So Nathan is back. He lives with us again. And naturally we’re talking about him getting back to Homestuck. Whether we record it or not, who knows? But either way, he wanted me to find a way to recap things for him, which I for some reason really really want to.

BUT in the process of recapping the first three acts (plus intermission), I wound up… realizing it would be just as beneficial to recap all of prior MSPA, since Nathan has read most of it. BUT in the process of that, I wound up… well… here, I’ll just share my notes for Jailbreak





MS Paint Adventures: Command parser and host of games.

Game: In MSPA, a game is not something you directly control. You merely influence events, and even that is debatable. The goal of each game is for the trapped character(s) to escape.

Characters: Described through narrative text as “You,” but not in practice a player-controlled character. In practice, characters are simply “that which we don’t control.” (See: Commands)

Narrative: The symbolic rendering of content. In practice, “that which we see/read at present,” albeit parsed in the narrator’s given symbolic language. (See: Arms)

Commands: Will not necessarily be followed, thus are not technically “commands” but suggestions that are implied to pop into the character’s head. What sorts of behaviours and commands characters will accept is pre-determined and up to us to figure out through trial and error. When not presently being commanded, or when a command involves something the character does not comprehend (see: Pumpkin), characters will act on their own volition.

Narrative Logic: Not only is the character trapped, but they are trapped because of their own actions and because of your commands. The narration often jumps through time and space in order to give us a full picture of a situation slowly and obtusely (including why the character is trapped– it is often the result of the character “winning” later on that retroactively traps them. See: Time Travel). The narrative presented visually and the narrative presented through text are not necessarily congruent. (see: Pumpkin)

Skills and Traits: Rendered symbolically like RPG/Sims character stats, these are depictions of a given character’s physical or mental functions, sometimes even of more abstract functions such as “how close we are to success.” (See: Diplomacy)

Weird Puzzle Shit: Rendered symbolically like adventure game puzzles, these are trials demonstrating how characters act under pressure, trials often pre-set to play to the character’s weaknesses and challenge them in the solving process. Facilitators of growth.

“Be the other guy:” Occasionally, we switch between characters. But it is not up to us to switch characters; only characters who are ready to be commanded will respond to commands, and we will only switch when the narration allows us (“you cannot be the other guy, as the other guy is too busy being dead”).

Pumpkin (“What pumpkin?”): The faults of perception. You “see” the pumpkin (through image but not through narration), but that doesn’t necessarily mean the character does. The absurdity of the pumpkin (it is there when you don’t want it to be, it is not there when you want it to be) reminds us to always be patient; the road of commands we suggested is impossible for a reason the narration had not yet clarified.

Arms (“Retrieve arms” “Already got arms”): The faults of perception, inverse. You “see” characters drawn without arms (through image but not through narration), but that is simply style. The art is not literal; characters and environments are rendered symbolically. In Problem Sleuth, this is turned into a linguistic pun– the command is to retrieve (fire)arms, the narration proclaims that the character already has arms (establishing a link between linguistics and symbolic rendering).

Robots (“Logorg” in Jailbreak): Characters’ attempts to engineer life. In practice, characters’ struggles with commanding robots mirrors our struggles with commanding characters.

Diplomacy: Characters make better headway when they are polite to each other, but the narration implies that diplomacy is not a universal trait, and that those who are capable of diplomacy still need to hone it as if a Skill in a video game.

Time Travel: Physical extension of Narrative Logic. Example: The pumpkin that disappears from view for us at the start of Jailbreak was “snatched” out of reality by the protagonist in the future (by accident, using a device called an Appearifier).

Mystical Creatures (“Elves” in Jailbreak): Rumoured to exist, turn out to exist, have names based off of actual folklore (elves, ogres, imps, trolls, cherubs, fairies), have the power to fix everything but they, too, are marred by subjectivity.

Branching Paths 1: Game Overs. When more than one command is parsed at once, you get a choice between events. If one command results in character death, that path is generally considered “noncanon–” not what “really happened.” But the path is generally shown, even in part.

Branching Paths 2: Character Select. Sometimes the choice in command effects to a choice in which character to follow. Both can be selected without penalty, and selecting both is necessary for full comprehension of game, but the narration still presents this as a choice.

The Ending: The characters are in equillibrium (they know exactly what they want). No command applies anymore, for no character will follow them.

(Overarching logic: Acceptance of a balance between “serious” thought and “silly” thought– both bring us closer to success and both hold us back equally, due to a complex supersystem we call “human interaction,” which is often parsed as a game or a story. Generally, every idea we have will turn out, ironically, to be the fundamental opposite of what we need to do. This is because of another complex supersystem– related to the former– we call “mythology” or “culture” or “language.”)

(My Personal Theory About Jailbreak: The dead sperm whale explains everything. It is Moby Dick. Someone had finally killed Moby Dick, but the white whale was God just as Ishmael had suspected, so a vast wave of misfortune fell upon all within the dead whale’s vicinity.)

(The Face: I don’t actually know if this is a Thing, but the face from the MSPA logo [and from the Jailbreak protagonist, I think?] appears frequently, often hidden from convenient view and in the inanimate environment. Sometimes characters act as if they may or may not be aware of the face. Example is the Jailbreak protagonist seeing the stump towards the end– the face appears on the stump.)

(Gay porno established in Jailbreak: Hunk Rump, Black Inches.)

(Literary allusions in Jailbreak: Moby Dick, Henry V)