Why are the seasons so weird in the show and why are the people so backward?

[psl1]

Why are the seasons so weird in the show
10 years for summer and seasons of undetermined length...wtf?

The time measurements are different, so 10 years in their time is 6 months in our time? ....that might make the 8000 years more like 400 years?

Different seasons length....they don't have an accurate calendar measuring system?



why are the people so backward?

From reading something of the history online it looks like this medieval culture has lasted 8000 years. They don't want to get out of the dark ages and join the real world?

No offense but in human history 8000 years goes from 'Neolithic stone age man' to 'modern space age man'.

These are not humans?

Their all inbreed?

[P-90_177]

Why are the seasons so weird in the show
10 years for summer and seasons of undetermined length...wtf?

The time measurements are different, so 10 years in their time is 6 months in our time? ....that might make the 8000 years more like 400 years?

Different seasons length....they don't have an accurate calendar measuring system?



why are the people so backward?

From reading something of the history online it looks like this medieval culture has lasted 8000 years. They don't want to get out of the dark ages and join the real world?

No offense but in human history 8000 years goes from 'Neolithic stone age man' to 'modern space age man'.

These are not humans?

Their all inbreed?

Because that's how it was written? In a fantasy world of magic and dragons perhaps?

The inbreeding....... well actually in GoT that's a fair point.......

[Gen. Chris]

First of all, the series has more of a 12,000 year long history that the people know of.

There is a reason for the seasons being years long at a time, and Martin has said that it will be explained by the end of the series.

As for people not yet advancing out of the medieval ages, there may be a reason for that as well. Don't know, and don't particularly care. And what "real world" would they enter? This is not Earth. It's a different world with a different history, complete with dragons, warlocks, and beings that can raise people from the dead. Everyone in "that" world is still in relatively the same point in their civilization unless there is someone in Sothoros building warp drives.

[Skydiver]

YOu can call it 'dark ages' but really they're pretty much 'pre electricity' on the tech scale. Think about the 'wild, wild west' and how they did things. Electricity paved the way for machines and mechanization. And that's pretty much what they lack.

As to other things....it's an alien planet (as in alien to us) and you can't expect it to follow earth rules of 'normal'.

[DigiFluid]

YOu can call it 'dark ages' but really they're pretty much 'pre electricity' on the tech scale. Think about the 'wild, wild west' and how they did things. Electricity paved the way for machines and mechanization. And that's pretty much what they lack.

And further to that: since we know that magic and such is 'real' in the GoT world, it's clear that it doesn't follow the same physical laws as the real world. It hasn't been addressed (and I doubt it ever will be), but it seems to me that it's entirely conceivable that electricity may not even be possible by the physical laws of the GoT world. But to put it simply: we just don't know, and it's not fair to judge that world by this world's standards.

There's also rather valid in-world reasons for technological stagnation as well:

• The distant east, from what little we know, seems to be ruled by the Red Priestesses and their mysticism--not exactly conducive to what we'd call progress
• In the nearer east, civilization was dominated for a long time by the comparatively advanced nation of Valyria. When the Doom struck, almost all of Valyrian civilization was wiped out in the devastation. It's recovered somewhat by now, but the secrets of their power have been all but lost, and the remnants have grown up into not-especially-nice descendant nations (ie: the slaver cities of Slaver's Bay, the cutthroat Venice-esque merchants of Qarth, etc)
• The West, traditionally, has been a bit of a backwater. It was populated for the longest time by nature-loving creatures, who have slowly died out in the face of the aggression of Men. The first kingdoms of Westeros were crushed by the Andal invasions, who pretty much sought to remove the old and replace it with their own.
• And then came the Targaryens who, rather than seek any sort of progress, ruled through the blunt force of having dragons at their disposal. Try to stand up for yourself? ROASTED
• Meanwhile in the North, what civilization there is spends its time trying to eke out survival in the harsh conditions (when they aren't having to defend themselves from the Others)

[psl1]

Ahh tooobad. I was hoping the show would grow up and feature Panzer Group Stark ambushing & destroying the Royal Lannister fusiliers while they drank their tea.

[Skydiver]

I thought I had heard/read a theory once

Spoiler:

the GOT world isn't like ours in that it's not big, planets revolving around a sun, but an inside solar system...as in the 'sun' is inside a massive sphere, and the people walk inside the outer shell...that's what's represented by the open, those revolving bands.

I'm honestly expecting....anyone remember the old Clash of the TItans? I'm talking the one in the 80's, with Harry Hamlin and BUrgess Meredith. Where zeus put playing pieces down into the stadium of life...that that's what we'll end up with in the end, that the whole show has been nothing but a RPG, a game that two people were playing. And what we were watching as 'reality' was them playing their game. ANd it gets played over and over and over. and maybe one reason the seasons are so unpredictible...they are as long as a roll of hte dice dictates they are.

[Gen. Chris]

Ahh tooobad. I was hoping the show would grow up and feature Panzer Group Stark ambushing & destroying the Royal Lannister fusiliers while they drank their tea.

...grow up?

[psl1]

I thought I had heard/read a theory once

Spoiler:

the GOT world isn't like ours in that it's not big, planets revolving around a sun, but an inside solar system...as in the 'sun' is inside a massive sphere, and the people walk inside the outer shell...that's what's represented by the open, those revolving bands.

I'm honestly expecting....anyone remember the old Clash of the TItans? I'm talking the one in the 80's, with Harry Hamlin and BUrgess Meredith. Where zeus put playing pieces down into the stadium of life...that that's what we'll end up with in the end, that the whole show has been nothing but a RPG, a game that two people were playing. And what we were watching as 'reality' was them playing their game. ANd it gets played over and over and over. and maybe one reason the seasons are so unpredictible...they are as long as a role of hte dice dictates they are.

Wow you've just saved my interest in this show. What you describe is similar to one of the best Dr Who series I ever saw as a kid. It was called the WARGAMES. You end up stumbling with the Dr and Jamie and some girl from battlefield to battlefield, but each battlefield is from a different century and location.

You only find out later its part of a massive war game that the "War chief" is orchestrating with opponents from a spacestation to amass the supersoldiers surviving each battlefield.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Games

[boo1234]

Here is my scientific answer... their moon is proportionally either too small or too far away to stabilize the axis of the planet, so the axis wobbles unpredictably. The moon has sufficient mass/distance to the planet to keep the axis from totally going haywire, but at the same time, not enough mass to keep it at a constant angle like we have on earth.

In addition, the orbit of the planet may be more elliptical than that of Earth, which would further subject it to more violent temperature changes. However, I believe that the axial tilt being wobbly is the major contributor in this, because if it was just the elliptical orbit, the seasons would be predictable length.

[psl1]

Yes I gather the author also did write an earlier novel about the difficulty of life on a earth that's orbit around the sun is getting bigger and bigger.

This guy was originally a sci fi author.

[Gen. Chris]

Martin has said the nature of the seasons is more a matter of magic than nature.

[Skydiver]

Regardless of what it ends up being, viewers would be well served to not expect it to conform to 'common' standards....meaning it ain't earth, don't get yer knickers in a knot if it doesn't act like earth.

They have magic, they have giants, they have white walkers, they have monsters....it's not a 'normal' world.

[psl1]

That’s why I'm not a big fan of fantasy. Without any connection to the real world , It serves little purpose, but to occupy time. In fact sometimes I wonder about the agenda.

After reading the Hobbit & LOTR as a kid I was really bothered by all the 'hacking' and 'hewing' and 'cleaving' & slaughter of the Goblins and Orcs etc. It seemed that scores of Orcs/Goblins died for each Human. In real battles this doesn't happen, until you read about colonial empires and subjugating slaves for such an empire.

I started to wonder ‘what was the point of this narrative’? Over the decades I started to see the humans and elves as colonial westerns, while the Goblins/Orcs as the "coolies" , "wogs" “ragheads” and all so called "savages".

But clearly Tolkien is depicting these goblin/Orcs as evil. Does that makes his efforts just part of a century of apologist in English literature justifying the slavery they visited upon these occupied territories?


If it’s meant to be Swiftian satire , I fear it’s a failure.

[Gen. Chris]

...I think you read far too much into Lord of the Rings...


Aside from that, it was far more likely (given what we know) for the good guys to be the better fighters in Lord of the Rings (books) rather than the complete opposite in the movies, where there were few if any casualties on the side of the Mordor at, say, Minas Tirith before Rohan showed up...For a civilization that had existed for 3,000 years, even in decline, the soldiers of Gondor were pretty useless.