About a year ago an anon asked me on my multifandom blog (@pyramidofmice) for my headcanons on Gary King's home environment. I haven't responded because I plan to take some screenshots of the movie & do some reading before I analyze Gary (sorry anon 😭). But in the meantime I'd like to have a little fun speculating!
I assume that Gary's family = him and his mom. In my opinion, the movie + the commentary suggest that Gary's dad was absent. I imagine that, if Gary's dad ever actually interacted with his him, it was brief and intermittent.
There's a lot of room to speculate regarding Gary's mom. Gary definitely had negative experiences authority as a kid, imo, but I think it's uncertain whether that happened at home or only at school.
The only things we know about Gary's mom are:
Andy likes her and thinks she's "a good woman." Gary says that he agrees.
Gary evaded her attempts to contact him for 8 months leading up to TWE (if I remember correctly 🙊)
For me, Andy's affection for her doesn't rule out toxic behavior... a young Andy could've failed to understand whatever he was exposed to. I tend to imagine that, at the very least, she fell short in a few ways regarding parenting...but I'm not committed to anything. It could go all sorts of ways!
What do people think??? The movie is very ambiguous about Gary's home life... I'm sooo interested in hearing what others have headcanoned!!