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I really enjoyed Sacco's work, but I haven't read it in ten years. It's quite heavy, and I don't know how soon I want to revisit it. After reading it, I felt very politicized, especially Palestine. It's hard not to sympathize with their plight after reading that. Last week, I reread Hicksville, which is one of my favorite graphic novels. It is about the most comic loving town in the world, tucked away in rural New Zealand. As someone who loves comics, this book is like catnip. Not loving superheroes or manga or anything, but comics as an artform in general. A lovely, lovely book.

No worries, but keep in mind your posts here are meta-gaming. By someone, you mean you, and by get voted off, you mean place a single vote and explain the reasoning for it. Your very phrasing affects the game I'm playing by the light you choose to cast it in. There is no escaping meta-gaming, particularly in the Confirmation and Discussion thread, it seems No worries, I'm not offended at all, but it's better to send it to the game host rather than post about it, if something like this comes up again

Sorry, I saw a play called the Forest once, and this actor named Zepher was in it. A few months earlier, he was in a play called Bloodbrick. There was an actor called Sandy in both too. It sounds crazy, but I think we can learn something about this very real situation we're in where we're all Russians hunting the mafia by considering these plays. Hopefully that clears up the confusion.

Yes, from now on, I read a book called the Forest, and saw Zepher in a play called Bloodbrick. On top of that, nobody will target Shadows or Dragonator night one, and n00bs won't be safe until the end because they're naive, because we're not meta-gaming Anyway, I'll respect the game boundaries during this game, but, yes, I think we need to have a discussion after his game about how seriously we enforce this meta-game rule, since it's a given that everyone meta-games. The only way to start with a clean slate it to sign up to a new forum and play with strangers each game. Since we don't want to start a game with strangers each time, meta-gaming should be considered a given. Now I'm off to go read some more 'plays'

There's a good chance that you're just duplicating your paranoia from the Forest here. By 'immediately,' I guess you actually meant, 'Hours later, when I caught up with the thread.' I said I'm not afraid of a penalty. What's the penalty? I doubt 'God' has made his decision on that yet, or else the rules would be explicit. So, you think "Voting is our best weapon against the Mafia," but my vote is suspicious? I didn't wait long enough Geezus. This whole diatribe is so full of faulty logic, that you are on my list. You don't think Barbara is the most likely scum, but you will vote there anyway There are another 30 hours left. Wait, did you wait long enough? I voted at, like 16 hours, and you voted at 20 hours (too tired to check the time codes, sorry ) So I voted too soon, but you are just being natural? You employed the same faulty rationalizing during the Forest, so I'll keep that in mind, that you are an erratic player. But I think you are worth investigating night one.

No hard feelings. We all need to place a vote.

I really don't think we need to worry about convicting day one, regardless of the 'penalty,' but I think everyone should vote.

I said nothing of the sort. I said we don't know what the penalty is, and at worst I think it will be a vanilla townie. Big Cam too, don't put words in my mouth. The guy in the sky said there will be a penalty. That is vague. That is why I don't worry about a conviction. My suspicions at this point are this: Barbara/Bob is really inane, to the point of saying nothing often. I think that is a scum tactic, or simply someone being inane. The person pinging my scumdar in a heavy way is Petr/Zepher. There are a number of reasons, which isn't good on day one. The first is the ridiculous fake accent. He took his role-playing to a new level with that, and then later said: Really, that accent is the most distracting thing I've seen in this thread. More suspicious is this: He said he found some people suspicious, then when called on it, he quickly told us people he didn't think were scummy; http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=58660&view=findpost&p=1045401 He also misquoted me, like Peanuts and Big Cam above. I said Whitefang seemed town, Zeph said I trusted him. For Peanuts and Big Cam, it seems that they just have trouble reading, but for Zeph, I think he is deliberately misrepresenting me; a gut™ reaction. <gut™ is a trademark of Captain Tammo> He let us know that he thought Whitefang, Brickdoctor and I are town. It's really easy for scum to 'get' 'town' vibes, especially on debatable players like me, when they are scum. Since he would know I'm not in the mafia, he can use that as evidence later when I die and show as town.... And I always die. In the past, Retr/Zeph has tried to be inscrutable in games, and today he's been quite aggressive. It could be that he's innocent, and this is how he acts when he's innocent. But in Bloodbrick he was quite conservative, and innocent town. He's had some off behaviour that makes him the main candidate I have for scum. Vote: Petr/Zepher I'm sorry if this is your Town game. And Peanuts, Big Cam, please double-check before you post.

Depends on the townie I wasn't saying a vanilla townie wasn't an asset, but we'd be hurt losing an ability on the first days vote. But I can see your point. I think a pro-active vanilla townie is better to us in the long run than a half-playing townie with an ability. No, I said worst case. That's why I said worst Huh? How would it take teamwork to not reach a majority? If anything, if people started jumping on a bandwagon for no reason, it would make them stand out. We need, what, 14 or 15 people to agree on a person to reach a majority? That requires a lot more teamwork, or it requires a sheep-like voting style. I also think scum will be happy to vote out someone today since it's unlikely they'll fall victim to it. Anyway, it seems people are pretty worried about this vague "penalty..." so do as you will. I will vote, but I'll have to take in what everyone's said before doing so. Wilem (Whitefang) seems to be thinking about things in a town-like manner. After my nap, I'll have to go over everything that's been said and separate the real opinions from the filler.

I don't think it will be worse. As bad, maybe. If there is a lynch, worst case scenario, we lose a valuable town role. If there is no lynch, I imagine a non-voter might be taken. Maybe. But, I think God loves his game so much that he wouldn't allow a scum member or an ability member of town to be taken out for those reasons, especially on the first day. So the worst case scenario is a vanilla townie is taken out. I think it's good for us to vote, but since a majority is needed for a lynch, we'd be better off voting without necessarily reaching a lynch, unless there is genuinely something suspicious to go after. I've never been a fan of these abstract penalties. I seem to recall being martyred in a past life partly because of 'penalty fear,' and frankly, I don't care for it. But I'm just a drunken laborer, what do I know?

Do you think the penalty could be worse than losing a good member of our town? I'm not sure it would be.

I tire of these stereotypes ruining the image of our mother country. The Russian is not just mobster. We are the hard laborer, the proletariat! We shall cut this mafia from our town like the sickle cuts the wheat to make precious vodka!

Aizun dun bai yuuu.....

Huh? Wha shoo talkin bout?

Badboy isn't playing a woman? What's this world coming to?

Hallo hallo! I am the Denis. I am liking so much the American prostitutes. The American liquor, it is not so great. But it is, how do you say, cheap. God bless this country! (*^o^*)

The ending of it is quite abstract, involving a Japanese businessman in a park in San Francisco, and I didn't really even understand it at the time. The meaning is there, but Dick doesn't spell it out for you. That book, Shifting Realities, is mainly a collection of essays by Dick, with a little fiction. He talks frankly about his out-there beliefs, one of which that came out in a few of his books, like the Man in the High Castle, was that God (or someone who thought they were God) was correcting the time stream, since they could see all of time from start to finish, like an intricate game of Civilization. In the places where time goes astray, God intervenes to set it on a better path. Most people don't realize this, and forget the past version of reality, but a few people fall through the cracks, and have leftover memories for a reality that's been erased. So that's The Man In The High Castle, and somewhat the story for Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. I read a lot of his stuff, and it's a bizarre head space to be in. I'm on the verge of that. The HBO show was awesome

I guess the I Ching is Yi King in French? I got into I Ching for a little bit after reading that. It introduced me to it. But ultimately I'm not a superstitious guy. Dick started on a sequel to that book, but he got too depressed thinking about Nazis all day and gave up part way. A few of the sequel chapters were printed in The Shifting Realities Of Philip K. Dick

Heroica has at least one hero, it seems...

I think it's bigger than Star Wars III since most normal people didn't really care for the prequels. They were more kids movies. In contrast, Iron Man, Thor and Captain America have all been big mainstream successes, and I can see a lot of anticipation building. But it all depends on the script and the directing. I'm somewhat optimistic.

The Ant-Man movie was being billed as a semi-comedy, and was attached to Edgar Wright, I think. If Hank Pym makes it to the Avengers, I think Giant-Man is more likely. And I don't think Loki is a spoiler, since if you've seen Thor, you know he's getting involved with the cosmic cube. And if you've ever read a comic, you know he was the reason the Avengers were formed (something I'm sure he regrets). But, there is another rumor, of a cosmic villain, which should be a spoiler, and isn't as well known and yet to be in any movie: I love this character, so if that's what's happening, I will be even more looking forward to it. By the way, if anyone wants to do some comic reading in preparation of the movie, the Ultimates volumes one and two are a better choice than than any Avengers comics. They seem a lot closer to the vibe the movies have been leading to.

That's a good one too. It takes a few chapters for the language to sink in, but once you're with it, it's really great. I strongly recommend Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker for you. It is set maybe 2,000 years in the future, and the language is even more dramatically different. Anthony Burgess loved it and did the main cover blurb for it.

I love this book I've read it three or four times, and it always reveals new details to me. All of Dick's 'time-slip' books are a lot to wrap one's head around.

Well, that's a good reason not to wear your hair in pigtails too

Let's see how sign-ups are, and how my life is in the coming week. Truth is, I'll be moving a month or two ahead of my wife and kid to a city where I don't know anybody, so I could very well be bored as megabluck every night and welcome the respite of a quaint mafia game to whittle away the time. There's no English TV, and all my cash is going to be invested in relocation, so I may as well make full use of my smart phone's Internet. Put me on as a tentative yes. Though I may not make a Google spreadsheet for this one. Just be sure I'm not on Tammo's team