant 5-headed dragon, which rules out the typical exclusively female villainous attributes. Most of the rest is just general "bad" attributes that historically people arguing in bad faith to push a position have back-engineered as an attribute of a gender, conveniently ignoring an equal capacity for the same traits on the other end of that spectrum.
On the subject of altering Tiamat, probably the easiest axis to shift her on while keeping her villainous is to shift her from an aloof figure who created chromatic dragons simply as a means to extend her influence to one that's more invested in securing the dominance of her progeny for their own sake. Still villainous, but definitely a different flavor from the current model.
Honestly, Tiamat being identified as a monstrous mother of other monsters predates Gygax by millennia, you might as well blame ancient Babylonian sexism. The idea of her being a five-headed dragon is new to D&D as far as I know, I assume he just wanted something that fit with the five main types of dragons. In any case, Tiamat's personality can be trivially changed without most people even noticing, because the key concept is "five-headed dragon", not any particular personality (in AD&D she wasn't even listed in the MM as 'Tiamat', she was listed as 'chromatic dragon', implying not necessarily even unique).
Despite her popularity, some have criticized Tiamat for having a lot of negative female stereotypes that have been frequently used to vilify women and keep them in their place in patriarchal systems: shallow, lying, scheming, treacherous, envious, gold digger, etc. And if you wanted to try and address this, how would you do so?
For me, depending on the setting, I've done one of two things.
1.For my own personal setting, Axeoth, I've reinvented Tiamat as a Goddess associated with chaos and femininity. She is neither good nor evil. Rather she is wild, chaotic, unpredictable, and a patron of women who are oppressed by Axeoth's often patriarchal nations. She teaches women to seek freedom and equality among men, and to express their femininity and sexual pleasures. Additionally, Chromatic Dragons in Axeoth are not all evil, but they are all chaotic. While some Chromatic Dragons are very much CE, there's an equal amount of CN and CG's among them. Because of this, the evils of Tiamat and Chromatic Dragons from other settings, is turned into propaganda in Axeoth.
2. For official settings where she is evil, that part I'm still working on. But I have made a start by revealing that not all Chromatic Dragons are evil, and that they were not created evil. But I wrote that when Tiamat BECAME evil in the official settings, many Chromatics chose to follow their goddess down the same path. But I try to make sure that there's at least one good Chromatic Dragon in a Tiamat/Chromatic themed campaign. But I'm still working on Tiamat herself... especially for Dragonlance where she's the ultimate Big Bad. I'm even considering revealing that the War of the Lance is a false flag operation.
Honestly, I just tell them to form their own opinions and leave it at that.
I don't say that to minimize/marginalize the argument, but to bring people back to the fact that if we're introducing Tiamat into a game, we're introducing a literal deity whose aspirations, whims and fancies are far beyond the realm of mortals. Her history as a deity is also complex. She is by her nature, someone of many personalities because of the representation of multiple types of dragons. Even then, she has also been sundered, split into multiple personalities against her will and at points mortal and faced mortality as a deity and then of course imprisoned in Hell.
In other words? It's complicated. I don't presume to know how people will imagine Tiamat because I don't know their connection to the lore, which is extremely fragmented and sometimes contradictory.
Separately, all of the negative words that you used in the beginning are words that people can just describe "dragons" in general. That's the trope. It's not Tiamat specific. Smaug hits all of those buttons with the biggest of hammers. Despite with the wikipedia article says about Tiamat(because the string of words there is literally verbatim from it up to gold digger), and while people can say that about her? They can say that also about....all the evil deities? That's just how they roll in the classic sense.
I trust the people in my games in 2024 to be able to have a nuanced conversation about the topic
Frankly, I address it by ignoring it. You can apply most of those same characteristics to various male-coded Evil deities or comparable beings- lying, scheming, and treacherous is pretty much every Evil deity or comparable figure (and also somewhat redundant, which pads the list a bit), "gold-digger" and "envious" would also apply to the head of the Duergar pantheon and Gruumsh, and I'm not really clear what "shallow" is supposed to mean in this context. Really Llolth would be a better one to accuse of bad representation, but the counterpoint there is that tropes are tools and there's nothing inherently wrong with occasionally using the classic Evil Matriarch figure so long as you're not pigeonholing a significant demographic under it, and the existence of Eilistraee and a lot of material regarding non-Evil Drow neatly highlights that while Forgotten Realms Drow culture has been shaped by a toxic female in a position of power neither female nor Drow inherently predetermines an individual will be toxic.
Being dishonest, traitorous etc is villain-coding, not female. I can say I've never considered those as specifically female traits at all. I mean, sure, there are females who happen to be villains and have those traits, but that's because those characters were villains, and only incidentally female. You're not going to have any female villains if you refuse to let them have such traits, because villains have them.
Just write good villains. Let them have evil traits. Let them be whatever gender makes sense. Don't write them to be nasty to [insert person or group of people here], just make a three dimensional BBEG. When done in good faith, the biggest problem comes when you write caracatures or one-dimensional characters. Those can easily get offensive.
Well written villains though? Generally, that tends to iron out the problems automatically.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Tiamat is a five-headed dragon the size of a castle who's a walking juggernaut of destruction. If someone's reaction to seeing her in the game is "what a female stereotype," they probably need a better shrink.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The reality is that Tiamat probably was intended as a sexist caricature of certain feminine stereotypes - because Gary Gygax was a sexist who regularly bragged about how sexist he was and how he thought women ruined tabletop gaming. Like so many things he said, his ideas were wrong and repugnant… but he inserted them into the game It is no secret that Gygax often designed by looking at bigotry and stereotypes first, then constructing game elements around his unsavory ideals.
The best way to counteract that? Just do the opposite of what Gygax did. Instead of first looking to stereotypes and trying to build a villain to fit those stereotypes, create the villain first. Ask what makes a compelling bad guy - generally someone you love to hate or you hate to love - and use that as your foundation.
For Tiamat specifically, you have the chromatic dragons, each which have their own villainous personalities. Take those as your villainous base and work out from that. No need to even take her gender into account. Do that and you will probably be fine.
Frankly, I don't think this is a Gygax thing. She's a giant 5-headed dragon, which rules out the typical exclusively female villainous attributes. Most of the rest is just general "bad" attributes that historically people arguing in bad faith to push a position have back-engineered as an attribute of a gender, conveniently ignoring an equal capacity for the same traits on the other end of that spectrum.
On the subject of altering Tiamat, probably the easiest axis to shift her on while keeping her villainous is to shift her from an aloof figure who created chromatic dragons simply as a means to extend her influence to one that's more invested in securing the dominance of her progeny for their own sake. Still villainous, but definitely a different flavor from the current model.
Honestly, Tiamat being identified as a monstrous mother of other monsters predates Gygax by millennia, you might as well blame ancient Babylonian sexism. The idea of her being a five-headed dragon is new to D&D as far as I know, I assume he just wanted something that fit with the five main types of dragons. In any case, Tiamat's personality can be trivially changed without most people even noticing, because the key concept is "five-headed dragon", not any particular personality (in AD&D she wasn't even listed in the MM as 'Tiamat', she was listed as 'chromatic dragon', implying not necessarily even unique).
I'm pretty sure gods and super duper fiends don't get into the whole Patriarchy/ Matriarchy thing.