#zenmasterspalace

Between the laugh track, we can hear Fez has a little sister and both his parents are still together, and alive. He doesn’t seem to register when people makes fun of him for his accent, culture and color until it’s make too obvious like it happens in season 5 when he meets the racist parents of his girlfriend Nina.

Fez, to me, comes as proud of his origins even when he has admitted he wouldn’t go back to his country. As a part of a third world country myself, I can understand that and seen from the context of the time, the USA was, and still is to some, the dream for kids that grow up with nothing.

I believe Fez still loves his family, but has lost most contact with them. Seeing his old friend in season 8 prompted him a desire to go back home and see everyone. He ultimatelly decides to stay because of Jackie *rolls eyes*, but he misses home and again, I can find myself in that feeling.

My headcanon for Fez’s family and country is that he misses the island dearly and tries not to show it because if he does, and someone makes him talk about it, he may end up crying or wanting to go back home.

He saves money to one day visit again and has the dream of bringing his siter to the States so she can have better oportunities, too. Once he starts working, he starts sending money to his parents and tries to mantain contact with letters and a phone call at least once a month.

The relationship with his parents is one of respect, he appreciates the sacrifices both did for him and sometimes feels like he has no way to give them back all they gave him. He is closer to his mother and is very sweet with her.

Fez is also a sweetheart to his little sister, she is the light of his world and the first love of his life. He is protective of her and only wants what is better for her.

He also has a looot of uncles and aunts, and cousins, and grandpas, and grandmas, and in-laws. His family reunions are quiet the event, but he enjoys it more once he gets to visit them at least once a year.

If their parents never got to control their children and find a way to put the deserving attention to all of them, one can only wish Michael would had grown in a better house. This also keeps the theme of absent parents so present in the show.

This was probably thought this way not for ddeper reasons but to having an excuse for the gang to be always with and at the Forman’s, having always permission to go out and do stupid shit without furter consequences. But it gave The Formans a compassion no other TV family has, and also hints of characterization to the rest of the characters, since their types of abandone are so different from the other’s, but abandone no less.

His relationship with Casey is weird. It’s very cliché sibling-like in the sense that they see each other and Casey immediatelly pulls his triggers and bothers him as much as he can, but other than that, we never see him bond in any ways.

This makes me believe Michael may not have a good relationship with most his older siblings, which also makes me believe he must be around the fourth kid, only having his sister and another baby brother behind him. Here is where we start with the headcanons.

I have chosen names and professions to all of Michael brothers and sister. I’ll list them for you before we start talking about Brooke’s entrance to the family.

John, is the older one. By the time Brooke comes along, he is already married and has a kid.

Tom who is married to Lily, and have a baby only a year older than Betsy. This is the brother Michael actually has a good relationship with, and he likes expending time with him and his wife Lily. He was excited when they announced Lily was pregnant, ad they were his major support from their family when Brooke got pregnant.

Casey, who we know is a damn disaster and a complete asshole. Michael will probably never be able to have a better relationship with him.

[Michael]

Kimberly, “Kim”. The only sister. She is chubby, a little bit dumb, but sort of cute and incredible spoiled.

Christopher, “Chris”. Super spoiled, pretty young still.

Brooke was pretty welcomed to the family, and so was Betsy. What she doesn’t know is that Michael’s parents rolled their eyes at him getting someone he isn’t even dating pregnant, while John had to pay Casey for a bet they did years ago, about if he [Casey] or Michael would get someone pregnant first. 

She [Brooke] felt a little awkward at the beginning because she comes from a smaller family and she heard from Michael how distant his parents can be, and how much crap John and Casey give him. But it went good since the beginning.

His mother was kind of excited once she met her, since Brooke is so different from her son and her daughter. She believes something good will have to come from this, that Betsy will be smarter or something. While his dad was fine with her, actually is nice to her and talks to her a lot. 

Yet, Mrs. Kelso is more present all the time, always calling to know how Brooke is feeling and then to know how Betsy is doing.

When she had to leave to Chicago, she was actually surprised at how the family reacted wanting her to stay. She was even offered to live with them, but as she talked with Michael before, going to Chicago was the best for her and Betsy, and so they left only to be followed by Kelso a few months after he finished his preparation as a cop.

For her wedding, she was given her somethig old from Mrs. Kelso and her something borrowed by Kim, who absolutely adores Brooke. She sees her as an older sister and admires her, wants to be with her, as pretty and cool, as she sees her. Michael gives her shit about it, but he is happy to have Kim over with them.

They also carry a lot with little Chris, since his parents usually can’t afford a babysitter and Brooke is terrified of the stories Michael has told her about Casey being his babysitter. So Chris and Kim are usually with them and are sent to Chicago to spend the summer with them, or at least a week with them.

Betsy grows up fond of her uncle Tom and Aunt Kim, and plays a lot with Uncle Chris. She has a good relationship with her cousins, too. Tom’s son, Marvin, is only a year and half older than Betsy, so they are very good friends.

Tom and Lily are always hanging out with Brooke and Michael. They are their plus couple when Hyde and Jackie can’t hang out, and they are always invated to couple’s gathering when Jackie does them at her place. They are almost always the older couple in the reunions, when Mr. and Mrs. Forman can’t attend, but it’s always fun.

Casey still enjoys bothering Michael, but after Brooke slapped him in front of everyone, he has learned to keep his shit away from her. Funny enough, he fell in love with little Betsy and she has him eating in the palm of her chubby, small, baby hand.

One of the very, very, very few little things done right in season 8 is Hyde’s relationship with his father. We see him in season 7 working for him in his comapny, then getting the chance to own the Grooves store at Point Place with his sister (I’ll later about Angie).

But in season 8, we see them bonding. We see W. B.’s house and his offic a little bit more often (not much, but is there), and what I got from the scenes with him is that, even if on the cover he and Hyde have nothing but their ‘fros in common, Hyde does share some things with his father.

They bond over music and W. B. ultimatelly gives him the complete ownership of Grooves and the hint at him starting what he had with his Music Company. W. B. sees potential in Hyde and his love for music and encoragues it the best he can (and as much as the writers allowed his character).

I firmly believe he has a good relationship with W. B. and with time, it can become a ral father-son relationship like Hyde dreamed to have with Bud in season 3. And what’s more important is that this doesn’t overshadows his relationship with Red. Red Forman will always be Hyde’s father, but like I got to learn by being adopted by my own daddy, you can have as many. Father is the one that raises you and supports you from the heart.

Angie is Hyde’s older sister, W. B.’s daughter from a marriage we don’t know nothing about. She is a total daddy’s girl like Hyde’s girlfriend is, an intelligent woman that will not stand anything getting in her ay to be successfull in what she is passionate about: the music industry.

Hyde and Angie have a very rocky start and slowly gets to become better. Like with W. B., Angie get sproven wrong about Hyde, and we see her more often interacting with him and the gang.

Turns out they couldn’t be more different, but like with W. B., music drives them together and a bond is born from it. 

He starts showing interest and care for his sister early on. He jokes in the office about how they are like a family of awesome ‘fros, to what W. B. smiles and seems genuanely pleaset at. Angie shows no interest in this, but later when she starts dating Kelso, we see Hyde upset over this over the course of an entire episode.

Because he knows the kind of crap Kelso is to woman, he doesn’t want his sister to date such a fuck up like his friend, and with his best friend [Eric] being an asshole about it, things aren’t looking fine for him. Eventually, this gets solved and peace comes back to them.

We aren’t told much about the Barnetts away from W. B. and Angie, so the next I’m telling is pure headcanon of mine.

The Barnetts is a family I have a lot of interest in. I understand the fear some writers may feel at working with POCs, but as a poc myself, I find it important and interesting to talk about. Yet, I’m always being careful, since it’s a culture that doesn’t belong to me, it’s a theme that is important to real people beyond the fiction I love.

I have the Barnetts as a hard working family. W. B. is an only chield but, his was Steven Barnett, who died when he was younger. His mother, Isabella ‘Izzy’ Barnett, re-married many years after Mr. Steven Barnett’s death, to a man named Nethan, also known as only Nate.

He has plenty of cousins that he sees as brothers, so his children call his nephews and nices cousins themselves, too. From them, comes Uncle Tim who married Aunt Eunice, and got George, Alice and Tom. Tom is around Hyde’s age, a few months older than him, and also the first of the cousins to welcome him.

Tom constantly invites him and Jackie to hang out with the other cousins. At first, Hyde didn’t feel like going, but Jackie managed to convince him most times. Later, breakfast on Sundays and the cousin night out once a month become something they attend all the time is required.

She’s happy to see Hyde being accepted in the family and both enjoy their place at Barnett’s table and the importance they hold in the house as members of the family.

Other uncles, aunts and cousins: Aunt Lila that married uncle Jon, and had Lily and Daisy, both around Angie’s age, just a little bit older. And Aunt Gina that married uncle Al, and had Vicky, who is Angie’s age, and Diego, who is Hyde’s and Tom’s age.

Diego, Tom and Hyde hang out a lot when they have the chance. He sometimes takes Eric with him, and other times, even Kelso and Fez get invited, alongisde the girls if it’s not boy’s night.

Hyde and Jackie later become Diego’s kid, Jonathan, godparents. While Tom’s younger kid was named Jackson after Jackie. Hyde and Jackie chose for their second daughter’s middle name to be ‘Tami’ for cousin Tom.

While Hyde’s name was not chosen for his late grandfather he didn’t had the chance to meet, when the family is asked if it’s because of him, no one makes an attempt at saying ‘no’. He likes it that way, too. Deep down, it makes him feel included.

Izzy was the first member of the extended family he got to meet alongisde Nate. They being his grandparents welcomed him warm and happy, since Izzy has always said she wanted more grandchildrens.

Her love for Hyde and Angie can be seen from space, she would do anything in her hands for them and is always there for Hyde. He feels safe talking to her and having her accepting him so easily and so quickly into the family helped him shape his security for when he met the rest of the family.

Edna Hyde can be seen as one of the biggest turn points for Hyde. She is his mother and like any child, there was a time when Hyde loved her, he probably still does deep down. He understood at a young age that he wasn’t wanted and that his ma wasn’t exactly the best.

He used to take offense when someone trash talked his mother, even when we do know the nickname ‘gross Edna’ was well put and that she was just-- horrible. In a way, I feel like this is that way because Hyde still cares about his mother at that point, even when later that season she abandones him, too.

Edna leaving him changes everything. He goes to a better place but with a broken heart and crashed spirit. Hyde changes from season 1-2 because of inconscistent writing, but one can find subtext characterization in a shift between the moment he realized his mother had abandoned him and the rest of his life.

This relationship is rather complicated than just not good. It’s unhalthy and one sided, to put a level to it. And had Hyde the chance to comfront his mother, he may had been able to finally move on from her, the impact she had in his life, and else.

But he didn’t.

Most his trust issues come from seeing his parent’s marriage going to hell and them leaving him behind so easily like if he was nothing, a replasable object they couldn’t care about at all.

In the show, we are told Bud leaves Hyde again to get together with Edna. They leave together without telling him, without wanting him. Some fans don’t take this as canon, but for this meta and headcanon we will. And with this, I can only say that Hyde’s relationship with his parents suck.

What he mentions about the rest of his family is having an uncle in jail, and that the other two Stevens in his family are also in jail. Other than that, we know nothing.

The Hydes sound like an unlikely family, troublemakers that probably thought they didn’t have a future but to become criminals or something of the likes. This would explain why he thinks his future may lay on being in jail at some point, and also why other people seem to believe that (”we believe he may be the smartest guy on his sell block”, reads a report an actual teacher wrote of him in junior high).

We can say that his relationship with them isn’t good.

Now, my headcanons? Well, I share lots of these with my good friend Lisa (those70scomics / MistyMountainHop), so these may sound familiar to you all.

I have thought of an uncle from Bud’s side that cared about him and he had a good relationship with him. The man is still problematic in the sense that he also has an alcohol problem and probably will be up for a flash robbery, and so.

He has other uncles and aunts, mostly on Bud’s side. He doesn’t had many contact with Edna’s side because she had a bad relationship with them, but knows Edna’s older sister, who wasn’t that bad but still he never liked her that much.