Anyway, random stuff about Edgar's parents. While what we see of Edgar's childhood is with his grandmother in Vargas, it's not all of it. He did spend some time with his parents before he went to her. Various stories about what that coulda been like flutter through my head occasionally. I haven't really committed ta one over another, but here's da current cohesive thing that I got. I might change this later, scrap it entirely, who knows.

Edgar's parents were dirty hippies. Well no, that's not true. They're actually yuppies-turned-hippies. Edgar's grandmother is on his father's side (I don't know much about his mother's side) is the one that took care of him eventually. Edgar's Gran (I shall call her Gran now) was totally religious, very by the books. I'm think that her husband (Edgar's grandfather) died fairly young and it was up to her to take care of herself from that period on. Considering when she lived, this wasn't easy, but she did it. In order to survive she took very careful control of every aspect of her life and basically everything that she could, in one way or another. This is part of why Gran values independence and control so much and she tries to drill that into Edgar. She wants to make sure that he can do take care of himself later cause at any minute, it could happen to him. Yes, Gran has her own baggage. Everyone does.
REGARDLESS, Gran took care of herself and I don't know how many children she had. One I'm guessing. Edgar's dad is a laid back kind of guy, easily pressured into things and swayed by pretties. That's mostly why he liked Edgar's mom so much, he thought she was hot. He wasn't particularly bright in the scholarly sense, tho he was bright enough in other ways. His laid-back attitude meant that Gran's discipline never took with him, and he was constantly rebelling against her in a rather passive way. This drove her crazy, but he was her son, so she tolerated it after he got old enough. I'm thinking she might have got him that coat (the coat that Scri wears and Edgar still has).
The big nose comes from Edgar's father's side.
Also, yes, Edgar's dad had long hair. This drove Gran crazy, but it was the style at the time. Edgar's dad refuse to get it cut, even as an adult, despite everything that Gran tried to get him to do so. It was his most obvious resistance to her influence, which is why Gran cut Edgar's hair whenever it got close to being long. She never wanted him to resist and turn into a bum like her son did.
Edgar probably didn't/doesn't understand this and doesn't know why his grandmother hated long hair. Since Edgar loved his dad, he thought long hair was really awesome and wanted to be like his dad. Little did he know that really, really bothered Gran because she seriously thought Edgar's dad was a total bum. She didn't want little Edgar to turn out that way. However, instead of explaining this to him, Gran decided that all Edgar needed to know was that no self-respecting boy ever had long hair and that was that. Edgar resented the unexplained rule, was hurt by it, but he never fought it.
By the way, Edgar's Scriabin (haha, there's a weird phrase) has slightly longer hair than the movie!Scriabin does. Maybe not by a lot, but by enough that it's more than mere faulty memory. Scriabin or Edgar made his hair just that little bit longer. Maybe both.

Anyway, Edgar's mom is something of a ditz and very easily influenced. She's the kind of person who followed trends and fads and hot-button issues. Not necessarily because it was the cool thing to do, but because it was really really easy to get her to believe in something. I'm not sure how Edgar's mom and dad met, but they hit it off really quickly. Gran did not like EdgarMom and thought she was a ditz, and told EdgarDad so. EdgarDad laughed this off and ignored her.
This would be right around the end of the sixties, I believe, going off my rough idea of when Edgar was born. EdgarMom and EdgarDad caught the hippie fever (perhaps a little late) and totally latched on to it. Unprotected sex later and voila! EdgarMom is pregnant and not intentionally. Neither of them particularly cared (although it took them like...five months to tell Gran this, something she did not appreciate) and Edgar was born sometime in 1970, as a rough estimate. Give or take two or three years. Since JTHM was drawn sometime...1995, I believe, and therefore that is when Vargas is set, that'd make Edgar about 25 in Vargas, give or take a few years.

Now, EdgarMom and EdgarDad are the kind of people that are fun ta hang around with, generally great party people. Charming, funny, social. However, they are not responsible and they are NOT good parents.
This is NOT to say that they didn't care about Edgar because they did. The two of them loved Edgar to death. They just had absolutely no idea how to take care of children when really, they could barely take care of each other (lots of casual drug use going on, not when Edgarmom was pregnant though).
I'm thinking that Edgar was named after one of Edgarmom or Edgardad's grandparents. I don't know, some family name. By the way, his middle name is Moonflower. snerk. He will never ever admit that and his grandmother did her best to erase that from his life. Fer all intents and purposes, Edgar thinks of his middle initial as M.
Scriabin's is Symphony, but more on him later.
ANYWAY.

So EdgarMom and EdgarDad have no idea how timeconsuming and difficult children are. During this very early period, from birth to maybe when he was two or so, his grandmother was mostly responsible for keeping him alive. Knowing that her son was a flake and her daughter-in-law was a bigger flake, she dropped by constantly to make sure that they remembered to feed Edgar and take care of him. Most of the time they didn't. I have no idea what they were doing that kept them so busy. Drugs or work, you decide. Positive or negative IT'S UP IN THE AIR.
So Gran is the one who kept Edgar alive and kept nagging her son to take better care of his kid. Edgardad, in response, just played with Edgar more. Edgar formed a really deep attachment to his father and a kind of hero complex about him.
Interesting how Scriabin kind of looks like his dad, huh?
At any rate, Edgar eventually learned how to talk and walk, 80% because of Gran's influence rather than his parents. Gran had already raised one child already and thought it was totally irresponsible and irritating that she had to raise another for her slacker children, but she tried to keep this from Edgar if she could.

The question of how long Edgar spent with his parents before being shifted to his grandmother is one I'm not clear on. I'm not sure how old he was when it happened. Could be anywhere from three to eight.
Either way, whenever Edgar wanted something (food, attention, clothes), he'd go and ask his mother or father, depending on who was around. Their response was always the same thing - "can you do it by yourself? I bet you can. The food is in the cupboard, I bet you can make it alone." Either that or "I'm busy honey, give me five minutes" which meant an hour.
If Edgar could do what he wanted by himself and told his parents that he did so, they'd lavish praise on him. During this period Edgar began to associate actions with his own personal worth. He was a good boy because of what he did, rather than who he was. His parents were too distracted with...whatever it was they were doing, to give him random affection unless it was when they came home.
When they did praise Edgar, it was very sincere. They did care about Edgar, they just didn't have the time to spend on him. Yes, they did encourage Edgar to do things by himself so they'd have more time to themselves, that much is true. But they did love Edgar, in their own way. Edgar learned that he could only "earn" this love, through physical signs, by doing good things or by doing what they wanted him to.
Is this when the cookie episode happened? No, that was later with his grandmother. Same basic concept though.
Edgar's parents were extremely lax. Edgar had no bedtime and no basic rules, except not to bother his parents whenever they were doing something. They never punished him. Gran, however, having gone through this before, had to do her best to set limitations that Edgar needed. As a result, since Edgar had no idea whenever Gran was coming to the house and would catch him, began to fear that Gran was really everywhere, seeing everything he did, wrong or right. Edgar feared his grandmother rather than his parents, and his desire for that positive attention and fear of punishment kept him in line. He was fairly quiet as a child anyway and spent most of his time playing by himself in the house.
Edgar's parents also never cut his hair. They thought he looked cute with it long, also it was too much work and they were too busy. The first thing that Gran did when she got custody of Edgar was cut his hair. I imagine him crying a lot during the experience.

I don't know why Edgar went to live with his grandmother just yet. There are several theories out there. Levi and Rue suggested that his parents died, which is as reasonable a guess as any. How they died is again up for debate, but it's possible. Car crash, homicide. Drug overdose, went to the wrong war protest, who knows.
It's also possible that they just abandoned Edgar and left to go do...whatever. Maybe went on some massive drug bender and vanished. Forgot about him entirely.
Another possibility is that Gran sued for custody of Edgar and won, considering Edgar's parents were obviously unfit parents.

Either way, Edgar went to live with his grandmother afterwards, and he never really saw his parents again. He got the sporadic postcard for a few years afterwards, but communication soon dwindled off. As far as current Edgar knows, his parents are also dead.
Gran didn't totally rag on his parents when Edgar was a child, but whenever he asked about them she answered honestly (or at least, with what she felt was the truth). As a result, Edgar grew up feeling disappointed and left behind by his parents, and therefore all the more in-debted to his grandmother for taking him in when they abandoned him, for whatever reason. Deep down though, Edgar does still care about them. This is something that feels conflicted about and therefore he very rarely ever thinks about them. This is part of why Edgar is in a way attracted (platonically mostly) to people with long hair (Scriabin, Jake) but also is in a way afraid or repulsed by them. It's associated with being irresponsible and stupid and hurting. This is something that's relatively minor tho, compared to other things, so it's not something that would really bother Edgar or even cross his mind consciously unless someone brought it up.
When Edgar's parents abandoned him for whatever reason, Gran stepped up to take care of Edgar. She explained that Edgar was her responsibility because his father was her son. I don't know how old Edgar was exactly when this happened or how much he understood, but I think there was a part of Edgar that didn't understand that Gran was taking care of him for good. Or that Gran HAD to take care of him. Always worried that he might end up being abandoned again if he did something wrong, wanted to make sure that he did the best he could so that Gran would never want to abandon him like his parents. Of course, Gran never would have abandoned Edgar no matter what, but Edgar didn't know or understand that. Gran did love Edgar, when you come down to it. Edgar though had to constantly earn that love through his behavior, because that was how he understood things to work. Gran didn't know that Edgar felt this way, Edgar didn't know Gran loved him regardless of what he did. HURRAY CHILDHOOD EMOTIONAL DAMAGE.

His grandmother defined the lines for his future personality, but his parents set the groundwork.

Now, how does Scriabin fit into all of this?
I prefer to look at this metaphorically cause IT'S MORE FUN THAT WAY. Mostly, I view child!Scriabin as what Edgar wanted and feared being as a child, much as adult!Scriabin is what Edgar wants and fears as an adult, in one way or another. As a child Edgar wanted to be taken care of, he wanted someone to take care of him, he wanted to be bad and break rules and be stupid, as the beginning of the kidfic said. But keeping with pre-Gran here, there was a part of Edgar that wanted to yell at his parents and misbehave and demand that someone do something for HIM for once. A part of him that wanted the attention all the time, instead of just when he did something. Child!Scri mostly comes from this kind of desire for attention and the anger and frustration Edgar felt at his parents for being so distant.
Scriabin wants a place to be in Edgar's childhood, so he returns to where he was "born" so to speak. That place, that part of Edgar that he always shoved down really deep. The part he repressed and kept to himself instead of letting it go. Scriabin took that and used that to define his own false childhood, and Edgar and Scriabin both willingly worked their stories around the concept. Child!Scri is a selfish, egotistical brat who constantly does everything that Edgar fears, including begging for attention from his parents.
Sadly, even in their constructed memories, Edgar's parents still keep their unavoidable distance, just as Gran keeps her strict personality. Instead, Edgar again is relegated to caring for Scriabin. Edgar becomes Scriabin's "parent" so to speak, taking care of him when his parents refuse to do so. In their earliest, earliest memories, before Gran, Edgar was the one who fed, clothed, bathed, and took care of Scriabin. In return, Scriabin gave him the unquestioning affection that Edgar wanted from his parents, and Edgar gave Scriabin the affection and validation he wanted as a person. Later on, with Gran, their personalities develop more, but at the earliest state, I think this might have been what they were like. What they would have reconstructed the past to be.
I imagine that Scriabin feels similarly about his parents that Edgar does, except that he's more vocal about it. He'll say out loud that he hates them for leaving them, that he still cares about them later on, and Edgar will shush him and tell him to be quiet but secretly agree.

God, this is all so twisted. DARN IT.