More Awesome Than You!

Jonathan Burb (son of John & Jennifer) is married in my game to Melinda Dreamer, daughter of Lilith & Dirk.  This means (I think) that Jonathan is married to the daughter of his first cousin.  These two met as children and were great friends from the start.  When they became teens, they had all romantic interactions available as the game didn't see them as family.  Technically this is understandable insofar as legally there would be nothing against them getting together. 

Another character, Desdemona Goth-Dreamer, is the daughter of Cassandra & Darren, which makes her Melinda Burb's auntie and therefore Jonathan's 'auntie-in-law', although clearly there is no blood relationship between her and Jonathan.  I noticed that they have exactly the same personality profile, the same aspiration and similar interests, and expected to see a strong attraction between them.  Desdemona has no flashes at the moment as her sexual preference isn't set, but it's obvious that she and Jonathan have 'something' as they are drawn to each other.  However, Jonathan has no option to give Desdemona anything more than a 'friendly hug' or 'family kiss', both of which he seems to thoroughly enjoying doing.  This means he views her as family.  Desdemona, on the other hand, has all the romantic interactions available (first kiss, romantic hug, etc.) and no family ones. 

In SimPE, there is no family relationship shown.  From experience, I know there are other places that these can be set, but I am puzzled as to why Jonathan is seeing Desdemona as family when she isn't seeing him the same way.  He does have the option to check her out under 'Flirt', but no other flirt option, whereas Desdemona has the normal ones.  I rather think that Melinda senses something because whenever Jonathan interacted with Desdemona, she insisted on interacting with him herself.  There are no flashes at all between Jonathan & Melinda, incidentally. 

As Desdemona has romantic interactions towards Jonathan available to her, I can't help wondering what would happen if she were to try one.  Presumably, as he sees her as family he would reject them, but it still makes no sense that he would see her as family and her not see him that way.  I don't really want to get them together anyway, especially as there are children involved, but I am curious as to why this family relationship is one-sided, not to mention keen to find out whether I would be right about them having a strong attraction.

I would assume this is because he has genetic ties by proxy to her, but not her to him. Although that really doesnt make sense.

In-laws occasionally receive a partial family status and are able to encourage. It is not known what triggers this: Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't. Wild theories suggest that it may be related to attendance at the wedding party, previous knowledge (more specifically, lack thereof) of the sims involved, etc., or some possible combination of other factors.

I've had this happen at times as well...with in laws for example.

The daughter-in-law sees her father-in-law as nothing more than family..only has family options available...good old daddy dearest however can feel free to romance his son's wife all he wants though..situations like that.

To be honest I have never tried it yet to find out what happens.  My sims haven't quite gone that twisted yet.

Speaking of strange family ties, I never quite understood what was up with the Singles/Curious family trees in Strange town.  Lola and Chloe *should* be half sisters to the Curious brothers and Jill Smith, but there's no family ties between them what so ever.

Heck, I'm not even sure how Johnny and Jenny Smith are related to them.  They're the kids of their father and half sister...so that makes them their siblings *and* Niece/Nephue...  o_O 

Anyone noticed how ancestors further back than grandmother/father don't count as family, too?

I noticed that a looooong time ago.

I think maybe the main reason for that is to lessen the amount of telepathic memories.  For example, Mortimer's grandparents only have memories pertaining to him, whereas if they recognised Cassandra & Alexander as family, they would also have a bucketload for them as well.  I suppose one answer could be to tick the family box in SimPE (without specifying a relationship) and use the "no telepathic memories" mod to stop those memories being added, although that would only work if the sims concerned didn't actually know each other.

Yeah.....I just thought it was odd that people could have relationships with their great-grand children. Sneh.

Well, I got Desdemona to check someone out and this brought all her flashes up.  She had two for Jonathan, but that might have been because he hates make-up and she wears it.  Anyway, still no option for anything fruity from him and when I asked him to check her out, there were no hearts.  I therefore gave them an artificially-induced mutual crush and WHOA ... it was like turning on a tap, they couldn't keep their hands off each other.  He got all the romantic options, but still retained Family Kiss.  Unfortunately, neither of them could perform any interactions with flashes on, which means the flashes can't be built-up.  I exited without saving the crush part, but I really do need to find a way to remove this non-existent 'family' connection.

Another rather puzzling thing with Desdemona ... when all her flashes appeared, she had one for Don Lothario (relationship 0/0).  I thought this was rather odd because she's Knowledge and he's Romance, not to mention the fact that he was her mother's first husband and is the father of her two half-siblings (and with Maxis strange rules, that should probably constitute family).  Anyway, shortly after he happened to walk onto the lot and as he walked past Desdemona, the flash developed a cross through it.  Nothing had changed, so maybe Cassandra was putting on the 'fluence from beyond the grave, or Desdemona suddenly realised who Don was.  Rather amusing in a way, I suppose.

I've been playing Strangetown, and my computer shows the Curious brothers and Jill Smith as family when I play Lola. Which is why I started digging.

I've been trying to figure out the strange family tree, twisted as it is. It looks like Pollination Tech #9  is the father of his wife's twin sisters, Lola and Chloe. Lola married Ajay Loner and they had a daughter, and as far as I can figure Johnny and Jill (and their new brother, Roswell) are her aunt and uncle(s) as well as her cousins, because their father is her grandfather while their mother is her aunt. Which means Johnny and Jill are Chloe and Lola's nephew and niece as well as their half sibs.

If you look at the photos (fun, by the way) it looks like the birth order of the Curious family is Jenny, Lola and Chloe, Pascal, Vidcund, Laslo ... they all should be named Curious BTW but due to limitations with the original game they have their household names instead. Looks like Kitty Curious was none too happy to acquire alien twin daughters in such an unconventional manner. Maybe that's why they changed their name  ;D

Also, it looks like Loki Beaker and Erin Singles are sibs, which means Erin should be Erin Beaker. So Kristen Singles is the only "true" Singles.

I plan to have General Buzz explore his feminine side. Still trying to get Laslo Curious abducted. Right now I have two depressingly normal looking Curious tots ... Johnny Smith is at college and his parents are trying for 10 kids. I'm sadistic enough to let them try ... good thing it's easy for family sims to run up the aspiration points. They'll need lots of green stuff. And some money. He's unemployed, and she's just a nurse. May have to send her to work for one day and hope for a promotion between pregnancies ... can't adopt with the dough they've got and I don't like to cheat.

Sorry. Off topic again ... anyway, back on topic things get even more twisted when you add a new generation.  :D

Eww, I'd completely forgotten that Lola & Chloe are actually half-siblings of the Curious brothers and Jenny Smith. I'd never really paid attention to the family tree and thought at most they were distant cousins or such. Before my reinstall Lola was married to Pascal, raising alien step-son Ulyssess and their twins William and Anne. Chloe had son Trevor by Lazlo Curious before he settled down with Crystal Vu. :-X I haven't touched Strangetown yet since the reinstall, maybe it's time to go in a completely different drection before I gross myself out entirely. I may still marry Vidcund Curious to Erin Singles though, they seem to get along quite well.

I've seen those pictures and it does indeed seem that Lola and Chloe are twins.  But when you first start playing the Singles household they're different ages.  With Lola being the oldest of the four and Chloe being the youngest.  So realisticly the timeline should be Jenny, Lola, Pascal, Vidcund, Lazlo, and Chole.  However, that doesn't hold any water when you compare all of that to the pictures availiable in story mode...

Whoever's in charge of making the neighborhood stories over at Maxis took this one out of the oven before it was fully baked.

How confusing! Makes parts of my family tree look entirely normal :D.

Regarding the original topic, I went through with SimPE and marked all of the three Curious brothers + Jenny Smith + Lola and Chloe Singles as "family" and "siblings". Yet, despite being seen as family, Chloe has options to Flirt with Vidcund and Lazlo. I don't know whether this is a bug in the game, or a bug in SimPE (could it be that although I ticked the box in SimPE, the game can't read the correction?). I have a similar problem with Ophelia Nigmos and Nervous Subject - I want them to be seen as family for when one of them gets the "Talk to a relative" want (it's difficult to fulfil this if you only have one relative), but while Nervous sees Ophelia as family, the reverse isn't true, despite my having ticked the box.

Erin is indeed Loki Beaker's sister. I renamed Lola and Chloe to have the surname Curious-Smith (although I wondered whether Smith-Curious sounded better), and Erin to be Beaker. Kristen's real surname is Loste.

The family dynamics of this game baffle me.  I guess Maxis wanted to give us something to try to figure out.  Why does most everyone in the original neighborhoods all have family ticked in Sim pe but oviously they aren't family.  I also had a couple that had all the romantic options but when it came to the hot tub,they were considered family.  The girl's Dad(who she had never met) married the guy's Mom.  They met in college and I never thought of there being a prob with the family ties.  It wouldn't have mattered except they were both romance sims and they were getting quite insistant.  The same Dad had gotten his high school sweetheart prego right off the bat, but they didn't end up together cause he couldn't keep his hands of her mother.  Well, even though  they had a baby together after he got married to her mom,they no longer could have romantic relations even though they had never lived in the same house together.  Her child was aunt and sister to the new children they had together.  He was my 20 woohoo guy and he ended up having 17 children with various women.  That neighborhood had gotten way too complicated-Kinda glad I lost it.

I don't think it has anything to do with SimPe since I have never used it. I created a new family the other night, mom, 2 teen daughters and a teen son, the teenagers have the option to "flirt" with each other. I am quite perplexed (and kind of grossed out) as to how this could be.

I've noticed another one now.  My first vampire in the game has 1 or 2 flashes (can't remember) for her stepfather, the townie Amin Sims.  He married her mother when she was still a child (the vampire, not the mother) so has basically brought her up, although she's been left home quite some time and is 3 days off elder now.  They've never been marked as family and of course they're not related, hence the flashes.  Nevertheless, neither of them can perform more than "Family Kiss" and "Friendly Hug".  Seems weird that it gives them these flashes, yet they can't act on them.  There's a lot of confusion as to who is family and who isn't by the looks of it.

The only other explanation for all these anomalies is that the game is actually taking things like aspiration and personality into account, then again that doesn't really work in the case of Desdemona & Jonathan because they're both Knowledge and both have exactly the same personality profile.  Damn, thought I'd hit on something there.  Would have made sense, too.  I can see a Family Sim not wanting to 'carry-on' with their mother-in-law, but a Romance Sim probably wouldn't care two hoots. 

Some in-laws exist in a kind of indetermine half-family half-not-family way, where some family options are available (Encourage, Family Kiss), but others are not. It is unknown why this occurs, as it doesn't happen consistently.

It's probably supposed to happen consistently, but since it's triggered by an in game event it's prone to the same weirdness as the memory related LTWs.