Hello! Welcome to my new story: You Don’t Have To Be Perfect. It’s a Perfect Mother Challenge, ad the title comes from a series of ads that encourage people to adopt older children from the U.S. rather than babies from overseas. They say “You don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect parent,” and that’s my operating premise.

This is Allyn Tsvirkunov. Allyn was adopted as a child herself, and grew up on a reality show.* She is Family/Popularity, with the LTW to Become City Planner. According to the rules of the challenge, the challenge should have started when she was a Teen.

Of course, you know me by now, and you know that naturally I did not decide that I wanted to play this challenge until Allyn’s junior year in Uni.

*100 Days of Awesome, available on my LJ.

The challenge consists of a list of things for Allyn to complete at each life stage. Because I started so late, I have completely missed most of the checklist items for the first part of the challenge, which technically means I’ve lost before I’ve even begun.

I’m not going to let that stop me, though. I will take what points I can for Allyn’s past life, make up lost ground where possible, and keep up with the current lifestage tasks. Allyn needs a Bronze Sewing Badge while a YA, so a Bronze Sewing Badge she will acquire.

Eventually.

Allyn calls her family – one mother and one sister – faithfully every day, as per the rules. She also stays connected with her extended family of aunt, uncle, and two cousins.

Although since one of her cousins lives in the same dorm, that’s not really too difficult.

Part of the challenge is finding a partner in Uni, and although Allyn missed out on her Romantic coals in her Teen years, she’s making up for lost time. After striking out with fellow students both on and off campus, Allyn turned to the matchmaker.

Well… At least she got that Bad Date out of the way.

Eventually, though one of Allyn’s blind dates – with one Ryan Wheeler, Bohemian Social Groupie – went quite well. It didn’t quite reach that coveted Dream Date status…

…but it did let her make up the First Kiss requirement without any problems.

Allyn continued concentrating on her Sewing badge, and eventually completed it. I know that doesn’t sound super impressive, but it’s a point now and builds to another point later.

She started on her Toymaking badge after finishing up Sewing, and although I missed getting a picture of the doodad above her head, you can see that she did complete that as well.

You’ll see that control panel regularly during this challenge, especially in Uni. After all, it’s really the only way to prove that some things got done. F’r instance, Allyn needed to skip class three times while in Uni. Here, you can see that she did indeed skip.

You can also clearly see here that she should be in class instead of eating pancakes.

But you see, even though I know full well that this was the third time that Allyn skipped class, I can’t prove it.

You can trust me on that, though. What do I gain by lying about the events in an obscure challenge for an ancient video game to a handful of people on the internet?

Here you can see that Allyn made the Dean’s List (one of the requirements) and therefore must have made an A+ grade (another requirement), because unless I am very much mistaken, that is a requirement for making the Dean’s list.

You can also see that she has at least six Best Friends – the rules call for five Best Friends that aren’t relatives. Allyn has three relatives that she is Best Friends with, so that’s at least three of them right there. I’m quite sure there’s a fourth hiding in the next screen over, but of course I can’t prove that.

Look, it’s hard to get used to deliberately putting all that stuff in when I spent years making sure it was well out of the way!

Let’s see, what else…

Well, Allyn had a party broken up by the police.

And she had a Roof Raiser of a party too.

She attempted to have her first woohoo at the hotel that I put on campus exclusively for the purposes of having wooho in, but it didn’t work. Can you figure out why not?

Hint: It has nothing to do with the enthusiasm of the participants.

Fortunately, Allyn earned her five required Logic points (not that I can prove that either) and came up with another solution. And a good time was had by all.

Allyn even made an enemy and got into a fight, as required.

It was a hard thing to do, as both Allyn and the dormie I picked for her to pick on are actually both fairly Nice, but I managed it.

Mind you, the rules don’t specify that your sim has to win.

Which is a very good thing, because Allyn lost. Repeatedly.

And with all her Young Adult accomplishments completed (if imperfectly documented), Allyn set off back to the main ‘hood to begin the challenge in good earnest.

Until next time, Happy Simming!