MS Paint Adventures

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"Who are you, and why are you throwing all this weird shit all up in our business?"

"My name is Andrew, and I have done some other stuff too. As for why I'm doing this, my objective is merely to make your day just a little more fucking awesome."

—Andrew Hussie

MS Paint Adventures is a catch-all term for several webcomics by Andrew Hussie which are all, as the name suggests, made entirely in Adobe Photoshop and later, Flash. The Trope Codifier of the Interactive Comic genre, each is written in the style of an Interactive Fiction game, where each panel is accompanied by a text description, and the link to the next panel represents a player's command entered into a Text Parser. It originated in 2006 as a series of games run on the Gangbunch forums, a small gathering of artists and miscellaneous people from the Penny Arcade forums which later became the current MSPA Forums, and were played by a group of Hussie's online friends; it graduated to its own site and effectively became a webcomic in in 2007.

Originally, all of the commands (barring "Next" and "==>" command continuations) were originally suggested by the readers back in Jailbreak, but over the years this decreased and major plot events were generally planned out ahead of time, culminating in Homestuck simply closing off its suggestion boxes entirely. However, the readers still have a lot of influence on the story through the community discussion, with Hussie admitting he likes reading theories and employing ones which he likes and which make sense.

It is comprised of five series:

• Jail Break is the original adventure, where the player is a prisoner trying to escape from an incredibly illogical jail that is completely devoid of pumpkins. Andrew Hussie began it as a forum game many years ago, and one of the rules was that he had to pick the very first suggested command for each move, no matter how unfunny or preposterous. One of its central gags (namely, that You Can't Get Ye Flask because the game denies that the flask even exists) reappears as a Mythology Gag in Problem Sleuth, where the game repeatedly insists that Problem Sleuth's gun is actually a harmless key, and vice versa. It was abandoned until September 2011, where it was capped off with an ending.
• Bard Quest is an experimental comic where each panel has multiple branching paths, much like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. It has been abandoned completely.
• Problem Sleuth concerns the antics of three especially hard-boiled detectives (Problem Sleuth, Ace Dick, and Pickle Inspector) in their attempts to foil the dastardly plots of Mobster Kingpin and to escape from their room. It parodies various point-and-click adventure and JRPG mechanics and tropes (such as Stat Meters and Turns Red) and features increasingly complex animated panels depicting Super Move Portrait Attacks, Summon Magic and Wave Motion Guns galore.
• Homestuck is the current series. It begins with 13-year old John Egbert, who's trying to get around to to playing a hot new video game called "Sburb" while contending with a poorly-designed inventory system and his father, but snowballs very quickly into an epic of children trying to survive After the End in a world predestined to work against them. While still happily displaying the energetic imagination and lightheartedness of Problem Sleuth, it has increased focus on deep characterization and dialogue, dramatic moods and a wildly twisting plot. It was initially done entirely in Flash, before Hussie decided to switch back to Photoshop because Flash is a pain to write comics in, though Flash is still occasionally employed for animated sequences and brief exploration games.
• Dr. Brinner Ghost Psychiatrist is the longest story that Andrew has written, featuring the eponymous, heavily-begoggled Dr. Brinner. Started shortly after the best ending for Bard Quest was finished, it has been updated in parallel with other adventures, resulting in a somewhat erratic update schedule. Currently on hold, as Andrew is going back and updating older panels as a form of self-described "retroactive foreshadowing", and keeping the style more consistent. (This story doesn't actually exist, having been "created" by fans on the MSPA forums, although it's a bit of a dead meme these days).

These comics are a stated favorite of Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics^[1], and Hussie and North tend to be all about the incredibly silly hijinks.

MSPA has outstripped the much longer running Kevin and Kell as the longest webcomic in existence in terms of page count, which numbers over 6000. However, the mixed media and the fact that several distinct stories are told leaves this fact somewhat open for debate.

It has absolutely no relation to MS Paint Masterpieces. See also Hussie's creator page for works not related to MSPA

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Tropes used in MS Paint Adventures include:

• Abandoned Info Page: The New Reader page claims that Problem Sleuth is 'by far the longest adventure'. All of the Adventures other than Homestuck compromise about 2,000 of MS Paint Adventures' pages. Homestuck has over 4,000, with text, animations, and games.
  • The secret page also counts, as it lists Andrew's Formspring account, which is now out of service.
• Aborted Arc: Both Jailbreak and Bard Quest end abruptly and are now abandoned.
  • Jailbreak subverted this by having an ending written for it years after it was originally stopped.
• Acronym and Abbreviation Overload: From Problem Sleuth onward, to the point where the wiki has an acronym cheatsheat.
• Archive Panic: Oh dear lord. If you are foolish enough to start ANY of these, but particularly Homestuck, only' start it early in the morning on a Saturday. Do not, under any circumstances, let Homestucks slow start lull you into a false sense of security about your ability to put it down.
• Art Evolution: From the first panel of Jailbreak to Homestuck, the art has increased dramatically. However, all of the art in the comics has always been below Andrew's skill level, and in fact he's lost some of his skill simply because he never uses it anymore.
  • Nonetheless, the writing and pacing have increased by magnitudes.
• Artifact Title: The only image on the entire site to be drawn in MS Paint is the very first image in Jailbreak. Andrew Hussie very quickly abandoned it for Photoshop due to MS Paint's inherent limitations. See also Never Trust a Title.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Very noticable over the course of the comic. Jail Break was driven completely by user suggestions without regard for quality, and as a result is completely nonsensical and gag-driven. Problem Sleuth was still largely user-driven, but managed to incorporate characters and a plot (albeit a comedic, cartoon-y one). Homestuck has a pre-planned story arc and serious themes mixed in with its humor.
• Character Blog: Dave gets a blog
• Chekhov's Gun: Any object, character, feature, gesture can return in a plot significant way.
• Continuity Porn: Liberal use of Chekhov's Armory and numerous Running Gags and Call Backs to minor details. Homestuck also adds Recurring Riffs and repeated art elements.
• Doing It for the Art: More of the writing than the art itself. The is art fairly well below Andrew's skill level but he clearly enjoys writing the story solely for the story.
• Eldritch Abomination: Fluthlu. And possibly the lesser "terrifying beasts" as well.
  • Not to mention the entire Noble Circle of Horrorterrors.
• Follow the Leader: Around the time that Problem Sleuth ended, an impressive number of member-run MSPAs started showing up in the MSPA forum. For his part, Andrew is highly supportive of these: participating in some, linking to the more popular ones in a newspost, and creating a separate subforum in his forums to organize them.
  • MSPA's influence has become so broad that a number of comics with similar formats such as Silent Hill: Promise and Aetheria Epics have sprung up independently of the forums.
  • Funnily enough, the grandaddy of these fan MSPAs, Bird Wizard, had a suggestion from Andrew Hussie ("Squawk like an idiot and shit on your desk." that made it into Homestuck (though the character resisted it.)
• Image Boards: Skaianet imageboard and MSPAchan.
• Indecisive Medium
• Interactive Comic: The Trope Codifier.
• Interactive Fiction: Technically it's fake, but it has all the trappings.
• Interdimensional Travel Device
• Interface Screw: "What pumpkin?"
  • Problem Sleuth has this as a major element in the form of each characters weapons, which are also mundane items like a ring of keys or a lipstick tube. Most of the time, referring to an item as its counterpart seems to get around this (e.g. using the keys on the door shoots it with a gun), except when working normally would be more frustrating and funny. It's explicitly described in universe on GameFAQs as a bug.
  • Homestuck does the same thing with the Midnight Crew's decks of cards / storage items.
• Never Trust a Title: The comic used to look like it was made in MS Paint (see the first page of Problem Sleuth), but by a couple hundred pages later the style has evolved and it's quite a bit more complicated, to the point where being able to draw such things on MS Paint would be pretty amazing. Then, around a year later, we're at the point where we have interactive flash pages, elaborate animations, and almost every page in full color. The truth is: the comic was made in Adobe Photoshop from day two.
  • The author does say right in the FAQ that only the very first page of Jailbreak was made in MS Paint. Everything else has been made in Photoshop and/or, more recently, with Flash.
  • Not only that, but the titles Problem Sleuth and Homestuck only reflect the initial circumstances of each adventure, and don't give a very good glimpse into what the actual story will be like. In Problem Sleuth, no cases are solved, clues found, or culprits apprehended instead, the plot evolves into sort of a pastiche of Eastern RPGs, culminating in a final battle where the entire universe is at stake. On the other Hand, Problem Sleuth was the protagonist, so the title at least made some sense.
    • Homestuck was nearly an aversion. Andrew had at one point considered naming the series Sburb, which is what the series is about, but decided it wasn't nearly as distinctive. The name "Homestuck" is basically a nonsense word that only describes the initial conditions of the protagonists, as mentioned above, as a Shout-Out to old-school Adventure games. It also is sorta-synonymous with EarthBound, which had an enormous influence on Homestuck.
• Ninja Prop
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Andrew is a very intelligent author. He spends most of his time talking to the fanbase trolling them.
  • He also wrote this, and writes recaps from memory.
• One-Man Army: In Problem Sleuth, Andrew did all the work himself and posted around 5-6 pages per day for a year. In Homestuck, he does the majority of a workload for an entire animation team and manages to keep the 5-6 pages average per day. While there is now a dedicated art team which assists him in the Flash animations, there are still the hilarious moments in which he says he'll be slowing down for a while... and posts 80 pages in the span of a week.
• Orphaned Series: Jailbreak (until September 2011) and Bard Quest. Bard Quest much more so than Jailbreak; most fans have never even read BQ, but Jailbreak gets a fair number of call backs.
• Running Gag: Several.
• Schedule Slip: Subverted so hard it's not even funny. Regular webcomics might have 3 or 5 pages a week, with some having as many as 7. MSPA averages about 40. In a single day there have been upwards of 30 pages. Andrew describes MSPA as less of a job and more of a lifestyle; he literally does little other than update constantly.
  • However, pages of MSPA might not be comparable to pages of most webcomics.
  • By his own standards the later half of Act 5 Act 2 of Homestuck suffered heavily from very sporadic updates and pacing problems. Part of switching the story to Doc Scratch was designed to relieve this, and that started to drag on as well! Seems to have recovered fully with Act 6 however. And it should be said that even during this "slip", he still updated more frequently than normal web comics.
• Schrödinger's Gun: Most of the early adventures and Problem Sleuth.
• Stylistic Self Parody: the characters are usually drawn sans arms, leading to a running gag throughout the series, consisting of the command "Quickly retrieve arms from _____" with the character responding by gesturing with whose arms and the message "You already have arms, stupid!" (or some other insult). This is subverted early on in Homestuck. And again thereafter.
  • "Quickly retrieve arms from cinder blocks." "Nah."
  • THEY'RE RIGHT THERE. IN PLAIN SIGHT. LOOK, THEY ARE FLASHING RED.
  • At one point, a character literally has to retrieve an arm (from an inadvertently dismembered corpse.)
    • Another instance involves retrieving firearms.
• Stylistic Suck: The unrefined, aliased art style allows for swifter drawing, allowing several panels to be published per day. That doesn't stop Andrew Hussie from doing incredibly refined and detailed drawings, however.
  • The stride does slow significantly when Hussie is utilizing Flash for pages in Homestuck.
  • The best example of stylistic suck would be Dave's own webcomic, Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff.
• Sure Why Not: Andrew has admitted to getting as many plot ideas from the Wild Mass Guessing on the forums as the user commands themselves.
  • Homestuck now almost entirely runs on this, since the suggestion boxes have been closed.
• Theme Table: Problem Sleuth and Homestuck each use this. In Homestuck, each of the main characters has a guardian, something weird that guardian collects, a world etc.. In Problem Sleuth, each of the detectives and the Mobster Kingpin has something trapping them in a room, a kingdom in the fantasy world etc..
  • Some more detail on things the kids in Homestuck each have one of here.
• They Plotted a Perfectly Good Waste: Done repeatedly with reader suggestions, with hilarious (and often plot-crucial) results. The rather silly idea of building a fort out of a desk in Problem Sleuth actually developed into a major game mechanic of the series.
• Up to Eleven: Routinely. And he never turns it back to 1 before he kicks it up again.
  • Although it is nearly always put in with incredibly tame, even dull moments in between one Wham! Episode and the next. A prime example would be the most recent (at time of writing) scenes, When it's revealed Dirk and Roxy live in the dark future under the control of the Baroness, then followed by Spades Slick being milkfed by Hussie, while Ms. Paint makes a special meal for Slick, before revealing the Big Bad is in the very close quarters with that particular group of offside heroes. This is finally followed by Karkat yelling at himself. Twice.
• Web Animation: One of Homestuck's primary draws is the [S] updates.
• Webcomics Long Runners: Counting all the stories together, MS Paint Adventures became the single largest webcomic in existence on 2/11/2011. It only started five years before.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Interesting use. In Homestuck, Andrew planned out the entire process of Sburb, and the end result before even making a single page, but the way the story shows that process is completely improvised. Concepts such as the trolls, the exiles, and the entire Apocalypse were made up more or less on the fly.
  • Applies to the art, as well. Andrew has admitted to creating some character designs shortly before they were introduced, such as the guardians.
    • Andrew admitted the basic story plan for Homestuck was from the outset: Make crazy shit up. It's worked surprisingly well so far.
• You Can't Get Ye Flask: The pumpkin. Of course, when you attempt to get ye flask of whiskey, it works fine. Also, when you attempt to get ye key, you get a gun... and ye key disappeareth.
  • It's sort of applied logic: in Problem Sleuth, one of the commands would be to grab something (gun, knife,) and it would immediately turn into something else. Any time you bring it up, it will turn back.
    • It was so common that it even got an official name "Innocuous Double" and a page on the wiki detailing all the doubles.

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1. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20160313025523/http://wooopedia.com/wooo/andrew_hussie