Welcome back to the Vetinari Dualegacy! This is Chapter 26: School Days!

And we're at college! The most exciting thing for me, personally, is that no one grew up into a totally WTF, retina-offending outfit!

It's the little things.

Admittedly, some still fared better than others. Paulie's got a bit of the Hurtful Stereotype going, and worse than that, Jojo did not grow up into pink! Lawrin did, though, which I think made Jojo happy.

And honestly? Not only do I not hate what Jack's wearing, I don't hate what Jack's wearing ON JACK.

But George has GOT to give those jeans back to Oz Warner.

Overall, I give it a hearty two thumbs up. No one is wearing breeches or a unitard, so hooray!

Assessing the damage to the Uglacy boys, George is still a dead ringer for Stevie. Which is less fun. I already have someone who looks like Stevie! I call him “Stevie!”

On the other hand, he's PermaPlat, so I don't have to worry about keeping him happy.

Jack, unlike his brothers, got a good mix of his parents. Heavy brow and lumpy nose and lack of cheekbones from Francie, eyes, mouth, and chin from Stevie.

OK, so I know that when you see Paulie all grown up, you're going to go “AAAHHHHHH!” and then dissolve into hysterical laughter, because that's what I did. And then you will ask why I'm not making Paulie the heir. And then I will tell you that it's because, aside from that one teeny detail, Paulie looks exactly like Francie, and I have not come nine generations into an Uglacy to have my final heir be “Frances J. Worthington III, with one slight difference.”

Jack is a glorious melding of his forebears with ol' Franny J. And that is why he is the heir.

If you are drinking, swallow before you click to the next slide. I will not be responsible for liquid damage to electronic devices.

Paulie... has no eyeballs.

He has, like, NEGATIVE EYEBALLS.

I have to assume he navigates his world via echolocation.

I thought Stevie was squinty and blind. And then Paulie grew up and I realized that compared to Paulie, Stevie has great big anime eyes.

Lest you think I have caught Paulie mid-blink, allow me to assure you that I have not.

That right there is as “open” as Paulie's “eyes” ever get.

However, I concocted a brilliant solution! Which you will see later. Muahaha.

Joyce and Brett were still placeholding Havelock House, the family fraternity.

I was a bit worried when I saw First WooHoo Wants in their panels, because they had plenty of WooHoo before they moved into the fraternity, but then I remembered that that was before the mini-rebuild, so they got revirginated. That, at least, isn't a sign of impending catastrophe.

Jack pledged in first, and made great use of the keg. Since he's a slob, it wasn't too surprising that his preferred method of plastic cup disposal was the forehead-smash.

However, influence was free, and Joyce does love her some torment.

“How do you do this? ...No, seriously, I have never actually cleaned anything before. I am the cause of cleaning in other people. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I AM DOING.”

“THIS, however, is so much better without my dead grandmother popping through the computer to scare me.”

Jojo, meanwhile, managed to slip the leash of Influence and took up his spot at the stereo, because it's never a bad time to Hula.

“Why do homework? It's Perma-Fall here. No need to do homework, ever.”

“Homework? There's a bug on the paper and I'm chasing it with my pencil.”

“...Okay then.”

Lawrin was mainly tasked with making friends with assorted Dormies and other passers-by. She was totally OK with this, and so was everyone else, since it kept her from sitting naked in the hot tub.

Brett and Joyce moved in Jack, Jojo, and Lawrin right before they graduated.

They've been at college for a while now, and I think they were both more than ready to go.

There were the usual assortment of shenanigans at the graduation parties. Friends zapping the Cow Mascots, casual nudity, and cranky vampires.

Ulysses Goodytwoshoes courtesy of ProfessorButters and the Squeaky Clean Legacy.

Naturally, where Ulysses and SimNerd go, the Crazy Gay Huggy Servo tends to follow, and because he is Crazy and Gay, he zoomed in on George as the one person at the party who might be remotely interested.

He wasn't. George isn't terribly Outgoing, and hearing a Dirty Joke from a strange robot was a pretty big Do Not Want for him.

Any retaliation on George's part was cut off by the shock of Lawrin naked in the hot tub.

I get a lot of that this generation.

Joyce and Brett got engaged, moved home, got married, went on a honeymoon, got PermaPlat, that whole bit.

And, because Joyce is my SimSpawn and I can play favorites if I wanna, they got to have a kid. Rowan is a mean little Vetinari, just like Daddy.

No zombie teddy bears—or Sims with Nice Points—are safe.

“Yesterday I took the trash out all by myself!”It was a momentous occasion indeed.

Giacomo “Jack” Vetinari's a Libra 3/8/5/10/8 Romance Sim with a job-related LTW. This generation's heavy on Pleasure and Romance, so there's a lot of Free Love going around, and happily, no one seems to mind too much (thanks to romancemod).

Anyway, Jack's my Uglacy heir, for reasons previously discussed. At any rate, he's a congenial little slob and I like him.

Giacomo (by Holy Bull out of Set Them Free) won the Kentucky Derby in 2005, trained by John Shirreffs and ridden by Mike Smith. At 50-1 odds, he's tied for second-biggest longshot to ever win the Kentucky Derby.

He is currently retired to stud at Adena Springs in Kentucky.

“Yup—still pretty!”And still look good in green!

Lawrin's a Leo 5/10/5/3/5 Family Sim. She's got a job-related LTW, which makes me happy. She also has an ongoing thing with Duncan Landgraab, also a Family Sim with a job-related LTW, so I can get them married and they can get PermaPlat and then whine about not having children.

See? I have a plan.

Lawrin (by Insco out of Margaret Lawrence) won the Kentucky Derby in 1938, trained by Ben Jones and ridden by the legendary Eddie Arcaro.

He is buried in Prairie Village, Kansas next to Insco on Woolford Farm.

“Pink dreads!”PINK DREADS!

Joe Cotton “Jojo” Vetinari is a Pisces 2/8/10/3/10 Pleasure Sim with a job-related LTW, and is probably best described as a Cloudcuckoolander. His reality is sort of... off... from everyone else's.

He's the Prettacy heir, mostly because I like him.

Joe Cotton (by King Alfonso out of Inverness) won the Kentucky Derby in 1885.

He was killed during a race in 1888 when he tripped over a fallen racehorse at the Mystic Park racetrack in Boston, Massachusetts.

With the older three moved in, it was time to pledge in the other two. Jack did the honors for his brothers, who mostly hung around and played poker for a day.

Lawrin called up Duncan for a quick date, and they fell in love again pretty much immediately.

However, shy Duncan has yet to face the full horror of Lawrin's addiction to hot tub nudity.

The finger-gunning, he's probably used to.

I made over Jojo's bedroom, because I like him.

It's pink. Very, very pink.

It sort of reminds me of the Barbie aisle of your local toystore.

There is generally a Hula going on somewhere.

It's also a side effect of moving the piano to an inaccessible location, following Jojo, George, and Jack taking turns trying to commit Suicide By Busking.

The upshot was, more Hula, less piano, but George and Paulie hung around long enough to get into the fraternity.

“So if I have a turtleneck sweater, does that mean I get a chain too?”No. No chain and a turtleneck sweater.

George Smith Vetinari is a Pisces 3/3/10/6/10 Romance Sim who's already PermaPlat and now has a job-related LTW, which doesn't matter because he's already PermaPlat. He and Paulie are twins, and while they're not as close as some of my twins have been in the past, they share weirder things. Like girlfriends.

George Smith (by Out of Reach out of Consuelo II) won the Kentucky Derby in 1916, ridden by Johnny Loftus.

He was put to stud at age five, and eventually ended up at the US Army Remount Service, where he sired horses for the military.

“I look totally normal!”Just keep your sunglasses on. Always. No matter what.

Paul Jones “Paulie” Vetinari is a Sagittarius 3/7/10/10/6 Pleasure Sim with a job-related LTW.

With the sunglasses and the hair, you'd hardly know he's a little mutant!

Paul Jones (by Sea King out of Persimmon) won the Kentucky Derby in 1920, the sixth gelding to do so.

After his retirement from racing, he was used as an exercise pony, competed in steeplechases, and was a fox hunting mount. He's buried at Inglecrest Farm in Charlottesville, Virginia.

See? He looks totally normal—or as normal as a ninth-generation Uglacy Sim is likely to look—as long as he has the glasses on!

Right above the upper edge of the glasses, are what look like black eyebrows. If you didn't know they were what passes for his eyes, you'd never guess that's what they were! And his actual eyebrows are mostly hidden by his hair.

Who's my little mutant? PAULIE!

And he's shy enough to get dressed to go to class, and he's a little slob, so he takes frequent showers, so I rarely have to force him into his Everyday clothes and therefore his sunglasses!

*cough* Nothing to see here, moving along...

Look! A second household gets reasonably un-horrible transition outfits! So what if a sensible business suit doesn't fit Maui's personality? AT LEAST IT'S NOT A RAVE KIMONO.

And I don't hate what Gretzky's wearing—ON GRETZKY.

It's a Christmas summer fall miracle!

The girls are Tahiti (top left) and Maui (top right), Edmund Fitzgerald and Wydah's daughters. Tahiti's a Romancer with the 20 WooHoos LTW, and Maui's a Pleasure Sim.

Kati (bottom left) is Abel and Kaylee's daughter. She's another naked hot-tubbing Pop Sim.

Gretzky is Vex and Emmy's son. It took him all of ten seconds to declare that De is hot.

The guy just made a beeline for her, and monopolized her attention until he got too hungry to stand it anymore.

I'd be more worried about De and an Uglacy cousin if it weren't for her affection for Cassius, and no one who isn't an heir is having kids anyway, so it will continue to be a mystery what it would look like if De and Gretzky reproduced.

De (fireflower314) writes the Morgan Legacy.

Tahiti doesn't waste a lot of time getting to work on her LTW. George is a more-than-willing participant.

I think the crispy-fried guy is Jojo. It didn't seem to bother him all that much.

Thanks to romancemod, the Romance and Pleasure types don't care who does what with whom. George was still hanging around, and the fact that his twin brother was getting it on with Tahiti was really a non-issue.

Although, brace yourselves...

AAAUUUUUGH! PUT YOUR GLASSES BACK ON!

In case you're wondering, this is what Paulie looks like with his eyes CLOSED.

That little sliver of eye you can see? That's actually BELOW the bottom edge of his lower eyelid. And those are his eyelashes above that.

George has a habit of sitting down to do homework in the most inconvenient place possible at the time. Like in front of the stove when people are hungry.

True story! When George would follow his classmates home from school, he would use every single one of the toilets in their houses! He would make special trips to other floors for the sole purpose of using out-of-the-way toilets! And it's not like he constantly has to pee. He just wanted to piddle in as many foreign potties as possible. It was BIZARRE.

He's still sort of doing that now, only with homework instead.

Not that there aren't perfectly valid reasons for hanging out at this house, mind you.

Yeah, that's Jack and Jojo. With the Love Tub, there's no hearts thrown into Relationship Panels, so I don't feel overly bad about using them for Aspiration Fodder. I don't have to bust any Crushes or Loves, and Tahiti gets to chip away at that LTW of hers.

It occurs to me that Archie would have LOVED to be in this generation.

Bear in mind that I am showing these slides in the order in which the events occurred.

Gretzky invited De on a date.

Despite non-matching turnons, they have three bolts.

One relatively mild flirt, and they both get Big Red Hearts of Big Redness.

The date progressed, as dates do. They both rolled car-related WooHoo Wants, as Sims on dates do.

Aaaaand then De decided to play hard to get.

Suddenly remembering that Gretzky is not, in fact, Archie?

Pang of remorse, despite Cassius and Rhys not existing in this neighborhood?

Pissy mood?

Who knows? Gretzky took it pretty hard.

I couldn't figure out what was going on. I made De selectable to check her Needs to see if she was hungry or something. Nope! Hunger was the lowest motive, and it was still 2/3 full.

So I tried again. Into the car with you!

Only I still had De as the active Sim, so the option to Try For Baby was there—and I very nearly clicked it, because it was where regular WooHoo had been on the pie menu.

DE. I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE. YOU ARE NOT TRICKING ME INTO GIVING YOU BABIES.

With Gretzky in a much happier (postcoital) place, and De's attempts to reproduce thwarted, I left this crowd and headed over to the last house.

Again: they generally all look OK! Duncan and Tyler even grew up into similar outfits in a different color!

I seriously won the Transition Outfit Lottery this time around.

...I hope this means they won't all age up into gorilla suits and breeches when they graduate, as some sort of great cosmic balancing act.

Duncan and Tyler, the twins, are Ellie and Michael Turner's sons (Mal V's grandsons). Duncan's a Family Sim dating Lawrin, and Tyler's Knowledge.

Kinsey is Six and Inara's daughter. She's a mean little Fortune Sim (and really, really acts like it!).

Kinsey is absolutely all about the money. She's got Write A Bestseller and Sell A Masterpiece permanently cemented into her Want Panel. She works on the novel herself, and the boys are pretty attracted to the easel, so there's generally something Masterpiece-worthy hanging around on any given day.

In other news, Tyler likes to poop with the door open.

This is NOT the last bathroom-related slide in this chapter. I apologize for that.

I had Duncan invite Lawrin over for a date to perk up their flagging Aspiration. Luckily for Duncan, there is no hot tub on this lot.

I also had Duncan propose, to avoid any awkward date drops from the Wishing Well or from the Gypsy Matchmaker that might occur in the future.

Lawrin happily accepted, to the surprise of no one.

And then I felt bad that the Landgraabs had the crappiest car, and they had money left over from building Kinsey's bedroom, so I got them a nicer car. Possibly no one but Duncan and Lawrin will ever use it, but at least the doors close on the first try.

Turns out Lawrin leaves pretty good date gifts! The giant fountain is expensive, and it gives Kinsey something to put soap in when she gets bored.

This was strange. I'm not even entirely sure how this happened. You can see, on the left side of the screen, the Cow Mascot Trophy Head, in place to prevent these sort of shenanigans from taking place. And you can see Tyler at the easel, autonomously painting something for Kinsey to sell.

Then there is the obvious GRRRR of the Cow Mascot pulling the Sprinkler Prank in their kitchen. Two tiles away from the Cow Mascot Trophy Head.

Then, AFTER flooding the kitchen and living room, the Cow Mascot ran outside to cry in front of the Trophy Head.

At least Tyler was there, and busted out the Repo Gun, right?

HAHA NOPE!

While the Cow was on the lawn sobbing, Tyler very calmly walked over to the giant puddle and started mopping up.

SOMEONE ZAP THIS COW ALREADY!

Kinsey came home from class, and took care of business.

Oh, Kinsey. Never change.

At Havelock House, it's usually Jack who gets tasked with the Repo Gun chore.

I don't think he minds much.

“Jojo? You ever think about the Sophomore Year Re-roll? I mean, I'm Romance and you're Pleasure, and maybe that's not the best thing, given what's coming. I don't know, maybe it's just me because my head's on the chopping block. Unless Ben was wrong when he said that? Like, I just... I don't know what I want to do, you know? I feel like I should take it, but what if I get something worse, right? So maybe I shouldn't? What are you going to do?”

“I don't know. I haven't really thought about it. I am who I am. Are we our Aspirations? Does that make us who we are? If I were someone else, would I still be me? Maybe I'll just roll the dice to see if I should roll the other dice. Or maybe roll the dice to see if I should roll the dice to roll the dice. Infinite dice rolls!”

“After what happened with your brother, you still haven't thought about what's going to happen? I think about it all the time! Ben was my friend too. Even though he messed up, I miss him. And I'm really, really scared I'm gonna end up like him. How do you not worry about all of that?”

“What's the point? Why worry about stuff that already happened? You can't change it. And the future hasn't happened yet. Maybe it will never happen. Maybe every little decision we make spins off a parallel universe, like one where Ben didn't go to Cypress and he's here hanging out with us right now, and maybe there's one where Ben and Cypress killed me and he's here and I'm not, and maybe there's a parallel universe where I didn't eat leftover pizza for breakfast this morning and now I'm all hungry, and maybe there's a parallel universe where there's no shrimp, and if every possibility is already occurring, what makes our reality any more real than any of those other ones? There is no past, there is no future, there is only now.”

“...I can't tell whether you're completely nuts, or ridiculously well-adjusted.”

“Yeah. I get that a lot.”

Meanwhile, Paulie goes on dates with slouchy Downtownies to keep his Aspiration up! He doesn't need to hide in the tree, because he remembered to wear his sunglasses!

In the absence of the piano, poker's probably the biggest draw.

Until the chairs glitched, and no one could sit down.

It was a sad day in Havelock House when there was no poker.

I fixed it, and now they're all happy again.

Jojo tends to lose. I genuinely think he has no concept of “money” or of “winning” and “losing.”

“This is awkward. I really feel like cheering at me taking a shower is wildly inappropriate.”

Last bathroom slide, I promise!

OK, confession time.

I love the karaoke faces.

And I think they're so much more awesome on Uglacy Sims.

Just look at Jack's cavernous pie-hole! And George's soulful squint!

The karaoke faces make me laugh every single time.

JACK. And that MOUTH. It is HUGE.

OK, I promise I am done with karaoke faces now.

“Well, you can go with the traditional birthday cake, chocolate and buttercream, but we have a nice red velvet if you want to try something different, and... Uh... OhGodNO!”

“Cass? What's going on?”

“Cass? Honey? Where are you? What's wrong?”

“Cass, whatever it is, it's okay. I'll fix it. Just tell me what's wrong.”

“I... I can't...”

“You're safe back here. The door's locked. It's just you and me.”

“The guy who just walked in, with the blond hair and the black shirt...”

“...that's my father.”

“He can't come back here, Cassidy. He can't hurt you. I'll go out and get rid of him.”

“Gil, you can't! He kills people, he'll kill you, it's what he does! You can't go back out there! I can't—I can't handle losing anyone else to him!”

“It's okay. Does he even know we're together? I'm just another shopkeeper to him, right? There's no reason for him to do anything to me. I'm just going to go out there and get him to leave. Just sit down on the couch and wait for me to come back. And I will come back. I promise.”

He's not coming back.

It's Dad.

It's Dad, and he knows, and he's not coming back.

What am I supposed to do?

I can't go out there.

Not even to save Gil.

I can't do it.

I can't ever save anyone.

It's been too long.

It's been way too long.

Maybe Jake was right.

Maybe people don't love me because the ones who do end up dead.

Gil's dead and it's my fault and I'll never forgive myself.

“OhGodyou'reokay!”

“I said I would be. He just wanted a pie, Cass, that was all. He didn't even look at me twice.”

“I thought he killed you. I thought you were dead because of me.”

“I'm fine. I said I'd get rid of him and come back, and that's exactly what I did.”

“He killed my mom. He killed my brother.”

“But he didn't kill me.”

“He could have.”

“But he didn't. I'm still here, Cass.”

“I'm sorry I'm like this. I don't know how to... to not be broken.”

“It's okay. I closed up shop early today. Let's go home, huh? I could do with a nap right about now.”

“Yeah. A nap is good.”

“Gil? I really am sorry that I freaked out.”

“It's understandable. Given the circumstances, I probably would have done the same thing.”

“You'll never be in my circumstances. And that's a good thing.”

“Come on, Cass. Let's just take a nap and let it go.”

“Sure. Let it go.”

“Gil? I don't know if I can keep doing this. Not the us this, but the this this. You know?”

“You lost me on all the pronouns.”

“Like, I don't think I wanna be me anymore. Like, I want something to change. Not you, because you're the best thing that's ever happened to me, but I need for me to change. I can't keep doing this. I know I'm never gonna be totally okay again ever, but that doesn't mean I have to be this.”

“I still don't understand, Cass. You don't want to break up, but you don't want to be yourself? I don't get it. What are you trying to say?”

“Let's get married.”

“I already said I would.”

“No, I mean, like, right now. You and me, right here, right now, let's get married.”

“What?”

“Cass, no.”