MS Paint Adventures
Encyclopedia
MS Paint Adventures is a collection of webcomics written and illustrated by Andrew Hussie. Because of the frequency with which the site is updated, MS Paint Adventures is estimated to be the longest web comic on the Internet with over 6000 pages total among its four series.
These comics are written in serials, or "adventures", in a manner that parodies interactive fiction
games. The characters' actions are driven by commands, typically selected from suggestions provided by the comic's official forum
. The comics tend to draw inspiration from video games, imitating and parodying genres such as RPG
s and simulation games
. In the process, the comic has evolved from simply using static images and captions to incorporate animations, music, and occasionally interactive games utilizing Adobe Flash
. The current adventure, Homestuck, has given rise to a large fan community
as made evident by the increasing amount of fan art
and cosplay
at comic book conventions
. The comic currently averages over 600,000 unique views daily.
The stories also contain a variety of plot elements parodying various internet and social phenomena such as H. P. Lovecraft
's Cthulhu Mythos
, juggalo
culture, and shipping
.
MS Paint Adventures is one of many web comics which supports its author financially by selling merchandise on the online store TopatoCo as well the site's store and record label What Pumpkin.
following an unnamed man as he attempts to escape from a prison cell. While the adventure ends abruptly after a few hundred pages, its brief run established many ideas, patterns and running jokes that would reappear in subsequent adventures. Left unfinished for several years, the adventure was given an ending screen in September 2011 during a hiatus of updates from Homestuck.
format and featured multiple, branching paths rather than a single linear storyline. It was the first adventure to be hosted at on its own web space but was ultimately left unfinished due to the difficulty Hussie faced in maintaining the complex web of branching storylines. Bard Quest was updated from June 12, 2007 to July 6, 2007 upon which the site was left on hiatus.
games and the film noir
genre, Problem Sleuth began by presenting three detectives who are attempting to escape from their respective offices. Thanks largely to reader input, the story quickly grew in complexity, exploring a full fictional universe and dozens of characters. Problem Sleuth earned MS Paint Adventures major popularity in many parts of the internet
, forming a strong community of fans. Unlike its predecessors, Problem Sleuth featured a complete story with a proper ending and ran from March 10, 2008 to April 7, 2009.
that brings about the end of the world. As in Problem Sleuth, the adventure is characterised by time travel
, mystery, and a complex fictional universe. This adventure includes a large cast, including the protagonists, their families, denizens of the game world, and twelve figurative
and literal trolls from another universe whose character designs are based on Zodiac symbols
.
Unlike the previous adventures, which exclusively used GIF
images for animation, this adventure introduced the use of complex Flash
animations and games, many of them involving music provided by the comic's community. Eight major soundtrack albums have been released under the comic's own record label What Pumpkin., with eleven side albums also having been produced. The Homestuck soundtrack combines includes an extreme variety of instruments, musicians, and musical genres.
Homestuck is a story in seven acts, of which five (and two intermissions) have been completed.
It is by far the largest of the four adventures, in length and popularity.
, purportedly drawn by the character Dave Strider out of irony.
These comics are written in serials, or "adventures", in a manner that parodies interactive fiction
Interactive fiction
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...
games. The characters' actions are driven by commands, typically selected from suggestions provided by the comic's official forum
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
. The comics tend to draw inspiration from video games, imitating and parodying genres such as RPG
Role-playing video game
Role-playing video games are a video game genre with origins in pen-and-paper role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, using much of the same terminology, settings and game mechanics. The player in RPGs controls one character, or several adventuring party members, fulfilling one or many quests...
s and simulation games
Simulation video game
A simulation video game describes a diverse super-category of computer and video games, generally designed to closely simulate aspects of a real or fictional reality.-Sub-genres:-Construction and management simulation:...
. In the process, the comic has evolved from simply using static images and captions to incorporate animations, music, and occasionally interactive games utilizing Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
. The current adventure, Homestuck, has given rise to a large fan community
Fandom
Fandom is a term used to refer to a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of sympathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest...
as made evident by the increasing amount of fan art
Fan art
Fan art or fanart is artwork that is based on a character, costume, collage, item, or story that was created by someone other than the artist, such as a fan, from which the word is derived from. The term, while it can apply to art done by fans of characters from books, is usually used to refer to...
and cosplay
Cosplay
, short for "costume play", is a type of performance art in which participants don costumes and accessories to represent a specific character or idea. Characters are often drawn from popular fiction in Japan, but recent trends have included American cartoons and science fiction...
at comic book conventions
Fan convention
A fan convention, or con , is an event in which fans of a particular film, television series, comic book, actor, or an entire genre of entertainment such as science fiction or anime and manga, gather to participate and hold programs and other events, and to meet experts, famous personalities, and...
. The comic currently averages over 600,000 unique views daily.
The stories also contain a variety of plot elements parodying various internet and social phenomena such as H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
's Cthulhu Mythos
Cthulhu Mythos
The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, based on the work of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.The term was first coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, who used the name of the creature Cthulhu - a central figure in Lovecraft literature and the focus...
, juggalo
Juggalo
Juggalo or Juggalette is a name given to fans of Insane Clown Posse or any other Psychopathic Records hip hop group. Juggalos have developed their own idioms, slang, and characteristics.-History:...
culture, and shipping
Shipping (fandom)
Shipping, derived from the word relationship, is the belief that two fictional characters, typically from the same series, are in an intimate relationship, or have romantic feelings that could potentially lead to a relationship. It is considered a general term for fans' emotional involvement with...
.
MS Paint Adventures is one of many web comics which supports its author financially by selling merchandise on the online store TopatoCo as well the site's store and record label What Pumpkin.
Jailbreak
Jailbreak, the first adventure written by Andrew Hussie, was conceived as a forum gameForum game
A forum game is a text-based multiplayer game played on an Internet forum. Simple examples include word association, hangman, "Count to a Million", "what are you listening to?", "which do you prefer?", and variations of Photoshop contests....
following an unnamed man as he attempts to escape from a prison cell. While the adventure ends abruptly after a few hundred pages, its brief run established many ideas, patterns and running jokes that would reappear in subsequent adventures. Left unfinished for several years, the adventure was given an ending screen in September 2011 during a hiatus of updates from Homestuck.
Bard Quest
The second adventure Bard Quest took on a Choose Your Own AdventureChoose Your Own Adventure
Choose Your Own Adventure is a series of children's gamebooks where each story is written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character's actions and the plot's outcome. The series was based on a...
format and featured multiple, branching paths rather than a single linear storyline. It was the first adventure to be hosted at on its own web space but was ultimately left unfinished due to the difficulty Hussie faced in maintaining the complex web of branching storylines. Bard Quest was updated from June 12, 2007 to July 6, 2007 upon which the site was left on hiatus.
Problem Sleuth
A parody of interactive fictionInteractive fiction
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...
games and the film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
genre, Problem Sleuth began by presenting three detectives who are attempting to escape from their respective offices. Thanks largely to reader input, the story quickly grew in complexity, exploring a full fictional universe and dozens of characters. Problem Sleuth earned MS Paint Adventures major popularity in many parts of the internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, forming a strong community of fans. Unlike its predecessors, Problem Sleuth featured a complete story with a proper ending and ran from March 10, 2008 to April 7, 2009.
Homestuck
Homestuck, the current adventure, began on April 13, 2009 and follows four teenagers as they play a reality-altering video game resembling The SimsThe Sims
The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. Its development was led by game designer Will Wright, also known for developing SimCity...
that brings about the end of the world. As in Problem Sleuth, the adventure is characterised by time travel
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
, mystery, and a complex fictional universe. This adventure includes a large cast, including the protagonists, their families, denizens of the game world, and twelve figurative
Troll (Internet)
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response...
and literal trolls from another universe whose character designs are based on Zodiac symbols
Astrological sign
Astrological signs represent twelve equal segments or divisions of the zodiac. According to astrology, celestial phenomena reflect or govern human activity on the principle of "as above, so below", so that the twelve signs are held to represent twelve basic personality types or characteristic modes...
.
Unlike the previous adventures, which exclusively used GIF
GIF
The Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability....
images for animation, this adventure introduced the use of complex Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
animations and games, many of them involving music provided by the comic's community. Eight major soundtrack albums have been released under the comic's own record label What Pumpkin., with eleven side albums also having been produced. The Homestuck soundtrack combines includes an extreme variety of instruments, musicians, and musical genres.
Homestuck is a story in seven acts, of which five (and two intermissions) have been completed.
It is by far the largest of the four adventures, in length and popularity.
Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff
Originally conceived by Andrew Hussie as a parody of poorly made web comics, this comic is intentionally drawn crudely with images copied and pasted from other strips in the series only to be saved with increasingly lossy compression. It was kind of incorporated into Homestuck as a comic-within-a-comicStory within a story
A story within a story, also rendered story-within-a-story, is a literary device in which one narrative is presented during the action of another narrative. Mise en abyme is the French term for a similar literary device...
, purportedly drawn by the character Dave Strider out of irony.