< Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 >
Act 6 Act 1, Part 4 of 4
Pages 4227-4284 (MSPA: 6127-6184)
In a callback to a scene in the trolls’ arc, Jake discovers a grumbling giant version of Karkat’s lusus. Presumably the callback is there to make it extra obvious those are the trolls’ lusii—this isn’t the only time such a thing is done.
Continue reading< Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 >
Act 6 Act 1, Part 3 of 4
Pages 4195-4226 (MSPA: 6095-6126)
NOTE: This will be my last post before leaving for my next vacation, from which I’ll return on August 6. After that I’ll go back to regular posting, hopefully at a less sluggish rate than previously.
Jane leaves her room and examines her hallway, which is quite different from John’s without any clowns or anything.
Just one of your dad’s bland HALLWAY DOUCHEBAGS. Another example of his cornball dad tastes, which make you roll your eyes and shrug. Still, it’s preferable to how it used to be.
Years ago he would work really hard to mimic your interests throughout the household. Gaudy paintings of sitcom legends covering the walls, hideous detective figurines littered everywhere. You think it’s better that he embrace his own interests rather than try to pander to yours.
This description of how Jane’s relationship with her father progressed away from a mirror of John’s life seems to me like another “what could have been” sort of thing: in this case, what John’s relationship with his father would have become if he kept living a normal life for a few more years. And maybe what it would’ve become if not for Gamzee doing the whole clown doll thing. Oh, and that’s another thing that’s better off in the scratched universe. Even during Dad’s mimicking interests phase, this time around at least it’s mimicking a real interest of his child’s.
Continue reading< Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 >
Act 6 Act 1, Part 1 of 4
Pages 4113-4121, 4163-4194 (MSPA: 6013-6021, 6063-6094)
So remastered, in fact, that SBaHJ is now a moive.
NOTE: Tomorrow marks my two-year anniversary of first reading Homestuck. (actually I was wrong, I released this post exactly on the anniversary)
NOTE FOR THOSE READING THESE POSTS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER: Warning you know, my early Act 6 posts are extremely rambly and weird, and I have no idea what I was talking about in them half the time. If you want to go to the part where the posts stop being absurdly rambly, then feel free to skip to part 80, a post that I released after going on hiatus for almost two years. Trust me, the posts are a lot better from there on.
Before I start Act 6, I’d like to talk about the alpha kids in general, just as I opened Act 5 by talking about the trolls.
Like the trolls, the alpha kids are a group of characters who didn’t exist from the start. However, unlike the trolls, they haven’t grown to become part of the comic’s premise. This may be because it takes quite a long time for them to be introduced and thus their existence is a major spoiler, or simply because the trolls have such a special appeal. When I was early in my first read of Homestuck, I accidentally found out early that there was a character named Jane, who I thought was some kind of fifth kid who shows up a lot later (which is half-true). I think this goes to show that the alpha kids are not as distinct and special as the trolls, especially when the beta kids have always been a group of four main characters. But despite that, the alpha kids are most certainly not simply a repeat of the beta kids. Even though they’re all young versions of existing characters (the guardians), they are still very much their own characters, since we only saw what the guardians are like from the kids’ often distorted perspectives. You can’t map each alpha kid to a beta kid without ignoring other major similarities between them; this second group of four kids is definitely its own group of characters, with a lot of new things about them that make their story a tale with a much more complex premise than the beta kids’ story. This brings me to the second part of my Act 6 introduction.
Act 6 starts off with the players of the kids’ post-scratch session. The Scratch was stated to reboot the conditions of the kids’ universe for a more ideal session. This applies not only to the story’s plot, but to its narrative as well. Act 6 Act 1 is not just Act 1 with a different set of main characters; it’s a remastered version of Act 1. While Act 1 starts off in a rather generic setting and builds up from there, Act 6 Act 1 immediately gives us a very colorful premise. In the scratched universe, Sburb is released by a company which clues already suggest is owned by an evil alien queen, rather than a seemingly generic mysterious technology company; Jane is the heiress to that company, and doesn’t know anything about what she’s getting into—not even whose company she will inherit—but we certainly do. There’s also a lot of other parts that refine what the beginning of the comic was like; I’ll go over them as I go. For now, you should know that the theme of remastering the beginning of the comic also applies to the post series, hence the title of this post. I will analyze Act 6 Act 1 the way I retrospectively wish I went over Act 1 when I started this big project.
Continue readingChapters 2-3
Pages 84–229 (MSPA: 302–447)
Chapter 2 opens with Problem Sleuth leaving his main office and entering his secret chamber. This allows for worldbuilding typical of pretty much any story while avoiding him actually leaving his office. It also matches up with Act 2 of Homestuck starting with John leaving Earth.
Continue reading< Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 >
Act 5 Act 2, Part 31 of 32
Doc Scratch Intermission, Part 6 of 6
Pages 4036-4083 (MSPA: 5936-5983)
I can’t believe I’m this close to Act 6, with only two posts to go that likely won’t each take a week to make.
This girl was originally drawn without horns by mistake.
Hussie joked that Doc Scratch revoked her horn privileges.
Doc Scratch turns off the fifth wall and then Damara, I mean the Handmaid, I mean the mystery girl who looks like Aradia (I’ll just call her Damara for now), throws a chair at him. It’s always hilarious and satisfying to see people beat up Doc Scratch, even though I don’t really hate him.
Continue readingPart 1 | Part 2 >
Chapter 1
Pages 1–83 (MSPA: 219–301)
You are one of the top Problem Sleuths in the city…
Problem Sleuth, like all three other MS Paint Adventures, starts off simple enough: by introducing the main character in a default starting situation. Jailbreak and Bard Quest both put the main character in a definite predicament of sorts, but Problem Sleuth and Homestuck simply introduce the main character in the most everyday setting possible. While Homestuck soon tells us that John, the protagonist, is getting a video game called Sburb for his birthday, thus setting up a premise*, Problem Sleuth does not give us any premise at all in its opening pages, instead revealing it through Problem Sleuth (the character) realizing through command-based exploration that he is trapped in his office.
* I’ll be doing A LOT of comparing Problem Sleuth with Homestuck in this post series. That’s part of the point of this project, to see Homestuck from a different perspective by comparing it with its predecessor.
The text accompanying the page is as follows: You are one of the top Problem Sleuths in the city. Solicitations for your service are numerous in quantity. Compensation, adequate. It is a balmy summer evening. You are feeling particularly hard boiled tonight. What will you do? It’s a simple introductory line that gives a bit of introduction fluff that doesn’t have much relevance to the real story. The three main characters are all supposedly detectives, but they do almost no detective work at all in the comic; I bet this is to parody how character introductions in video games are also hardly relevant. In Homestuck, the interests brought up in character introductions sometimes actually are relevant to the plot; sometimes they’re not relevant to the plot but very character-defining; and in a few cases, such as Dave’s supposed interest in bands nobody has ever heard of but him, never brought up at all.
Continue reading< Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 >
Act 5 Act 2, Part 30 of 32
Doc Scratch Intermission, Part 5 of 6
Pages 4002-4035 (MSPA: 5902-5935) (in order this time)
Another ominous Gamzee eye title picture because why the hell not.
NOTE: SBES stands for Scrapbook Examination Station.
The fifth scrapbook selection screen has only one option so I guess I’ll go ahead and do that one.
Continue readingAs I mentioned not long ago, I’m starting a new blog post series similar to my lengthy post series commenting on the famed story webcomic Homestuck, but covering its predecessor, Problem Sleuth. I would say it’s based on the success of my Homestuck post series, but that post series isn’t particularly popular at the moment. I would also append that sentence with “(yet)” if there was a non-awkward way to say that while also acknowledging that my posts becoming more popular is merely what I hope will happen.
Although Homestuck is unquestionably Andrew Hussie’s magnum opus, Problem Sleuth deserves some appreciation for keeping a consistent theme and storyline through its year-long run. Homestuck, while unlike Problem Sleuth intended as an “actual story” from the start, started as a command-based story of four teenagers playing a video game but gradually shed many of its original layers, progressing into a tale of gray-skinned aliens and lengthy dialogue and complex plot lines, and then incorporating relationship drama and aging up its characters and regularly going on hiatus to the point where it’s a completely different story from what it started as. This is not to say that what Homestuck became ended up being bad—although some people do think that, I actually like the middle section of the comic the most—it’s more like Problem Sleuth does a better job at keeping a consistent style. Throughout its run Problem Sleuth ran on user-suggested commands and kept its theme of being a video game adventure while still doing a good job at escalating its storyline, something that cannot be said of Homestuck.
Problem Sleuth is so far the only one of Hussie’s four comics on MS Paint Adventures to have a definite conclusion, sealing its role as a story more so than Homestuck which is the one that’s an actual story. Its predecessors of similar style, Jailbreak and Bard Quest, are both left unfinished, while Homestuck is either finished or semi-finished depending on how you look at it (I look at it as semi-finished). As it stands, Homestuck technically has an ending, but there’s a vaguely described epilogue planned as well. There is much debate as to whether Homestuck’s present ending is a good satisfying ending. Many readers, myself included, feel that the ending as it stands does not give a satisfying wrap-up to all its plot threads and character arcs. Some readers, myself still included, think Homestuck’s current ending doesn’t even hit some of the bare minimum requirements for a satisfying ending. Readers also can’t agree on what to expect for the epilogue of the comic, whether it will resolve stuff and possibly even redeem the ending, or if it won’t be of much substance. I personally have optimistic expectations for the epilogue, mostly because it really feels all “look I know Homestuck isn’t good anymore” to think it won’t be much good.
While Problem Sleuth has a solid conclusion, it still is at heart a silly video game parody story of clumsy detectives. But with a decent length of over 1600 pages, it’s still worth giving serious commentary, in what will be my second full read of Problem Sleuth. For reference, my first read of Problem Sleuth was on and off over the course of several months, and was at around the same time as my second read of Homestuck. While I have no posting schedule set in stone yet, I’m thinking of making these posts at a similar rate to my Homestuck posts: generally every 3-5 days, though it can vary. I think it’s reasonable to cover about 100 or more pages per post, similar to how I originally did my Homestuck post series. This means that if things go as planned, my Problem Sleuth post series will contain about 16 posts total and take a few months from start to finish.
List of posts:
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4
Unfortunately, the project has since been abandoned. In 2025 I decided to deem it a failed experiment.
< Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 >
Act 5 Act 2, Part 28 of 32
Doc Scratch Intermission, Part 3 of 6
Pages 3874-3935 (MSPA: 5774-5835) (not in order)
NOTE: Remember, no new posts until after the 23rd because of vacation.
Here’s how this whole 250-ish-page scrapbook section is going to work. I said a while back that I will always avoid doing the selection screens in the normal order. The scrapbook pages, which are in fact the first selection screens, are an exception, not because I will do them in the normal order, but because there is no normal order; from what I can tell, readers do them in various orders. To spice it up regardless, for each of those selection screens, I will go by a different rule for which order to read the scenes.
There are six such selection screens total, each directly following the previous. This post and the next two will each go through two of those selection screens. I was originally going to do something different so that I’d be sure it’s all split evenly since some selection screens take up more pages total than others, but I figured it’s easiest to just split it like that.
For the first selection of scrapbook scenes, shown above, I will do them in order of smallest to biggest picture. This means I’ll start with the one on the bottom left, the Dersite battleship.
Continue reading< Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 >
Act 5 Act 2, Part 25 of 32
Pages 3717-3762 (MSPA: 5617-5662)
NOTE: This post took longer than I hoped because it goes through a lot of flash pages and those always take longer to cover than usual. For some reason it didn’t occur to me until yesterday that I could take screenshots from flashes far more easily by taking them from these fan-made storyboards. See the image above for how I feel about that.
Terezi is starting to surpass Karkat as my favorite troll.
Proceeding from where we left off, we have what appears to be yet another walkaround game, except it doesn’t work because the disc is missing. A weird big “Objection!” referencing Ace Attorney appears out of nowhere, our first hint that something isn’t right with the disc missing.
Continue reading
Cookie Fonster's stuff 
