another “zoey is a child of divorce” hc:
zoey was actually her parent’s first child and only child they had together (they had her when they were pretty young), before their eventual EXTREMELY messy (like “nearly filed a restraining order against one another” messy) divorce when she was 8 or 9, and then zoey’s mother got pretty much full custody of her (not that she was that much better off with her mother than she wouldve been with her father, but zoey refuses to acknowledge her father’s existence by the time of the movie so she definitely feels Worse about him).
a few years later they both got remarried to other people, and started having children with those other people. zoey noticed early on how much better their treatment of her half-siblings was, and eventually found out they basically considered her their “practice child” or their “test run” before they started having other children. this prompts her to finally leave home at around 14 or 15, around when she became a hunter. they had a decent number of children each, too, and every time she would find out about a new half sibling from some cousin or aunt or uncle, she would spend the night on her own, thinking about how they never even really looked for her after she left because it would have been too much effort to go and find her, or how they just kept on having children because she was never enough for them.
whenever rumi and mira asked about zoey’s parents, for the first few years of knowing them she would make up some excuse to not talk about them, even at one point telling them her parents were dead (which hey! they were to her!) when they eventually find out that her parents aren’t dead, just deadbeats, they’re a little upset but never bring them up because of how much they know it hurts her to talk about them.
nowadays she almost never visits california unless it’s on tour. the only times she visits her family are to check on her half siblings (since she’s grown a bit, she’s realized that the treatment she perceived as being better than her own was still not exactly Good, and she worries about them) or because one or both of her parents have pressured her into doing so (she hates that they still make her feel like if she just does what they say then maybe they’ll love her as much as she wanted them to). she has some relationships with her half siblings (mostly her maternal half siblings), but for most of them she barely knows them because they were so young when she left, or they weren’t even born yet. several of them don’t even realize that she’s famous, they just think she’s the weird family member that shows up every few years or so, claims to be their sister, asks them about what’s going on with their life, has a terse conversation or fight with their mom and/or dad (zoey never really got along with her stepparents either), ruffles their hair, then leaves.
she also never tells her parents when she’s going to visit the other parent, because it will lead to screaming matches that will leave zoey a trembling mess. she has also never brought her girls to meet her family, as much as they hate whenever she leaves and wish they could come with her to give her parents an ass whooping. its not for her parents’ sake either; she just thinks that if they see how little her own parents, the people who are supposed to love you more than anything else in the world, think of her, they may start to think there must be something wrong with her, and eventually leave her too.
