If the seasons didn't change?
In my other-worldly fantasy novel, there's a race of people who live up in the mountains and there are big rebel groups who - as far as I know - live in a giant, ancient forest (treetops, platforms from tree to tree, etc.) pretty much all year. While filling out one of those world-builder question sheet things I started to wonder how that would work in the winter, when everything got all cold and icky. Nothing in my story is taking place during the winter... But I started to wonder. And since we'd just been on the subject in general science a few days ago, I started to wonder if they even had to have winter?
What I (kind of) know so far:
The seasons take place because of the earth rotating on its axis, yes? And in my science class we talked about how if the Earth DIDN'T rotate on its axis, there would be no seasons. It would pretty much be spring all the time in one place, fall all the time in another, etc. (and while during some preliminary research I found something implying that it could also potentially be summer all the time in one place, winter all the time in another?). Night and day wouldn't be affected except that the hours of daylight wouldn't change throughout the year, so there wouldn't be longer and shorter days. They would always be equal(?). Also, people I've asked thus far bring up the matter of people who live on the equator, who have kind of the same deal going on with them.
After asking my science teacher and doing a little browsing around on the web, right now it looks like it might be plausible for something like that to occur. But I kind of want some second (and third, and fourth) opinions on the matter so I don't put it into the revision now and then find out later that it's completely impossible and science geeks will pelt me with plungers if I try to write it like that.
So my main question is, could a world function like this? Could people live in a place where the seasons don't change?
And if you get really ambitious, you could try to help me out by answering these little things that make me hesitate (But don't feel like you have to answer everything. Just give me whatever info you've got on the subject, please):
1. Why do planets rotate in the first place, and if a planet didn't rotate what might happen in relation to the moon?
2. How would plants/animals be affected if the seasons didn't change? What kind of things could grow? Could anything grow?
3. What exactly would the climate be like in such a situation? Right now, I'm looking for 'warm'. Spring or summer weather, maybe. But would temperatures be totally unbearable?
4. What about oceans/tides etc.? I know tides are from the moon and sun, but if changing such a major thing like the earth's axis rotation would have any bearing on things like that, I'd kind of like to know about it.
5. If something like this occurred, would it be possible to have mountains in the north, an ocean in the east, desert in the west (with the possibility of another ocean on the other side) and fertile, resource-rich, forest-ey ground in the center-ish region and to the east? Would a setting like that be possible under normal circumstances? Because otherwise... I've got to rethink my world completely.
6. Anything else you can think of that could make this more plausible or less plausible?
Also:
This is a fantasy novel. It's not taking place on Earth. It's taking place in another world - a world where there are spider-people and portals and huge, huge, ancient forests. Lots of the plants and animals in it don't even exist on Earth, so if I have to I can adapt things like that to make it work. I'm probably overthinking this, especially since - if I do end up doing it this way - it'll probably just be the characters noting that "OMG! The seasons don't change here! Weird!" and then moving on to avoid me going into a science-ey lecture like I did in the rough draft (the girl with black and silver hair realized that it was possible because of codominance in genes! 8D). I'm not even sure if I'm really going to use this idea...
But it would be nice... And if I DO use it... I'd like to make everything as close to being realistic as a fantasy novel could get.
So. To anyone that remains after reading through that horribly long "Help Me" post, congratulations. Help? Pwetty pwease? :3
Thanks for reading, even if you can't help, and whatever help you CAN give will be much appreciated. ^^ Gracias!
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