Hey I remember seeing some posts on here about scars and I think amputees talking about avoiding "I was injured in some Super Tragic Backstory" and it got me thinking about one of my characters with FASD (and IDD as a result). I had planned that his mother was drinking to cope with the death of a dear friend, before she knew she was pregnant. So I guess my question is: Is the problem with the Super Tragic Backstory thing the fact that you'd like to see more people who are disabled as a result of mundane causes or is the problem more with the Tragedy Porn aspect of the whole thing? (I'm trying my best to avoid tragedy porn with this character in general)
TLDR: I don't think there is any problem with what you're writing, I don't think the trope applies here to be honest because the backstory doesn't count as a Tragic Backstory (capitalized). The rest of the response here is just theory of the trope.
I'd say that both are true, but that doesn't mean a character can't have a sad backstory. A lot of disabled people do have a sad or traumatic event behind their disability, or being tied to it in some way, whether it's an accident or an illness, etc. That is life and that is completely fine. But "sad event" and "Tragic Backstory" with a capital T are somewhat different.
A Tragic Backstory to me is a character-defining event, where the character is basically just that. Never moves on, never does anything actually interesting, just them and their Tragic Past. I'm sure there are ways to make it compelling! But when so many disabled characters are like this, at some point it just begs the question "does the author think a disabled person's life continues after the disability?", and often it feels like the answer is no. Disability absolutely alters a person's life, can cause depression, can cause the person to stagnate, can dictate a person's life going forward, all of that is true (although the disabilities that cause this IRL and that cause it in fiction are sometimes rather different, but I digress). But those Tragic Backstories guys aren't some exploration or deconstruction of that, they're more like a one-dimensional screenshot of their Tragic Backstory that, again, is usually boring as hell.
With FASD specifically you also don't have many choices. The mother either drank by accident not knowing she was pregnant, which is possible, or she struggled with alcoholism, either aware of her pregnancy or not. Both options are realistic. Neither is better nor worse.
A good question for this trope is, IMO ; is the character defined at their core by their Tragic Past and thus carry some original sin that prevents them from getting character development, or are they still an actual character?
If you do want to make that backstory important, try to explore it. What does it mean to the disabled character? What does it mean to the mother? How does it affect their relationship? The best way to go about any Tragic (or just tragic) event is to make it more tridimensional. Because if you're reading a story and then something almost cartoonishly evil/tragic happens that doesn't fit or interact with anything else properly, it will stick out like a sore thumb (again, not applicable to your situation specifically. "cartoonishly tragic" here would be if the mother like, purposefully drank alcohol with the goal of having a child with FASD to later give them up to some evil lab experiment people as debt payment or something. Why are so many disabled characters lab experiments?).
Hope this helps, as said in the TLDR I don't think your storyline evokes the trope at all but hopefully the explanation helps others consider how to go about the Sad Backstory characters !
