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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Quest Sprout: 'The most wholesome thing on the internet':

Among the horror and the misery of this year, one tiny round hero has emerged to give thousands of people brief moments of joy. That hero is Quest Sprout.

All Quest Sprout wants to do is go on a quest. All Quest Sprout ever says is "Quest".

He's the creation of New Zealand video games tester and comic artist Matthew Wills, who's been making fantasy/comedy webcomics since March 2018.

Matthew's had some success with his Swords series, but the response to Quest Sprout, when the character appeared in May this year, was unlike anything he'd seen before.

The most recent episode got around 80,000 upvotes (Reddit's version of 'likes'), when it was posted in the Wholesome Memes subreddit, where some users were calling it "the most wholesome thing on the internet".

Quest Sprout is part of a world Matthew created to parody things like Lord of The Rings, anime and the "fantasy tropes" he saw in them.

Matthew says the response has been on "another level" to anything he's seen from his other work, and feels that world events such as the coronavirus pandemic have made people want to find things online that make them feel good.

"I think the fact everyone's having a hard time definitely helped with people attaching themselves to this character," he tells Radio 1 Newsbeat.

"It's definitely a case that it's helping people, I think, if that doesn't sound too vain."

Original Submission