Overmusing on Twitter: Seasons in Westeros & Kepler’s Three Laws

I danced in the city’s neon lights, forever too soon. The man in black caught my eye. He tapped his watch and smirked.

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She slid her resignation under the Dr.’s door and half-dragged R12U-8 from the lab to her SUV. The man did not stir.

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The sky was unusually bright–a stark white. That could only mean one thing: the Alliance had arrived. Time to split.

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[Recent microfic]

Shoutout to Elisa Michelle! This fellow writer decided to join in on the #microfic challenge. Yeah-yuh! *confetti and fireworks* Recent shorts are posted on her fiction blog, ElisaMichelleStories, and she posts updates on Tastes Like Spaghetti, her Tumblr account. Go check them out!

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By the way–Happy Autumnal Equinox for you Northern Hemis and a Great Vernal Equinox for you Southern Hemis! (Someone’s having fun in Stellar Astronomy class. ;))

200+ tweets in so far on my new Twitter account, rowannhai. It’s been an interesting endeavor so far, but I really hope I’m not spamming followers with my thoughts … Let’s say that for a few minutes a day, I may go into a musing-lapse. Like today.

Post-Spoiler: I completely forgot that summers and winters on Westeros vary in length (so no, summers are not “shorter” than winters), but I’ll just clarify what I had thought (since I only had 140 characters for each post to explain):

[Read from bottom to top]

(Read from bottom to top)

Johannes Kepler’s Three Laws of Planetary Motion, if you’d like to know more.

In the world of A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin, summers and winters can last for years at a time. Why is that?

I jumped ahead and assumed that Westeros is on a planet (it has day and night) and it is part of a solar system like our own so that Kep’s Laws could apply (as far as we know, Kep’s may only apply to our system and no other).

Kepler’s Third Law of Planetary Motion States that p^2 = a^3.  In simpler terms, that means that the longer the orbital period (time it takes for a planet to orbit its sun-star, the longer its distance from its sun-star. For example, Jupiter’s distance from the sun is greater than Earth’s distance, which means that it has a longer orbital period than Earth’s orbital period of one year (this law seems sorta obvious to us, today).

Seasons are caused by the planet’s tilt (such as Earth’s 23.5 degree tilt). As the tilted planet orbits its sun-star its hemispheres receive least/most amounts of sunlight, like below:

Courtesy of HowStuffWorks.Com

But alas. One thing I absolutely forgot to put into account–which shatters my ideas, anyway–is that the length of summers and winters vary in Westeros. Sorta hit me when I took a break from this post and returned. Argh. For the length of seasons to abnormally change, I guess the orbit would have to be unstable … I dunno!

Perhaps it’s fantasy, hahaha! Le gasp, Batman!

I’m only a newbie to Astronomy. *shrug* Yeah, yeah, everybody’s splurging out on A Song of Ice and Fire (aka Game of Thrones) these days, but I was tempted to add some thoughts as to why summer and winter are so friggin’ long in Westeros. How do they measure time outside of days, anyway, if winters and summers vary? I believe that I read that age is measured in winters (or summers?), if I remember correctly …

Ok, ok, it’s fantasy. But sometimes I want to wrap my head around things, you know? I guess all this astronomical analysis puts things into perspective as I work on my WIPs. Verdigar of SoM has a few “scientific” things to iron out.

Avatar: The Legend of Korra. Commence Squealfest.

I am about to enter a new level of Squealdom. Look at that chick–I’m loving her already (and she’s actually a PoC that can kick some serious backside! *le gasp* More please. Like seriously)! So many awesome things coming out in 2012!

 

 

 

The Mindboggling World of Children’s TV

I’ve ranted with friends and family over and over about how TV sucks nowadays. We’ve had those “Don’t You Miss 90s TV” nostalgic whine and cheese parties so many times, I think my head’ll explode.

Not going to rant today–I’m rather apathetic. That’s for another day.

Just wanted to bring your attention to a the pilot of a kid’s show I happened to stumble across today while breaking from East of West.

In my opinion, it seems like a rather interesting show. Has this “psychedelic 70s steampunk vibe” to it, and the characters and animation look great! I’d watch it if I could haul my apathetic self to the TV (Just kidding–I watched some TV today! It was a cancelled show. Hmm). Sigh.

Then again, I’m fresh out of childhood (I still watch cartoons, though!) .  Like I mentioned before (in a previous musing on young readers and children’s/YA lit–Readers vs. Writers, Reviewers, Publishers, etc.), do children sample these things, or are adult execs making all the decisions as to what is entertaining for kids?

Don’t kill me or seek to destroy my [not-quite-launched] writing career! Just a thought, is all.

And another thought–does art imitate life or life imitate art? Do kids like shows because they’re the only things to watch on the tube, or do these shows tickle their imagination? Ah well, there’s always books!

By the way, I absolutely love Avatar: The Last Airbender **The Animated Series**. (All sorts of adults watch cartoons, too!)

Fueling Up

As obvious as this is, I constantly rediscover the magic of reading (DUH!). It soothes some paranoia with my writing style and juices up the inspiration sponge.

Right now, I’m kind of in a book jam since I’m catching up on reading (this semester, every time I geared myself up for some leisure reading, I passed out from exhaustion. Revenge of the Late-Nighters).

Here’s what’s on the list so-far. I think I have to restrain myself from getting more books:

• Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (Got this for Christmas. Didn’t get past Chapter 4, since I kept passing out from academic exhaustion. The concepts and magical system are quite interesting so far. Allomancy!)
• Racing the Dark by Alaya Dawn Johnson (From the library. As mentioned before, I was hooked to the sample she provided on her website. Love the worldbuilding so far–on some summaries, it seems like there’s a whole lot more to discover. Something about bound-spirits in the center of the world coming loose. Ooh)
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Quite a few people are highly recommending the trilogy. Judging by the wait–I was Hold No. 5 of 15 in the library system–the content must be on fire.)

I was also going to order Clash of Kings, second book of the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin (that, too, I tried to read this semester with the same result), but I need to clear my list first. I read Game of Thrones last summer and gaped at the worldbuilding. (I’m also watching the show on HBO, hehe! Cheering for Arya Stark! She and Tyrion seem to be the only people keeping it real in that hellhole. But more on that later.)