Mutt and Jeff

There's something inherently comical about a very tall person standing next to a short one. Couples where there is a large height disparity seem curious. When I was growing up, I used to read a comic strip called Mutt and Jeff which was exactly that, a tall guy and a short guy doing wacky things together.


Funny, right? When I started crafting the world of Rome's Revolution, I always had in the back of my mind that winnowing down the population would give the opportunity to change the general characteristics of humankind. I took the opportunity to have humans end up quite a bit shorter; Rome is just over five feet tall. In contrast, the Essessoni (us) are, well, our size. So Rei is often described as "towering over the Vuduri" and not just because of his height but because of his musculature. In other words, I believe the Vuduri were diminutive. It gave me a lot of material to fill out the book when contrasting the two sets of people.

Yesterday, I described the scene where Rome appears to reject Rei, leaving him for good. Now Rei loves her very much and isn't going to just let her walk out of his life without a fight. But making the Vuduri diminutive would make it seem that Rei could overpower any Vuduri that got in his way but for the plot to continue, Rome needs to go. See if you think I was able to sidestep this issue:

Rome disappeared from view and Pegus followed her out, closing the door behind him. Rei tried to move in that direction but the two guards, who were burly by Vuduri standards, stopped him. He struggled mightily, however, they were simply too strong for him. He tried to take a swing at one guard but the guard caught his fist and twisted Rei’s arm around behind him. The other guard locked his arm around Rei’s neck and squeezed until he became faint. While Rei was an athlete, he had never been trained on hand-to-hand combat. He could not overcome the two of them singlehandedly. Finally, he gave up. He knew when he was defeated. A kind of catatonia set in.

Of course when the movies get made, the first thing the producer and director are going to do is eliminate the size difference between the two groups of people. It makes casting harder and it isn't germane to the plot so bye-bye Mutt and Jeff.