Cousincest, or "How to get around the game's family ties in three easy steps."

[strangetomato]

Remember this post about Audrey Broke and Alonzo Burb in my last version of Pleasantview? A helpful anon recently pointed out (via Formspring - feel free to ask me a question, if ya wanna) that they're actually related. Audrey is the daughter of Daniel Pleasant and Kaylynn Langerak and Alonzo is the son of John and Jennifer Burb, which makes them... wait for it... FIRST cousins. Eeep! That's a little close for comfort.

It's funny I didn't pick up on it, but I can always blame it on the fact that adoption erases the old family tree in favour of the adopted family's. Audrey was not longer linked to Daniel, so the relationship didn't show up. And in story terms, they probably wouldn't have known about it either, so it really could have happened. It certainly creates some drama, in true Pleasantview fashion.

It won't be an issue anymore, since I didn't clone off those two for the uberhood (I stuck to the essential characters only), so there'll be an Audrey and Alonzo (I'll reuse the names), but they probably won't be dating this time.

Comments

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I know of people in my own life who are married to their second cousins, but not so much first. I'm sure it happens plenty.

When you think about it, it's not so related. A brother and sister may not even be alll that genetically similar (Daniel Pleasant and Jennifer Burb don't seem that similar, for example), and even if they were twins with identical DNA, the first cousins would only share 50% of their DNA. In reality, it'd probably be less than 25% in a first cousin.

I think my own reaction to this is a little stronger than most would be, because I don't have siblings and I grew up with my first cousins like their were my brothers and sister. For me, in a close-knit family, it's way too close. If it were someone you hardly knew, it'd be a different thing entirely.