(no subject)

[naath]

Two things about aSoIaF:

*the random long seasons are apparently "magic"; but the people in the books clearly have "years" that are regular, predictable, and much shorter than the interval between Winters. For instance people give their ages in years, they know how many years since various historical events happened, some officials serve for a year and so forth. Presumably that means that things like solstices are not affected by the magic weather patterns; I wonder if there are annual seasonal weather variations that just aren't mentioned because the magical seasons are much more important.

*OMG all the people are SO YOUNG. I was just reading a passage where Dany is thinking about how Missandei is *11*; Dany herself is 16. *eleven* and she's working as (effectively) PA to a minor monarch. Bran is 10 and he's off on his very own magical quest. The next generation up (people like Ned Stark and Cersei Lannister) are in their 30s.

I was looking these numbers up because I wanted to maybe make a costume, and I guess I want someone *more my age*... but none of the interesting people are in their late twenties.

I find the competence demonstrated by the younger people very unrealistic... I guess maybe living in a harsh world forces you to grow up faster. I wonder if there's a way to make people grow up faster without being vile to them.

Comments

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

If memory serves Shae is 27.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not cosplaying Shae ;-p

http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Shae <-- suggests she was 19 at the time she died though; maybe you are thinking of the actress? the TV series ages-up all the younger characters.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I just have gotten it mixed up in my mind. I thought she left her weird country when she was 20 and then spent seven years making her way to King's Landing.

You could be a white walker...

[naath.livejournal.com]

Graaaaaaaagh

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

If I was a girl I think I'd want to be Ygritte, because she's awesome. But I think she's on the young side as well.

[naath.livejournal.com]

19 at death; also has important hair that is unlike my hair in almost every respect.

I like Missandei dammit! (because she's from Naath :-p also cool) but I can't very well look 11.

Maybe I could pull off a medieval 18/19 (Lyanna, Shae, Alayaya, oh! Sarella Sand, Brienne (too tall), Ygritte).... oh look I found a list...

In their twenties
Arienne Martell (gosh she's stupid compared to some of the younger characters), Tyene, Asha, Nymeria Sand,.

Early thirties
Cersei & Lysa (oh god just no)

This might just be one of those Bad Plans.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Asha is pretty fucking cool (in fact, the only interesting greyjoy.)

[naath.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Asha is cool. And totally not a whiny brat like Theon... although I do feel a bit sorry for him now.

Also the Ironborn are cool because CTHULHU although I'm not sure worshiping him is usually thought of as... sensible.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

The idea of the Ironborn is cool, but most of the Ironborn chapters are poorly executed.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

One of the wikis says Tyrion is 24 :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I think partly, people can grow up faster if they're given responsibility and taught how to handle it: there's lots of grown-up stuff I couldn't do when I was 3, but probably could have done when I was 15 even if it was expected of me, but didn't actually do until I was 30.

But partly, fantasy novels just do this. When Miles Vorkosigan was 17 he seemed 17. He did lots of genius stuff, but also lots of "agh, I don't know what to do" and "agh, I'm obsessed by my feelings" stuff. Whereas lots of other protagonists just seem to plod along acting like a competent adult and then suddenly have out-of-the-blue fits of irrationality, whether they're supposed to be 15 or 45.

I'm thinking of Robert Jordan: the characters are wonderful, but all the main characters are supposed to be about 18? But they don't seem like they're 18 year olds trying to act like war leaders and constantly being overridden by the romantic feelings: they feel like they're two different characters stapled together.

Finally, in GRRM, I hear he'd intended to have a several year gap between novels when people would have some time to get used to the political status quo, and for the children to grow up, so their original ages made more sense, but that didn't work. I think he's gone on record that if he were doing it again, he'd have them older, and people are ok to think of them that way even though that's not strictly what it says in the earlier books.

I actually think this is a reasonable approach. If you rewrite the earlier books too much, they lose their pizazz (and you have to wait 30 years for the last book to be finished before publishing the first). And if you lock yourself into your mistakes too much, you end up with nonsense like "and then there was a big magic spell that, um, closed all the plot holes". So sometimes "yeah, mea culpa, that plot point is a bit unrealistic, sorry, I can't fix it and leave any of the rest of the book worth reading, we just have to live with an imperfect book", while very unsatisfying, may be better than the alternatives :)

[naath.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm sure as shit not happy thinking of 13 year old girls as grown women... (even though, really, 13 is not that young to "flower"; it's just that it's very young to be shafted with all that responsibility).

[angoel.livejournal.com]

I read somewhere that the random long seasons were due to the planet having an erratic orbit. But I could be wrong.

[naath.livejournal.com]

If it were an erratic orbit about a single star then they would have great difficulty in charting the year they use to, eg, count how old people are surely?

It could be a binary system like in Heliconia - but that was regular, much much longer, and the second "sun" was visible.

[requiem-17-23.livejournal.com]

A planet with an axial tilt that was itself in a precessing elliptical orbit would have seasons a little like this, I think. The main effect would likely be the effect of the orbit - perihelion would be Summer in both hemispheres, aphelion would be Winter - but if your hemisphere happened to be pointing at the star in Summer then your Summer would be hotter and the next Winter would be colder... hmmm...

A planet with a rapidly precessing axial tilt that was in an elliptical orbit would have a beat set up between the axial precession and the orbital motion. In order for it to work as written, the planet's axis would have to precess almost but not entirely around in a circle in one year - imagining a forty-year long cycle, it'd be precessing ~351 degrees around in a year. So then if your hemisphere is pointing at the star in Summer then your hemisphere will be pointing at the star again in Winter (the axis has turned halfway around, and the star is now on the other side of you).

Oh, and the approach of winter could be tracked by measuring the shadow of a pole at noon, and the height of the sun in the sky would have nothing to do with the time of year.

The planet's axial tilt would also have to be much smaller than Earth's, or people would have surely mentioned the extremes of weather in April and October that heralded the approach of true Winter.

[naath.livejournal.com]

The characters don't track the Seasons with astronomical measurements, just with increasing-cold. Although maybe that's just because they are all thick.

Also I don't think your system gives the *unpredictability* of the Seasons.

However I think we have Word Of God that it's magic.

[requiem-17-23.livejournal.com]

Give the axis a bit of a wobble to it, and nobody will ever live long enough to predict the Seasons, I guess...

I now want to find somewhere to put my idea for a planet in a Lagrange horseshoe orbit about a binary pair where the lighter partner is basically made of Magic: you get two sets of seasons a year on top of a two-year hot/cold cycle, and magic works best at one specific time of year which differs depending where in the world you are, the one constant being that the morning star is at its brightest. I had this idea while trying to puzzle out the above, but I can't make its cycle slow enough.

[pavanne.livejournal.com]

They never explicitly call them 'years' do they? 'Name days' make slightly more sense if you take them as being about 14-18 months apart, our time (although this makes most of the characters have quite late onset puberty, I don't think it is completely broken). I never thought of Ned and Catelyn as mid 30s, and they looked right to me as 40-50 year olds in the TV adaptation. This might just be a retro-justification of GRRM meaning to leave more time between books for characters to grow up.

Asha seems a good option, and you get an axe.

[naath.livejournal.com]

I recall them saying things like Triarchs ruling for "one year" or it being such-and-many years since Agon's Landing. Of course their years may not be the same length as our years; although menarche at 13/14 isn't unusual in modern women.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

clearly have "years" that are regular, predictable, and much shorter than the interval between Winters.

Yeah, I thought that. But come to think of it, several real world calendars are completely independent of the seasons, although of approximately the same length, if they're lunar, so that's eminently possible.

My impression is that the winters are unpredictable (and quite possibly magical) but it's also possible they're just on a long slightly-irregualr cycle the characters don't have enough information to predict.