Uglacy Challenge

Once the dust had settled and all the dyin’ in the Pugsley house was gotten out of the way, the household was left with just Michaiah, his bride Carmen, and their daughter Fionnuala, unexpectedly thrust into the spotlight as heiress after her older brother Fergal tragically died in a starving-haunting-showering accident. However, Fionnuala had the bad luck to be somewhat more attractive than her mother Carmen, which didn’t bode well for the family line.

Despite the fact that it would be hard for anyone to follow in the footsteps of Carmen, probably the ugliest woman in Kensington, Fionnuala could almost feel the ghosts of her fugly ancestors whispering derisively behind her back as they swarmed around animating the dining room set every night. She wasn’t supposed to be the Pugsley carrying on the family name; her parents had always counted on Fergal to carry the torch, and she had been merely an afterthought in their lives. Fionnuala was sure her parents were sorely disappointed that she, the spare, was destined to be the one who gave them grandchildren when she was so much less ugly than Fergal had been. As a Sim who could pass for a fairly attractive woman with the right hair and makeup, Fionnuala was determined to make the most of the cruel hand dealt her by fate.

The first order of business was to get out of the house. Overshadowed by her truly simian parents, Fionnuala’s “pretty duckling” status in the family was almost overwhelming. She needed to escape to somewhere where her true ugliness could come out and be appreciated. In a perhaps misguided flash of brilliance, Fionnuala decided she would work hard to finish her studies early and head off to Sim State, where the pretty faces of the trendy college kids would at last cast her in the properly homely light. Or would they?

A Knowledge Sim like her mother, Fionnuala easily studied enough to get several scholarships to college. She packed her bags and caught the taxi to the Sim State campus. Free at last! Taking a spot in one of the dorms on campus, Fionnuala settled easily into college life. She was secretly thrilled that all the students in her dorm were a fair bit more attractive than she was, leaving her with a certain smug satisfaction that at last she was the eyeful of ugly she’d always wanted to be. That is, until she met Andrew.

Andrew Baena was a sight to behold. Fionnuala met him at a coffeehouse on campus, and she was immediately drawn to his fat face, broad flat nose, protruding lips, and shaggy, unkempt hairdo. Fionnuala was afraid Andrew could never take notice of someone as inoffensive-looking as she, but she was pleasantly surprised when he struck up a conversation, and soon they were close friends. It was in front of her dorm one evening that they became more than friends, as a bit of flirting and kissing cemented the crush that had grown between them. Fionnuala was bursting with pride at the chance to redeem herself to her family by bringing home the dashing Andrew. Carmen and Michaiah would be so proud!

As the days went on, Fionnuala was still glowing with the joy of her perfect boyfriend, but in the back of her mind, the thrill had receded to reveal a tiny glimmer of doubt. Would Carmen and Michaiah really approve of Andrew? Would they think he was good enough? After all, there was something about him…he looked so much like her own family. Was that actually why she was drawn to him? Would he really be ugly enough for them after all? If Fionnuala were to someday have a family with Andrew, would their children be more of the same, a parade of tots that were only as ugly as Fionnuala herself, not enough to redeem her in the eyes of her ugly parents? Fionnuala was ashamed to admit that the thought began to worry her. In fact, it began to consume her.

Another guy around her dorm, Colby Nott, was a friend of Andrew’s–they were both in the secret Landgraab Society together, something Fionnuala wasn’t supposed to know about–and Fionnuala was good friends with Colby herself.

As she began to have doubts about her future with Andrew, she found herself confiding in her friend more and more. She talked in broad, general terms, careful not to bring her actual relationship into the conversation lest it leak back to Andrew, but she vented to Colby about her feelings of inadequacy in her supremely ugly family and her fears that the underlying disappointment she felt from her parents would be magnified if she passed her unfortunate good looks to her children. Colby was so kind and understanding that Fionnuala suddenly found herself looking at his wide jaw and pushed-in mouth through new eyes. With her nose perched above it, that jaw could be…magic. Fionnuala’s heart jumped. She stopped Colby mid-sentence with a kiss.

Fionnuala knew that Andrew could never find out about her feelings for Colby. But how could she choose between them? It was then that Fionnuala, almost deranged with desperation for her family’s approval, came up with a radical idea. Once and for all, it would give her the best chance of proving to her parents that she could give them the ugly grandchild that would do the family proud. She packed her things and moved out of her dorm into the one that Andrew lived in. She had to stay close to him while she fleshed out her plan.

It was hard to keep up her relationships with Andrew and Colby without exposing her infidelity, but the problem soon multiplied when Fionnuala met another student in Andrew’s dorm who threatened to carry her heart away.

Venkat Go’s large, pear-shaped face reminded her of Andrew’s, but something about his scowling brow and pushed-in, bulbous nose was even more appealing. Fionnuala was determined to woo him, no small feat considering that Andrew was around every corner and the only thing she and Venkat could talk about without dissolving into arguments was culture. Day after day, Fionnuala yammered away about the relative merits of Simheim’s musicals in comparison to Rodgers & Simmerstein’s, the role of operagoing in modern life, and the skyrocketing cost of museum tickets until she had thoroughly charmed the tough Venkat and was ready to make her move. It was around this time that she started having serious second thoughts about her life goal of pursuing knowledge. Her goal had become something very different–she wasn’t sure if it was the conquest of romance or the pull of popularity, but ultimately she realized that it all came down to satisfying and carrying on her family. After she had made that decision, it seemed as plain as day that she had made the right choice in light of her current plans.

With Venkat now under her spell, Fionnuala found it was almost an addiction to drop by the coffeehouse in the evenings and turn on the charm for the ugliest men. Soon she was cultivating a romance with Clay Nanale, a guy too attractive for Fionnuala to bother with if not for his tremendously long nose, as well as with Ray Shaw, a singularly unattractive Sim with a tantalizingly long hooked nose and frowning mouth.

At this rate, it was getting difficult to maintain her cover to so many paramours. Fionnuala saved up the cash from her semester grants and moved into a small rental house near campus, where she could invite each of her lovers over in turn with no one the wiser. Soon she was riding high on a perfect relationship with each of her five boyfriends, and all she could think of was how much she wished she could get engaged to all of them so that she could further her cunning plan.

Fionnuala managed to keep up perfect grades along with her perfect loves, managing to graduate with a 4.0 GPA in what seemed like hardly any time at all. As she packed her bags and moved back to Kensington, she knew one thing: even if her parents were still harboring doubts about her future as an heir, and, in fact, even if they were sitting and playing chess exactly as she had left them eight semesters ago as if no time had passed at all, things were different now. In time she would show them just how different.