seagullsong:

nicholassayre:

seagullsong:

my problem with trying to read ASOIAF is that I am more interested in the climate and ecology than literally anything else 

what would it even mean to have a world where the day and year were standardized but the seasons varied by years? Martin says its magic, but what kind of magic? I’ve read multiple possible scientific explanations for why a planet would have variable seasons and any or none of them could be true. TELL US MARTIN, TELL US.

But never mind that, how did a preindustrial society even identify the standard length of a year without being able to associate it with the cycle of the seasons? Probably stars, I guess.

I get that humans can store food, but what do the animals do? Are there bears that can hibernate for a decade? What about migration? Is there even a place with the opposite seasonal cycle for animals to migrate to, or do birds hang around all winter? Are the reproductive cycles of animals constant like humans, or tied to the seasons? Are direwolves giving birth in the middle of winter as well, or does the population go years and years without new members to replace the animals that die off during the winter? 

I’M SO CURIOUS BUT HE KEEPS WRITING ABOUT BATTLES 

I’m pretty sure the years are identified astronomically, I’m less sure why anyone gives a fuck about a year as a unit of time. I mean, it doesn’t correspond to any sort of economic or agricultural activity, so I don’t see how it would become part of the tradition.

Ecologically Martin has to handwave because there is no way that the ecology of ASOIAF-verse resembles anything like our ecology. Evolution would take a completely different path if it’s been going on since forever, if it’s a new development (Martin’s suggested it hasn’t always been like this), I’m pretty sure life would just be wiped out. The winters would be death for the animals, and I’m pretty sure that no rest period would be death for the plants in summer.

Economically it would be a nightmare, too. You’d have to stockpile huge supplies of food in a pre-industrial society. Historically, the last few months of winter were periods of near-starvation for anyone who wasn’t pretty darn wealthy. Basically you’d have places like Dorne still growing food and selling it at incredibly jacked-up prices to the north, or you’d have legally imposed price ceilings on food exports.

But that wouldn’t have worked when Dorne was its own kingdom, so I don’t know how it was managed before then. A lot of starvation, I’m guessing.

The gimmick of seasons lasting several years is, unfortunately, just that. A gimmick. Were it real, it would profoundly change the nature of evolution, ecology, society, and economy and Martin would have had to actually explain all of it so that we had any idea what was going on.

I figured that with the long summers, I could buy the huge stores of food thing. (And yeah, I have no idea how the plants work. I mean, lots of plants only produce fruit/edible things towards the end of the summer, which would significantly reduce the food supply.) But…how would you store food that long? Food storage is hard when you don’t have electricity or, like canning. I guess they could freeze stuff by leaving it in a cache outside. 

I love that you also care about this. Man, dragons don’t un-suspend my disbelief, but this kind of thing always gets me, because dragons are standard but the seasons thing is a crazy awesome idea. Building a world with a climate like this and then exploring all the multifaceted ways that it would affect the development of life and human society on a planet would be like 5,000 times more interesting to me than writing about Earth but…with long winters. 

I always assumed that the huge castles like Maegor’s Red Keep, Oversized Harrenhal and The Vale were all built in the Long Winters in a system similar to that in which the Pharaohs built the pyramids. While waiting for the Nile to flood and start the growing season, or in this case Summers to come again, the ruling class would start massive public works projects to pay, feed, and keep the lower class from rebelling while asserting their authority with massive monuments. All the biggest castles are south and near the coasts, where it would be warmest, and have the most access to food through fishing and trade. And since all of the major castles are dated after the Seven Kingdoms came under single Targaryen leadership (Not sure about the Vale, will double check) it would probably work. Thoughts?