realistic fantasy (🐾)

Human populations subjected to protected environments for many generations may experience selection towards certain juvenile traits.
Relatively rounded faces.
Less pronounced facial features.
Less aggressiveness.
Greater social dependence.
Prolonged play and curiosity behaviors.
Greater ease in establishing bonds with caregivers.
Important: These changes don't occur because nature "wants to make adorable humans." They are the result of accumulated selection under specific conditions.

Goblins are small and may have abilities that humans do not possess.
Their size helps them better understand human physical vulnerability.
There may be communities where humans and elves have fairly equal relationships.
There may also be goblins who consider humans interesting domestic creatures.
Their relationship with humans is probably the most culturally variable.

The enormous physical difference makes physical coexistence complicated.
An ogre may consider a human too small and fragile for certain tasks.
Ogre-human communities often require infrastructure adapted to both species.
Ogres can become protectors of human communities, but they can also easily exert enormous physical authority over them.

Orcs usually recognize that humans are physically weak.
However, strength and authority are not necessarily equivalent in their culture.
Some orca societies consider it undignified to treat a person as property simply because they are vulnerable.
Humans can be allies, neighbors, traders, or members of orca communities.
Other orca cultures may be much less respectful.
Result: there is no single "orca opinion" about humans.

Elves often consider humans fragile.
Their longevity makes them perceive human life as extremely short.
Some develop a paternalistic attitude: protecting the human because they believe that he cannot take care of himself.
Few fully respect their autonomy.
The more paternalistic elven societies were important in the development of human domestication.
Cultural idea:
"A human can be free, but why allow him to suffer if we can take care of him?"

Humans did not evolve to become warriors capable of confronting other species.
Natural selection primarily favored the ability to avoid confrontations; being quiet, prudent, social, and able to recognize dangers may be more valuable than being strong.
Humans learn from a young age to interpret signals from predators and other species.
Cooperation becomes a biological and cultural necessity.

Over time, two major identities emerge:
Free humans
"We are weak, but our lives belong to us."
Domestic humans
"Being protected does not necessarily mean being oppressed."
Not all domesticated humans want to be freed.
Not all free humans reject domestic life.
The discussion becomes much more complicated than simply "freedom vs. slavery".

There is no longer a single "human".
There are wild, urban, integrated, and domestic human cultures.
Some populations preserve ancestral traditions of independence.
Others have lived with other species for hundreds of generations.
Cultural differences can be enormous.
Domesticated humans may even see each other as belonging to different cultures.
The final paradox:
The weakest species in the world ended up creating one of the most difficult questions to answer: if a creature can think, feel, and choose, can someone keep it as a pet?