It’s understandable when tired tropes find their way into your writing, but there are good reasons to be aware of them. Introducing nuance to your villainous women will help you to give your writing credibility while maintaining your female readership. It’s all about integrity, which is something most, if not all, writers aspire to.

I see a lot of posts highlighting examples of male writers getting descriptions of female characters wrong. Of male writers falling back on tired sexist tropes that place women as props in the male MC’s storyline. But in a world where it’s quite possible to read works only written by men… and I must stress here the importance of diversifying if you haven’t already… it can be difficult to know how NOT to do those things.

As far as I’m concerned this is very simple. A dragon is a dragon, a wyvern is a wyvern. We have names for these things that are long-established. It is simply what they are called.

BUT

There are a few good reasons for authors to call wyverns dragons, and these come down to accessibility and marketing.