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from the whatever-happened-to-the-Even-Seasons? dept.
A central conceit of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books (and the popular HBO series Game of Thrones based on them) is that the seasons of the planet where they take place are not as predictable as the Earth's annual cycle. Somehow the phrase "winter is coming" wouldn't seem as foreboding if you could reply, "Yes, that usually happens in December through February."
But how could a planet have unruly seasons? Earth's seasons are due to the tilt of its axis. During one part of Earth's orbit, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the Sun, with the resulting indirect sunlight spread thin over the surface of the hemisphere, causing winter. On the opposite side of its orbit, summer comes as this hemisphere is tilted toward direct sunlight. There isn't much room in such clockwork for randomness.
Well, if you've ever wanted to debate fan theories, here's an excellent new resource for you to draw from: a real climate model simulation of Westeros and Essos.
Source: Ars Technica
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday December 27 2017, @02:36AM (2 children)
Is the climate model really the issue? Isn't it more like there is no real sense of distance, time and space in the show. People move by the blink of an eye (or cut of a scene) seemingly since we don't know how much time really passes from one end of the world to the next. So they sitting around chilling in Winterfell and then *bam* next scene they (the same characters) have magically appeared in Dragonstone (or some other place) and then all of a sudden they are back up at the Wall etc. Weeks have probably passed by but there is no indication of that. OK "magic" and Dragons might fly at the speed of a airliner but then not everyone gets a ride.
So I have bigger issues with the show then that the climate model seems a bit wonky.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Wednesday December 27 2017, @03:12AM (1 child)
They do attempt to portray journeys as taking quite some time, they just don't show it much. When Eddard and Co. traveled from Winterfell to King's Landing in season 1, I'm pretty sure they explicitly said it would take a couple weeks or something like that, and they showed the incident with Hound killing the little kid at one of the stopping points along the way. Traveling to Dorn by ship similarly took some time; it took Danyreus plenty of time to travel across Essos, it took some time for Arya's party to travel from King's Landing north towards the Wall, and they had stopped to camp when they were attacked, etc. They don't always do the greatest job of conveying to the viewer just how long it really takes to get anywhere, and time constrains (1 hour per episode) probably has something to do with that, but it is built into the story. As far as the dragons, yes, those do travel quickly since they can fly, but we've only seen them used as transport recently (going past the Wall to rescue Jon Snow and co.).
There's some issues with the show, but personally I don't think the sense of distance is as much as you're making it out to be. They're skipping over all the long journeys, but they are in the story, and probably have to do with why you sometimes don't see some characters for a while.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday December 27 2017, @01:14PM
I agree mostly. Latest season has not followed the travel-takes-time logic.