Family relationships?

[cutecuddlydirewolf]

Since the last thread I started was about war and bloodshed, it's only appropriate that this one is about warm, fuzzy feelings.
Anyhoo, so far, I've noticed that the number of families in Cantr isn't very high. I have one character who has a grandmother and a bunch of siblings, one who has a brother, one with a sister, and one who has a brother and used to have a son. That's only four out of fifteen (I have others who'd like to have a family, but can't find the right people). I was wondering... who else has seen these kind of relationships where characters care for one another and share the last name, like in a family? And why don't we see this sort of thing too often?

[Swingerzetta]

Well, I think the reason why we don't see these things often is that there is no parentage, and no children, so adoption doesn't make sense, normally. I've seen siblings done well, but everything else tends to be kind of weird, and sometimes embarrassing.

[Shedevil]

I have one character in a family type setting. She's got brothers and sisters, a niece, and now a son. Another has a sister. Another is part of a family, but not entirely sure of her role in it yet (it's kinda complicated).
Another had a family, but she doesn't now (as far as she knows). Then my last one has a brother. So that makes.. 3 out of 15.. Well, 4, if you count one of my characters and her husband.

[*Wiro]

Families are weird. I guess that's kind of realistic then? (:

One of mine shares a last name but they never really defined their relationship. They don't even talk that much.

No romantic partners either, but that's partly because all of my characters are jerks, gross and ugly.

[computaertist]

People spawn into the world largely independent of any others and potentially nothing at all like the others around them aside from starting skills. There is therefor between little and zero incentive for families to start in most cases unless you count romantic partners as families. Existing families may attempt to expand, but it's very rare to get one going because, really, it's an ooc concept with no in character bearings unless you happen to notice one in character and have your character think to themselves "I'd like to be in / have one of those". And if your character does think that, there's a good chance they'll attempt to get in the one they saw rather than start one themselves.

[AshBee]

Yeah I've only had one character in a family, though I've had many who have used the term family to relate to the group they are in. All of those who use it have seen a family though in game. The one in a family was approached by his later family members and asked if he would be their brother. Really he just looked at them funny, but because he had seen sisters in his town before it wasn't too odd. I agree, because there is no child birth, and really even marriages are a foreign concept in the game, they just seem unnatural. Usually when my characters hear those terms mother, father, brother, sister, etc they just scratch their head and are utterly confused.

[sherman]

I think the closest thing to a family is when someone is the father/mother figure for some chars. But other than that only siblings tend to work well

[SekoETC]

One of my characters originally had a daughter, and when the daughter died, she unofficially adopted the daughter's fiancé. Later this adoptive son adopted a daughter, and the daughter started adopting a whole bunch of siblings. At some point it was agreed that my character's two romantic partners were considered grandparents beside her. It has developed up to a point that not all of the granddaughter's siblings are considered grandchildren, only the ones that are known personally.

My long dead character Bessie Rae Gardner, had a son and later some other children, but I'm not sure what happened to all of them.

One of my younger characters considers four characters her parents, even though she doesn't have the words for mother or father. One of them she hasn't seen in years and this one might not be alive anymore. Out of the "parents", three are female, and at least two have been in a relationship with the man. I'm not sure what the nature of the relationship between the third woman and the man is, but they seem sort of close as well.

One of my older characters considered a couple of people a son and daughter. The daughter died and she never told the son about her feelings (as far as I can remember) because she's not one to express emotions easily. Back when the daughter was still alive, it got awkward when she was having sexual relations with the brother because they were spawned out of the same mother. They had different fathers, though. I could tell my character was the mother because they spawned when there was only one other person in the location (as far as I can remember).

[ObsessedWithCats]

None of my characters have family that they'd refer to as such - there's a couple with sort of family-like relationships but some have never even heard of these things, some have heard of it but never felt the need for it and one has heard of and seen family relationships turn very messy and depressing.

[cutecuddlydirewolf]

Hmmm... interesting points so far. But aren't families really just a source for more roleplaying, and a different kind at that? Though, I have seen other families be ruined because one of them slept to death…

[Snickie]

My dead character Stella's views on family were very close to the old traditional view of nuclear families, very interconnected and very much "one mother, one father, mother is married to father". When she was adopted by Drake Kras, he and Madeline had made the decision together. (She wasn't a bigot though.)

Stella didn't mind Sydnie claiming Kazuma and Astrid as her "parents" (even though I'm pretty sure Sydnie was older than both of them, and Stella knew it too). It did bother her that they weren't married but she sort of accepted it anyway. It made her extremely upset when Sydnie claimed that Drake was her second father, especially since she claimed it had been so for a long time but she had never been informed by anyone. Since Stella worshipped Drake (quite literally), she acquitted him and ended up resenting Sydnie and rejecting her as a sister.

As I said, in Stella's mind, the whole family had to be interconnected -- Drake would be her father and Madeline would be her mother and Stella would be her sister, but if one of those didn't work, the whole thing didn't work. And if Stella was Sydnie's sister, that also made her Karnon's sister and Astrid and Kazuma's daughter as well, and she just couldn't process the idea of having more than one father. What would Drake's relationship with Kazuma and Astrid be? What about Madeline?



Snick rejects the idea of parent-child relationships altogether. They make her physically sick. (Actually, she resents anything touchy-feely gooey mushy. She will probably never have a true romantic relationship.) Siblings, sure, fine, whatever. The Blackrock Tribe is kind of a collection of adopted siblings. Anything beyond that doesn't truly exist as far as she is concerned.



Most of my other characters just find familial relationships strange (something transferred from myself, oops), but for the most part don't give too much thought to it.

[quilink]

A character of mine has a huge family, and another one has a daughter. Also I have a crazy one that thinks his socks are his parents...

[Marian]

I think 'families' in Cantr are out of place and sometimes annoying (depending on how overbearing the RP is) but basically harmless. IC my chars would interpret it as them being in some kind of close-knit clan and probably chalk any needy and dependent 'child-like' behavior of 20-something adults up to some kind of mental illness.

OOC I remember being incredibly skeeved out on a few occasions though because some of these 'sisters' and 'daddies' and 'daughters' were clearly banging each other...

[Cdls]

How can you find it creepy if you don't see the family dynamics as being true family dynamics, that sort of contradicts itself.

I agree with the first part of your statement, I don't see families as real families (in the real world sense) but instead see them as a group of people who are close. They may assign real world naming to them (sister, brother, mother, etc) but since those dynamics are not possible in Cantr (spawning vs birth) to me it is just a title.

[Marian]

There's no contradiction, I was talking about my OOC vs IC reactions. My characters can't see it as 'true' family dynamics because in game 'true' families don't exist. While my OOC self thinks its creepy and weird for someone to RP sex with their daughter, especially when the that character is talking and acting like a child.

I mean I'm sure there are entire sections of the internet dedicated to exactly that, I just don't like to see it in Cantr, where my character has to nod and smile and pretend like it's normal.

(Even though even IC, characters with mental disabilities getting sexually exploited ought to be disturbing too, but Cantr society is amazingly backwards in some ways while being progressive in so many others...)