8-Bit for academic study: help wanted!
 

Yes, you did read the title correctly, I really am asking for your help in conducting an academic study, featuring critical analysis of 8BT.

Essentially, my Literary Criticism class requires me, in conjunction with a couple of girls I've never spoken to until this morning, to somehow produce a 25-30 minute presentation, subject more or less anything, within the next five weeks. We have a fairly free rein when it it comes to using visual and audio media such as video, DVD, web pages, OHP slides and of course the obligatory PowerPoint abomination. The presentation has to, more or less, revolve around one or two of the schools of literary theory we've looked at this year, but the texts we use to do this can be literally ANYTHING. The traditional trifecta of poems, plays and prose are of course welcome, but so are song lyrics, TV or film scripts, political or religious speeches... I think you're starting to see where I'm going with this.

So here's where you (please, I'm begging) come in. As I'm sure you've guessed, I'm currently planning to use 8-Bit Theater in my part of the presentation; the problem is, I have NO IDEA where to begin. As my group is tentatively planning to look at our texts from a standpoint of postmodernism, what I would most appreciate is any examples of postmodern thought expressed in 8-Bit, or at least suggestions for criticising 8-Bit from a postmodern perspective. However, we aren't 100% decided, and are not restricted to a single school of thought, so if you have any experience or literary criticism yourself, and feel you could talk about 8-Bit in terms of any of the following:

- Structuralism
- Reader response theory
- Deconstruction
- Marxism
- Gender/Feminism
- Cultural materialism
- Psychoanalysis
- Cultural criticism
- The works of Foucault

Then your contribution would be greatly appreciated. I know I'm asking a bunch of people who don't owe me anything to do me an enormous favour for free, but I genuinely feel that academics, gamers and comic fans alike can potentially gain something from looking at 8-Bit in this way, and that some twisted freaks among you might actually enjoy doing my research for me.

I've got very little idea what I'm looking for, so please reply with ANY suggestions you think would be worthwhile, however stupid they may seem to you at the time, but anyway, here's a few ideas for things I might find helpful:

- Numbers/links to 8BT comics with a particular relevance to postmodernism or one of the other theories listed above, preferably with a brief explanation as to why you feel I could use it.

- Generalised statements about 8BT characters or plots and their relation to postmodern etc thought.

- Help and advice on conducting literary criticism of a comic or webcomic, I would REALLY like to talk to anyone who has done this kind of thing before.

- ANYTHING ELSE YOU THINK MIGHT POSSIBLY HELP, NO MATTER HOW STUPID IT MAY SEEM TO YOU! I can't stress this point enough: I've got NOTHING right now, so whatever how have will likely be helpful to me.

Anyway, that's all for now, if you feel you can help, and feel like taking the time to do so, please post you suggestions in a reply to this thread, OR email me on r.twyman1@lancaster.ac.uk OR AIM me, my sn is ExplodingTuesday (yeah, I snapped that one up pretty fast, I got it for a yahoo account as well!). If anyone actually helps me out here, I will sacrifice several cows in their honour and swear an oath of eternal loyalty. Sorry I'm out of orphans for the sacrifice, although I believe several of the cows were brought up by foster parents, so that kind of counts.

Peace, and I look forward to hearing from you,

Richard (UrbanSpaceman)

The problem lies in the fact that, despite my desire to help, I personally don't know anything about literary theory. So helping you is a bit abstract, at best. Maybe if you could provide a quick description of the various possible avenues you're considering?

I can hazzard a guess that Reader response theory might be the way to go, however. The reason I say this, is because 8-bit theater is very much based of the fondations of fan support.

I mean, way back when the comic was just starting, Brian even had a regular guest comics feature which kinda set up the basis for fan support & community. Which lead into fan donnations, and back in its early days, most of the structure & content of 8-bit was fan donnated, and driven by same said means.

And I think its safe to say that today's comic format finds its basis in said earlier comics.

If any of this sounds vaguely useful, I do recall a website that used to archive the entire internet. Brian brought it up when his website changed servers, way back when & some poeple couldn't access the new site, except through the website archive thingie...

SWK

Thanks for the help, KC, but unforunately Reader Response theory is not quite what you think it is: its more about the way the reader's own interpretation of a text, based on the socio-political climate and their peculiar personal circumstances, influences the meaning of the text, NOT about actual dialogue between fan communities or individual readers and the author. However, your point IS still valid, as the way in which future texts in a series are potentially influenced by support (or lack of it) from the fanbase is quite unique to the medium of webcomics, or at least it occurs in a unique way, and the idiosyncrasies (sp?) of the medium involved are ALWAYS relevant to criticism, from any theoretical standpoint. So, thanks for your two cents, that's a good start and I'll certainly look into some of the older sites you talk about. Next please!

Here's something like what I was talking about:

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

Wow. That.... is amazing. I am in awe. I love this link for reasons that have nothing to do with academic study and everything to do with proving people wrong in arguments about what was said by who on obscure forums five years ago, and who won ridiculous roleplaying competitions in relation to said forums. You are a GOD.

I gave up English at GCSE so I'm not really up to date with the terminology, but if I wanted to study 8bit Theatre in terms of literature then I think I'd do it by looking at its audience.

Final Fantasy I is less than 20 years old, but things have moved on so far since then that now new gamers can define themselves as "Old Skool" (or whatever) simply by playing a game that's more than 10 years old. We can use terms like Romanesque and Gothic to cover architecture in fashion for hundreds of years, yet in games a generation is a scant 4 years. Back to 8BT - given that this is the case, and the number of "Old Skool" gamers is relatively small, why is it that a comic based on such a game is so popular? 5 years is enough to put average people off a video game, graphics are seen by some as the be all and end (which is like saying better illustrations automatically make a better book - it certainly doesn't hurt but it's not the core). Given that it's clear that the popularity of 8BT lies not so much in the fact that it's a games comic as it's well written and consistently appealing.

The things that make 8BT good are the same as the things which make any comedy novel good (which is just as true of hand drawn funny comics), yet the people who read webcomics are forever bickering over whether sprite comics have any merit or are just tacky rip offs (the holy grail lying with hand drawn comics of course). It's kinda ironic that they're discussing artistic merit at the same time as games and comics/cartoons/anime/manga themselves are generally seen as utterly devoid of any worth by people outside the "culture".

I guess what I'm saying is that from a literature standpoint, the thing I find most interesting about 8BT is the way that all discussions about sprite comics vs hand drawn is basically just verbal fluff - good illustrations alone wouldn't be enough to sustain popularity over 500 episodes. It's good writing that counts, now just as much as it did when the Iliad was being written, yet the opening up of different media has only lead to the opening up of a lot of snobbery both within (hand drawn vs sprite) and without (video games are destroying the minds of a generation) the gaming community (for want of a better phrase). Seems like the messenger is becoming more and more important than the message, and greater diversity is only leading to greater fragmentation and snobbery.

As far as I know, in post modernism the laws, beliefs, exiomes, morals etc. that were considered total solid facts in earlier periords are now not so. Everything is relative, everything is true and untrue at the same time. The most obvious way I can see postmodernism in this comic is this:

RM believes the world is based on a strict, given set of laws and acts by it, and even tries to exploite it, but most of the time reality fails him. His beliefs look ridicilous to us, but in fact aren't much better then what sicence or religion have to offer. Also notice that he believe in those rules, but spending most of his time trying to bend them or break them. It reminds me of many people that use different moral codes for themselves and the world around them.

P.S. I know near to nothing about literature, and my english is also not so good...

I know nothing about literary analysis, beyond the scope of 'gee, this book was entertaining, i liked it'. However, something you might consider is a comparison between 8Bit and other fanfics or parodies. For instance, in the time between the release of Star Wars, and when The Empire Strikes Back was released, there was a book written by a fan called Splinter of the Minds Eye, IIRC. Compared to Empire, the two are nothing alike, but both could naturally follow out of Star Wars. Another possible comparisson would be the Star Wars parody, Spaceballs. 8Bit, to me, has been taking equal measures of both tracks. At times it reads like a fanfic, and at times there is a blatant parody of FFI, one of the other FF games, D&D, or some other system. Not to mention Arachno-dude and the Sulk.

SI TEH LIEK 2 REED!1!1 ME RAED GUD!2@!

*ahem* sorry. kind of an odd topic to go on for such a serious presentation, but i've always been fond of the odd topics. i think you might have alot to go on with the cultural materialism, possibly.

the one thing you're going to have to devote time to is the enitre sub-culture that Brian encapsulates in the comic. like, he doesn't just talk about one nerdy things, he talks about everything involved with the nerdy process. i dono if thats of any help. probably not. but hey, its not my project!

In relation to the nerdy things I bring up in the comic, you could relate that to post modernism's obsession with the "other." Similar to how, for example, black authors writing about the black experience are writing about and for a marginalized group, I'm writing for and about the geek experience and geeks are certainly a marginalized group (though our marginalization is certainly minor compared to that experienced by blacks, gays, people of mixed ratial heritage, certain religious groups, etc.).