Different by Design: The Sizing System and Why It Had to Exist
Part of the Anthropomorphic Writing Series
Imagine a subway car.
Not an imaginary one — a real one. The kind that rattles and lurches and smells faintly of someone's lunch. You're standing, holding a pole, and the person to your left is two feet tall. The person to your right is nine feet tall and has to tilt his head to avoid the overhead bar. The Vulpen beside you barely reaches your knee. The Leonite across the aisle has his legs folded at an angle that would be uncomfortable for anyone, and is pretending not to notice.
This is not a novelty. This is Thursday morning.
When I first began building this world, the sizing question wasn't a creative choice — it was a necessity. The moment you commit to biological realism in anthropomorphic worldbuilding, you don't get to ignore the fact that a wolf and a lion and a fox are not the same size. And if your world is populated by the anthropomorphic equivalents of wolves and lions and foxes, you don't get to ignore it there either.
Most anthropomorphic worlds do ignore it. We talked about that problem in an earlier post — the universal tendency to draw every character at roughly the same height, as if the species differences that matter so much in every other area of biology somehow stop applying to scale. It's one of the four core failures I identified in that post, and the one that, visually, is perhaps the most immediately obvious once you've been trained to notice it.
My world doesn't do that. Every person in my world is the size they should be, species-consistent and biologically grounded. And to handle the variety that creates, my world uses a structured sizing system — one that has shaped everything from how cities are built to why a Leonite and a Lupenite become friends.
The System: Three Classes, Three Grades
The framework is simple on its surface: three Size Classes — Small, Large, and Giant — each subdivided into three Grades (I, II, and III). Classes describe the broad tier a species belongs to. Grades allow for natural variation within that tier.
A few examples to make this concrete.
Small Class is home to the Vulpens — the fox-people of my world — and a range of other smaller species whose grades reflect their real-world counterparts. Fennec fox-folk and the wild cat-folk — the people descended from the ancestors of the domestic housecat — are Small Grade Is: small, quick, and built close to the ground. Otter-folk occupy Grade I or Grade II depending on their lineage, with smaller river varieties toward the lower end and larger species pushing toward Grade II. At the top of the tier, ocelot-folk sit at Small Grade III — the upper ceiling of Small Class, large enough that the size gap between them and a Small Grade I fennec is immediately obvious. Vulpens span the full range, from Small Grade I through Small Grade III, with males reaching just over four and a half feet at the upper end. That's an enormous internal spread, and it illustrates something important: smaller species tend to have the most variation within their class.
Large Class covers species like the Lupenites, Pardinians, and Jabutuns — the wolf, leopard, and cheetah peoples of my world, all clustering at Large Grade II. Lupenites range across Grade I and Grade II, with Grade II being the most common. Vladimir Volorsky, at just over seven feet tall and 275 pounds, is a solid Large Grade II. A shorter Lupenite — a female standing five foot two, for instance — would be a Large Grade I. The Pardinians and Jabutuns share that Large Grade II space, which is part of why the clothing and manufacturing systems work the way they do: a Large Grade II garment isn't species-specific — it fits whoever fits. Elsewhere in Large Class, species like the Ocanians — the jaguar-folk — and the Hyeanids cluster at Large Grade III, the upper end of that tier.
Giant Class is where the scale starts to feel genuinely different. The Black Ursinians — the indigenous bear-folk of North America — occupy Giant Grade I. Leonites and Tiscythians, the lion and tiger peoples, are Giant Grade II: physically imposing in a way that announces itself before they've said a word. Leo Amerigo stands between nine feet and nine feet one inch tall and weighs 660 pounds. His wife Lea, at eight feet nine and 550 pounds, gives you a sense of what the lower end of Giant Grade II looks like for a female Leonite. And at the very top of the scale, Giant Grade III, you find the Grizzly and Polar Ursinians — the largest people in my world, reaching up to twelve feet tall — for whom even large doorways become a negotiation.
The Narrowing of Variation
Here is something that surprises people when they first encounter the system: the larger the species, the less variation there tends to be within it.
Vulpens, as I mentioned, can range across all three grades of Small Class. That's a wide internal spread — the fox world has a lot of room. But as you climb the scale, that room shrinks. Leonites are almost always Giant Grade II. You will rarely meet a Grade I Leonite, and a Grade III is genuinely exceptional — not impossible, but unusual enough to be remarked upon. Grizzly and Polar Ursinians are, effectively, always Giant Grade III. There is very little spread there.
Why? Because larger animals, in nature, tend to converge on an optimal size for their ecological role. The environmental pressures that produce a twelve-foot polar bear don't leave much room for smaller or larger variations. The biology settles. And in my world, that biological reality carries through to the people who bear it in their heritage.
Why It Had to Exist: Creation's Physical Variety
There's a reason the sizing system exists beyond the practical — and it is, at its core, the same reason most of my worldbuilding decisions exist: it reflects the world God actually made.
God created animals in extraordinary physical variety. The tiniest fox and the largest bear are not accidents of biology — they are expressions of a creation that was designed with physical difference in mind. Different sizes, different builds, different roles, different relationships. The variety is not a problem to be reconciled. It is part of what creation is.
When I ask the question I always ask — if God were to create an anthropomorphic world, how would He do it? — the answer regarding size is obvious. He would not collapse the variety. He would keep it. He would make a world populated by people of genuinely different sizes, because that variety is one of the things He evidently delights in.
The Imago Dei framework, which underlies all of my worldbuilding, extends this in a specific direction: God gave His image to many kinds of creature, each bearing it fully and completely, each different in form. That difference in form is not incidental. It is part of the design. A Small Grade I Vulpen and a Giant Grade III Polar Ursinian are not more or less human by virtue of their size. They are both fully human — different expressions of the same divine image, wearing very different coats.
Built for Harmony, Not Hierarchy
This is where the sizing system connects to something I've written about in previous posts: the multi-species civilization that has been the historical norm in my world from the very beginning.
In our world, physical difference has sometimes been weaponized — used to assign hierarchy, to justify dominance, to divide. That is not what happens in my world. Size difference, here, was never designed to produce hierarchy. It was designed to produce complementarity.
God designed these species to coexist, to harmonize, to build their civilizations together. And the sizing system, rather than creating the conditions for antagonism, creates something more interesting: a dynamic of mutual instinct that actually draws different-sized peoples together.
Consider the most common interspecies friendship pairing in my world: the Leonite and the Lupenite. On paper, a Giant Grade II Leonite and a Large Grade II Lupenite have a significant size gap between them — we're talking about the difference between nine feet and seven feet, and a far larger difference in mass and sheer physical presence. And yet these pairings are so natural, so common, that no one remarks on them.
The reason is simple, and it echoes something observed in the real world.
Elephants, according to researchers who have studied their behavior, appear to regard humans as cute — in much the same way that we regard cats as cute. There's something about a smaller creature, a creature that functions just well enough on its own but could obviously use some looking after, that activates the protective instincts of the larger animal. The elephant sees the small biped and something in it says: that one needs watching.
In my world, a Leonite sees a Lupenite the same way.
It's not condescension. It's not superiority. It's something more like the feeling you get when a cat headbutts your shin — a combination of tenderness and protective instinct that bypasses rational analysis entirely. The Leonite doesn't decide to feel that way about the Lupenite. He just does. It's wired in.
And from the Lupenite side, something symmetrical is happening. Smaller species, in my world as in nature, are drawn toward larger ones for protection. Not out of weakness — Boris Volorsky at Large Grade II is a formidable physical presence by almost any standard — but out of deep-seated instinct. The world is large and has teeth. A seven-foot wolf and a nine-foot lion standing together are better equipped for it than either one alone.
These instincts don't produce dependence. They produce friendship. And the friendship is genuine — rooted in something real in the biology of both parties, expressed through the freely chosen love that the Imago Dei makes possible.
How the World Actually Functions
All of this has practical consequences that my world has had to work through — and that, I think, are some of the most interesting aspects of building a truly multi-size civilization.
Clothing doesn't go by species — it goes by Size Class and Grade. A Large Grade II garment fits a Large Grade II Lupenite and would fit any other Large Grade II person equally well, regardless of what species they are. Multiple species occupy the same class and grade, so the manufacturing logic follows the system rather than tracking individual species.
Transportation follows similar logic. Personal vehicles are designed for specific size classes. Public transit is where things get most interesting: subway cars, buses, and public spaces are designed to accommodate every size class simultaneously — not by segregating them, but by building in accommodations. Public restrooms have sections scaled for Small, Large, and Giant users. Locker rooms work the same way. The goal is not to separate people by size but to make sure every size can actually use the space. You share the room. You don't share a stall designed for someone three times your height.
Housing is where the size gap is felt most personally. Houses and apartments are built with a specific Size Class and Grade in mind. A Lupenite family buys a home designed for Large Grade II occupants — doorways, ceilings, furniture, appliances all calibrated to their build. A Leonite family, as Giant Grade II, needs something built to a different scale entirely.
This doesn't mean crossing the threshold is impossible. A Giant Grade II Leonite visiting his Large Grade II Lupenite friend's apartment is a familiar scene — he just has to be thoughtful about doorways. In most cases, the architecture can accommodate visitors from adjacent size classes with minor inconvenience. The more extreme the gap, the more pronounced the difficulty. A Small Grade I Vulpen navigating a Polar Ursinian's Giant Grade III home is a genuinely challenging experience. A Leonite navigating the same space has considerably more to work with — closer in scale, even if not identical.
Most places of residence can accommodate visitors from other size classes in a general sense. But there is a moment, in every cross-size visit, where the architecture makes the difference visible — where a doorframe or a chair or a ceiling fan at the wrong height quietly says: this space was not built for you. Not as a statement of exclusion. Simply as a fact.
In a world that has always been multi-species, that fact is not remarkable. It is Tuesday.
Using This in Your Own Anthropomorphic World
If you're building a world with multiple anthropomorphic species and you haven't thought through the sizing implications, here is where to start.
Build a tiered system, not a flat one. "Different sizes" is not enough — you need a framework that tells you where each species sits relative to every other species, and what the spread of variation within each species looks like. Without that framework, you'll find yourself making inconsistent decisions every time you put two characters in the same room.
Let variation narrow at the top. The largest species in your world should probably have less internal size variation than the smallest ones. That's how biology works, and it makes your world feel grounded.
Let the size gap produce chemistry, not conflict. The instinctual dynamic between larger and smaller species — the protective instinct, the draw toward those who can watch your back — is a rich vein of genuine character relationship waiting to be mined. Don't waste it on antagonism that has no real basis.
Design your world's infrastructure honestly. If your characters are genuinely different sizes, the world has to account for it: clothing, transit, housing, public spaces. The practical texture of a truly multi-size civilization is one of the most underexplored areas in the genre, and getting it right makes your world feel lived-in in a way that few things else can.
A two-foot Vulpen and a twelve-foot Polar Ursinian do not live in the same world by accident. They live in it because God made them to. Different sizes, different builds, different gifts — and the same image, worn differently, in every one.
The world has room for all of them. It always did.
It just had to be designed that way.
— Eric Flegal
