Uglacy Challenge

Kaebrianl looked to have a good chunk of days left, but, of course, you never know with her. While much trouble has been taken to get her into platinum, her grandson Michaiah has the opposite problem–he needs to feel a little more down in the dumps before he can swill some elixir and reduce his super-extended Tedious Teenhood. When his fears aren’t anything particularly forthcoming, it’s decided that Norman will use the SimVac to suck away Michaiah’s aspiration points. I suppose having Kaebrianl do it would have been more efficient, but it seemed a little too cruel for a grandmotherly goodbye. The trick works, and Norman gets into a superfluous platinum mood while Michaiah approaches the brink of despair. He’s promptly sent to guzzle elixir until he has but three tedious teen days left.

Sandy, if you recall, had been flirting with Daniel Pleasant, which led to some trickiness because Kaebrianl, in fact, didn’t die after she used him for an aspiration boost at one of her “Thought I Was Going to Die” parties. In the rush to make sure Sandy greeted her flame outside because of this, God totally neglected to make sure that Norman was safely ensconced in his beater of a carpool car to go off to his slacker job before Sandy welcomed Daniel with a big ol’ kiss. Though Norman was far enough into the car to have to just go off to work, he saw the spectacle; his relationship with Sandy went down to a -35 and he fell out of love with her. Hypocrite. In his memories, he has a negative one of “Caught Sandy cheating” followed by a positive “Met Daniel!” That made me laugh. Anyway, I toyed with him getting a divorce from Sandy but learned that that would involve her moving out, and the rest of the neighborhood doesn’t need her roaming around it anymore, so they made up instead. It was sinfully easy, since Sandy lost no relationship with Norman, so as long as Norman initiated all the interactions, he just racked up the relationship points. Several “leap into arms” hugs later, Norman and Sandy were back at full strength and celebrated their reunion with some WooHoo.

It finally looked like Kaebrianl’s last day, so she carefully cultivated a full platinum bar all day. She stayed home from work to earn another skill point, no small feat for a Sim lacking only three total. She met a new Sim; she even made an effort to become best friends with Sandy, her tenth best friend, giving her a 15,000-point boost. Finally, she threw another death party, inviting over some of the usual suspects–Goopy, Gordon, Carmen, and Abhijeet. Six o’clock rolled around, and Kaebrianl’s life meter moved incrementally CLOSER to full, with a smidgen still left at the end. ARRRRRGGGGGGHHHH. The whole regimen was replayed the following day, complete with party. Because she didn’t have any achievable big wants left for the final pull, Kaebrianl tried out the SimVac on Lucy the maid (after getting the boost from meeting her for the first time). Why I don’t just use that for every imminently departing Sim, I’ll never know, but it gave Kaebrianl a nice margin of insurance to make sure that her party-throwing want definitely kept her in platinum. She also rolled a series of wants to encourage Norman, first to be nice, then active, and then shy. Norman had 9 outgoing to Kaebrianl’s 1, but it didn’t seem that a single instance of encouragement would do Norman any harm; however, it turned out to be the first occasion EVER that encouragement has worked in one try, and Norman lost a point of outgoing. Oh well, I guess he doesn’t need it for much. Kaebrianl threw her latest funeral bash late in the day, so only half an hour had passed when the clock struck six, but the Grim Reaper was incredibly prompt. At the very soonest minute, as if the Reaper were as tired of this whole cat-and-mouse game as I was, Kaebrianl froze in the midst of her party and turned into a platinum urn amidst much sobbing.

Determined to salvage the party, Michaiah–despite his grief and, in fact, his food poisoning–decided to age up and sweep the lovely Carmen off her feet. Everyone turned directly from weeping at Kaebrianl’s urn to cheer on Michaiah, who twirled into an adult exactly like his teenage self but taller, hornier, and wearing an even stupider outfit. In a brief flirt with Carmen, they were in love, and since Michaiah is a Romance bastard, he immediately gained the wants to have two loves at once and make out with three Sims and added a fear of engagement to Carmen. Like father, like son. (He also wanted to get a job in law enforcement, which is NOT something a Romance Sim is supposed to want.)

He asked Carmen to move in with a half-hour left to the party. Carmen is a Knowledge Sim who, like Juan, started out as a 5/3/7/3/7 Pisces but is now a 2/5/8/6/4. She had a lot of skills, 30 points out of the possible 70 (3/5/2/8/4/4/4), but brought only $1000–I guess exterminating doesn’t pay well. I was tempted to give her the stupidest outfit, haircut, and makeup possible, but that seemed too easy, so she changed into a sweater and jeans and took on the haircut that she’s had when she gets in the hot tub. It’s a good one, anyway, that doesn’t hide the enormity of her forehead or have any slimming effect on her immense jaw. I was tempted to give her the Social Bunny outfit for her undies choice, since it was actually an option for her, but the joke turned out to be unnecessary when I found out that the suit was already both Michaiah’s adult swimwear AND Norman’s formal attire. Sigh.

Michaiah’s everyday outfit, by the way, is similar to his teen wear in that it’s a pair of schleppy-looking, slightly bell-bottomed jeans with sandals and a T-shirt, but his teen T-shirt was plain with a stripe. His adult shirt is black and has a character on it that looks vaguely like a skateboarding genie wearing a showgirl headdress and carrying a bazooka.

Since Michaiah’s fear of engagement was seemingly never going to go away, he was sent off to get as aspirationally positive as possible so that he could take the plunge with less harm. After some hot tub WooHoo with Carmen (in the bunny suit), he was suitably platinum to make his move and did so, jetting down into the green. Somewhere during this all-day aspirational orgy, Carmen actually got the want to WooHoo with Michaiah and was promptly impregnated with what I pray is the future wife of Assface King. To get everyone in a better mood, a family outing was planned to the clothing store, where all three Romance Sims indulged their desire for public WooHoo. The next morning, Michaiah and Carmen had a small private wedding ceremony in the yard, with Norman in attendance in his bunny suit and Sandy already gone to work, before Carmen had to twirl out of her wedding dress and go to her new job as a test subject, none the wiser to the potential Fionnuala within.