What are Good Safety Rails for Sci-Fi and Fantasy Races?

[Dr.T]

Recently read a thread on minors in stories of a non erotic role. I was refreshing myself on the rules and saw they were (and I quite understand why) exclusionary. One phrase is “a body height which is very unusual for an 18-year-old” and now thankfully it doesn’t say “a body height which is very unusual for an 18-year-old human, (lest we lose all that delicious orc muscle-mama territory ), but what I am curious about here, is the community standard, of what are the safely comfortable lows (and honestly comfortable highs) of character height.

Does body shape matter to you? A plump farm wife hobbit, a muscled dwarf, a short-stack goblin, a twink cyclops, a milfy elf, a pigmy xenomorph, a femboy yautja, and the various rearrangements possible of these?

I’m not looking for the where the ultimate line is in the grey, where on side you’ll get pass and on the other it is call the mods territory. Personally, I’m looking for where most of us stop being perfectly comfortable, and on the other side of this line we start to think “wait, is this okay?… Yeah, sure, that is fine.”

 

[GyroscopicGraphite]

Anything below 150cm is short, but not anything to note unless height-based insecurity is relavent to the story. At about 135cm is where I start to get scrutinous. Now, for a race known for being short (dwarfs, goblins) I'd be fine until about 120cm, and at the point the average person would have to literally lift the lil' guy or prop em' on a table/bed to have comfortable sex.

On the tall side of the spectrum, I'd say 210cm is about the reasonable limit for tall human/normal human relations. For something like a hot muscly orc, I'd be welcoming up to 230cm.

Keep in mind that the average person is about 170cm, so unless stater otherwise, readers will assume somewhere between 160-175cm as your character's height. Hence, at least for me, anything past these limits just starts to feel like size-based fetish, and if that's what you're going for, you go all the way.

 

[TheLowKing]

Of all the minor-related rules, the height one strikes me as the least practical/useful/impactful. As you say, species have different average heights, and while you can certainly abuse that by inventing a brand new species that looks and acts suspiciously like a pre-teen ("but actually she's 10,000 years old!!!"), when using well-established species like dwarves, gnomes, goblins, fae, you should be totally safe portraying someone with a species-appropriate height of 120 cm in your story, as long as you actually show they're an adult, both in your descriptions and their behaviour. Those are your safety rails: one, write adults as adults, two, make all your characters 18 solar years old.

Keep in mind that the average person is about 170cm, so unless stater otherwise, readers will assume somewhere between 160-175cm as your character's height. Hence, at least for me, anything past these limits just starts to feel like size-based fetish, and if that's what you're going for, you go all the way.

You shouldn't conflate the sexes, though. The average species-wide male human height is currently about 177cm (~5'10) and female human height 165 cm (~5'5), with a standard deviation of about 5-6cm. But those numbers vary further by geography, class, and ethnicity. In some European countries, a man with a height of 180 cm is below average, whereas in many (but not all) African countries he would tower head and shoulders above the crowd.

 

[Leonine_Knight]

A quick internet search reveals that the average height of a female dwarf (as in, someone with actual dwarfism, not a fantasy creature) is about four foot one. That, then, I think makes sense as being something I'd be perfectly comfortable with. I do wonder, however, with regards to the actual rule, how it would impact giant/giantess fetish stories, and ones with fairies. There seem to be plenty of them on the site.

 

[gene.sis]

At about 135cm is where I start to get scrutinous.

That's way too low.

150cm is short

For an American girl that is already close to unusual.

looks and acts suspiciously like a pre-teen ("but actually she's 10,000 years old!!!")

That character is considered underage.

female dwarf (as in, someone with actual dwarfism, not a fantasy creature) is about four foot one.

That's fine as long as they are described accordingly.

giant/giantess

Doesn't matter as they are taller. (Though a character who is physically described like a 17-year-old who is scaled equally in all dimensions to be 20 feet tall is still considered underage.)

ones with fairies

If they are like human adults who are scaled equally in all dimensions, that's fine.

 

[TheLowKing]

That character is considered underage.

Yes, I was lampooning a common (thin) rationalization.

 

[Audiflex]

Recently read a thread on minors in stories of a non erotic role. I was refreshing myself on the rules and saw they were (and I quite understand why) exclusionary. One phrase is “a body height which is very unusual for an 18-year-old” and now thankfully it doesn’t say “a body height which is very unusual for an 18-year-old human, (lest we lose all that delicious orc muscle-mama territory ), but what I am curious about here, is the community standard, of what are the safely comfortable lows (and honestly comfortable highs) of character height.

Does body shape matter to you? A plump farm wife hobbit, a muscled dwarf, a short-stack goblin, a twink cyclops, a milfy elf, a pigmy xenomorph, a femboy yautja, and the various rearrangements possible of these?

I’m not looking for the where the ultimate line is in the grey, where on side you’ll get pass and on the other it is call the mods territory. Personally, I’m looking for where most of us stop being perfectly comfortable, and on the other side of this line we start to think “wait, is this okay?… Yeah, sure, that is fine.”

It’s an interesting topic, i think comfort zones vary a lot depending on context, genre, and tone. For me, as long as the characters are written respectfully and fit the story’s worldbuilding, their body shapes and heights are just fun ways to add diversity and flavour. But yeah, it’s always good to check community standards.

 

[Audiflex]

Creating sci-fi and fantasy races involves thoughtfulness and consistency to avoid pitfalls while building compelling worlds. Start by ensuring races aren’t defined by a single trait or stereotype, give them diversity and depth. Ground their traits in logical evolutionary or environmental factors, making their physical forms and cultures feel believable. Create layered traditions, social structures, and languages, reflecting the same complexity found in human societies.

Be cautious about unintentionally echoing real-world stereotypes. If you draw inspiration from existing cultures, research thoroughly and combine elements to make something original and respectful. Avoid painting entire races as inherently good or evil; give them a mix of motivations, perspectives, and histories. Think about how they interact with other races—alliances, rivalries, or shared histories and ensure these relationships shape their identity.

Challenge yourself to think beyond humanoid forms, imagining species with unique biology or communication styles. Let them have agency and purpose in your story, not just existing to serve or oppose other characters. Consider how power dynamics, physical traits, and their roles in the world contribute to their identity. By focusing on these aspects, you’ll create engaging and relatable races that add depth to your world.

 

[TheLowKing]

There's a problem with that: if you do all that fun stuff in advance, you might never get to actually writing your story. So I'll present an opposite argument to "think every detail of your world through in advance": it's totally OK for your characters, organizations, societies, and species (I don't like calling them "races") to be utterly one-dimensional... at first. Obviously there's nothing wrong with world-building as a hobby, and if that's what you want to do, by all means, get started on that detailed 10,000 year history for your world. Been there, done that. But if you want to do is write a story, then you should start writing it as soon as possible. And once a story is in progress, you can use it to bring your world to life, rather than doing it the other way around.

There are a ton of stories out there that started as the wacky zany adventures of 2 people with exactly 1 character trait each. But as stories progress, characters get fleshed out almost as a matter of course. It's practically impossible to avoid it. Every new situation they encounter, every problem they solve, every person they interact with, something new is revealed about them. Webcomics are especialy famous for this: from Order of the Stick to Sam and Fuzzy, and from Questionable Content to ye olde 1/0, they all started with one-dimensional stereotypes (greedy halfling, selfish bear, vulgar robot, evil eyeball, respectively), and all grew more and more nuanced as their story progressed.

So sure, start your goblins out as irredeemably greedy intolerant backstabbers, one and all, and by the time chapter 5 or 10 comes along, maybe you'll have established that their deepseated distrust of other species stems from centuries of their elven neighbors cheating them at every turn or the dwarves stealing away their precious gems from underground, and boom, suddenly you've got something interesting on your hands.

(But, uh, yeah, try to avoid being racist.)

 

[Audiflex]

Fair point. Over-planning can be a trap. If you spend all your time building a world but never write the story, what’s the point? Let the characters start shallow, depth will come as they interact with the world, I like it.

Yeah point taken will try avoid it.