This is a blog dedicated to reviewing the collective works of a website called mspfa.com. Said site is dedicated to creating a storytelling experience similar to the new defunct MS Paint Adventures website, or MSPA. The F in MSPFA is for Fan, so basically it’s a bunch of Homestuck fanfiction. You may also find a few Problem Sleuth inspired adventures, maybe even a few original works. And that’s what we’ll be reviewing.

So with that being said let’s do an overview on how these reviews will be carried out. For simplicity’s sake, we’ve prepared a chart.

For these reviews we have five categories, presented as questions. Let’s go over them one by one.

1. IS IT FUNNY?

Now if this was say, Fanfiction.net or Ao3, this probably wouldn’t be a category. It more certainly wouldn’t be the first, and dare we say, most important. But as MSPFA stands, it’s a site populated by MSPA fans, and most of them are trying to imitate MSPA. And if there’s one thing MSPA is good at, it’s comedy. Since a lot of adventures are directly trying to copy Homestuck or Problem Sleuth’s tone, this is a very important step in doing that. If we happen to review any original works that are strictly stated as serious business only, we may ignore this category. But for your run of the mill Sburb or guy stuck in a room adventure, this is a must.

2. IS IT WELL WRITTEN?

Here’s the real meat of things. Maybe some jokes can be funny without being particularly well written. But when it comes to the overall writing and storytelling, it’s definitely important. If you can tell a good story, but the jokes fall flat, it might still be worth a read. But if your writing is messy, your plot is confused, and you can’t tell a good joke, well, better luck next time.

In this category we might go over the plot of the story as it currently stands, dissecting what’s wrong with it, where it fucks up, or maybe praising it for its genius, wouldn’t that be something. We’re not going to go over the entire story beat for beat and make goofy jokes like the movie “reviews” you see on YouTube, because those aren’t reviews. At best, they’re riffs. We’re serious business here at What If It Was Awful. We might post pictures with goofy captions though. Those guys at tfwiki know what’s up.

If characters are important to the story, then we may go over characters as well. Talking about the overall character writing, if they’re written well, if they’re distinct, if they ooze personality or not, etc. We may not go over every character, but we’ll talk about the overall quality of how they’re written.

3. IS IT PRETTY?

Now frankly, this category isn’t too important if you know what you’re doing with the writing. Here we’ll be going over the art and presentation of the story. Now, if the art is passable enough where you can tell what things are, the writing can really carry the story. But for some people, art can be the deal breaker, so it’s important to discuss it at least. If anything this section will either be incredibly nitpicky, or gushing over how good everything looks. Or both, considering how artists generally improve over time. Sometimes.

This blog is aiming to review adventures that the public has already put some semblance of value into, so needless to say we won’t be reviewing 5 page adventures from 2013 that look like a first grader drew them. Unless we get really, really bored. Which is plausible.

This section will also cover Flash pages, which while not necessary for good storytelling can be a nifty addition, and possibly commenting on custom CSS if applicable.

4. IS IT INTERESTING?

This category is a little subjective, but here we’ll discuss how “Interesting” an adventure is. That is to say, does it hook the reader, does it keep them enthralled. Maybe every individual page of the story is masterfully written, but when put together it creates a slog. We’ll also discuss the originality of the story, concepts in it that we find interesting, etc.

This category may also be where Characters are talked about more in depth, if any of them particularly caught our eye.

5. IS IT WORTH YOUR TIME?

This is the conclusion, the overview. The part where we put all the other categories together and come up with a final verdict. Instead of a number score, we’ll discuss more in depth whether we would recommend the story in question or not. A number score is far too simple, and we don’t want to create a dick measuring contest between the guy who gets a 6 and the guy who gets a 7. We’re perfectly fine, however, with creating a dick measuring contest between the guy who gets a yes and the guy who gets a no.

WITH ALL THAT OUT OF THE WAY,

We hope you enjoy the reviews, we hope the authors take our words to heart, and we hope that we can put forward our best advice for furthering the storytelling skills of the MSPFA community as a whole.

Reviews will come when they come, we hope you all have a nice day.