when I watch Star Wars as a kid I was
obsessed with the characters backstories
and not the backstories of our heroes
Han Solo or Luke Skywalker no I wondered
about these guys or this guy how did he
end up here in this very important
meeting with Tarkin and Darth Vader well
lucky for me Star Wars thrives on these
sorts of questions and I had no shortage
of videogames and novels to fill in
these backstories these guys oh that's
figuring to an and the modal nodes as
told in the spin-off short story tales
from the Maus Eisley cantina oh and this
guy that's wolf yularen former Republic
officer turned intelligence officer for
the Galactic Empire you can learn all
about his backstory in the Clone Wars
and rebels cartoons well just like in
Star Wars early Christianity also had
this impulse for spin-off literature the
canonical Gospels also throws you into
the midst of action characters come and
go and you don't always know the
backstories of some of your favorite
characters Mary Magdalene where did she
come from what happened to her after she
disappears from the record st. Paul why
does the book of Acts just end like that
we want to know what happens to the rest
of his story early Christians must have
felt the same way because they wrote all
manner of spin-off material that builds
out the stories of these characters the
acts of Paul and Thecla for example
tells a fantastic story of Paul meeting
an aristocratic woman named Thekla she
becomes a devoted disciple to Paul
renouncing her riches and her fiance
visiting Paul in jail and proselytizing
the gospel everywhere in fact she even
faced down death in a Roman Coliseum by
being thrown into a vat of killer seals
the only way she survives is when a
lightning bolt strikes the water and
kills all the seals I'm not kidding this
is an actual text from the 2nd century
CE II st. Tecla is an ancient Mara Jade
an invented character that becomes so
popular that she's accepted into the
fold of canonical characters churches
were built in her honor babies were
named after her and she appears in works
of art such as this painting on the
walls of a cave overlooking Ephesus
similarly Mara Jade a character invented
by the author Timothy Zahn has yet to be
canonized by the Church of Disney but
she lives on in the head canons of
devoted fans all over the world this is
what
call the fan fiction impulse the scholar
Aiko Willis describes fan fiction as a
form of folk culture critical to this
understanding is that fan fiction builds
off of source material under corporate
ownership whether that corporate
ownership is an actual corporation like
Disney or a group of religious
institutions attempting to establish a
canon of official texts Henry Jenkins
scholar of fandom culture argues that
fan fiction emerges from a balance
between fascination and frustration with
the source material if the original work
did not fascinate fans they would not
continue to engage with it if it did not
frustrate them on some level they would
feel no need to write new stories
according to Henry Jenkins this balance
between frustration and fascination
usually manifests itself in fleshing out
the backstory of a secondary character
or changing the characterization of a
main character and we see this in early
Christian literature dozens of
well-intentioned efforts that develop
minor characters who are just crying out
for a backstory we can think about the
acts of Andrew and Matthias a text that
takes two very minor biblical characters
and sends them off on a journey to
evangelize to a city full of cannibals
or the acts of Paul and Peter a text
that takes the famous character Peter
and sets him up against his arch nemesis
the magician Simon the story almost
reads like a comic book with st. Peter
and Simon Magus facing off an
increasingly stupendous miraculous shows
of power at the climax of the story
Simon Magus just takes off he starts
flying and Peter straights up kills him
he pronounces a curse that makes him
fall to his death
now I'm not arguing that there is a
one-to-one relationship between fandoms
and religions
I'm not equating them but I see
similarities between fandoms and
religions with respect to the impulse to
canonize if we think of early Christians
as members of a fandom we can imagine
how these stories emerge from the same
balance between fascination and
frustration with their sacred texts the
four Gospels in the book of Acts
obviously fascinated early Christians
why else would they have tried to
canonize them as sacred texts but that
official status did not stop them from
trying to innovate upon the
next appropriating characters and
putting them into new situations in many
respects fanfiction requires cannon fan
and versus cannon if you will yes an
institution can try to enforce a cannon
but as long as there's people that are
both fascinated and frustrated with that
source material there will always be the
impulse to write fanfiction whether that
Star Wars Harry Potter or the New
Testament as always thanks for watching
if you'd like further reading definitely
check out the work of Henry Jenkins also
for an analysis of Harry Potter in the
New Testament check out a blog post by
early Christian scholar Christa Dalton
thanks again and as always I'll see you
next time