Simpulsion

[temeres]

I've been playing Sims 2 for the best part of a year now, and my neighbourhood continues to grow. The latest arrival: to Jenna and Kerr, a daughter - Servalan Stannis. To which you will either nod knowingly (quite possibly with a chuckle or a weary sigh) or just go "Huh?". If the latter, and you wish to be enlightened, go hereServalan's birth is

Comments

[watervole]

What's your limit on allowable degrees of incest? First cousins? Second cousins?

[temeres]

Whatever the game will allow, and the matrix of relationships is not yet sufficiently sophisticated to discern what it permits. Close cousins seem to be out, though. (I've never been any good at counting degrees of cousinship and removal and all that stuff.)

Adopted children are treated like natural children by the game, so two adoptees in the same family can't get off with each other even though they are not, strictly speaking related.

Interestingly, children adopted from another in-game family are no longer recognised by their natural family as family. I have one girl, neglected as a baby by her natural parents and taken away by the social services, and then adopted by another family. She has since been befriended by her natural father (mother has died in the interim) and she has now become an adult, so in theory I could pair her off with daddy. Not that I intend to, but the possibility seems to be there.

[watervole]

INteresting. There are real life cases of siblings brought up apart who later fell in love. As far as I can figure it, our instincts for incest depend on who we grow up with.

Some chinese families that adopted girls in the hope their son would have someone to marry have apparently hit this problem.

[temeres]

It's also been cited for children raised in Israeli kibbutzim. Not that Sims 2 seems to have factored this in - I have a lesbian couple who (by deliberate design) each got themselves pregnant almost simultaneously before moving in together. The kids - a girl and a boy - are now teenagers. Since they have different fathers they don't recognise each other as family so although they've grown up together as effectively brother and sister, they will be a viable couple when they become adults.