#sometimes it feels like my ocs are constantly in a virtual ethnography HAHA

[holocene-sims]

List 5 facts about a favorite sim of yours, and send this to 10 simblrs whose sims you adore ♥♥♥

this is so sweet, thank you 😭 i'm honored to have received this message ❤️

when i get back to posting my story, there will be a lot of interaction with grant's family, so i'll give you some fun facts about him as related to his family! hopefully it'll provide some background to where things are starting in the story family-wise and to grant's life!

(1) grant actually speaks three languages! not with perfect fluency, but quite well. he's the child of an immigrant father 🇫🇮 and immigrant grandparents 🇮🇪, so multilingualism is a natural result! but grant never really tells people this fact unless you know him really well or just happen to be there at the same time he's with his family (or also his now ex-fiancee...)

bonus fact? - his grandma aoife is a native irish speaker! his grandpa joseph is not, but grandma very much was insistent that if he wanted to marry her for real, he had to learn the language (and that their kids, their grandkids, etc. should as well)

(2) grant is the youngest sibling! you have not seen them on this blog, but grant has two older sisters. his oldest sister died (i'm so sorry that this was an intentional story choice by me) from a terminal illness when he was about twelve years old. about his other older sister...they have nothing to do with each other and haven't spoken in years, really since he was about twenty-two

bonus fact again? - interestingly, on that note, grant speaks to no one from his nuclear family except for his father, and they only reconnected about a year ago canonically. his abusive mother is 100% out of the picture and excommunicated by everyone, and his father was, too, for a long time

...and then dear old dad realized he wasted his life with a woman who used him and barely loved him, lost all his kids, and was shunned by his own parents and brother for the aforementioned reasons...and he decided to stop being an emotionally unavailable enabler, divorced evil mother mary, and started therapy!

(3) so the third fact is that grant and his dad have a relationship again. it's still awkward and they're both tiptoeing around talking about the whole, you know, "you enabled my mother to abuse me because you were afraid of her lashing out at you instead of me" thing. that and his father is dating someone else, so now grant is also awkwardly trying to have a friendly relationship with this woman dating his father.

so, yeah, it's super awkward but there is a decent undercurrent of love and acceptance and apology there, regardless of how upfront about it they are...

(4) grant has a hard time conceiving his actual biological parents as his parents, though. if you were to ask him who he considers his parents or who raised him, he would immediately say his grandparents. aside from the fact they felt immense guilt over their daughter's scorched earth path in life, in the end, they are good people, good parents, and good grandparents, and they always seem to do the right thing in any situation. for him, they did the right thing by stepping in and intervening to look after him as soon as they noticed something was wrong with the home situation for him. so he's very, very deeply close and connected to his grandparents, and the three of them have a lovely relationship

so for the final fact...

(5) his cousins jokingly call him "the favorite grandkid." the thing is, none of his cousins actually believe that because the structure of their family leads every single one of them to have a very close and impactful relationship with their grandparents. every kid got the support and love that they needed out of their grandparents, and unfortunately, some of them needed more attention. "favorite grandkid" is just a weird little nickname because grant internally feels guilty that he got "the most attention" and that he didn't deserve it, and the nickname is an odd but understandable way for the rest of the cousins to sanction that it was fine for him to be treated a little differently

#do i play my game and create characters like an anthropologist? yes #but it's fun - i like making my sims like real people with real stories and real family histories #sometimes it feels like my ocs are constantly in a virtual ethnography HAHA #asks #hlcn: grant #hlcn: oc info #hlcn: story extras