fandomhigh | Practical Philosophy, Monday

"It's been quiet," Ender said. "This week."

An important modifier on Fandom for sure.

"I'd say for most of us that's a relief - a respite, in fact," he continued. "There is often so much excitement here that the moments of calm are very welcome. On the other hand, for some of us, life on Fandom is a lot more banal and quiet than what we're used to. I've seen people wound up tight because they hadn't fought something in a few weeks. I've seen people go stir-crazy in the quiet."

Like him, but he wasn't about to add that.

"There's apparently a room crafted by scientists that is the quietest in the world. You're supposed to be able to hear your own heartbeat when you sit in it. Most people don't last more than half an hour. Of course, some philosophers would tell you that facing the quiet simply means facing yourself, deprived of all distractions. That that's the way wisdom is born."

His mouth quirked.

"What do you think?" he asked. "Is silence a friend, an enemy, a boon or just something that happens? Do you prefer the quiet or the excitement?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hello, silence.

"I don't know," Karina said, shrugging. "It depends on the silence, and on the excitement. If my choices are invasion or quiet reading in my room, I'll take the reading. If it's reading versus hanging out with friends... the friends win."

"So social engagements over quiet time, but quiet time over peril," Ender surmised.

"Sounds like a pretty good plan in general to me," she admitted, considering that. "Mostly, anyway. If there's a choice."

"Well, some people aren't as fond of human interaction," Ender said. "And some have a death wish - though I think those people would prove your point more than anything else."

"Silence is either what happens right before something terrible does, or right after," Cade said. "I want a little bit of noise."

"You could also say that noise is what happens right before or after silence," Ender said mildly. "That's just juggling with cause and effect."

"Wiggin answer," Cade muttered with a half smile on his face.

Ender quirked a lopsided smile right back at him. "How does Fandom do on that scale?"

"Well, you're more of an expert on Fandom than me," Cade said, "but if more than a few weeks go by without something karking insane happening, I start worrying that the place is cooking up another dungeon."

"But the dungeon is noise, too," Ender noted, "You did say you'd rather have that."

"At least then I know what I'm facing," Cade said. "It's better to know than the fallout or the build-up."

Re: Talk.

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"Silence is silence." Flick didn't really have any better words than that. He shrugged. "Sometimes, it's there, sometimes it's not. But, if it's dead silent? Well, then I'm gonna think I've gone deaf or I'm dead. Nothing needs to be that quiet."

"You don't like it?" Ender asked.

"It's not my favorite," he said, shrugging. "I'll deal with it if I have to, though."

"Would you see yourself as someone who goes looking for noise? Life?" Ender asked.

"No." It just tended to find him. "I go where I need to go. Whether it's noisy or not doesn't matter to me. I deal with that when I get there."

"So there are extremes you'd rather not deal with, but overall, adaptability is more important?"

"Pretty much." He shrugged. "I deal."

"The quiet is a little unsettling," Kathy admitted. "Not the lack of anything crazy, that I'm really okay with. But this island is just really, really quiet most of the time. I'm not used to it."

"Where are you from?" Ender asked. It seemed relevant.

It was!

"LA," Kathy replied with a smile. "There, I'm used to a quiet that still has an undercurrent of noise."

She was used to falling asleep to the hum of car engines, sirens, and hundreds of voices rising up to her window at night, blending and blurring together until it was impossible to make out the different languages, never mind the different words. Fandom was so quiet compared to all that, it was almost deafening.

"It's a different kind of quiet than I've dealt with before," she added. "Every few summers, we used to visit my grandparents in Korea, and they live in a small town. It was quiet there, too, but not like here." There were still cars for one thing. "And, it was a different country, so it being so quiet didn't weird me out the way it does here. Expectations, I think."

"'It's still America, so surely...'"

Ender shot her a wry smile.

"There's quiet everywhere," he said. "Especially in a country this big."

"Well, yeah, but whenever I think of something like that, I think of picturesque New England towns or huge cornfields in Kansas. Not an island just a little ways away from Baltimore."

Or anywhere she'd ever pictured herself being.

"Disappointed?" Ender asked.

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