Most of the bad fanon childhoods have roots in canon. I mean, we know Pa Vecchio was up there with Wyndam-Pryce pere in terms of dicktasticness.

Faith's bad childhood gets a nod in canon, a stronger (more explicit) nod in some grey canon (official tie-in books), and a HUGE nod in fanon.

Canon was that Faith's mother was an alcoholic and left her unsupervised a lot, right?

I think so, yeah.

Also, dead!

I think there were no women because, hey, MANPAIN. Fans find manpain appealing, but womanpain NSM.

There was Parker

They've walked a strange and delicate line with Parker--her childhood pain has been played both for real sadness and for absolute hysterics. I think that helps her get on that list. Having herself buried alive by friends in order to get over claustrophobia? Blowing up her house? That's the kind of childhood trauma I can get behind. Starbuck is much more raw.

I have a lot of tangled, difficult-to-voice feelings about the fetishization of manpain in fandom. I mean, I enjoy it myself, and the ability to distance myself from the suffering while enjoying the delicious angst is nice. Also, it can be kinda empowering to witness fictional manly man forced to show their emotional vulnerability. On the other hand, the whole manpain thing gets so much emphasis in fandom at the expense of female characters (sometimes at the literal expense -- as in female characters getting fridged to up the manpain quotient), I've become more reluctant to revel in it as I used to.

I've been wondering about the most recent major female death in Criminal Minds. Technically it fits all the criteria of a fridging--it's definitely an escalation of the Hotchangst for him to hear his wife killed over the phone by his nemesis. But somehow I think his pain resists the label manpain and her death resists the label fridging. Perhaps I'm biased because it's one of the shows I'm the most into, perhaps it was actually well handled. I'm not sure.

But not all male pain is manpain, and even though Hotch has a fanon bad childhood, I wouldn't offer him up as fodder for that list. It just has a different tenor. Same with Morgan, really. Reid--maybe.

Has anyone else been following the fandom return of Amy Player (creator of the Victoria Bitter, Jordan Wood, MrFrodo [and probably other] personas that scammed the LotR fandom through the site Bit Of Earth)? Player claimed to channel hobbits, the actors who played them, engaged in pseudicide, drew actor Sean Astin into a convention con "for charity," and heaven knows what else.

A couple of years ago, Player came out as a trans-male (I hope that term is correct; I mean Player came out as a person who identifies as male, but was born with female sexual characteristics) on Turimel's LJ. Turimel was one of the people who lost the most (financially) to Player. After announcing he was FTM, Player then seemed to fade into obscurity.

Player is back as LJer "thanfiction." Thanfiction is the author of a novel-length Harry Potter fic: "Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness" -- often referred to as DAYD, which has spawned its own little fandom. Of course thanfiction didn't advertise that he was Amy Player. Instead, he used the name Andrew (Something-Not-Player) who is on the run from the IRA. Someone who had seen pictures of Amy Player made the connection, I think. Since this has all hit fandomwank again, it's only gotten more surreal. The latest is that Player is claiming that he really is Andrew Player and Amy Player is his Actual Evil Twin.

My summary is doing none of this the slightest bit of justice, so please tell me someone else has been following along at home. The latest Fandomwank entry is here: [link]

edited for clarity

Oh lord, again?

Oh, man.