#*insert sonic prime reference here*

[minusgangtime]

(Who is that?!)

[tenebraevesper]

Sonic the Hedgehog's 900th Adventure (Part 1)

We are finally here! The 900th Adventure one-shot!

I will have to split this story up into two parts, mainly because of the sheer number of pages and Tumblr refusing to allow more than 30 images. Could I just skip some pages? Sure, but where's the fun in that?

In any case, as stated above, this special issue is a way of celebrating Sonic's long history in the comics, involving all the stuff from Archie Sonic, Sonic the Comic (Fleetway) and IDW Sonic. To note, this story has been worked on my many writers and artists, all of which were trying to deliver a fun and colourful tale of Sonic going an adventure to save the world once more and, personally, I believe they delivered in that aspect. Is it anything groundbreaking? Not really, but this is a one-shot story written purely for our enjoyment, so let's dive in!

We kick off with Sonic and Tails reminiscing about their past adventures, with this first part of the story being written by Ian Flynn. I will mention which writer wrote which part, simply to showcase whether there were any differences between their writing.

In Ian's case, he has Tails talk about their battle against Neo Metal Sonic on Angel Island, which happened back in Issue #9-#12. Sonic responds how that was a group effort, with Tails snarking since when he was so modest. Sonic just responds that he was giving credit where it's due.

The two keep on getting close to breaking the 4th Wall by talking about how many adventures they have experienced, with Tails even doing the research and the result being 889, although by the time I'm writing this, it's over 900 (insert DBZ Vegeta joke here).

Sonic then references the whole Metal Virus fiasco, noting how his friends gathered the Chaos Emeralds and how Silver did a lot of heavy lifting, although Sonic did supercharge the Warp Topaz and... speak of the Devil, it's back!

Okay, I will take a moment to explain the deal with the Warp Topaz. Correct me on that, but I have read somewhere that Ian Flynn wanted to get rid off it back during the Metal Virus Saga, but the higher-ups said to keep it for any future stories. I believe that this is why it was brought back now.

Tails runs a diagnostic on it and finds out that it's highly unstable. Going by Sonic's scale, they are somewhere at ''panicked screaming'' when it comes to how dangerous the situation is, with Tails just giving him an annoyed look to take this situation seriously.

Tails gives him a more detailed explanation, saying how the Warp Topaz had the potential destabilize the planet's core or wipe out an entire city. In other words, we might as well have another Sonic Prime-style Paradox Prism situation at our hands.

Tails adds how, in order to neutralize it, they have to find where Dr. Starline had found it. Sonic figures this shouldn't be too difficult, but Tails is worried that if he takes on too much energy as his normal self, he might not come back...

I was joking about this being Sonic Prime!

Of course, Sonic remains calm and relaxed, noting how he'll run, while Tails watches his back. It would be the same as always, with Tails agreeing.

Tails checks to make sure he still has the wrist-comm on, and after confirming it, Sonic rubs his hands and grabs the Warp Topaz, getting immediately warped away. He is fine tho, much to Tails' relief.

He finds himself in Green Hill, agreeing with Tails that they'll try to see if anyone's around so they can help him from being overexposed to the energy, with Sonic adding how there is no more infections, corruptions, warpings or any other nonsense:

''We're going for win NINE HUNDRED!''

This part of the story is written by Evan Stanley, and we see Sonic as he dashes through Green Hill, checking on Tails, or Minty Fresh as he calls him (I can feel Tails rolling his eyes at this).

Tails responds how he expects some erratic spatial distortion, maybe localized importation of physical matter from concentrated areas... with Sonic having no clue what he's talking about. So Tails responds with: ''Portals. Lots of 'em.''

Cue Sonic almost jumping into one, only for the Warp Topaz to berserk.

He ends up avoiding a bunch of stuff emerging from more Warp Topaz portals, until he runs into that orca from Sonic Adventure.

Seriously, what do orcas have against Sonic? X3

Fortunately, he gets saved by Amy, and in turn, Amy gets saved by Sonic just as the orca crashes down into the water.

The two hold onto the orca, trying to figure out what to do next. Amy has been called by Tails, with Sonic showing her the unstable Warp Topaz and explains his plan to her. Amy agrees with it, but she is worried about the orca, since this place isn't its natural habitat. Nevertheless, she has a plan, with Sonic not looking to happy when he gets forced to run across water as the orca chases him.

Hey, at least Amy promised that she'll bake him a batch of cookies once they're done.

They lure the orca towards a portal, getting it to jump back home, while Amy hits the Warp Topaz as far away from Sonic as possible to stabilize it.

Both nail the landing, with Sonic drying himself and Amy hugging and wishing Sonic good luck as he continues dealing with the Warp Topaz. Amy waves as he leaves, only to realize that she has no clue how to get home.

Eh, I'm sure you'll figure it out, Amy.

The next part of the story is written by Nigel Kitching, and oh, boy, if you're British, this should sound familiar. If not, then let me explain - Nigel Kitching is most famous for his work on Sonic the Comic, aka the UK equivalent of Archie Sonic, albeit written to be more in line with the games, unlike Archie Sonic, which was based on Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic SatAM. It's really great they got him to write part of this one shot.

In this part, we see Sonic running through a desert towards Knuckles, who left Angel Island to help with this crisis. Unfortunately, before they could even get close to each other to hand over the Warp Topaz, it activates and Sonic vanishes, leaving a stunned Knuckles behind.

Sonic suddenly ends up in a laboratory managed by Metal Sonic, having been weakened by the Warp Topaz' energy. You know, thinking back to how Dr. Starline described the dangers of the Warp Topaz, now we see why it is a bad idea to overcharge it.

Not that Metal Sonic cares, as he reaches for it.

Sonic pleads for Metal Sonic to give it back so he can dispose of it safely, with Metal Sonic glancing at the Warp Topaz, then back at Sonic.

Before I continue, may I add that the art is just gorgeous here? *checks artists* Okay, so this was the work of Mauro Fonesca, Rik Mack and Reggie Graham. You guys did a great job! I really love what you did with Metal Sonic.

Metal Sonic refuses to listen to Sonic, bitch-slapping him in the face and knocking him back while Tails is screaming in the background, not knowing what's going on. Sonic and Metal Sonic fight, with Sonic refusing to give up no matter how badly he gets beaten.

Despite feeling weakness moments ago, Sonic manages to recover, explaining to Tails that, since he couldn't hand the Warp Topaz over to Knuckles, Metal Sonic was the next best thing. He's back in the game, running circles around Metal Sonic as he explains to Tails how he couldn't just hand the Warp Topaz over to Metal Sonic since he'd suspect something's up.

Cue the Warp Topaz creating another portal, with both vanishing in it.

Sonic manages to grab the Warp Topaz, while Metal Sonic's arm went kaput from the sheer energy the gem released, and the two end up back in the desert in front of Knuckles. Tails notes how Sonic has found a way to control the Warp Topaz, with Sonic then telling Metal Sonic to better go back to Eggman, because, let's be real, he is in no fighting condition.

Knuckles then happily asks Sonic to hand over the Warp Topaz so he can take part in saving the world, but Sonic refuses, leaving Knuckles pissed off for being called over for no reason.

Tails scolds Sonic, telling him to explain to Knuckles what happened and Sonic promises he'll do it... eventually.

...

He's never going to do it.

In any case, I'll stop Part 1 of the story here. We still got more to see, but again, Tumblr's image count works against me.

See ya in Part 2!

#Previous Issue

#Next Issue

#Sonic the Hedgehog Analyzer (Masterlist)

[askroahmmythril]

Reference List for amiibo Fighter Names (Set 4)

37) Pichu : Zap Nezumi - Those who have been with my channel for awhile might remember a cute and charming Mega Man style game called Nezumiman.  I love that game so much and would love to see a sequel.  Squeakuel?...  Anyway.  Most of the bosses were dubbed (Element) Nezumi, depending on their power.  So Pichu gets to fill in as Zap Nezumi!  Up top we have all the various stage bosses, and Pichu is dressed in all the fashion items Nezumiman gets for beating them.  He’s got Perfect Fashion!  Which according to Nezumiman, also involves having Dr. Gyoniku’s butt in the background.

38) Pikachu : Agent 25 - Actually a self reference, this one.  Agent 25 is a “character” that has appeared in some of my silly bits I’ve done for past videos.  Theoretically his real name is Conduit, my Lv. 100 Pikachu, but he serves as an agent for me, going by the codename Agent 25 (his Pokédex number), protecting me from annoying talent agents trying to zap me with a dragon prod for taking time off.  We went with a full-on James Bond style for this one.  A minor detail, the display of PokéBalls in the nameplate having five empty circles before it is supposed to reference the display showing how many Pokémon a trainer has in a battle, thus, he’s the only one here.

39) Pit : Icarusicus - What can I say, I grew up with Captain N as a kid.  Back then, as a gamer, you took whatever media you could get.  Captain N was cheesy as heck, and got a lot of source details WAY wrong, but it was still fun in its own weird way.  In that cartoon, Pit was instead simply named Kid Icarus, and had a habit of inserting “-icus” at the end of everything he said.  So here the more modern Pit is faced with a blast from the past, his cartoony old weapons and contact from Kevin and Princess Lana.  Neo added more details, like some Mega Man sprites recolored and restyled to look like characters in Captain N.  Including a Simon Belmont sprite given his look from the cartoon, blue bomber jacket and blond hair and all.  The building shown is the Palace of Power, Princess Lana’s base of operations.

40) Pokémon Trainer : RedVersion - Again a self contained reference to Pokémon.  The trainer he’s based on is Red as he appears in Fire Red and Leaf Green.  Thus, RedVersion, in reference to the original Red Version of Pokémon.  Neo and I both had the idea to try to pose the Pokemon and Red himself like how they’re posed in the original game sprites.  Neo also went an extra step, using minimalist colors to mimic how the sprites looked on a Game Boy Color or Super Game Boy.  While I do like the idea, I might ask to stick with full color just to mimic the amiibo itself if we do indeed redo these.  The overall look of the card was designed to look somewhat like the original Pokédex.

41) Robin : ShipREKT - Again, Fire Emblem is not exactly my area of expertise.  But this silly idea came to mind, knowing Robin’s game has a lot of “pairing people up to increase bonds” mechanics.  Sooooo Shipping : The Game.  So I just had the silly idea of drawing him in super charming anime style.  Of all things, I think I was largely influenced by a scene from the Unova episodes of Pokémon where a male Minccino was using Charm.  I suppose this is a good time to mention that, in cases where only one figure was released for a character, I go with that style for them, so for instance, there’s only a male Robin card, only a female Wii Fit Trainer card, no wireframe Little Mac, no Koopalings, etc.

42) ROB : Spin Cycle - I mean, ROB’s all about spinning his gyros, that’s really all there is to this one.  The colored swirl in the background was supposed to mimic the red and blue colors of the gates from Gyromite that he’d help you move.  However, it also kinda looks like the colors of those infamous Tide pods.  Which... I mean, spin cycle IS a laundry term, so yay accidental references?...

43) Rosalina : Cosmic Mama - I love Katamari!  Seriously given that was a Namco game, I would have loved it if some Katamari music got in on the Pac-Man stage.  Ah well.  This was one of those where I just couldn’t resist the reference and sneaking the Half Inch Prince into the picture.  Neo further personalized some of the Lumas, as well as adding the famous “I feel it!  I feel the cosmos!” quote.

44) Samus : Chozen One - A self contained Metroid reference, and a silly pun.  Samus is the “Chosen One” in the sense that a lot of Chozo prophecies as seen in the Prime series seem to center around her actions.  So just a combination of Chosen and Chozo.  I had worried that Samus would be hard to draw in Visio Home, but it turned out to be really good for drawing the defined lines of her suit.

45) Sheik : HARP HERO - While I’ve never actually played any of the Guitar Hero games, the fact that Sheik generally just follows you around to teach you new songs via her harp made this idea stick with me.  A shame she doesn’t use her harp for anything in Smash...  Seriously feels weird that she doesn’t.  Anyway, I had the track display the notation for Bolero of Fire.  For some reason, the scene of her teaching you this one just stuck with me as a kid as one of the most iconic scenes with her.  This was also drawn before we started putting character icons in the nameplates.  In his version, Neo added the Sheikah eye symbol to the nameplate.

46) Shulk : RA1NFALL - This is a reference to Project Rainfall, a community effort to coax publishers into localizing a few select games in the US.  If memory serves, Xenoblade Chronicles was the first and perhaps most prominent game to have been part of this effort, hence my putting a 1 in the name.  I didn’t really have a good solid way of drawing rain in Visio Home, so Neo added that on his end.  Really this one probably saw the most changes between versions, as I really had very limited info on Xenoblade.  My frame as such is.... really clunky looking.  Neo was able to make something far better looking on his version.  The symbol on Shulk’s Monado here means “rain,” so, uh.... umbrella utility!

47) Sonic : SpeedRacer - A reference to the anime of the same name.  Sonic here is posed like Speed after he jumps out of the Mach Five during the Speed Racer title sequence.  Meanwhile Sonic’s car here is the one he drives in Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed, as well as being on the game’s Starlight Carnival track.  Neo gave me the idea to have a Coconuts peeking out of the trunk of the car to mimic Chim-Chim, the monkey mascot of the Speed Racer team that had a habit of stowing away in Speed’s trunk while he was racing.

48) King Dedede : ThreeDeDe - A joke on 3D imagery, such as that found on the Nintendo 3DS.  The first Kirby game for the 3DS, Triple Deluxe, even had a mode where you played as King Dedede on his own adventure, so hey, him celebrating this moment of glory does not seem out of character for him.

[thegraytalon-blog]

Nostalgia is a Hell of a Drug

Remember Chewbacca, everyone? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Stormtroopers everyone? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Darth Vader everyone? Oh I ‘ member!

Remember the Millennium Falcon everyone? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda on Nintendo? Oh I ‘member!

Remember the original Game Boy and Game Gear? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Indiana Jones? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Sonic the Hedgehog and the Sega Genesis? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Mario Kart, Starfox and Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64? Oh I ‘member!

Remember the Sinbad pirate movie that we all swear exists but in reality doesn’t? Oh I ‘member!

 Above are just a few of the many vast examples of nostalgia in the form of media and entertainment for some of us who grew up in the 80’s and the ‘90’s. Now you might be asking yourself, how can a handful of random pop culture references have anything in common? The answer lies in that they all share one crucial thing that is very��similar. That being they all represent a form of nostalgia for the most of us who grew up within this era. This is the era that represented the iconic heroes, symbolic artifacts and the rise of video game dominance that we all know and love today. Even such entities that do not really exist and are part of what is called the Mandela Effect, such as that Sinbad movie from the 90’s that we all swore a blood oath existed but have no concrete evidence backing up such a claim. Well, other than the fact that Sinbad himself used to dress up like a pirate and wear some really baggy pirate looking pants in the 90’s. 

So what is it about nostalgia that is such a driving force behind what compels our minds today in such forms of life as decision making and even to the point of crucial thinking? Well, let’s start from the beginning. The majority of the memories that we have stem from early childhood and carry on over into adolescence and lessen by the time we reach and are in our full adulthood. When humans are born and are children from the age of about 3 or 4 we begin to develop our brains more and begin to retain moments that transpire in the world and capture them into an ethereal bubble and store them in our memory banks to recall at anytime we want. That is, if the memory is worth recalling at all. While most forms of nostalgia are positive some memories are not always as pleasant as that moment when you picked up a Nintendo controller for the first time to play the very first level of Super Mario Bros or when you went into that creepy cave and an old man gave a wooden sword to a child because it was too dangerous to go alone into the wilderness in The Legend of Zelda. However, they are still considered nostalgic because they caused such a tremendous impact on one’s life. 

Let’s say Timmy is 5 years old and is learning how to ride a bike without training wheels. During his trials one day he happens to lose balance, fall off and cuts his knees and sprains both ankles at the same time. Timmy then decides he will never learn how to ride a bike again. It’s not a pleasant memory, but little Timmy may carry on this memory for the rest of his life as it had a big impact on his childhood. When he is older and if people ask him if he knows how to ride a bike, he can not only say no but recall the traumatic experience that shaped his bike riding fate into the present day. Now let’s say little Timmy started riding a bike with training wheels at the age of 5 and nothing went wrong and he eventually graduated to riding a bike with two wheels like a champion. Later on during his life if the topic of riding a bike came up, Timmy may not recall the exact moment when he learned how to ride a bike or even his age, just that he knew how to ride a bike and learned when he was a child. The devil is in the details so to speak and the more prominent the events that transpire in your life, good or bad, the more you will recall and retain them and with great detail. 

Now let’s shift our focus back to the positive aspect of nostalgia and what kind of effect it has on our psyches and even physical attributes over a prolonged period of time. I will be using many examples in the form of video games and media for the rest of this entry so strap in and brace yourselves for some serious nostalgic moments! 

Petey is a pre-teen boy in the late 90’s who indulges in a plethora of video games. Sometimes on a weekend he goes over to his relative’s house to enjoy the competitive elements that gaming offers in the form of racing and shooting. He partakes in numerous races of Mario Kart 64, dogfighting matches in StarFox 64 and the tactical espionage shooting of GoldenEye 64. After hours of racing, dodging shells, popping balloons, aiming true and losing friends with that infamous blue shell in Mario Kart and shooting down enemy starships in StarFox and cursing out the kid who picked Odd Job in GoldenEye (even though we said NOBODY PICKS ODDJOB IN GOLDENEYE you cheating, miserable fucks), Petey leaves his relatives house and returns home. The next day at school Petey is in class doing his assignments when he notices out of the corner of his eye a pencil about to roll off the student’s desk that is to the left of him. Immediately Petey jerks his arm to the left and catches the pencil before it falls off and reaches the floor. Petey did not realize it, but by him dodging those shells, lasers and bullets in the games he played the day prior, it allowed him to have a slight form of heightened reflexes as his brain and body worked in unison to move his arm and catch the object before it reached the floor more so than a person who did not attune their senses by engaging in a hobby that tested your hand to eye coordination like video games do. In most video games, repetition is key. By performing various tasks over and over again, a person trains their mind and body to react in ways that are almost considered unnatural by the laws of man. Now I’m not saying that gamers are all Spider-Man or Jedi Knights, but their critical thinking does improve as well as their reflex actions and allows them to think and perform outside of the box more than others from time to time. 

Speaking of critical thinking, let’s say that it’s a bright and sunny Saturday morning in spring of 1987. You are 7 years old and wake up, have your Cookie Crisp or Fruity Pebbles while you pop on some Transformers or Thundercats as you prepare for your day off from school. Then in the early afternoon proceed to your room and take out the gilded cartridge crafted with great care by the Hylian warriors of future’s past, proceed to take a deep breath and blow deeply into the bottom of the cartridge. You then insert the cartridge into your Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and start to hear the whimsical and delightful music of The Legend of Zelda. As your adventure continues across the vast land of Hyrule, you seem to discover many dungeons along your path in which require you to solve puzzles and obtain keys to open your path to venture forward. Most of the puzzle solving includes memorizing geometrical squares or blocks to move them in such a pattern that they will allow secret passages and doors to open so you can continue your hero’s journey. After spending countless hours dungeon crawling , slaying mythical beasts, solving numerous shape shifting puzzles and obtaining the Master Sword to defeat the mighty evil lord Ganon, you put the game to rest for a little while. The next day, Sunday, you go over your friends house to hang out and he has something cool to show you. His mom bought him a new puzzle game called Simon. In this game you have to remember color patterns and memorize them to not fail and go back to the start of the puzzle. Your friend, who is not into video games as much as you, and proceeds to try out the Simon game with you. He gets a score of 4 turns without failing and you happen to score a whopping 12 turns without failing. Could it be that his memory is not as attuned as yours because you just spent the previous day playing The Legend of Zelda and solving pattern memorization puzzles in a plethora of different dungeons? It is indeed very possible and almost factual. Once again, repetition is key and it shapes the mind to retain and remember glimpses of imagery that will help you in such tasks as doing well in a memorization game or exam.  

Video games such as The Legend of Zelda are prime examples of how nostalgia not only plays a factor in critical thinking but also how our minds are shaped for when we become adults and how our way of thinking is affected by experiencing games like this in the past in our childhoods. For the most part, The Legend of Zelda series is aimed at a child base with it’s whimsical characters and environments and tunes. However, deep, beneath it’s surface, those games may contain such a deep nostalgic presence in the form of a darkened and twisted tone, that it can only be harnessed and resonated years to decades later as we reach adulthood and see how we use our intellect and minds to either provide rational thought or even something as trivial as conversing with someone and describing your likes and desires. For example, why do some of us migrate towards TV shows or comics or movies with such dark messages or that have a really sick and twisted meaning? I’ll use The Punisher and Fight Club as examples here. Could it be that our love for these 2 embodiments of physical and psychological warfare on the mind, body and spirit stem from our interaction with let’s say The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening on the Game Boy and/or The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask for the Nintendo 64? I know I am singling our Zelda games a lot but there’s a reason and method for my madness here, I promise. You see, both of these games in particular in the series have a deeply disturbing underlying message. In Link’s Awakening you play as the famed hero Link who awakes on an island with no memory of how he got there so his goal is to find a way off the island and get back to his homeland in Hyrule. Now SPOILER ALERT because I am about to fast forward to the game’s ending. At the end of the game, Link encounters the Wind Fish, who is a mythical creature and king of the island that informs Link he is part of some kind of deep REM like fever dream that once he wakes up from all of the creatures and inhabitants of the island he is presently on will cease to exist and die pretty much. The game’s theme and message here then becomes somewhat complex. It twists the plot and forces one’s mind into a psychosis that cannot necessarily determine fiction from reality. The same is present in that of the film Fight Club. Again, SPOILER ALERT here as the entire movie we cannot tell what is fact from fiction as the main character slips in and out of a deep schizophrenic psychosis that plays the duality of himself with a character who he may or may not have created, Tyler Durden, who was everything the main character was not. Like seen in Link’s Awakening, the focus of the story is shifted from reality to fantasy in the blink of an eye where you, the player and the main character in Fight Club and Link as well are uncertain whether the world they are living in and characters around or within them are all real or simply part of some kind of imaginative force. Nobody can really pinpoint the truth of the matters, only that there may be multiple outcomes for their unique situations. 

The Punisher and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask are also similar in their own diverse ways. Now before I continue I want to go on record for saying I feel Majora’s Mask is the copyrighted and trademarked property of not only Nintendo, but Lucifer as well. That’s right folks, this game is possessed by the devil and I can prove that with hard concrete evidence. Just Google or YouTube “Ben Drowned” after finishing this and I promise you that you will not sleep well tonight after seeing that. Now for a hefty third SPOILER ALERT here as in Majora’s Mask many feel and believe that the story takes place with Link having failed in all his endeavors to stop Ganondorf from taking over the world, Princess Zelda, who he loved, was enslaved and Link himself was dead and the game takes place in the Hylian afterlife where Link has a finite amount of time to save that world from collision with a moon face who kind of looks like he is in the middle of taking the most constipated crap known to man. Now my point is here that Link is dead, he knows his world has ended as he knows it and is now just running through the motions doing what he can to survive while expelling the evil around him, doing and making whatever he can right, until death knocks on his door. The same can be said for the Punisher. The man known as Frank Castle is dead and has been since his family’s cold blooded murder, leaving behind a shell of the former man he once was and he is just simply doing what good he can, righting the wrongs of the world, while being consumed in the hell on Earth he is living in, the same as Link in Majora’s Mask, until that fateful day when the grim reaper comes beckoning. 

Therein lies our attraction to such nostalgic elements of the past to that of the present in a nutshell. But it is only a mere taste of the many nostalgic elements of the past that carry on into our present and future, forever shaping and molding both conscious and subconscious  states of our minds determining our focus and reality. 

Now in conclusion I would like to leave you all with a disturbing thought about a form nostalgia that can pander to even the most enlightened thinkers as hazardous and demeaning. How many of us grew up idolizing Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Han Solo and Princess Leia from a galaxy far, far away? How many of us used to cherish those films and even used to dress up like those characters for Halloween or even go to extreme lengths to cosplay at shows such as Comic-Con or just for fun and create videos and role play as them for blogging purposes? George Lucas created something unlike the world has ever seen and even with his infamously criticized prequels, the Star Wars franchise was still a force to be reckoned with and like the Force itself was a powerful ally of nostalgia indeed. Now fast forward a few decades to where we are now. That nostalgia of Star Wars with what once was so illustrious and fruitful has caused us to sheepishly support the ongoing cancer of the new modern world that is known quite simply as the sequel trilogy. The soulless embodiment of corruption, greed and rape of the Star Wars franchise known to man and the majority of us continue to witness the horror, which is the equivalent to watching a train wreck I guess because some of us just cannot look away. And why you may be wondering? That devil is in the details here. Nostalgia is a pathway to many abilities, like I stated earlier, and some are considered to be unnatural. The most frightening ability nostalgia gives us is the ability to go and pay hard earned dollars to experience something that is completely unworthy, unholy and just plain unnecessarily bad for our souls because nostalgia said it was a good idea! This is not only present in such forms of media as Star Wars but in other forms of entertainment as well. How many of us saw Batman VS Superman because we as teenagers or adolescents read Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and thought it would be an exact rendition of that piece of art? Who saw Man of Steel only because they saw the Nolan Brothers names in the credits and thought it would be just as good, if not, better than The Dark Knight? How many of us flocked to theaters to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull because we loved Harrison Ford in the original adventures of Indiana Jones trilogy? Give me the total number of cattle who grazed their way to the theaters to see The Hobbit after the renowned success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy? And even in video games, who ran out and bought The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask because it took place in the same world and timeline as the famed The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time? The same with Nintendo and their consoles can be said. How many of you owned a Nintendo Game Boy and had to wait on line for 3 hours to obtain a Nintendo Virtual Boy due to the nostalgia caused by the Game Boy? On the other side of the fence, how many countless people purchased Sonic the Hedgehog for the Xbox 360 because of their fond recollections of Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast? The list goes on and on and on. 

All of these newly released end resulted products listed above have ended in disappointment over their predecessors in some way, shape or form. These letdowns that I just stated cannot hold a candle to their nostalgic ancestral entities  of the past that brought us such warmth and joy. Simply stated, they just do not make them like they used to! So why do we continue to follow this systematic pattern? Does nostalgia alone drive our state of mind or is it something deeper and something even more psychological? I feel that there is another driving force that goes hand in hand in tandem with the nostalgia factor. I strongly believe that married to nostalgia is F.O.M.O. or the “Fear of Missing Out”, which is a syndrome created by chemicals in the brain that develop such an emotional fear that if they were ever to stop witnessing a piece of intellectual property they have invested so much time and energy into that they became terrified as to what the outcome may be, even if there would be no harm done to them physically. Emotionally speaking, these people are frightened to the point of stasis that if they were to miss out on viewing or playing or experiencing something they have dumped a large chunk of their lives to, their minds may collapse into themselves like a neutron star! It fascinates the very mind and can even warrant further study to what drives an individual to such lengths of commitment, with nostalgic fear being one of the leading factors and causes. A prime example of this would be the television show The Walking Dead, based on Robert Kirkman’s comic series. The show has been renewed for it’s 11th season and has long since lost my interest so I simply stopped watching. But I know people who continue watching even though the show has turned stale. Why? F.O.M.O! Godforbid they miss out on a morsel and crumb of walking down a barren road! And what about the next Star Wars movie? Episode IX is due out in December of 2019 and the majority of people I know are committed to seeing it even after they claimed Episode VIII ruined the franchise for them. Why? F.O.M.O!

  I will leave you all with this final thought to ponder: If one is to break away from the sheepish herd, they must first act and lead like a member of the wolf pack.

[cladeymoore]

zkSNARKS and Cryptographic Accumulators

A journey through the dark side of implementation

By Michael Lodder

Zero-Knowledge proofs (ZKPs) are an increasingly popular means of enhancing privacy both in identity and cryptocurrency. The initial zero-knowledge proof ideas were first published in the 1980’s which at the time were dismissed as cryptography that wouldn’t go anywhere. Around that time, David Chaum pioneered the idea of enabling zero knowledge electronic payments. Unfortunately, these ideas came with royalties and patents and thus didn’t see much application. Lately, ZKPs have been applied to various cryptocurrencies as a means of both hiding the transacting parties and the amounts exchanged between them. ZKPs can also be used for shrinking the size of the blockchain so validators and observers can more quickly validate transactions.

In the cryptocurrency world, trading and spending works only if transactions cannot be double spent. So, two checks are performed: one, a transaction must be valid; and two, a transaction must not have been spent. Essentially the first check is a set membership test, and the second is a set non-membership test. A membership test is used to determine if an element is present in a set of values. A non-membership test is used to determine the absence of an element in a set of values. The most popular set of values in production are Merkle-Trees since checking if a value is in the set doesn’t require knowledge of the entire tree, only enough of the subset to validate a specific path to a value. Yet, applying ZKPs to a Merkle-Tree is complicated. The reason to use ZKPs is to hide the value and the path being checked to preserve privacy. But in order to do so, custom circuit-based ZKPs have to be designed which consider the various setup parameters:

Which cryptographic hash function to use?

What’s the maximum depth?

Are transactions allowed to be pruned?

Selection of elliptic curves

Proving time and computational requirements

Verification time

Proof size

Proving key size

Set size

zkSNARK is the technique receiving the most attention and research to optimize the landscape. Coda is applying zkSNARKS in a recursive manner to shrink the size of the blockchain for validation. ZCash uses SNARKS to anonymize parties and obscure amounts exchanged by performing multiple proofs: one for signature validation, the other to ensure the transaction is valid. However, SNARKs come with some drawbacks. For one thing, the desired arithmetic circuit needs to be designed so a proper Common Reference String (CRS) can be generated. The CRS is the public parameters of the system [ZCash]. Then, which system should the SNARK use? Spartan, Halo, Hyrax, Libra, Sonic, Plonk, Marlin… Each one has tradeoffs between trusted setups, proof size, bilinear pairings or other elliptic curves, proof generation and generation time. SNARKS are not the only circuit based systems that can be used. Bulletproofs, Bulletproofs+, STARKS, SNARGS… the list goes on but there is no clear winner and all of them require advanced knowledge in cryptography. Fortunately, another cryptographic primitive exists for performing fast set membership (and non-membership) proofs that preserves privacy (in that the element being checked is not revealed), and provides succinct proofs. These are called cryptographic accumulators.

Cryptographic Accumulators

Accumulators allow parties to prove that an element x is in a set S or not regardless of the number of elements in S, while not disclosing which element was checked. Accumulators work by adding a value x to (or removing from) a constant-size accumulator A, and proving that membership witness u, when combined with x, equals accumulator A. Accumulator values are short fixed-length digests (similar to hash functions), but also support short proofs for membership and non-membership checks for any element in the set. In other words, an accumulator represents the entire set of elements by a single value, the size is independent of the number of elements. An accumulator is dynamic if elements can be efficiently added or removed from the set. Otherwise the accumulator is static. A universal accumulator is dynamic and supports both membership and non-membership proofs. Otherwise the accumulator is said to only support membership proofs.

Due to the simpler setup and shorter proofs, these offer an interesting alternative to SNARKs. This is not a new concept to replace the membership test portion of proofs with an accumulator [see OWWB19]. However, OWWB19 proposes using an accumulator inside the SNARK versus dropping SNARKs altogether. They show the accumulator SNARK combination has less expensive cost requirements in space and performance as will be shown in this article as well.

Accumulators fall into the following three categories: Unknown-Order e.g. [Sander97, BP97, BM93, CL02, LLX07, Lip12, BCDLRSY17, BBF18, OWWB19, DGS20], Bilinear Maps [Nguyen05, ATSM09, CKS08, DT08, Thakur19, VB20], and hash-based [CHKO08]. Each one offers tradeoffs between setup parameters, accumulator sizes, witness and proof performance and space. Unknown order accumulators are subdivided into RSA-based and Hyperelliptic curve based (class orders). The remainder of this article focuses on the story about implementing the RSA-based accumulator and how they work.

RSA accumulators afford the most efficient tradeoff between the number of setup parameters, updating witness requirements, proof computation and succinctness. The accumulator value and witness are the size of an RSA modulus. When implemented, the modulus, accumulator value and witnesses are 256 bytes with 32 byte elements, and membership proofs are 800 bytes and only require 90 milliseconds(ms) to compute, uses 2KB of RAM and 30ms to verify. Witness updates can be computed in 5–10ms depending on the underlying system. Non-membership proofs require creating two proofs but the proofs can be computed in parallel which takes the same amount of time but twice the space with 1.6KB.

Contrast this to ZCash’s JubJub SNARK which requires downloading the entire Merkle-Tree which is a couple of gigabytes, downloading the proving key around 32MB, generating a 458KB witness in 1 second using 150MB of ram, generating the proof using 106MB of RAM, taking 3 seconds, and producing a 1.4 KB byte proof [CryptQuest2018]. The advantage of cryptographic accumulators is that proofs are succinct and fast to compute.

How it works

To set up an RSA accumulator requires generating two safe primes (p, q) of sufficient size (≥ 1024-bits) to compute the coprime modulus n and creating a generator that is a quadratic residue g, essentially find a random number and compute the modular squaring. g is the empty accumulator value and used for creating non-membership proofs. The generation of (p, q) is commonly done with a trusted dealer but some distributed methods allow it to be done in a decentralized manner [AVD19] (trustless) albeit more complicated. Each element to be accumulated must be a unique prime number. Values can be mapped to prime numbers by a function that is usually either a lookup table or a hashing algorithm and added to the set S. The accumulator value is computed as follows:

Values are accumulated by computing the modular exponentiation of the current accumulator value to the new element. Removals can be computed two ways: with knowledge of p, q and without. The trusted accumulator creator (or dealer) uses p, q to compute Euler’s totient and compute:

Mind your p’s and q’s, because without them, the accumulator has to be recomputed by multiplying all elements in the accumulator with a modular exponentiation, again. A user has a membership witness or non-membership witness (or both) depending on the type of proof that is expected by a relying party. The membership witness u is computed:

The witness must be updated to reflect any changes made to the accumulator otherwise proofs will be invalid. Users can efficiently update their witnesses as elements are added to and deleted from the accumulator. Unfortunately, implementing the non-membership variant was much more complicated than the membership version. The batching paper shows the non-membership witness as

This works okay, proofs compute normally and work out just fine. The caveat happens when attempting to update the witness w. The batching paper refers to another paper LLX07 for this math. At first the math appears simple in section 4.2 where it says to do the following for addition:

To verify the correctness of the update, compute a current non-membership witness without doing an update and compare for equality. However, they don’t match (overturn desk).

Implementation headache

To check if the match is working properly, I insert multiple assert statements that check the assumptions made in LLX07. All pass minus the final assumption. After being puzzled by this for a while, I read the LLX07 from the beginning and discover that the non-membership witness differs by a sign, Bg-b. I made this change and non-membership updates work correctly, but now the proofs are broken. The only option is to work through the math again to make sure things check out and look for where it doesn’t. The equation at fault here is the proof that computes the proof of knowledge of exponents (POE, proof that the exponents are known to the prover without revealing them) with the current accumulator A and non-membership value a. Instead of inverting V, the generator g needed to be inverted, moving the modular inverse operation. Here’s a before and after:

Send V, Q, B to be verified:

Why this change? Let’s look at before and after in depth.

Before:

B was changed to B=gb to B=g-b the old equation becomes:

The goal of the non-membership proof is to get the exponents to equal ax*+bx = 1. Thus the change to g-¹. With that change it becomes:

This is often one of the trickiest parts of implementing cryptography is checking equations for errors and making necessary corrections. The contact for the batching paper was notified of these changes but has not yet responded to the update. The working code implementation can be found here. We see that the code, while it had some hiccups, was much easier to use and implement than SNARKs.

Stay tuned to the Coinbase Engineering blog, as a follow-up article will dive into Bilinear Accumulators to compare and contrast RSA and SNARKs.

If you are interested in the complexity of applying zero-knowledge cryptography, Coinbase is hiring.

This website contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only (“Third-Party Sites”). The Third-Party Sites are not under the control of Coinbase, Inc., and its affiliates (“Coinbase”), and Coinbase is not responsible for the content of any Third-Party Site, including without limitation any link contained in a Third-Party Site, or any changes or updates to a Third-Party Site. Coinbase is not responsible for webcasting or any other form of transmission received from any Third-Party Site. Coinbase is providing these links to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by Coinbase of the site or any association with its operators.

zkSNARKS and Cryptographic Accumulators was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

from Money 101 https://blog.coinbase.com/zksnarks-and-cryptographic-accumulators-f840da0b61c6?source=rss----c114225aeaf7---4 via http://www.rssmix.com/

[abbzworld]

Fic Rec Day

Here are my favorite fanfic’s found online. :)

Codename: Kids Next Door

Broken

This story about Father finding out he has a biological daughter is SO sweet! Sasha is a well rounded OC and Father isn’t OOC.

Finding Happiness

This 3/4 fic is everything you could ask for in a story! It has angst, romance, humor and really cool moments! DEFINITELY give it a read if you like the 3/4 pairing!

Doctor Who

Against All We Know

Kate Stewart/Rani is a very strange pairing, but the author really makes it work! There’s some angst and sexual references mixed in so be warned.

Alone

A story told from the 1st person POV of a Dalek? That’s ridiculous! Yes it is, but it works. It really, really works! This is a novelization of the Series 1 episode “Dalek” and it’s really awesome and sad!

Bitter Dancer

Smutty and hot. ;)

The Chronicles of Impossibility series

I really enjoy this series, despite the cursing, sexual references and mature themes. The angst is quite heartbreaking, but very well written. Definitely give it a read if you like Whouffaldi, Twelve/River and Clara/River as the three of them are in a relationship together!

Guardians of the Universe series

This seven story epic that is far from finished is one of the most intricate, detailed, coherent and entertaining series I’ve EVER read! It features Rose as the protagonist and she’s a relationship with Nine, Ten, Eleven and Twelve. Some people might not like that, though. So be warned.

In Another Life

Misffle AU’s. ‘nuff said.

My Clara

Hasn’t been updated in a while, but the three chapters that are there really make the Misffle relationship work and it’s very realistic.

Mystery Girl - One Moment - She’s Back

These stories are REALLY good! I love the villains, the tension, the mystery (see what I did there) and the OC’s!

Small Bump

Absolutely heartbreaking. You will cry.

The One Who Returns

Very bittersweet and a good explanation for Twelve’s and Missy’s last scene in “The Witch’s Familiar”.

This is Yesterday

This is SUCH a good story! It wraps up some unanswered questions from the show (i.e. Rassilon and the Hybrid), brings up good plot lines and conflicts and the characters are REALLY well handled!

Travels in the TARDIS series

I really enjoyed this Osgood and Missy series with some Clara, Danny and Twelve mixed in. There’s romance (with a sex scene in “Blue Christmas”, so be warned), angst, humor and tension. Very good read.

When We Travel Book 1 and Book 2

This story isn’t perfect, with formatting and pacing issues that somewhat runs out of ideas sometimes. That being said, Whouffaldi fans should still love it! Though it hasn’t been updated in a while.

Where’s Poppet?

Very sad. Also contains spoilers for “Face the Raven”.

Harvest Moon

Dove’s Nocturne

Hasn’t been updated in a while, but it’s very tense and kind of scary... for Harvest Moon anyways.

Dying by the dream

Sad story revolving around Celia’s unrequited love for Jack.

Frostbitten Flower

Lovely, angsty and bittersweet story revolving around Marlin and Celia, as well as her relationship with the deceased Jack.

Hidden Greed, Hidden Grief

Lovely story about selfishness. That sounds weird, but just read it and you’ll understand.

Instant Message

Very cute story involving Chelsea and Vaughn.

Love and Hate - Honesty and Deceit

I LOVE the way the author makes the romance, angst, tension and humor work in the first story and as for it’s sequel, Chelsea and Vaughn have to deal with murderer that’s set her eyes on them!

Loveless: Jack’s and Celia’s story

Kind of fast paced, but still very sweet and has a good plot.

Maybe Mummy Misses You

Very sad.

Necessary

Love this Marlin/Celia oneshot.

Perfect

Crazy oneshot and it makes you think.

Under a Moonlit Sky

Hasn’t been updated in a while, but it’s an AWESOME story!

Legend of Zelda

30 Tales of Fate

Very cute.

A Glass of Port

A “what if” scenario involving WW Link and Ganondorf at the beginning of the game. Shame it was never continued.

A Love Story

One of the best ZeLink stories out there.

Cry for Hyrule

Very good Wind Waker story that deviates from the game’s plot in a good way and is very enjoyable.

Forgotten Memories - Twilight Sunrise

Love these Ilia/Link stories. Twilight Sunrise hasn’t been updated for a while though.

Fortitude

Another “one of the best�� ZeLink stories out there.

Kasuto’s Redemption

Still reading it, but I’m very much enjoying myself! Set in the TP verse.

Matchmakers

Cute story.

More than it Seems

Tense, romantic and sad. Trigger warnings for abuse.

Remember Me As A Time Of Day

LGBT represented in ST Zelda and Tetra. And it’s good!

Running to You

Haven’t properly read this one yet, but what I have read is good!

The Crimson Loftwing

Hasn’t been updated in a while, but this story is SO good! It’s fluffy, sad, angsty and just all around awesome!

The Infinite Wisdom of Wives

Awesome and sweet ZeLink story.

Til the Sun Grows Cold and the Stars Grow Old

Another ZeLink story that’s canon compliant with TP and the rest of the Zelda verse.

To Take Chances

Another good ZeLink story.

Transcendence - Little Princess

Another good ZeLink story. Some mature scenes, references and trigger warnings for stillborn birth.

Zelda: Winds of a New Beginning - Zelda: Winds of a New Darkness

These stories are SOOOO good! They’re incredibly well though out, have a little bit of everything and are just all around AWESOME!

Mario

A Twilight Tale

Very bittersweet and ties into the game nicely.

Better Off Alone - Better Off Alone II: Hope and Faith

I LOVE these stories! Koops/Vivian seems like a strange pairing, but the author REALLY makes it work! Trigger warnings for abuse.

Change of Heart

I’m not really sure if I ship Bowser/Peach, but this story REALLY made me want to!

Paper Mario: The Temple of the Sun

This story perfectly plays out like an actual Paper Mario game, with the vibrant settings, awesome characters, the twists and turns and the ending was so beautiful and satisfying.

Paper Mario X - Paper Mario X 2 - Paper Luigi X - Super Paper Mario X

This crossover series with Paper Mario, Metroid, Legend of Zelda, Sonic, Kirby and some others is incredibly well done and still keeps true to the games.

Naruto

Chipped Mask

Some people might not like this self-insert with an OC that “fixes” everything, but I still enjoyed it.

In The Blood

This over 100 chapter epic is freaking awesome! The OC’s and characters have amazing depth, there’s plot twists like you wouldn’t believe and everything’s kept quite true to canon! Trigger warning for abuse.

Little Mouse

Hasn’t been updated for a while but this NaruHina & Gaara/Hinata story is really well written; especially Gaara who isn’t a good guy here.

The Mating Frenzy

Hilarious. Though the humor’s inappropriate.

New Blood - Old Souls

Love these stories. Everything’s SO well written; the characters, the plot and everything else.

Yet again - Take Two Round Two

These stories ROCK! You might not like the “over powered” OC’s involved but it’s really well done here!

Transformers

Fallout - Fallout: Apocalypse

The angst, humor, fluff, romance and OC’s are really well balanced in these stories.

Xenosaga

Agas One X: Redefined

Hasn’t been updated in a while but this is a great High School AU and the humor is great.

Other

A Very Muppets Mystery

LOVED this story! If you like mystery and the Muppets, definitely check it out,

Freddy’s Girl

The pacing and formatting is terrible, but it’s incredibly entertaining!

Authors

Aiselne Phoenix Nocturnus

Their Xenosaga stories are very emotional and beautiful.

Bonus Parts

I really enjoy how this author ships Sally Sparrow and Larry Nightingale and writes them very well!

firefly

His Naruto stories rule!

Hollow Shadow Wolf

Wolfie here writes amazingly well and their Misffle stories are very good as well!

Kiara32

Her three Lion King stories are REALLY well written! The OC’s, the plots, the conflicts, the angst, the humor, the tension and the romance just work together so well!

Negaduck

Love this author’s take on the Muppet Show and the Fraggles.

Ninja Sheik

Big Anko/Orochimaru fan that writes really well! Warnings for some smut.

optimus prime 007

She writes SO well! I especially enjoy her Kaceystar stories.

The Saddleman

He’s a big Whouffaldi shipper and I find his writing so entertaining, whether it’s angsty, humorous or sweet.

There you go! I’ll probably update this later, but that’s basically the gist of it. Enjoy. :)