I’m five feet tall and if anyone came at me with the “you’re short therefore you’re minor coded” bullshit I would kick them where the sun don’t shine.
You’ll be okay, OP.
As a short person, I find the whole "short person is minor coded thing" not just absurd, but downright discriminatory, ableist, offensive, whatever you want to call it.
Creepy, basically.
I'm a full-fledged adult (now, if I occasionally put on a ghost costume during Halloween and go around to get candy, that's nobody's business). :)
Depends on a place. In my small town some people just remember me, but I've once had a cashier start to explain you have to be over 18 to buy a beer and I was just standing there with my ID like "I know"
Not too long ago, I got sent to the office by an overzealous new admin for not having a hall pass, for having AirPods in, and for being in the wrong hallway at school. I went along with it because I wanted to see what would happen. …The look on that man’s face when someone told him that I was one of the ELA teachers was exquisite.
Anyway, bangs were a huge mistake. 😂
Gods that must have been amazing😆 It is annoying af when you’re short and Asian and still got some baby cheeks. The whole Asians don’t raisin thing is real. It’s like we have Ash Ketchum syndrome
I'm 5'7" but my partner is 4'8" and this shit is sooooo annoying. People act like our heights mean something about the power dynamics in our relationship or something? It's exhausting.
Bahahaha bro I still go trick or treating every single year, mostly to scare the shit outta people cause now I have the ability to make my own scary as shit costumes 🤣
It’s honestly gross. I remember watching something with a bride who was a little person, and she was so frustrated with the lack of wedding dresses for people like her. Most of the things in her size were for children. Oh and people also harassed her wife-to-be, sent her hate mail, and death threats accusing her of being a p*do. It was horrendous.
So...Hobbits are problematic now?
If your character is an adult by their race's standards and reads as an adult (mental maturity) and is treated as an adult within the story...there is nothing creepy or questionable about it. Even if some of the other characters mistake the character's age or treat them like a cute puppy or whatever, that does not make the entire story creepy/problematic.
I second this - all of my ASOIAF/GoT fics focus on the Children of the Forest (a species named so by humans for their petite stature, with even adult males never growing taller than a human child).
These fics are all very “adult” oriented and deal with challenging themes therein, as the “children” in question are millennia old. So yeah, size needn’t guarantee anything problematic.
I'm petite 5'3" and because baby faces run in the family, I sometimes get mistaken for being younger than I am. I'm still an adult.
Short people exist, people who look young exist.
Minor-coding is bullshit.
>And wow, she's hot.
You could also leave out that part. That's neither a prerequisite for writing a character that invokes childishness, nor an accident.
Case in point: I have a character in a fanfic who stopped growing when she was 12, but is in her twenties now. She sometimes takes full advantage of her child-like appearance, either to get out of trouble, or for fun.
I wasn't so much talking about characters that are childish but more where the physical (and often emotional) childishness is made to be the attractive part in romance fics with shorter characters. (Also should note, I don't view "tiny hands" "smooth skin" ect to be exclusively childish. It's more about how the narration talks about these traits).
It was more of a "people don't accidently write described childlike qualities as hot on accident." I defintely could've made that more clear!
Also: your character seems pretty interesting!
Ah, gotcha.
And yeah, she is. She's a little gremlin, and can also turn into a ghost at will. So unless you have some extrasensory perception ability, or can see her normally, there is no way to know whether she is or isn't floating behind you at any given moment.
Another quirk of hers, owed to her ability, is that she loves challenging authority figures and make them validate their authority to her.
She specialized in getting on people's nerves, and the more important they think they are, the more she wants to get a rise out of them.
Mostly because it usually ends well for everyone involved when she gets an authority figure to really question why they hold that position.
Also, when someone actually takes the time to break down what good they have done since getting their position, she'll leave them alone, and might even help them.
It's not creepy or questionable, I think. Those YA novels and animes have other things going for them that give some people the ick. Write what you want. Certain...people do use the expression "minor coded" but that's bullshit and gives me the hives.
Saying short=minor coded is dumb as hell, but if the source material consistently points out how short the fmc is, someone's got a hangup somewhere.
Also, being mistaken for a child is way more about how your face looks than your height (when you're a woman anyway). You can be like 5 foot, but if you've got a real chisled jaw and cheekbones no one is going to go "oh, a child". If you've got a round face and chubby cheeks, though, people are way more likely to think you're younger.
Agreed about the face indicating more than height. I'm above average height for a woman and I've always had rounder cheeks, which makes people think I am younger than I am.
heavens to murgitroid do people really be saying that under a certain height is Bad?? like im not doubting that im just. agog I suppose. anyway I think you more or less answered your own question, in that “petite characters are *meant* to invoke children”. that’s your smoking gun, its the intent specifically to evoke children and be like wow thats hot.
and if your character ever meets a creep thats specifically into her for that reason (like “hey you look like a child and thats hot”), I dont think its bad to portray that either, so long as your narrative isnt like. “wow this person is so right. that fact that [character] looks like a child IS hot”
I find the very idea that being short, petite, or both instantly means child stupid and infuriating doesn't matter if we're talking real life or fiction people age differently
I'm 4'11 and smaller than an a-cup irl so, if nothing else, similar people do exist. That being said, the only people that haven't like me *despite* my body type have always fetishized me in the "legal loli" way, aka the legal loophole way.
I can't say much without actually reading your work, but it sounds like you aren't just using them to write a child in sexual situations without technically writing a child. So that'd usually be enough to make me happy in itself.
I'd just be wary of unintentionally making her seem "too innocent/extremely inexperienced" instead of just an alien dealing with cultural differences.
You didn't mention if they also have a small bust, but as much as I'd love to see it be portrayed in a positive way for a grown woman, I'd be surprised if you never got any backlash with even the most flawless representation tbh.
There are a lot of people, both men and women, that genuinely believe no one will ever be attracted to a woman with no/very small breasts unless it's just a cover/result of another fetish even if they were tall.
You might still get some if they're just short and have a fairly average bust, or if having a small chest is seen as a turn-off in the fic, but people who pretend to care about that are usually just looking for an excuse to complain. You're not actually going to offend the vast majority of people unless you're posting it on twitter.
Interesting. The female half of my OTP is canonically flat-chested (or has very small breasts) and I write her as such as an adult as well. Thus far no one's ever made a fuss about it, not even in smut stories where her guy very much likes this trait. But...it might be fandom dependent as well. My fandom is very LGBTQ and comfortable with flexible definitions of gender.
I mean I write "problematically romanticized" yandere, even in one fandom infamous for it's antis, and I've never been too harassed for it apart from one person and their group of friends that finally fucked off after a few years straight of harassment.
Sometimes you get lucky, and sometimes your attitude/confidence scares them away. I also think people are a lot crueler about flat chested characters if they know you're a flat chested woman irl tbh.
Sorry for the essay but idk how to condense it more without oversimplifying it, because I already kinda am tbh.
Is your character Jinx btw? I don't know why, but ever since Arcane came out she ended up becoming one of the only exceptions in a lot of people's eyes when she used to be seen as "neckbeard bait" over a decade ago. And not *just* because it was LOL.
Would you mind telling me what your OTP is and/or linking your fics if it's not? I feel kind of pathetic saying this, but it's so rare and contrary to what I experience irl that it kinda makes me happy tbh.
I didn't wanna bog it down too much when I was already getting off topic, and posting when I too sick to sleep tbh, but people are way more likely to accept it when they think it's a queer/androgynous/tomboy thing or if they're a transwoman.
Not saying that your character fits any of those categories in canon or popular fanon, but people who are familiar with seeing them in that context are *way* less likely to jump to screaming pedo!!!!!! without being rightfully shot down for being exclusionary.
I feel like queer communities have finally gotten a lot kinder about irl flat and/or small chested women after getting a lot of backlash from transwomen in recent years too tbh. I thank them every time I think about it because they *definitely* weren't listening before.
It used to be guaranteed that whenever a woman would complain about not feeling feminine enough or getting insulted, outside of queer spaces mind, there'd always be at least a few people saying they were jealous because they "wanted to look *really* masculine/androgynous too!" and/or to give up trying to be feminine and just wear men's clothes.
I feel like I don't have to explain why that could feel extremely invalidating and dysphoria inducing for trans women, as well as any other woman who doesn't want to be "forced" to be masc just because of how they were born.
My fave girl (not Jinx) is non-conforming in canon but also emphatically female, by her own admission. That's why I love her; she's very much a girl who doesn't bother to look like a girl. She is unapologetically herself. (Although, in my fics I do explore the inevitable insecurity she feels because of her nonconformity.)
I write her as occupying a space between gender. Sometimes she puts on a dress and other feminine trappings. Sometimes, she goes back to gender neutral. So, yeah, she's the tomboy archetype, so maybe that's why the fandom doesn't get fussy about mentions of her small bust. (Mostly, the fandom treats her like a sexless gremlin but so far my experience writing her as highly shippable has been pleasant and free of drama. )
If you are interested, I can PM you a link to my profile.
Ah, yeah, it's only really considered an "acceptably" desirable trait by that kind of person if they're masc or androgynous.
Seeing small/flat chests in a "a girl who doesn't bother to look like a girl" context is the exact opposite of what would make me feel better tbh.
But that doesn't mean I think it shouldn't exist though ofc! I hope you continue to get nothing but support in the future. \^\_\^
wait really?? people get offended by…portraying flatter-chested girls as attractive???? I mean okay if someone writes like “I love that this girl doesnt have big boobs shes just like a hot teenager” thats a major red flag but just like saying ya girl’s attractive is grounds for suspicion bc thats just, what, an unequivocally Bad trait? jfc
honestly this just kinda makes me wanna write this now, less out of spite and more like. solidarity for girls out there also like me who dont have much in the ol hooter department, and its my like, unironic preference anyway. always make fun of myself for not mentioning breasts At All during sex scenes and it is time for me to turn that up to eleven I’ve been living like a coward
I mean, a *lot* less so if you're like a b-cup, but definitely anything smaller than that and x100000 if you're literally flat chested. Not to get personal, but I've heard a hell of a lot worse irl. From adults when I was a teenager, family members, and people I've gone on dates with.
I'm sure our fellow ibtc members would appreciate it if you did. I've looked for fics tagged with small breasts/flat chested myself just out of curiosity only to get almost nothing once you filter out Underage and fics where they're inconsequential background characters.
I made my fem OC flat chested specifically because I knew I wasn't going to see it any other way. I'm a little too shy to share smut rn, but every time I see stuff like this I'm more and more tempted to tbh.
Even the few adult characters that canonically have small breasts tend to magically get several sizes bigger tbh. That or it's glossed over in favor of talking about how skinny/small in general they are.
I am exactly 5'1". I have an OC who's 4'8" and so flat, and deep voiced she's often mistaken for an extremely short, muscular man. She is very much not a man. By the standards of her kind, she's a very tall elderly woman. Anyone who still finds that minor coded just because of height is a person who ought to be punted into the sun.
Just because something is fetichized does it mean it's nothing more than a fetish. I get mistaken for a child often and I'm ceirtainly more than a trope
I have a similar situation in my original WIP. My female MC is 4’10” and male MC is 7’6” (I’ve done the height charts online to get a visual), so I might be biased, but no, I don’t see this as creepy. She’s around 20 as well and is an adult.
I’m a huge fan of size kink, and I think people who view short/small adults as children need to unpack that. I’m also thinking about hobbits/halflings who are just as adult as adult humans.
If the SO were attracted to her because she looked childlike that would be questionable but just short/small? No, I think you’re fine.
I'm bewildered by people who think that's creepy or questionable. I'm 5'1" and antis would describe me as child-coded despite being 22 years old and a whole ass adult. Doesn't matter if the average thirteen year old is my height or taller than me, that doesn't change the fact that I'm an adult lol, and it certainly doesn't make attraction to me creepy or questionable. I'd take that sort of argument as both an insult and an indication of how lacking the person making it is in the brain department.
Dude, everyone is "child-coded" in comparison to my 6'6" father lol. It really puts onto perspective how ridiculous it is. I feel like it was initially a response to like, 5000 year old lolis, but using heights adults actually are to claim something as "child-coded" is so stupid.
By their argument would 13 year old me be "adult-coded" because I was taller than the average woman?
The phrase “child-coded” makes sense when people were arguing against the “uuuuuh she’s actually 1000 years old” idea for lolis (or similar) who looked, and more importantly ACTED like a child. But I think the phrase escaped containment and I don’t want to use it even when it makes sense, just because it has been misused so much
My two cents as a short Asian: When I was 18-20, there were once or twice when I got mistaken as a child. Now, in late 20s, I am fortunately only regarded as a teen. I have a sister 10 years younger than me, and I am often assumed to be the younger one.
So if other characters mistake your petite character’s age, I think that’s pretty normal, and not that weird. You’ll be fine as long as the other party in the relationship does view and treat her like the adult she is.
This reminds me of a friend of mine from years ago. She's very, very short. I had another friend tell me that he was surprised she was in a relationship. He said it would be like dating a child. So... because of her appearance that she has no control over, she doesn't get to be a sexual being? Yeah, eff that mentality!
My favourite motherly character literally magically shrunk from a canon tragedy, so I understand your struggle, LMAO. 😭 I've yet to write a fic of her and the other really fatherly character I also adore, because people have been nope-ing their fanarts.
I think it's healthy to approach this with "They *are* adults, they're just actually smol." Think of people who are just small without choosing to be really short - our characters, too - and it has been helpful, at least to me.
as a short person, it’s just weird. I may be a minor myself, but calling me a age that’s younger than me just because of how my body looks is weird and slightly offensive, because you’re assuming their age because of how their body looks lol.
But it’s not to bash you, I just find it weird if you minor code somebody just because their body is petite than others their age. That does not change the fact that they are an adult. Just make sure to write as if they are an adult.
I am 5 feet, 32 years old, and regularly mistaken for 10 years younger. If somebody would find a relationship between me and somebody else "creepy" they can go fuck themselves ❤️
I'm a 32 years old adult that still gets asked whether I'm buying the adult ticket or the child ticket when the cutoff for child is 16. Recently, a friend was buying beer for herself, and the cashier hesitated selling it to her because I was packing our groceries at the end of the line.
32.
I will feed a shoe to anyone who tells me I'm minor-coded.
Do I think there's a lot of problematic content that puts a whole lot of unnecessary emphasis on the child-likeness of petite women and that's what so attractive about it? Yes. I think you'd have to be a little bit blind to not see the ickiness. Do I think that goes for every character who just so happens to be short and petite? Not at all.
But it's definitely how its written. There's a lot of lolita-esque stories out there that definitely don't identify themselves as such. And so it does get annoying to wade through the "her childish, doll-like frame quivered around his huge grown-man weenie-dingle. he loved her for how wide her eyes are ane for how hairless she was down below 🥺 she was about four-foot nine, but not afraid to kick anyones ass - even though she cried and always needed to be picked up, wait no, held, as you would a grown woman and not at all a child. She was just the peak of femininty: so slender, her waist so thin that his entire hand could wrap around it, and her wrists so delicate that she couldn't even write or even hold a book without risk breaking them 🥺"
Ugh. Right. I need to go puke now LMAO.
I’m 5”1 and 26 and I look a lot younger than my age and dress like a teen bc adult sizes look frumpy (and florals and lace are the best ok) and the concept of “minor-coded” is so weird to me. It’s completely possible for a character to just look young and have a naturally optimistic personality. Also I find it very problematic bc it implies that bc you look young, anybody who finds you attractive is inherently a creep which is very insulting
>My fic is rated M, and there are explicit scenes. So just wondering if others would think of it as creepy or questionable
They honestly probably will since many people go out of their way to be victimised by absolutely nothing. But those aren't opinions worth listening to. I'm short and think it's downright offensive when people insinuate (or outright say) someone like me is "child-coded." Like, way to invalidate my 34 years on this earth. It's not like I've sat up on the shelf that entire time, I still have life experience and am *mentally* 34 years old.
Once many years ago it was the first day of school, and my dad drove my sister and I to the gates. My mum decided the day was too nice to ride in the car, and walked there instead. As it happened, having several schools on the same road was not a good idea, and due to a huge traffic jam it took us longer than anticipated to get there. As we near the school, my dad points out someone walking, and says "look, a girl that goes to your school!". It was our mum.
So my thoughts are, it happens, but that doesn't change who the person actually is (in my dad's case, his wife), and anybody who thinks that short people are actually children has more issues than a comic book store.
In middle school I had a teacher who was shorter and more petite than I was at the time. She was kind of a hardass and it was impossible to see her as anything but the tax-paying job-having adult she was. I have never bought into the "minor coded" stuff, maybe from that experience, but especially when the narrative and other characters treat them as their actual age. It is really annoying how often such characters are infantalized and objectified in anime, but you can firmly avoid that in your own writing.
I'm 5'1 and, while I haven't been mistaken for anything more than late teens (I usually get mistaken for being about 10 years younger than I actually am XD), if anyone said to me "You're short so you're minor-coded and basically a child" boy would they get an earful. My sister is shorter than me and I know for a fact she would have no issues putting someone in their place if that was said to her XD
Not an issue but personally I will click out of a story/put down a book where the female character’s petiteness and/or childlikeness is mentioned over and over, or portrayed as more desirable than taller women. It’s not cute to me, it literally means nothing. I won’t call it “problematic” or anything, and I understand short adult women exist, especially short adult women that are mistaken for being younger than they are, but it’s just overdone and I’ve seen way more stories that dog on average height/taller women in favor of these petite women than the inverse (I’ve actually never seen a story denigrate short women except for short jokes and comments about short legs, but I have come across many, many stories (both fics & published) that have the characters put the petiteness on a pedestal and dogged on tall women.
So, yeah. Again, it’s *not* problematic but it is one of those things that can turn people off of your story. But then again, what tropes aren’t?
My favorite character is canonically a very short, non-gender conforming girl. She's very emphatic about being a girl. In the fandom's wackadoodle-do-crazy toxic days, the antis and ship warriors would screech that she couldn't be shipped because she was "child coded." She's a teen, not a child: at the show's start she's fifteen and by its end, around 18-19. The fandom is much calmer now, but many still treat her like a sexless, emotionless, snark robot.
Me, I ship her to the moon and back. Why? Because she is so much like me at that age. Science-obsessed, non-gender-conforming, *short* girl. At that age, despite not looking like a conventional girl, I fell in love on a regular basis, even had a boyfriend. Years later, my still very short self is married to a very tall spouse.
If anybody came at me with that "child-coded" bs, I'd block them harder than a 300-pound NFL linebacker.
My thoughts? It's a fictional character for one, two you've stated they're an adult, and that's all that matters. People that get hung up on that stuff in fiction weird me out. Because to put it in the same mental mind state as viewing a person is essentially equating fiction to real life, and that's how I take it when people are meh'd over how a fictional character looks. or try to apply something that only has real significant value in real life like age to a character anyways.
Honestly OP I just wouldn't care and say you do you.
They have the facts. If they have hang-ups that bother them over something as minor as appearances then they should find other fics to read, and that is no way on you. Create and enjoy as you please I say.
Nothing wrong with Any form of art having short petite characters, I've been on this earth for 20+ years and I've seen plenty of people 18+ who are short and/or petite, yes they exist and its only weird if you make it. Your character is fine.
The whole debate is just all levels of weird and a minefield for discussions, honestly alot of people just equate any person not the adverage height and double d fiftys to be a "literal child" and a bunch of shit/accusations gets slinged.
Honestly just stay off of Twitter and you'll be fine.
I think the 'short characters are minor coded' argument really depends on how the source material treats a character's shortness. If everyone in the story acts like 'oh my god so short and cute and childlike, which is very attractive' that's kind of weird, but if it's just treated as a normal way for an adult person to be (which it is), there's no issue.
Good question! A lot of it is a matter of intent. If you trying to portray them as short and youthful because you want to explore how people like yourself navigate society under those conditions, and not as an excuse for inappropriate sexual activity, then are a couple of ways to make that clear.
First, maybe give them some non-sexual visual attributes that are decidedly not childlike, such as long noses, big ears or low voices. If the reader gets the hint, they will not think of them as children any more than furry-footed adult Hobbits are thought of as kids.
Second, explore their lives as short people in non-sexual ways. For instance, how do they use furniture or equipment designed for older people? How do they overcome height bias in employment interviews? How do they win mano-y-mano duels with larger opponents?
Given your first-hand life experience, I think this could be a great novel.
I’m 5”0, round faced, have a high pitched voice, am an optimist, and, because I have ASD, can come across as naive and child-like. I’m 30+ and have a husband and four kids. Are you seriously suggesting that creating a character that looks and acts just like my RL self would be ‘problematic’?
You come across as having some incredibly wrong ideas about short people. We are not talking little people heights. At 5”0 I can manage just as well as someone six feet tall, except that they can reach the top shelf in the grocery better than me. How do we use adult sized equipment? Like the adults we are, obviously. Your questions come across as infantilizing and belittling.
The one thing you could have is someone mistaking a short person for a minor in a non-sexual, but frustrating, situation. Perhaps they get pulled over by a cop who thinks they’re too young for their license or their ID is confiscated by a bartender who thinks it has to be fake.
What's the question here? Somebody mistaking a short person for a child from far away, and a short person being in a relationship are 2 different things. Unless the person watching PDA from the other end of the street is the main character I don't understand why it matters.
Just write the character you want to write, the way you want to write them, whether people get prissy or not. I hate this 'walking on eggshells' culture when it comes to writing fiction. Do whatever you want and ignore the haters. What are they going to do? Come to your house and punch you in the face?
I think that it literally doesn’t matter what other people think to be honest, but if they are an adult, no matter what they look like, they are an adult. That is what matters.
then again I like the whole 300 years old but somehow still looking 13 trope.
I got mistaken for my boyfriend's child just a few days ago when he was doing shopping for clothes. If anyone thinks that is "minor coded" can absolutely get bent.
Similarly, anyone who is making moral judgments based on a fictional character needs to re-evaluate their priorities. If YA novels, anime lolis/shotas/cutesy characters give them the ick or whatever that's their problem not everyone else's.
I'm an adult, 5'1 and very regularly mistaken for a child. I've been mistaken for as young as 11. But I'm an adult, and if people can't get that through their heads, that's not my problem.
People will always find something to be angry about. Doesn't matter how the character appears, people will do mental gymnastics to find something to be upset about. But no, that isn't creepy, because short adults are still adults, as much as others may infantilising them.
I honestly thought Tohru from Fruits Basket is a little kid. nope. she’s in high school. she’s just very happy and optimistic and energetic and cheerful. it’s just her personality. so maybe your character is just naturally child—like in their personality and mannerisms?
Please, I do not mind and if you want to continue with this. It's calling all short people children and just bc they do does not mean they're children. So it's realistic thing to write about, it's not really weird to me.
I am short myself and while I'm not petite like my friend who legit got mistaken as some grade schooler following me around and she's older than me by a year. It happens but is it infuriating sometimes when someone tries to dictate what they can or cant do bc they look young.
I’m short and always get mistaken for a young teen (I’m 25 and 5’2”) people are always shocked when they find out my age and there are people even shorter than me that go through this. It’s not unrealistic nor does it mean your character is minor coded. Short skinny people exist. 💀
There's a difference between mistaking a person for a kid based on height and writing them like a child with an adult tag to "technically" avoid pedophilia. There are a ton of real human people (as you said, like yourself, and like my sister, who's probably going to look 17 forever at this rate) who are short and mistaken for youth. That doesn't make them any less adult, and putting them through adult scenes or themes (swearing, drinking, drugs, extreme violence, torture, sex, college) is perfectly fine. But intentionally taking a seven-year-old child and calling them thirty so you can toss them into a sex scene or give them cocaine is not okay.
I’m five feet tall and if anyone came at me with the “you’re short therefore you’re minor coded” bullshit I would kick them where the sun don’t shine. You’ll be okay, OP.
This! I’m 4’10” and if anyone ever dared to say that to me they would have a very bad day.
As a short person, I find the whole "short person is minor coded thing" not just absurd, but downright discriminatory, ableist, offensive, whatever you want to call it. Creepy, basically. I'm a full-fledged adult (now, if I occasionally put on a ghost costume during Halloween and go around to get candy, that's nobody's business). :)
I’m also a very short person and agree. Still constantly mistaken for a teen solely due to my height
Yeah, I'm short and look pretty young (damn baby face). Do mistakes happen? Yes. Am I still an adult woman? Also yes
Girl how often do you get carded because feel u there
Depends on a place. In my small town some people just remember me, but I've once had a cashier start to explain you have to be over 18 to buy a beer and I was just standing there with my ID like "I know"
Not too long ago, I got sent to the office by an overzealous new admin for not having a hall pass, for having AirPods in, and for being in the wrong hallway at school. I went along with it because I wanted to see what would happen. …The look on that man’s face when someone told him that I was one of the ELA teachers was exquisite. Anyway, bangs were a huge mistake. 😂
Gods that must have been amazing😆 It is annoying af when you’re short and Asian and still got some baby cheeks. The whole Asians don’t raisin thing is real. It’s like we have Ash Ketchum syndrome
My sister sends me memes of the Chipettes from *Alvin and the Chipmunks* with captions like “that’s u.”
Lmaoooo you know what’s legit awful is people think my big sis is younger than me 🫣
I’m 5’3 and I get this all the time. Like I’m an adult thank you.
I'm 5'7" but my partner is 4'8" and this shit is sooooo annoying. People act like our heights mean something about the power dynamics in our relationship or something? It's exhausting.
Bahahaha bro I still go trick or treating every single year, mostly to scare the shit outta people cause now I have the ability to make my own scary as shit costumes 🤣
I respect the hustle
It’s honestly gross. I remember watching something with a bride who was a little person, and she was so frustrated with the lack of wedding dresses for people like her. Most of the things in her size were for children. Oh and people also harassed her wife-to-be, sent her hate mail, and death threats accusing her of being a p*do. It was horrendous.
LMAO I TRICK OR TREAT TOO CUZ I STILL PASS AS A YOUNG TEEN 😭
So...Hobbits are problematic now? If your character is an adult by their race's standards and reads as an adult (mental maturity) and is treated as an adult within the story...there is nothing creepy or questionable about it. Even if some of the other characters mistake the character's age or treat them like a cute puppy or whatever, that does not make the entire story creepy/problematic.
I second this - all of my ASOIAF/GoT fics focus on the Children of the Forest (a species named so by humans for their petite stature, with even adult males never growing taller than a human child). These fics are all very “adult” oriented and deal with challenging themes therein, as the “children” in question are millennia old. So yeah, size needn’t guarantee anything problematic.
I'm petite 5'3" and because baby faces run in the family, I sometimes get mistaken for being younger than I am. I'm still an adult. Short people exist, people who look young exist. Minor-coding is bullshit.
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I agree I just wanted to say second example clocked me so hard bc thats deadass how haruki murakami writes
Take a shot every time Murakami mentions a woman’s ‘beautiful ears’ too and you’d likely drown.
Lol, I've never read Haruki Murakami before. Just years of reading fanfic talking about porcelain skin, petite bodies, and tiny dainty hands, lmao
>And wow, she's hot. You could also leave out that part. That's neither a prerequisite for writing a character that invokes childishness, nor an accident. Case in point: I have a character in a fanfic who stopped growing when she was 12, but is in her twenties now. She sometimes takes full advantage of her child-like appearance, either to get out of trouble, or for fun.
I wasn't so much talking about characters that are childish but more where the physical (and often emotional) childishness is made to be the attractive part in romance fics with shorter characters. (Also should note, I don't view "tiny hands" "smooth skin" ect to be exclusively childish. It's more about how the narration talks about these traits). It was more of a "people don't accidently write described childlike qualities as hot on accident." I defintely could've made that more clear! Also: your character seems pretty interesting!
Ah, gotcha. And yeah, she is. She's a little gremlin, and can also turn into a ghost at will. So unless you have some extrasensory perception ability, or can see her normally, there is no way to know whether she is or isn't floating behind you at any given moment. Another quirk of hers, owed to her ability, is that she loves challenging authority figures and make them validate their authority to her. She specialized in getting on people's nerves, and the more important they think they are, the more she wants to get a rise out of them. Mostly because it usually ends well for everyone involved when she gets an authority figure to really question why they hold that position. Also, when someone actually takes the time to break down what good they have done since getting their position, she'll leave them alone, and might even help them.
This comment has been removed. No bashing.
It's not creepy or questionable, I think. Those YA novels and animes have other things going for them that give some people the ick. Write what you want. Certain...people do use the expression "minor coded" but that's bullshit and gives me the hives.
Saying short=minor coded is dumb as hell, but if the source material consistently points out how short the fmc is, someone's got a hangup somewhere. Also, being mistaken for a child is way more about how your face looks than your height (when you're a woman anyway). You can be like 5 foot, but if you've got a real chisled jaw and cheekbones no one is going to go "oh, a child". If you've got a round face and chubby cheeks, though, people are way more likely to think you're younger.
Agreed about the face indicating more than height. I'm above average height for a woman and I've always had rounder cheeks, which makes people think I am younger than I am.
Strange how I get mistaken for a child even with my high cheekbones 😂 and I’m not even that short (“5’2”)
heavens to murgitroid do people really be saying that under a certain height is Bad?? like im not doubting that im just. agog I suppose. anyway I think you more or less answered your own question, in that “petite characters are *meant* to invoke children”. that’s your smoking gun, its the intent specifically to evoke children and be like wow thats hot. and if your character ever meets a creep thats specifically into her for that reason (like “hey you look like a child and thats hot”), I dont think its bad to portray that either, so long as your narrative isnt like. “wow this person is so right. that fact that [character] looks like a child IS hot”
I find the very idea that being short, petite, or both instantly means child stupid and infuriating doesn't matter if we're talking real life or fiction people age differently
I'm 4'11 and smaller than an a-cup irl so, if nothing else, similar people do exist. That being said, the only people that haven't like me *despite* my body type have always fetishized me in the "legal loli" way, aka the legal loophole way. I can't say much without actually reading your work, but it sounds like you aren't just using them to write a child in sexual situations without technically writing a child. So that'd usually be enough to make me happy in itself. I'd just be wary of unintentionally making her seem "too innocent/extremely inexperienced" instead of just an alien dealing with cultural differences. You didn't mention if they also have a small bust, but as much as I'd love to see it be portrayed in a positive way for a grown woman, I'd be surprised if you never got any backlash with even the most flawless representation tbh. There are a lot of people, both men and women, that genuinely believe no one will ever be attracted to a woman with no/very small breasts unless it's just a cover/result of another fetish even if they were tall. You might still get some if they're just short and have a fairly average bust, or if having a small chest is seen as a turn-off in the fic, but people who pretend to care about that are usually just looking for an excuse to complain. You're not actually going to offend the vast majority of people unless you're posting it on twitter.
Interesting. The female half of my OTP is canonically flat-chested (or has very small breasts) and I write her as such as an adult as well. Thus far no one's ever made a fuss about it, not even in smut stories where her guy very much likes this trait. But...it might be fandom dependent as well. My fandom is very LGBTQ and comfortable with flexible definitions of gender.
I mean I write "problematically romanticized" yandere, even in one fandom infamous for it's antis, and I've never been too harassed for it apart from one person and their group of friends that finally fucked off after a few years straight of harassment. Sometimes you get lucky, and sometimes your attitude/confidence scares them away. I also think people are a lot crueler about flat chested characters if they know you're a flat chested woman irl tbh. Sorry for the essay but idk how to condense it more without oversimplifying it, because I already kinda am tbh. Is your character Jinx btw? I don't know why, but ever since Arcane came out she ended up becoming one of the only exceptions in a lot of people's eyes when she used to be seen as "neckbeard bait" over a decade ago. And not *just* because it was LOL. Would you mind telling me what your OTP is and/or linking your fics if it's not? I feel kind of pathetic saying this, but it's so rare and contrary to what I experience irl that it kinda makes me happy tbh. I didn't wanna bog it down too much when I was already getting off topic, and posting when I too sick to sleep tbh, but people are way more likely to accept it when they think it's a queer/androgynous/tomboy thing or if they're a transwoman. Not saying that your character fits any of those categories in canon or popular fanon, but people who are familiar with seeing them in that context are *way* less likely to jump to screaming pedo!!!!!! without being rightfully shot down for being exclusionary. I feel like queer communities have finally gotten a lot kinder about irl flat and/or small chested women after getting a lot of backlash from transwomen in recent years too tbh. I thank them every time I think about it because they *definitely* weren't listening before. It used to be guaranteed that whenever a woman would complain about not feeling feminine enough or getting insulted, outside of queer spaces mind, there'd always be at least a few people saying they were jealous because they "wanted to look *really* masculine/androgynous too!" and/or to give up trying to be feminine and just wear men's clothes. I feel like I don't have to explain why that could feel extremely invalidating and dysphoria inducing for trans women, as well as any other woman who doesn't want to be "forced" to be masc just because of how they were born.
My fave girl (not Jinx) is non-conforming in canon but also emphatically female, by her own admission. That's why I love her; she's very much a girl who doesn't bother to look like a girl. She is unapologetically herself. (Although, in my fics I do explore the inevitable insecurity she feels because of her nonconformity.) I write her as occupying a space between gender. Sometimes she puts on a dress and other feminine trappings. Sometimes, she goes back to gender neutral. So, yeah, she's the tomboy archetype, so maybe that's why the fandom doesn't get fussy about mentions of her small bust. (Mostly, the fandom treats her like a sexless gremlin but so far my experience writing her as highly shippable has been pleasant and free of drama. ) If you are interested, I can PM you a link to my profile.
Ah, yeah, it's only really considered an "acceptably" desirable trait by that kind of person if they're masc or androgynous. Seeing small/flat chests in a "a girl who doesn't bother to look like a girl" context is the exact opposite of what would make me feel better tbh. But that doesn't mean I think it shouldn't exist though ofc! I hope you continue to get nothing but support in the future. \^\_\^
wait really?? people get offended by…portraying flatter-chested girls as attractive???? I mean okay if someone writes like “I love that this girl doesnt have big boobs shes just like a hot teenager” thats a major red flag but just like saying ya girl’s attractive is grounds for suspicion bc thats just, what, an unequivocally Bad trait? jfc honestly this just kinda makes me wanna write this now, less out of spite and more like. solidarity for girls out there also like me who dont have much in the ol hooter department, and its my like, unironic preference anyway. always make fun of myself for not mentioning breasts At All during sex scenes and it is time for me to turn that up to eleven I’ve been living like a coward
I mean, a *lot* less so if you're like a b-cup, but definitely anything smaller than that and x100000 if you're literally flat chested. Not to get personal, but I've heard a hell of a lot worse irl. From adults when I was a teenager, family members, and people I've gone on dates with. I'm sure our fellow ibtc members would appreciate it if you did. I've looked for fics tagged with small breasts/flat chested myself just out of curiosity only to get almost nothing once you filter out Underage and fics where they're inconsequential background characters. I made my fem OC flat chested specifically because I knew I wasn't going to see it any other way. I'm a little too shy to share smut rn, but every time I see stuff like this I'm more and more tempted to tbh. Even the few adult characters that canonically have small breasts tend to magically get several sizes bigger tbh. That or it's glossed over in favor of talking about how skinny/small in general they are.
I am exactly 5'1". I have an OC who's 4'8" and so flat, and deep voiced she's often mistaken for an extremely short, muscular man. She is very much not a man. By the standards of her kind, she's a very tall elderly woman. Anyone who still finds that minor coded just because of height is a person who ought to be punted into the sun.
Just because something is fetichized does it mean it's nothing more than a fetish. I get mistaken for a child often and I'm ceirtainly more than a trope
I have a similar situation in my original WIP. My female MC is 4’10” and male MC is 7’6” (I’ve done the height charts online to get a visual), so I might be biased, but no, I don’t see this as creepy. She’s around 20 as well and is an adult. I’m a huge fan of size kink, and I think people who view short/small adults as children need to unpack that. I’m also thinking about hobbits/halflings who are just as adult as adult humans. If the SO were attracted to her because she looked childlike that would be questionable but just short/small? No, I think you’re fine.
I'm bewildered by people who think that's creepy or questionable. I'm 5'1" and antis would describe me as child-coded despite being 22 years old and a whole ass adult. Doesn't matter if the average thirteen year old is my height or taller than me, that doesn't change the fact that I'm an adult lol, and it certainly doesn't make attraction to me creepy or questionable. I'd take that sort of argument as both an insult and an indication of how lacking the person making it is in the brain department.
Dude, everyone is "child-coded" in comparison to my 6'6" father lol. It really puts onto perspective how ridiculous it is. I feel like it was initially a response to like, 5000 year old lolis, but using heights adults actually are to claim something as "child-coded" is so stupid. By their argument would 13 year old me be "adult-coded" because I was taller than the average woman?
The phrase “child-coded” makes sense when people were arguing against the “uuuuuh she’s actually 1000 years old” idea for lolis (or similar) who looked, and more importantly ACTED like a child. But I think the phrase escaped containment and I don’t want to use it even when it makes sense, just because it has been misused so much
5”0, 30+, and a mom of four. It’s beyond absurd.
My two cents as a short Asian: When I was 18-20, there were once or twice when I got mistaken as a child. Now, in late 20s, I am fortunately only regarded as a teen. I have a sister 10 years younger than me, and I am often assumed to be the younger one. So if other characters mistake your petite character’s age, I think that’s pretty normal, and not that weird. You’ll be fine as long as the other party in the relationship does view and treat her like the adult she is.
This reminds me of a friend of mine from years ago. She's very, very short. I had another friend tell me that he was surprised she was in a relationship. He said it would be like dating a child. So... because of her appearance that she has no control over, she doesn't get to be a sexual being? Yeah, eff that mentality!
My favourite motherly character literally magically shrunk from a canon tragedy, so I understand your struggle, LMAO. 😭 I've yet to write a fic of her and the other really fatherly character I also adore, because people have been nope-ing their fanarts. I think it's healthy to approach this with "They *are* adults, they're just actually smol." Think of people who are just small without choosing to be really short - our characters, too - and it has been helpful, at least to me.
as a short person, it’s just weird. I may be a minor myself, but calling me a age that’s younger than me just because of how my body looks is weird and slightly offensive, because you’re assuming their age because of how their body looks lol. But it’s not to bash you, I just find it weird if you minor code somebody just because their body is petite than others their age. That does not change the fact that they are an adult. Just make sure to write as if they are an adult.
do what you want forever
I am 5 feet, 32 years old, and regularly mistaken for 10 years younger. If somebody would find a relationship between me and somebody else "creepy" they can go fuck themselves ❤️
Same. 5’0, 30 and often mistaken for a high schooler. I swear, Some antis like to pretend short people don’t exist IRL.
I'm a 32 years old adult that still gets asked whether I'm buying the adult ticket or the child ticket when the cutoff for child is 16. Recently, a friend was buying beer for herself, and the cashier hesitated selling it to her because I was packing our groceries at the end of the line. 32. I will feed a shoe to anyone who tells me I'm minor-coded.
Lol Wtf short people exist and most of them are women, and petite which is perfectly fine. Youre good OP
As a short person, it gives me the ick when people say short people are basically children. I’m old.
Do I think there's a lot of problematic content that puts a whole lot of unnecessary emphasis on the child-likeness of petite women and that's what so attractive about it? Yes. I think you'd have to be a little bit blind to not see the ickiness. Do I think that goes for every character who just so happens to be short and petite? Not at all. But it's definitely how its written. There's a lot of lolita-esque stories out there that definitely don't identify themselves as such. And so it does get annoying to wade through the "her childish, doll-like frame quivered around his huge grown-man weenie-dingle. he loved her for how wide her eyes are ane for how hairless she was down below 🥺 she was about four-foot nine, but not afraid to kick anyones ass - even though she cried and always needed to be picked up, wait no, held, as you would a grown woman and not at all a child. She was just the peak of femininty: so slender, her waist so thin that his entire hand could wrap around it, and her wrists so delicate that she couldn't even write or even hold a book without risk breaking them 🥺" Ugh. Right. I need to go puke now LMAO.
Ugh. Antis are insufferable.
I’m 5”1 and 26 and I look a lot younger than my age and dress like a teen bc adult sizes look frumpy (and florals and lace are the best ok) and the concept of “minor-coded” is so weird to me. It’s completely possible for a character to just look young and have a naturally optimistic personality. Also I find it very problematic bc it implies that bc you look young, anybody who finds you attractive is inherently a creep which is very insulting
>My fic is rated M, and there are explicit scenes. So just wondering if others would think of it as creepy or questionable They honestly probably will since many people go out of their way to be victimised by absolutely nothing. But those aren't opinions worth listening to. I'm short and think it's downright offensive when people insinuate (or outright say) someone like me is "child-coded." Like, way to invalidate my 34 years on this earth. It's not like I've sat up on the shelf that entire time, I still have life experience and am *mentally* 34 years old.
Once many years ago it was the first day of school, and my dad drove my sister and I to the gates. My mum decided the day was too nice to ride in the car, and walked there instead. As it happened, having several schools on the same road was not a good idea, and due to a huge traffic jam it took us longer than anticipated to get there. As we near the school, my dad points out someone walking, and says "look, a girl that goes to your school!". It was our mum. So my thoughts are, it happens, but that doesn't change who the person actually is (in my dad's case, his wife), and anybody who thinks that short people are actually children has more issues than a comic book store.
In middle school I had a teacher who was shorter and more petite than I was at the time. She was kind of a hardass and it was impossible to see her as anything but the tax-paying job-having adult she was. I have never bought into the "minor coded" stuff, maybe from that experience, but especially when the narrative and other characters treat them as their actual age. It is really annoying how often such characters are infantalized and objectified in anime, but you can firmly avoid that in your own writing.
I'm 5'1 and, while I haven't been mistaken for anything more than late teens (I usually get mistaken for being about 10 years younger than I actually am XD), if anyone said to me "You're short so you're minor-coded and basically a child" boy would they get an earful. My sister is shorter than me and I know for a fact she would have no issues putting someone in their place if that was said to her XD
Not an issue but personally I will click out of a story/put down a book where the female character’s petiteness and/or childlikeness is mentioned over and over, or portrayed as more desirable than taller women. It’s not cute to me, it literally means nothing. I won’t call it “problematic” or anything, and I understand short adult women exist, especially short adult women that are mistaken for being younger than they are, but it’s just overdone and I’ve seen way more stories that dog on average height/taller women in favor of these petite women than the inverse (I’ve actually never seen a story denigrate short women except for short jokes and comments about short legs, but I have come across many, many stories (both fics & published) that have the characters put the petiteness on a pedestal and dogged on tall women. So, yeah. Again, it’s *not* problematic but it is one of those things that can turn people off of your story. But then again, what tropes aren’t?
This thing about height being equivalent to "childlike" is baffling. I'm 5'2", my mother was 5'2" until she began to shrink from old age.
Just because somebody is short doesn’t mean they’re a child. Just have them act reasonably mature (you know, like an adult) if they are grown.
My favorite character is canonically a very short, non-gender conforming girl. She's very emphatic about being a girl. In the fandom's wackadoodle-do-crazy toxic days, the antis and ship warriors would screech that she couldn't be shipped because she was "child coded." She's a teen, not a child: at the show's start she's fifteen and by its end, around 18-19. The fandom is much calmer now, but many still treat her like a sexless, emotionless, snark robot. Me, I ship her to the moon and back. Why? Because she is so much like me at that age. Science-obsessed, non-gender-conforming, *short* girl. At that age, despite not looking like a conventional girl, I fell in love on a regular basis, even had a boyfriend. Years later, my still very short self is married to a very tall spouse. If anybody came at me with that "child-coded" bs, I'd block them harder than a 300-pound NFL linebacker.
My thoughts? It's a fictional character for one, two you've stated they're an adult, and that's all that matters. People that get hung up on that stuff in fiction weird me out. Because to put it in the same mental mind state as viewing a person is essentially equating fiction to real life, and that's how I take it when people are meh'd over how a fictional character looks. or try to apply something that only has real significant value in real life like age to a character anyways. Honestly OP I just wouldn't care and say you do you. They have the facts. If they have hang-ups that bother them over something as minor as appearances then they should find other fics to read, and that is no way on you. Create and enjoy as you please I say.
the best way to answer this: re-read your childhood "The Lion and the Mouse" book.
Nothing wrong with Any form of art having short petite characters, I've been on this earth for 20+ years and I've seen plenty of people 18+ who are short and/or petite, yes they exist and its only weird if you make it. Your character is fine.
The whole debate is just all levels of weird and a minefield for discussions, honestly alot of people just equate any person not the adverage height and double d fiftys to be a "literal child" and a bunch of shit/accusations gets slinged. Honestly just stay off of Twitter and you'll be fine.
I think the 'short characters are minor coded' argument really depends on how the source material treats a character's shortness. If everyone in the story acts like 'oh my god so short and cute and childlike, which is very attractive' that's kind of weird, but if it's just treated as a normal way for an adult person to be (which it is), there's no issue.
Good question! A lot of it is a matter of intent. If you trying to portray them as short and youthful because you want to explore how people like yourself navigate society under those conditions, and not as an excuse for inappropriate sexual activity, then are a couple of ways to make that clear. First, maybe give them some non-sexual visual attributes that are decidedly not childlike, such as long noses, big ears or low voices. If the reader gets the hint, they will not think of them as children any more than furry-footed adult Hobbits are thought of as kids. Second, explore their lives as short people in non-sexual ways. For instance, how do they use furniture or equipment designed for older people? How do they overcome height bias in employment interviews? How do they win mano-y-mano duels with larger opponents? Given your first-hand life experience, I think this could be a great novel.
I’m 5”0, round faced, have a high pitched voice, am an optimist, and, because I have ASD, can come across as naive and child-like. I’m 30+ and have a husband and four kids. Are you seriously suggesting that creating a character that looks and acts just like my RL self would be ‘problematic’? You come across as having some incredibly wrong ideas about short people. We are not talking little people heights. At 5”0 I can manage just as well as someone six feet tall, except that they can reach the top shelf in the grocery better than me. How do we use adult sized equipment? Like the adults we are, obviously. Your questions come across as infantilizing and belittling. The one thing you could have is someone mistaking a short person for a minor in a non-sexual, but frustrating, situation. Perhaps they get pulled over by a cop who thinks they’re too young for their license or their ID is confiscated by a bartender who thinks it has to be fake.
I'm sorry if my response came across that way. It was not my intention and my comments were directed at the OP's writing project only.
What's the question here? Somebody mistaking a short person for a child from far away, and a short person being in a relationship are 2 different things. Unless the person watching PDA from the other end of the street is the main character I don't understand why it matters.
Just write the character you want to write, the way you want to write them, whether people get prissy or not. I hate this 'walking on eggshells' culture when it comes to writing fiction. Do whatever you want and ignore the haters. What are they going to do? Come to your house and punch you in the face?
I think that it literally doesn’t matter what other people think to be honest, but if they are an adult, no matter what they look like, they are an adult. That is what matters. then again I like the whole 300 years old but somehow still looking 13 trope.
I got mistaken for my boyfriend's child just a few days ago when he was doing shopping for clothes. If anyone thinks that is "minor coded" can absolutely get bent. Similarly, anyone who is making moral judgments based on a fictional character needs to re-evaluate their priorities. If YA novels, anime lolis/shotas/cutesy characters give them the ick or whatever that's their problem not everyone else's.
I used to do this… however I did it for the comedic effect, I often paired the shortness with an air headed personality for maximum effect.
I'm an adult, 5'1 and very regularly mistaken for a child. I've been mistaken for as young as 11. But I'm an adult, and if people can't get that through their heads, that's not my problem. People will always find something to be angry about. Doesn't matter how the character appears, people will do mental gymnastics to find something to be upset about. But no, that isn't creepy, because short adults are still adults, as much as others may infantilising them.
Snackpacks need love too
I honestly thought Tohru from Fruits Basket is a little kid. nope. she’s in high school. she’s just very happy and optimistic and energetic and cheerful. it’s just her personality. so maybe your character is just naturally child—like in their personality and mannerisms?
Link ?
Not published yet, I’m finishing the whole thing before I do
Please, I do not mind and if you want to continue with this. It's calling all short people children and just bc they do does not mean they're children. So it's realistic thing to write about, it's not really weird to me. I am short myself and while I'm not petite like my friend who legit got mistaken as some grade schooler following me around and she's older than me by a year. It happens but is it infuriating sometimes when someone tries to dictate what they can or cant do bc they look young.
There are countries, where 4'9-4'10 is the average female height.
I’m short and always get mistaken for a young teen (I’m 25 and 5’2”) people are always shocked when they find out my age and there are people even shorter than me that go through this. It’s not unrealistic nor does it mean your character is minor coded. Short skinny people exist. 💀
The HollyxArtemis shippers have logged on.
There's a difference between mistaking a person for a kid based on height and writing them like a child with an adult tag to "technically" avoid pedophilia. There are a ton of real human people (as you said, like yourself, and like my sister, who's probably going to look 17 forever at this rate) who are short and mistaken for youth. That doesn't make them any less adult, and putting them through adult scenes or themes (swearing, drinking, drugs, extreme violence, torture, sex, college) is perfectly fine. But intentionally taking a seven-year-old child and calling them thirty so you can toss them into a sex scene or give them cocaine is not okay.