Why is Pathfinder so WEIRD about Pregnancy?
that's it, that's the essay
I’m breaking my completely unintentional streak of not writing essays about NSFW topics for this Substack since the Daredevil one with this one. My bad.
If you’re sensitive to discussions of pregnancy, abortion, and body horror (especially involving pregnant bodies and babies), either read this with caution or don’t read it at all. There will be pictures. This is your one and only warning. Be safe out there, friends!
If it were up to me, I would not be writing this essay. I would be relaxing instead, in a public pool perhaps, with my girlfriend at my side. I would be floating in the water, utterly ignorant to one of Pathfinder’s core deities.
Sadly, this is not my reality. I, like a fool, decided to read Lost Omens: Gods and Magic. This isn’t precisely a review of that book, not like my previous post about the Mwangi Expanse. This is me looking you all in the eye and asking… where the fuck did we go wrong? Why are TTRPGs so weird about pregnancy?
I might seem like the wrong person to talk about this. I’m trans. I’m not a woman. I have been on the record multiple times that if I ever got pregnant and wasn’t able to abort, you would next see me in an obituary. I do however think this qualifies me to talk about this. Maybe not as much as actual currently or formerly pregnant people with kids and stuff, but it qualifies me enough in the sense that, despite my personal hangups, I think of myself as pretty normal about pregnancy. I want more varied depictions of it in media. I am constantly advocating for that actually, as my girlfriend can probably attest. 90 percent of the time when I type Eileithyia, I don’t need spell check to do so. I think anyone who disparagingly calls pregnant people breeders on a regular basis should get punched, and I volunteer to do it. Because of that, I think it’s totally fair for me to raise the question. Again, why are TTRPGs so fucking weird about pregnancy?
I think it’s finally time to discuss it… together.
Pantheons and Problems
I think my teachers would actually kill me for posing a question that indicates a more general trend across a category right before solely focusing on a singular example, but this is Substack and I don’t care anymore. This is targeted at Pathfinder, and targeted it will remain. Feel free to chime in with your own observations about other TTRPGs if you’d like though.
Anyway, Pathfinder. I’m new to Pathfinder, so forgive me if there are any blatant factual errors in this, but I’ve tried to make this as honest as possible, even though it is fundamentally an opinion piece. Also, if anyone at Paizo sees this, I am open to getting a reviewer’s copy of Lost Omens: Divine Mysteries, just saying!
Pathfinder has 20 core deities. At the time of me writing this, Gorum - the god of war - is about to die, and his spot will be replaced by Arazni. The rest of those core deities will survive, though I have been reliably told (actually, I just watched this panel) that other deities may be changed as a result of the plot that is about to unfold. As I read Gods and Magic, I was introduced to each of these deities, one by one, in alphabetical order. With Lamashtu being in the L letter, I was not prepared for how she would look and act.
Thankfully, I won’t leave you to suffer the same fate. I will tell you right now that you will probably not like how she’s drawn.
Are you ready?
Here she is:
When I saw this, I was baffled. Most of the other designs in the core 20 were very normal, for lack of a better word. This was not that. More specifically, my eye kept being drawn back to her distended belly. Then I read the text for her entry. It’s one thing entirely that she’s perpetually pregnant. What gets to me more than that, though I do think that bit is… not great, is some of the other elements present in it.
Well… yikes? Oh, it gets better though.
Sorry, did I say better? I meant worse. 100 percent worse.
This alone would not be worthy of me typing up a post if not for a key detail. Lamashtu is, again, part of the core 20. She also happens to be the main fertility goddess in the setting. The other main alternative, a god of family, is also one that supposedly early on used to be homophobic and now in 2e is more so on the record of needing to be convinced that alternative family structures are A-okay and in the spirit of his faith, like some ineffectual grandpa figure with a deer head. So.
At this point, after also being informed there were other perpetually pregnant goddesses in the setting, I had to sit down. Like, what the fuck are we doing here? I’m so serious! Why is this a continual detail you feel is essential to include, and what does it say about the world you’ve crafted?
There are attempts to make Lamashtu feel like a goddess people would pray to in Golarion. There’s a brief mention of her being a god of outcasts as well as monsters. Specifically, there’s this idea suggested within the text that her faith appeals to those who are ostracized from society. I just don’t think the way she is written is clever enough to pull this idea off. What is so appealing about being made to give birth to a monster that won’t even listen to you or treat you as its parent? Again, what does it suggest about pregnancy that Lamashtu is the god you have to go to for your fertility needs, to the point where the language in cultures involves sayings wishing people pregnancies free from her influence?
These questions nestled themselves in my brain, but I decided they weren’t that important to focus on. It wasn’t as though she’d have any impact on the other books I’d be reading, right? That’d all be people like Abadar and Desna, not her. Right?
Right?
Book of the- Damn It! Not This Shit Again!
I’ve read a few books in between All Of That, and so I kinda forgot about Lamashtu until this morning. As a quick aside, with how poor my focus is, I tend to read multiple things at once. Currently, I’m reading Lost Omens: Monsters of Myth, three different Pathfinder bestiaries, and Book of the Damned. The final one is the one that’s important for this bit.
The guiding narrative principle of the book is that Tabris, an angel, descended into Hell in order to do a scholarly account of all of the powerful players within the infernal realms after his students and warriors died trying to fulfill the task. He got tossed out of the celestial plane for all that, but that’s not important. What’s important is that I forgot Lamashtu would be in this… until I saw her again… and read this…
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
Now, I know this book is 1e. This book came before 2e and existed long before Gods and Magic. But that’s the problem! Though I have been told this book is reviled enough that Paizo kinda just ignores it, the fact of the matter is that Lamashtu still retains her place as a major fertility god across Golarion and her influence still remains the same, if not larger than when this book was published. What gives? How do you recognize that maybe the ‘breed or be bred’ ritual to gain boons is kinda weird right before jumping into ‘HAVE A MONSTER BABY NOW’ territory?
People are weird about pregnancy. They just are. There is a huge contingent of people who are always frothing at the mouth waiting for Certain People to have more kids, and there is another group of people who find pregnancy and pregnant people to be utterly repulsive. I do not think these groups are remotely similar in terms of the power they have over governmental processes and the media, but I also think there should be more mainstream possibilities beyond seeing pregnant people as either baby factories for the white nationalist project or abominations.
When you draw your fertility goddess with a body that seems more similar to the forced rapid birth scene in Kaos than the people who are supposedly praying to her on a regular basis, it does not convince me that you have a normal view on pregnancy. When you publish comics where the villains birth monsters for her in examples of extreme body horror, that does not convince me that you’re normal about pregnancy! It instead feels like you have a ton of anxieties about the subject that maybe, just maybe, happen to also weaken the worldbuilding you are concocting.
Unlike some people out there, I don’t think it’s inherently wrong to use pregnancy as a subject for horror. But it is crucial to focus on what you are explicitly saying, and what implicit beliefs might be wrapped up in the rest. I guess it’s time to rephrase the guiding question of this to better suit where I’ve landed in the midst of my disbelief.
Why are TTRPGs so weird about pregnancy in a way that makes their gods completely unbelievable?
Normal Fertility Gods in the Real World: Hi, How are You?
“You don’t get it, Nyx.” This is what the strawman I have made up is saying in my ear. “Lamashtu is a homage to Echidna! It’s clever! Besides, weren’t fertility gods just like that anyway?”
Yes, I do get how a demon god who sees herself as the mother of monsters and is thought to be the cause of numerous monster species in-text is a Echidna analogue. I’m also allowed to think it’s stupid though to have that figure as your primary fertility and pregnancy god. Echidna wasn’t a god. Iconography of her is extremely hard to find, with one of the most popular sculptures of her dating back to the 1550s. Expectant mothers in Ancient Greece were not praying to her to boost their survival rates during pregnancy, a detail introduced in 1e only to be discarded by 2e. And yes, I think removing that part is also silly, but I’ll come back to that in a moment.
Instead, Hera, Artemis, and Eileithyia were the main gods looked to during that time period, with Eileithyia literally being the goddess of childbirth. Eileithyia had a ton of shrines and cults. I mean, a metric fuck ton. (The source for this is mainly Pausanias, but there’s still no reason to believe that he wasn’t actually reporting on shrines and art that actually existed. This is corroborated by the fact that archaeologists have located sanctuaries devoted to her.) She was also a patron god to midwives, and she was seen as vitally important for easing labor pains, ensuring the survival of children, and protecting them through delicate years. For a goddess who mainly features in myths when gods want to prevent births for one reason or another (usually spite), she got a lot of good press among Greek women!
Another fertility god is one from Ancient Egypt, Hapi. Hapi, from what I remember, was a god that represented how the Nile flooded each year, which was essential for Egyptian agriculture. Hapi was notably intersex. Like Lamashtu, he was often portrayed with what might be a pregnant belly, and most art of him showed him with large breasts. Despite these features, he was perceived as a father and sometimes portrayed as the father of Ra himself. He was also prayed to regularly, though mainly for agricultural reasons. (Other fertility gods were Min, who was more so associated with virility and the penis, and Heket the frog goddess, who was mostly only tied to the last trimester due to her role in the birth of Horus.)
For fertility gods in general, we see a lot of commonalities across cultures. A lot of them were also tied to agriculture; why else do we sometimes refer to semen as seed? A lot of them had their own children. If not, they were also commonly depicted in the role of a midwife, therefore giving them credibility. Nothing about Lamashtu, beyond the fact that she’s had children of her own, gives me the sense that people would be happily praying to her for help.
Easing your suffering? Oh, don’t worry! We got rid of that detail in 1e. It is very unlikely you’ll survive one of her assisted pregnancies. Monster baby? It won’t listen to you, just so we’re clear, and it might even kill you if you ever decide to change your faith. Credibility? How dare you! Just because we’ve never said that she also suffers when she gives birth, that doesn’t mean you can question her ability to help you!
Like always, I went to my girlfriend to discuss this. Was it just me? Was my aversion to ever being pregnant - as a personal choice! - holding me back? Did I simply not get it?
No, seriously. Can we? Because it’s getting weird in here, I can’t lie!
They went on to elaborate what they would actually find reasonable to see in a fictional fertility god.
As you can see from the chat record, we both have similar views on fertility gods, views that are generally supported by the gods that exist in real life. These were mostly friendly figures who were relied on to alleviate pain and complications. In times with high maternal and infant mortality, having these rituals that seemed reliable were very important! Nothing about Lamashtu assures me that she has that same reliability!
Just… Fuck! Can we be normal? Can we be normal about pregnancy? I don’t know if we can at this point!
I need to end this somehow… Anyway, I don’t think Lamashtu will ever change. The problem with stuff like this, stuff where people rely heavily on what has already been established for their own personal collaborative stories, is that huge changes in the actual canon books are very unlikely to happen. When a god’s entire thing is the birthing of monsters, you can’t switch her to being the god of infertility or something. That’d be weird and kinda cheap.
I also don’t want people to feel as though they’re somehow banned from liking or relating to Lamashtu. I’m just some random guy on the Internet. I have seen at least one person claim they see Lamashtu as more akin to their queer experience than gods like the Prismatic Ray. Which, you know what? Good for you. Normally, I’d be right there with you! I love monster women! I just feel that there could be better executions of the concept. When other monster gods get to just be monstrous but the main demon woman is eternally pregnant, scars her belly for no clear reason (certainly not due to any similarity to real world scarification practices), and makes you give birth to a monster irregardless of your anatomical setup, I think it says something about the people writing that. Maybe not something entirely damning, but it’s still something worthy of looking at and thinking through, I think.
Anyway, in Divine Mysteries, new gods will be showing up. One of them is a halfling god of community defense, familial bonds, and found family. He has a frying pan. He is cool in my book.
There are also promised covenants which include one centered around household spirits and gods of the hearth. Perhaps one of the spirits or gods involved in it will be a more mainstream fertility god.
We can only hope!