More Awesome Than You!

How (in completely dumbed-down terms  ;)) do I make it so that she recognizes him as family, and doesn't want to fall in love with him?

This rolled as a want as soon as he moved out to his own house.

Have you tried marking them "family" in the simpe relationship browser?

Yeah, Brynne, when I said dumbed-down, I mean I have no idea how to use SimPE.  So, a tutorial or step-by-step instructions that I can read that tells me how to do that specifically would be awesome.

Which version of SimPE do you have?  the SimPE classic or the new one?

I don't have it currently, I uninstalled it when I realised I didn't want my game to explode into a large fiery ball visible from outer space should I start mucking with it.

So, I would be downloading it again, and whichever version they offer (or someone tells me is better) would be the one I would download.

1) Click on "tools", "neighbourhood", "neighbourhood browser".
2) Click on the chosen neighbourhood, and click on "open".
3) Click on "tools", "neighbourhood", "sim browser"
4) Click on your key board the first letter of the sim's private name (M for Melody).
5) After you openned the sim's file, click on "relations".
6) Find the relative, and choose for the wife "parent" (Scroll), and for the son - "child"; then check the "family" rectangle of both.

Edit: if you have NL, you can use only the latest version of SimPe.

Ah, okay, lol. I'm not sure what level to write this to, so I'll do a very very "never-used-simpe" beginner version.


Open Simpe, and go under Tools to neighborhood to neighborhood browser. Click on your neighborhood. Once it's finished loading everything, go under tools again, neighborhood, and then to sim browser. A window will pop up with all your neighborhood sims. Click on the one you want to edit and go to the plugin view. Find the relationships tab, and go there.  Find the sim in the relationship box that you want to mark family and click on him/her. You'll then be able to see the relationship status. The pull-down menu should say "Unknown/undefined" something like that. The very last box says "family", click that. Commit and save. It should automatically do the other sim at the same time, but I always go to that sim's browser to make sure. 

If they still refuse to see each other as off-limits, I have actually gone back into SimPe to make them cousins. That definitely nips the flirting in the bud, but I'm not sure what it's doing to the character data behind the scenes... 

Whoops! Gali beat me to it. Ah well, they both explain it the same way.

Well, there are two other replies already, but since I have it all typed out I'll post it anyway!  :D

I haven't yet installed the shiniest version, but I can tell you how to get through it.  First off, you're probably not going to explode your game, which is the really great news! LOL

Start up the program, then go to the Neighborhood Browser (which I'm thinking is under Tools), then choose your neighborhood.  It may take a bit for stuff to load.  On the left-hand side of the screen near the top you should see a little area with options.  Scroll down until you see Sim Description and click on that.  Again, this may take a little bit to load.

This will bring up a screen that will list all of the sims in that neighborhood.  Find the sim in question and click on her name in the list.

Now look down below and you'll see a Relationships area.  Choose that.  After you do, a long bar will appear on the bottom left of the screen showing all other sims in the neighborhood.  Find the alien step-son and click on his icon.  Now to your right you should see what their relationship is and be able to adjust it.

Make sure after you do you hit the 'commit' button, which you'll find near the top right of the bottom half of the screen.  Then before exiting SimPE choose File>Save.

I always advise making a back-up copy of your neighborhood beforehand, but this is a very easy process and shouldn't cause any harm to your game. :)

Well, if you want to get all technical about it, the woman isn't related to the alien kid in any way.  So they're fair game for romance.  But even still, wanting to flirt with the guy you probably taught to walk, talk, and use the potty is...ewww.

I've had this happen in a couple of other familes with step kids/parents.  Most notably with Dina Calliente and Alexander Goth.  After he went to college they both kept spinning up wants to flirt with each other.  They eventually went away though after I ignored them for a while.

I'll try the mini SimPE tutorials here to try to fix the situation in Strangetown with Lola, Chloe, and the Curious brothers.  Because dammit, they're siblings!  By blood relation no less!

I had a curious similarity when I had Brandi Broke married to Don Lothario.  while the boys were kids, Don saw them as family, but as soon as they grew up, he lost the family tick, and I had to replace it. 

I also had a sim, who was the youngest broke brother's daughter, fancy her great-uncle (and he was knowledge, not romance) and in those days I had no idea how to change it (and this was while she was still a teen!  - I did discover, though, that I had unknowlingly downloaded a teenage woohoo hack in a house!)

That drives me nuts with the extended family not being recognized as family. I go into SimPe and mark every last relative "family" because I get a little weirded out when a sim eyes her cousin's son, or something. Maybe it's because in real life I know a lot of my own extended family and really get weirded out by the thought of....ugh. Let's not even go there.

It would be interesting, though I don't know how possible, if there was a hack that extended the "family" mark if the sim had know the family member in question as a child, and made a sim completely off limits to anyone who remembered "teaching to walk" or any similiar wants. It would probably annoy as many people as it pleased, because it would somewhat limit family drama, but it could be interesting.

Especially if anyone can understand what I'm talking about.

Thank you all for your replies.  :)  I know technically they aren't related, but she did help with his upbringing, so I definitely view this as an icky situation.  

Thanks again!

And Brynne - good call about marking all the relatives, I would so do that too, if my game was that big.  I tend to only play a couple of different families (and nowhere near as huge as yours), so I haven't run into that yet.

I understand what you're saying.
In the Inseminator there's a relations adjuster that lets you set/clear flags for crush, love, married/joined, engaged, friends, best friends, and enemies. I've always thought it would be great if there was also an option to set a family flag. 

Interestingly, some Maxis families have all the ticks in place - for instance, the Pleasants all seem to recognize the whole family, Mary-Sue sees Lucy as family, although she's Daniel's niece, not heres.  But there are odd ticks that shouldn't be there, like Lilith and Dirk being in love and yet having the family tick!  So many careless errors!  (Oh, and Angela and dustin have the family tick too!)

I had teleported a ton of sims, all blood-related in one-form or another (some marriage-related) onto my lot so I could take pictures of the different branches of the family tree. I immediately exited the game and went into simpe when one of my sims said "Oh robitaw" over her great uncle. He used to change her diapers!

I think they set up the neighborhoods, and they were rushed and didn't play them at all, so they didn't realize the extent of the illogicalities inherent in them. Or something. Maybe "Maxis Monkey" is more than a joke.

I'd be interested to know how many Sims2 programmers actually play the game - or do they go home and play SSX3?

If you've got the latest version, simply hit "Spawn.../Family Tree". I think it got split from the relationship adjuster a while back.

EDIT: Misunderstood question. The family tree only allows parent and child flags to be set, instead of the family flag. Whoops.

It did. There's the "quick relations" one, and then the "relationship adjuster" which is the one that has the flag options.

Edit to add: sorry, read that wrong. The family tree is actually a seperate thing, but doesn't have anyway to make someone a family member past the standard Maxian family tree.

I know what you mean!  I was raised in an extended family and a cousin, no matter how distant, was a blood relative and totally off limits.

My dad's brother, on the other hand, has six kids and out of the 5 that are married or soon to be married, at least four of them are married to cousins, a couple as close as second cousins. EWWWW!!  It seems that nearly all of my dad's relatives are married to either blood or step relatives.  It's bizarre!

I'm the same way but never thought of going into SimPe to fix it.  Just b/c my poor simmies don't realize that they want to flirt with their 2nd or 3rd cousin doesn't mean I don't realize it lol

I did have one incident where I got confused and one of my sims had a little relationship going on with their 2nd cousin.  When I realize what I had done I was slightly disgusted with myself lol  But in my defense the 'hood was getting huge and I was losing track of everybody...who was related to who and what not..especially when their were some babies being born out of wedlock and what not heh.

yuck!

I'd never touch a second cousin. Not that I know how to define most of those relationships I have no idea what second cousin once removed means lol. Anybody know of a website that explains that stuff, cause I'm tired of being clueless.

You can find a good article here (http://eogn.typepad.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2005/01/what_is_second_.html) on the definitions of cousins and how they're determined. Here's what it says about what each type of cousin is and what "removed" means-

First Cousin: Your first cousins are the people in your family who have at least one of the same grandparents as you. In other words, they are the children of your aunts and uncles.

Second Cousin: Your second cousins are the people in your family who share the same great-grandparent with you.

Third, Fourth, and Fifth Cousins: Your third cousins share at least one great-great-grandparent, fourth cousins share a great-great-great-grandparent, and so on.

Removed: When the word "removed" is used to describe a relationship, it indicates that the two people are from different generations. "Once removed" indicates a difference of one generation, "twice removed" indicates a difference of two generations, and so forth.

My 2nd great grandfather married his first cousin I have no idea what the story behind it was. :-X They had something like 8 kids (double ewww) but my granddad (my mom's dad) says he remembers that they were both really kind and caring people. It does crack me up that I am my very own 4th cousin.

Be glad you're not royalty!

Oddest case I remember reading about was a man who had a son, and they lived in the south of Italy somewhere.  The son moved up North (i don't know why) and met his half-sister ( it seems Dad had had a brief affair) fell in love and the bride and groom were virtually at the alter  steps when dad arrived to put a stop to the wedding!

You can hear all sorts of opinions on this.  The one I've heard the most is that 3rd (or was it 4th?) cousins are so genetically different that they don't really count as reletives anymore.

Get together with your 1st or 2nd cousin however and you run the risk of having a baby with nine heads!   :o  (forget where I heard that one from)

with the NL autonomous romance interactions, this is starting to happen in my neighborhoods by itself.

i guess as the generations go on autonomous incest will get more and more inevitable.

weird/gross/funny

From how I understand it, my first cousin is my aunt/uncle's child, my second cousin is my mother/father's first cousin (and therefore close to being an uncle or aunt) and their children are second cousins once removed.

Therefore, if my second cousin is my mother's cousin, they will share two grandparents.   My second cousins once removed will share two great-grandparents with me, but only one grandparent, but they are still genetically fairly closely relatied, although I believe you don't need a dispensation from the Pople to marry your second cousin if you are a Catholic, only a first cousin.

I'm figuring that in the US alone there's got to be something like at least one-fifth of the population who descended from the same 5x-great-grandfather I did, and if they got to looking into their family background, which did descend from royalty (in this case one of the ancestors was William the Conqueror), it gets very weird in there.  In the old country, you'd look at the family line that was started by a couple, follow it down for two or three generations, and then end up with some descendent of that couple marrying another of their descendents.  By the time they did marry back in they were around fourth cousins.  I realize, of course, there wasn't as large of a genetic base back then as there is now from which to choose a marriage partner and keeping royal families royal was and still is a real trick.

One thing I've always thought odd in TS2 is that I'll have a sim who recognizes another sim as their relative, but the recognition doesn't go both ways.  So far I've seen this mostly with in-laws, whereby the d-i-l would recognize her f-i-l as a relative, but he didn't recognize her as a relative and would roll up a want to flirt.  I've thought about trying it out to see what happened but haven't got brave enough yet. LOL

Instead of making them relatives (parent and son), just reduce with the SimPe their relationship to -10 (minus 10). It helpes too.

I noticed the uneven relationship thing with one of my families that had the alien child. The human stepmother (you know, the one whose husband had the alien baby) was a romance sim, and once the alien child was a YA at Uni she rolled wants to flirt with him. However, she couldn't ACT on the wants - flirt never came up as a possibility in her interactions with him, and he couldn't flirt with her. I thought it was pretty funny at the time, actually. Like, she was all "oooh I have forbidden desires" in her slutty romance way.

It's not a bug, it's a feature!

The family dynamics of aliens are always interesting.

I think that's related to a problem I had with a couple of gay teens who wanted their parents to get together.  So the mum of one and the father of the other met and fell for each other and moved in together.  Everything was fine between the kids until the parents got married!  Then, suddenly, they were getting all the flirt wants, but could only give friendly hugs and family kisses!  So, when they grew up, they moved in together, relationship 100/100, both had the pink and red heart, but they still couldn't do anything but hug!  I didn't have SimPE back then, and I had to get the parents to break up so they would no longer see each other as brothers!  Once they got their relationship going, the parents were able to fall in love and get married again!

I remember about 10 or 15 years ago, there was a case in I think Spain where a brother and sister who'd both been adopted out and had never known each other ended up married and with children. When they found out, they decided to stay as a married couple - after all, they had the kids already, and saw no point in breaking up.

And how did the kids turn out?  :o

I don't remember (or rather, I was probably never mentioned), but I don't think they had any serious problems. Inbreeding only gets problematic if you keep doing it over and over, so unless their kids keep up the practice, the family line should be safe.

Yeah, inbreeding doesn't mean your automatically screwed. It's generally a bad idea because it can bring out harmful recessive traits that otherwise wouldn't have been expressed but you can get away with it on occcasion. Not that I would do it.

and I have one neighbourhood where ALLLL the plyable sims are related by blood or mariage to the founder sim. They just keep on marrying townies and NPCs. It stated off as a legacy family attempt. Now it's a back neighbourhood with 4 generations of sims and one family of 10 kids. And  it's tarting to get into the kind of territory where they don't recognize each other as family. But I've not allowed them to do anything with any relatives as yet. And they won't be marrying relatives thank you very much. As long as there is an endless supply of townies and NPCs they don't need to marry each other.

I think the intermarriage thing became a problem in isolated villages when the nearest neighbour was more than a day's walk away.  It's never been a problem in towns - except, of course, for Pharaohs!

Of course, by the nature of things, if a brother and sister meet up for the first time, there'll be some kind of attraction because they are family, but it would probably be misinterpreted!  I'm sure it's happened many times over, especially when adoption details were kept so secret!  Which goes to show, there should be a law to prevent siblings being separated when they get adopted - I know most agencies try to keep them together, but if they can't find a suitable family to take all the kids, they will split them.

Inbreeding is only a problem if there are recessive defects in the family. Trouble is, that many features that cause lifethreatening illness when one has two copies beneficial when the person only has one copy. Sickle cell anemia is like this; protects against malaria. And cystic fibrosis protects against cholera. So you have a situation where if there aren't any other carriers of a gene in the population, a carrier's descendents will do much better than everyone else, but the more carriers there are the worse any individual carrier's descendents are likely to do. The benefits of this situation are maximized, and the problems minimized, with inbreeding taboos.

In the sims, of course, where there are no genetic diseases, inbreeding poses threat except to the sensiblities of the users and the coherency of the family tree display.

And possibly no noses for alien descendants?

Necromancy is bad, 'mkay?