Is too tall unrealistic?

Discussion in 'Character Development' started by SilentWaves55, Apr 20, 2018.

  1. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

    Joined:
    Jan 28, 2012
    Messages:
    8,102
    Likes Received:
    4,605
    Do you want them to be super tall or super tall and super big? Once in a very blue moon you see a guy who is clearly almost 7 ft, 7 ft, or even taller. I've also seen one woman that tall--it was amazing. All these people were surprisingly skinny. I don't think I've ever seen a person be that tall and also be proportionately wide. If you look up tallest wrestlers, yes, they exist, but now we're talking ultra ultra rare.
     
    Indigo Abbie likes this.
  2. SilentWaves55

    SilentWaves55 Active Member

    Joined:
    Feb 3, 2018
    Messages:
    229
    Likes Received:
    47
    You're right! But they are very athletic body types. Unless I decide to make all my tall villains athletic, I'll have to decide.
     
    Cave Troll likes this.
  3. SilentWaves55

    SilentWaves55 Active Member

    Joined:
    Feb 3, 2018
    Messages:
    229
    Likes Received:
    47
    Nanotechnology perhaps? Enhances their bodies to full maximum potential or I could say they have mixed DNA or someone gave them to increase their height genetics? I mean we got guys like Shaq walking around about 8 foot tall and no one asks why is he tall and if he's human or not. it's just hard for me to vision how these very tall guys would survive at so many other things without feeling knee pains all the time from what I heard is difficult for people around the 7 foot 8 foot range :D I guess these are just rare particular leaders who happened to be very tall, yet happen to be just ruthless and abuse their power in size. I was going to have it as over-time evolution, considering this is a little beyond the 28th century, may even head in the 29th century. No height has nothing to do with being good or bad, just that I have villains that would be very tall and yes there would also be very tall good guys as well. But I would also have short good guys and bad guys as well. But the size does play a critical factor in being fierce. I mean weren't leaders like Peter the Great, Vlad the Impaler very tall?

    Maybe some of them used to be basketball players, pro-wrestlers, NFL players that got recruited and trained or guys like my main villain, just happens to have grown very tall with genes or they are given super enhancements in the future.

    I'd want the villain very tall like that but also big at the same time. Maybe not as big like Bautista or Lesnar but pretty built. Wow never knew women could grow to be that tall.
     
    Indigo Abbie likes this.
  4. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

    Joined:
    Jan 28, 2012
    Messages:
    8,102
    Likes Received:
    4,605
    Shaq is 7'1 and Yao is 7'6, and from what I've read a lot of basketball player heights are reported with shoes.
     
    Cave Troll and Iain Aschendale like this.
  5. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

    Joined:
    Jan 28, 2012
    Messages:
    8,102
    Likes Received:
    4,605
    Tallest wrestlers I'm finding on google are mid 7 feet. Honestly, I'd use use Hulk Hogan as your inspiration.
     
    The Dapper Hooligan likes this.
  6. The Dapper Hooligan

    The Dapper Hooligan (V) ( ;,,;) (v) Contributor

    Joined:
    Jul 24, 2017
    Messages:
    5,864
    Likes Received:
    10,738
    Location:
    The great white north.
    Seriously? No Andre the Giant? He was kind of a big deal.
     
    123456789 likes this.
  7. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

    Joined:
    Jan 28, 2012
    Messages:
    8,102
    Likes Received:
    4,605
    OP appears to want "leadership" build--don't you think that's more Hulk than Andre?
     
  8. The Dapper Hooligan

    The Dapper Hooligan (V) ( ;,,;) (v) Contributor

    Joined:
    Jul 24, 2017
    Messages:
    5,864
    Likes Received:
    10,738
    Location:
    The great white north.
    No. Stand the two side by each, and Hulk Hogan looks like an angry chihuahua yapping at a mastiff.
     
    123456789 likes this.
  9. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

    Joined:
    Jan 28, 2012
    Messages:
    8,102
    Likes Received:
    4,605
    don't be ridiculous.

    [​IMG]
     
    matwoolf likes this.
  10. The Dapper Hooligan

    The Dapper Hooligan (V) ( ;,,;) (v) Contributor

    Joined:
    Jul 24, 2017
    Messages:
    5,864
    Likes Received:
    10,738
    Location:
    The great white north.
    My rebuttal:
    [​IMG]
     
  11. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

    Joined:
    Feb 12, 2015
    Messages:
    18,851
    Likes Received:
    35,471
    Location:
    Face down in the dirt
    Currently Reading::
    Telemachus Sneezed
    Two things. First, take a look here, most Northern European/Scandanavian men average over 180 cm tall. It's not simply a European thing either, the average Masai man (I'm not so sure I trust the source, but it's something to go on) is around 190cm tall. Those are averages, so given 800 years of semi-selective breeding (tall people tend to marry other tall people, although that's not always the case) and advanced technology, having a ruling class that's pushing seven feet doesn't sound impossible to me when you bell-curve heights like that.

    But the second thing, and I mean this in a polite way, is that you need to gain more confidence in your story and stop asking the forum for permission to do what you want with it.

    The movie Upside Down had people living in a world of anti-gravity unobtainium as a natural part of life, despite the fact that their whole ecosystem should have flown off into space at some point in the distant past. Jurassic Park used scientific nonsense to get dinosaur DNA. Dune has a planet that one of our members has repeatedly pointed out could not sustain oxygen, and Trantor (and its rip-off little brother, Coruscant) would die of oxygen starvation the first time the algae tanks caught a bug. Harry Potter features outright racism (specism?) against Muggles and Mudbloods as nearly a tenet of being a wizard, the self-aware droids in Star Wars are treated as property to be bought and sold by even the heroes, and there's even outright slavery under Jedi good-guy rule.

    You've asked for permission to have non-Asian characters employed in culturally Asian professions, to have superpowers, to have mixed-race characters, to have characters with multiple sexual partners, to have businessmen behave badly, and now to have unusually tall characters. All of these traits save the superpowers exist in the real world; indeed, I can think of a certain tall former businessman, currently employed in a job traditionally held by white men, although his skin has more of an orange-ish hue, whom many classify as a villain, who has had both multiple spouses and multiple concurrent sexual partners, and who may have had a child out of wedlock with at least one of them.

    These things do happen, so write your story. Just write.
     
  12. Azuresun

    Azuresun Senior Member

    Joined:
    Mar 25, 2017
    Messages:
    418
    Likes Received:
    573
    I was trying to figure out how to say the same thing, so I'll +1 this.

    OP, it's not a bad thing that you're asking how to make your story feel plausible or to avoid needless offence. But after so many questions over "Is X believable / acceptable", it starts to feel like you're really overthinking everything, possibly as a form of procrastination. In the end--just sit down and write. Execute your story well enough and the audience largely won't care that this character is too tall, that your evil businessman looks too typical, or that you've got a non-Asian guy being trained as a samurai or anything else. And if it is a failure? Learn from it, move onto a new project and salvage the good bits for later use.

    On a side note, I'd recommend checking out the anime or manga Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. That series (mainly from the second part onwards) is a good example of how you can casually throw out some really ludicrous situations and characters and make them work through sheer unapologetic audacity.
     
    Iain Aschendale likes this.
  13. SilentWaves55

    SilentWaves55 Active Member

    Joined:
    Feb 3, 2018
    Messages:
    229
    Likes Received:
    47
    I'm really sorry. The reason I asked so many questions is because a lot of what I'm writing about may come off as offensive to some and I wanted to get out the most important questions that I believe would be viewed as the most offensive. After so many movies, shows and such got bad backlash for not representing cultures appropriately or perfectly accurately, and it seems nowadays people get more easily offended if things are not accurate within the culture or race. It had me concerned so that's why I had asked so many questions. I wanted as much feedback on opinions to avoid any misrepresenting of Japanese culture. I apologies for all the questions :(

    I understand, thank you for the recommendation.
     
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2018
  14. Azuresun

    Azuresun Senior Member

    Joined:
    Mar 25, 2017
    Messages:
    418
    Likes Received:
    573
    I apologise, I didn't mean to come across as chastising you.

    One quote I've always remembered is "If nobody could possibly find you offensive, you don't actually have a personality." And that applies to writing as well. It's good that you want to avoid being insensitive or treading on nasty stereotypes that are used to hurt real people, but not all offence is justified. The answer to "Might someone get offended about this?" is always "yes", so you can't possibly appease everyone and have any sort of interesting story. There will be times when you need to judge whether the risk of offending a hypothetical audience member is worth putting something in that would make your story better. Sometimes it will be, sometimes it won't. I think you've already covered most of the things that could actually be issues already, things like "too tall?" have much less potential to cause genuine offence. :)

    But it'll be much easier to judge these things (and for other people to do so) once you have some written work to share. If you want to share your work for feedback here, we'll be happy to help. Good luck with it! :).
     
    Indigo Abbie likes this.
  15. SilentWaves55

    SilentWaves55 Active Member

    Joined:
    Feb 3, 2018
    Messages:
    229
    Likes Received:
    47
    No worries :) you weren't. I just don't mean to ask this many questions. If any of them sound ridiculous, it's ok to let me know. And you're right, it's almost impossible to avoid offending nobody cause someone will always be offended by something, especially if they are hypothetical thinkers, they will always have strong opinions. I can't let that stop me and I've been doing my best to avoid any controversial and stereotypical outcomes that could arise. In the matter of the "too tall" issue, I just want it to have some ground and be believable. It's not so much based on worried about offending someone because of a characters height, but more of creating a disbelief in how these villains would be mostly 7 feet and over, which may seem like an over exaggeration that may seem cliche in lots of comic super villains.

    And once I have some full written work, I'd be happy to share it with you guys for feedback!
     
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2018
  16. newjerseyrunner

    newjerseyrunner Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2022

    Joined:
    Apr 20, 2016
    Messages:
    1,462
    Likes Received:
    1,432
    Are these average for there time or are they all exceptionally tall for their time too? If you place it 900 years in the future, I would expect humans to be very different. I'm not sure if we'll migrate to being larger or smaller, but I doubt we'll stay this size. Diet alone makes us significantly larger than humans of even 100 years ago, when you add the ideas of things like genetic engineering, it's more likely than not. Right now, neither being large or small has any type of inherent genetic advantage, that may change with time. Any type of economic crisis would likely favor smaller humans, but in prosperous times, evolution would likely (very slightly) favor bigger. If we radically alter our atmosphere, that will also change things. If we continue on the course we are with our CO2 emissions, large humans would have an evolutionary disadvantage. Of course any natural evolution would be not terribly noticeable as it works over time scales of tens of thousands of years, where artificial evolution works very quickly.
     
  17. Cephus

    Cephus Contributor Contributor

    Joined:
    Jan 3, 2014
    Messages:
    850
    Likes Received:
    953
    Is there any reason why they have to be so tall? Doing things just for the sake of doing things is a bad idea in a story. You have to have a specific reason why you want it to be that way and that reason has to be explained to the reader or they're going to lose your narrative.
     
    Iain Aschendale likes this.
  18. SilentWaves55

    SilentWaves55 Active Member

    Joined:
    Feb 3, 2018
    Messages:
    229
    Likes Received:
    47
    A mix of both. Some would be average for their time. I'd say the 6 foot to around 6 foot 3 range would be average, 6 foot 5 to around 7 foot range would be tall, above that and around 8 foot would be very tall. But I would want to mix it up and not have this future world where everyone is tall. There would be shorter people too. Maybe depending on the environment there would be changes in height. Kind of like there is today in different countries. I imagine this would be believable in my world cause it's fiction and 900 so years would probably make sense. It's like comparing people today to the 10th century. Their heights and sizes have changed so I may have a shot at this.
     
  19. GrJs

    GrJs Active Member

    Joined:
    Apr 26, 2018
    Messages:
    185
    Likes Received:
    125
    You could use it as a comedic element between your characters, so they know it's weird, the readers know it's weird, but in your universe it's just a coincidence they happen find amusing. By stating that it's weird it makes it acceptable in a way. Because you all know it's weird but you've said it, pointed it out with a neon sign but you've also made it unimportant by doing so.

    You can circumvent the disbelief by pointing out the irregularity.
     
  20. SilentWaves55

    SilentWaves55 Active Member

    Joined:
    Feb 3, 2018
    Messages:
    229
    Likes Received:
    47
    That is true, but let's look at people who exist today besides basketball players. There's many pro wrestlers who reach this mark in height right? Guys like Big Cass and Big Show are considered incredibly tall, 7ft. Not outrageously tall like Jorge Gonzalez who was 8ft but still very much tall. Maybe some of my villains come from a long lineage of pro wrestling parents, grandparents that lead to these future generations of incredibly tall guys. Or enhanced engineered genetics overtime? Does everything need an explanation of why very tall people could exist?

    I could do that. Other characters pointing out how abnormally tall some of these guys are like "are they even human?" "what have they been eating? "
     
  21. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

    Joined:
    Dec 30, 2010
    Messages:
    6,541
    Likes Received:
    4,776
    If it's set in the future, I think it's fine. Think about it, we think of Napoleon as "short" and we laugh, but in his day he was considered tall. If you look at houses and doors from the 12th century or whenever (some time old. Lol), inevitably everything's much smaller because people used to be smaller.

    The thing, however, is that if being 6'6'', 6'10'' is "normal" (because future), then this height would not be "ridiculously tall". This height would just be the average height most people in your story would reach, assuming a healthy diet and normal lifestyle. As such, no one's gonna make mention of their height. If you see a guy who's 5'11'', you don't comment on it. If you see a woman who's 5'4'', you don't comment on it. So if 6'6''+ range is the norm, why would anyone comment on it?

    In contrast, your MC who's only 6'1'' might be commented upon, because he would actually be considered short. It's not that 6'6'' is tall - it is normal. 6'1'' would be short. In this way you can drop in the fact that this is the normal height of your characters in the story. But truth be told, there would be little reason in constantly reminding your reader of people's height, esp if they are a normal thing in the story, which means your readers will likely just think "tall person" and peg them at 6'1'' - 6'3'' regardless of what you write ;)
     
  22. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

    Joined:
    Feb 12, 2015
    Messages:
    18,851
    Likes Received:
    35,471
    Location:
    Face down in the dirt
    Currently Reading::
    Telemachus Sneezed
    Yup. How far into Avatar did you forget that the...Avatarians... were all nine or twelve feet tall? True, it came back in the final battle scene, and when she saw his real body, but for most of the movie, I was just watching slender blue people with tails, forgetting that they were giants by human standards. In a book, it's going to be even less obvious.
     
    Mckk likes this.
  23. SilentWaves55

    SilentWaves55 Active Member

    Joined:
    Feb 3, 2018
    Messages:
    229
    Likes Received:
    47
    That's interesting. Thanks. Although I'd still want my MC to be considered more average height than short so maybe I should turn the height chart down a notch. Plus some of my very tall villains that are 7 foot + are special :)
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2018
    Mckk likes this.
  24. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

    Joined:
    Dec 30, 2010
    Messages:
    6,541
    Likes Received:
    4,776
    Another thing to think about: is there a story reason why everyone has to be that tall? Does it serve any purpose?
     
    Iain Aschendale likes this.
  25. SilentWaves55

    SilentWaves55 Active Member

    Joined:
    Feb 3, 2018
    Messages:
    229
    Likes Received:
    47
    Not everyone will be that tall. It just so happens that these particular characters are very tall. It's like if you watch WWE, it's not like cause most of those guys are so big and tall that the rest of the world needs to be that tall. They just so happen to be very big and tall.

    I'd say overtime breeding with other very tall people over the generations and this one villain is obsessed with having a tall army, wanting to recruit and top train big guys. Also maybe some enhancements.
     

Share This Page

  1. This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
    Dismiss Notice