- Joined
- Feb 4, 2013
I lost a bet to my little sister and had to read Modelland in it's entirety. Someone asked me to describe it in more detail. Be careful what you wish for.
So Modelland takes place in a fantasy version of the modern world. Not an alternate history, or a science fiction universe with an identifiable point of divergence, it's basically just a more broadly drawn, stupider version of our world with barely any fantastical elements.
The setting is very important so I'm going to dwell on the world building at some length.
Countries have names that make it obvious what their real-world counterpart are and also are retarded. So China is Beijingle, Australia is Digeridoo, all of Scandinavia is Nordenswe, France is Tres Jolie.
The France bit is especially egregious because Tyra Bank is one of those insufferable people who think anything French is automatically classy and cultured, and so she name drops French shit constantly. But because France in this universe is called Tres Jolie we get shit like "Tres Jolie Braid" said with a straight face like every other page.
Now there are two exceptions to this naming convention. The second I'll get to in a bit, but the first is, I am not making this up, the city state of Metopia. Fucking Me-topia.
Naturally the main character is from here and is based on Tyra Banks. There is another character who we meet later who is also based on Tyra Banks though, so it can get confusing. Basically one character is based on Tyra Banks as a teenager, and is therefore super quirky and relatable, and the other character is who Tyra Banks saw herself playing in what she thought would one day be the movie version of the book. This second character is the very definition of a Mary Sue, but with some BDSM fetish mixed in there. We'll get to her shortly.
For now our story opens on the teenaged Tyra analogue: Tookie de la Creme. Tyra Bank has a bit of an ass fixation so you figure out why she's called that.
So Metopia is broken up into four quadrants, because one of the three books Tyra Banks has read is the Hunger Games (if you're keeping score at home the other two books she's read are Harry Potter and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). Tookie lives in the poor quadrant (natch) of Peppertown. This is where the factories are.
These factories are not heavy industry, however. In the world of Modelland everything relates to the fashion industry in some direct way and so do the factories, so they all manufacture high fashion dresses and accessories, apparently at scale. Everything is also super specialized. I don't remember what they make in Peppertown, but it's something like "Acessories" or "Hats". The entire industry in this self-governing metropolis is all just making one specific fashion item in bulk. Other city all make one specific item of high fashion.
Where any other manufactured goods come from is not explored.
Now initially the book has a kind of lemony snicket style narrator, with phonetically spelled worlds like "dah-ling" and addressing the audience directly. This is eventually abandoned in favor of a more standard narrative style, such that it is, but returns right around the climax.
This narrator explains, in classic shitty high premise fiction style exposition, that Modelland is the greatest place ever and everyone in the entire universe without exception wants to go there because it's great and everyone loves it, etc. etc. etc. It's a "city in the clouds". Modelland is actually pretty much the real main character so it makes sense to introduce it first. If I was advising someone who I was afraid to give actual criticism to and they so clearly wanted to write about this place and not the characters, I'd suggest they open by introducing the reader to that place so I see where her hugbox was going with it but it's executed literally as poorly as possible without just misspelling things.
So, now that we know that Modelland is coming, we finally meet our protagonist Tookie. Tookie is going through a relatably awkward puberty, and has all kinds of issues with her body. Things like no matter how much she eats, she just can't seem to gain weight. She's cursed to be thin forever! She also has CRAZY hair that has "multiple personalities" so one day it will appear in one attractive style and another day a completely different attractive style. She's also unattractively tall, and has two different colored eyes because of course she does.
Because of all these features Tookie is incredibly forgettable. But since this is Modelland this has to be expressed in the form of an asinine portmanteau (there are hundreds). Therefore Tookie is a "Forgettagirl" (capitalized every time) and the book uses the word like it's a real word, to the exclusion of all else. Tookie even signs her name Tookie de la Creme, FG. This is never explained except to note that it stands for Forgettagirl.
The narration would have us believe that being a Forgettagirl is basically being invisible. It treats it like some kind of magical realism, Jacob Two-Two shit where she's so forgettable that people literally cannot see her. However the actual plot has people constantly approaching her to initiate conversations. That's basically all that happens in the early sections set in Tookie's school.
It's worth noting that being "forgettable" to Tyra appears to just means not being the center of attention. Not paying enough attention to someone is basically ignoring them so thoroughly they might as well be invisible.
Tookie has like 8,000 boring conversations with people in the hall, all initiated by the other person, but the net of it is this: a rich girl named Zarpessa hates Tookie, Tookie has a crush on Zarpessa's boyfriend, said boyfriend/crush throws out a "vote for me" button for his own political campaign, Tookie fishes it out, and it has garbage covering all the letters on it except ones spelling "Tookie". She takes this as a sign from God that they're soulmates or something because she carries it around, garbage and all, for most of the rest of the novel.
Then school is over so Tookie goes to meet her only friend Lizzie.
Lizzie lives in a tree, eats from dumpsters, and cuts herself. Lizzie is kind of like a cartoon of a child with a messed up family as described by an alien. She gets committed a lot but then escapes to cut herself in a tree while wearing a hospital gown. Also her cutting is portrayed not as hurting herself because the physical pain numbs a deeper emotional pain, but because she has an irresistible compulsion that occasionally overcomes her for self harm, like a psychotic episode.
Tookie and Lizzie dream to one day run away some place that's soft, where there are no rocks where Lizzie can cut herself. Because Lizzie cuts herself with rocks. In this soft place they hope to open a high fashion factory, because it's all they know I guess. This is known as "Project Exodus".
So they talk about Project Exodus then Tookie goes home.
Suddenly shit gets real. Like up until this point it has been Wattpad nonsense about the least interesting people alive in fashion world. Then we get into Tookie's home life and suddenly it's a somewhat nuanced portrayal of a family unit centered around a narcissistic mother. There is nothing anyone can say that will convince me any of this came from Tyra's imagination, she has obviously actually been through some dark shit.
And it all comes tumbling out in like chapter 3 of her idiot Harry Potter meets America's Next Top Model YA novel.
Of course when I say "somewhat nuanced" I'm speaking relatively. It's still extremely broad in places. But in other places it isn't. In other places it's small and personal and way too real to have been imagined by the same person who wrote the rest of this novel. This is the section of the book that got me closest to feeling anything, although it was just pity for the author.
Tookie's father used to be an acrobat until he lost his eye after he performed a really elaborate trick that almost killed him, but then it didn't, but then when he took a bow for recovering so well he slammed his face into a sword.
Tookie's mother is Creamy de la Creme (oh yes). There are some early references, obviously added in a rewrite, to her always carrying around a realistic baby doll with her but this really doesn't become important until the climax. Creamy is a frighteningly psychologically realized narcissist.
Tookie also has a sister called Myrracle. She is very pretty and loves to dance. She's also supposed to use malapropisms to show she's dumb (like Ricky from Trailer Park Boys, or Little Carmine in the Sopranos) but Tyra Banks is too stupid to write them organically so they're so fucking stilted. It usually takes the form of changing the last word of an idiom, like "it's raining cats and frogs".
In the dynamic of their family Myrracle is the Golden Child, while Tookie is the Scapegoat (I told you it gets uncomfortably real suddenly). Creamy favors Myrracle in an extremely over-the-top way, like you might in an off-brand retelling of Cinderella, but when she is cruel to Tookie there are sudden flashes of realism. Creamy being nasty to Tookie is easily, without a doubt, the most subtle characterization in the entire book.
The de la Cremes all live in a crumbling, dilapidated mansion. The difference between the rich and the poor in the universe of Modelland is that rich people live in nice, well maintained mansions, and poor people live in old crumbling mansions so the de la Cremes are supposed to be read as generationally poor, not formerly rich but fallen on insanely hard times.
The family neglects Tookie and favors Myrracle for a while, then we move on to the Day of Discovery (usually abbreviated to DOD, but always capitalized).
Do you see what I was saying when I said there's no way this way ghostwritten? We haven't even gotten to Hogwarts yet.
So the Day of Discovery is the most important thing in the world of Modelland, because it is the day that Modelland chooses new students or "Bellas". Bellas who are picked go to Modelland, which is Hogwarts for supermodels, and if they graduate they become an "Intoxabella" which just means supermodel. In the acknowledgements Tyra points out that her agent told her the world supermodel was "over" so she came up with her own.
Except the Intoxabellas also have superpowers. They're all really funny and sound like someone trying to parody what a 50-year-old man would come up with for model powers. Stuff like "NeverThirty" the ability to de-age yourself back to 21 at will (the best one), the ability to shapechange but only into other beautiful women, or the ability to make any man want to have sex with you, etc. They all have asinine names and some of those names have accents. If you have all the powers you're a "7seven" because there are seven powers.
There are only ever seven Intoxabellas and they are the ONLY famous people on Earth. If you go to Modelland but don't become an Intoxabella you can use your powers to serve the school in some other way. But you can never leave. More on the unexplored dystopian implications of this later.
Everyone wants to become a Bella. Everyone. Without exception. The book goes out of its way to point out that all the women who come out to protest the DOD for being sexist and degrading all immediately throw down their signs and beg to be allowed to become Bellas as soon as the choosing process actually begins. There's a male campus too so no excuses. Literally, not figuratively, everyone wants to go to Modelland.
Therefore the DOD is the biggest event imaginable. In the days leading up to it it is all anyone talks about, and everyone prepares themselves. One of the best ways to do this is by getting a smize.
Okay so a smize is like a feathery thing that goes on your eyebrow, like what a drag queen might wear. It is described as being like 11 different specific shades of yellow (like "taxi cab" and "goldenrod"). It gives the wearer some non-descript boost to their Charisma ala Dungeons and Dragons. Having a smize increases your chance of being selected for Modelland by exactly 88%. This is extremely inconsistent with what we will later learn is the criteria for selection.
Don't ask me to further explain this next bit because it simply doesn't make sense. So the way you get a smize is, in the days leading up to the DOD, they come out of the water. The one time it's described a bubble just emerges from the running water in a sink and it transforms into the smize. So on all the days leading up to the DOD everyone constantly runs all the tapes and every other water source everywhere, across the whole world, because remember literally everyone wants to be an Intoxabella.
So the day before the DOD Tookie's parents have a fight. Tookie's father insists he can't be Tookie's real father, because she's too ugly. He has her toothbrush and waves it around, screaming about how he's going to test it to prove she's not his, and when he does he's sending Tookie away to be a slave in a factory.
Tookie overhears this and so gives Lizzie the signal that they're going through with Project Exodus tomorrow.
Unfortunately Tookie is needed to do her sister Myrracle's hair for the DOD, so Project Exodus needs to be delayed.
So on the day of discovery a bunch of superpowered "scouts" from Modelland come down and just snatch girls off the street to be in Modelland and literally put them in a giant burlap sack. You do not have a choice whether or not to be in Modelland, but luckily literally every person wants to join so it's all fine.
The flying magic people snatchers arrive, but Myrracle isn't being noticed! So in an attempt to help her sister for no reason Tookie climbs up onto a car with Myrracle to try and get the attention of the scouts.
But suddenly the car transforms into a dress, and a scout is wearing the dress. And to the shock of everyone but the reader the scout chooses Tookie instead of Myrracle! The scout grabs Tookie, throws her into a bag, and flies off.
Next: Bou-Big-Tique Nation or "When Are We Gonna Get To The Fireworks Factory?"
So Modelland takes place in a fantasy version of the modern world. Not an alternate history, or a science fiction universe with an identifiable point of divergence, it's basically just a more broadly drawn, stupider version of our world with barely any fantastical elements.
The setting is very important so I'm going to dwell on the world building at some length.
Countries have names that make it obvious what their real-world counterpart are and also are retarded. So China is Beijingle, Australia is Digeridoo, all of Scandinavia is Nordenswe, France is Tres Jolie.
The France bit is especially egregious because Tyra Bank is one of those insufferable people who think anything French is automatically classy and cultured, and so she name drops French shit constantly. But because France in this universe is called Tres Jolie we get shit like "Tres Jolie Braid" said with a straight face like every other page.
Now there are two exceptions to this naming convention. The second I'll get to in a bit, but the first is, I am not making this up, the city state of Metopia. Fucking Me-topia.
Naturally the main character is from here and is based on Tyra Banks. There is another character who we meet later who is also based on Tyra Banks though, so it can get confusing. Basically one character is based on Tyra Banks as a teenager, and is therefore super quirky and relatable, and the other character is who Tyra Banks saw herself playing in what she thought would one day be the movie version of the book. This second character is the very definition of a Mary Sue, but with some BDSM fetish mixed in there. We'll get to her shortly.
For now our story opens on the teenaged Tyra analogue: Tookie de la Creme. Tyra Bank has a bit of an ass fixation so you figure out why she's called that.
So Metopia is broken up into four quadrants, because one of the three books Tyra Banks has read is the Hunger Games (if you're keeping score at home the other two books she's read are Harry Potter and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). Tookie lives in the poor quadrant (natch) of Peppertown. This is where the factories are.
These factories are not heavy industry, however. In the world of Modelland everything relates to the fashion industry in some direct way and so do the factories, so they all manufacture high fashion dresses and accessories, apparently at scale. Everything is also super specialized. I don't remember what they make in Peppertown, but it's something like "Acessories" or "Hats". The entire industry in this self-governing metropolis is all just making one specific fashion item in bulk. Other city all make one specific item of high fashion.
Where any other manufactured goods come from is not explored.
Now initially the book has a kind of lemony snicket style narrator, with phonetically spelled worlds like "dah-ling" and addressing the audience directly. This is eventually abandoned in favor of a more standard narrative style, such that it is, but returns right around the climax.
This narrator explains, in classic shitty high premise fiction style exposition, that Modelland is the greatest place ever and everyone in the entire universe without exception wants to go there because it's great and everyone loves it, etc. etc. etc. It's a "city in the clouds". Modelland is actually pretty much the real main character so it makes sense to introduce it first. If I was advising someone who I was afraid to give actual criticism to and they so clearly wanted to write about this place and not the characters, I'd suggest they open by introducing the reader to that place so I see where her hugbox was going with it but it's executed literally as poorly as possible without just misspelling things.
So, now that we know that Modelland is coming, we finally meet our protagonist Tookie. Tookie is going through a relatably awkward puberty, and has all kinds of issues with her body. Things like no matter how much she eats, she just can't seem to gain weight. She's cursed to be thin forever! She also has CRAZY hair that has "multiple personalities" so one day it will appear in one attractive style and another day a completely different attractive style. She's also unattractively tall, and has two different colored eyes because of course she does.
Because of all these features Tookie is incredibly forgettable. But since this is Modelland this has to be expressed in the form of an asinine portmanteau (there are hundreds). Therefore Tookie is a "Forgettagirl" (capitalized every time) and the book uses the word like it's a real word, to the exclusion of all else. Tookie even signs her name Tookie de la Creme, FG. This is never explained except to note that it stands for Forgettagirl.
The narration would have us believe that being a Forgettagirl is basically being invisible. It treats it like some kind of magical realism, Jacob Two-Two shit where she's so forgettable that people literally cannot see her. However the actual plot has people constantly approaching her to initiate conversations. That's basically all that happens in the early sections set in Tookie's school.
It's worth noting that being "forgettable" to Tyra appears to just means not being the center of attention. Not paying enough attention to someone is basically ignoring them so thoroughly they might as well be invisible.
Tookie has like 8,000 boring conversations with people in the hall, all initiated by the other person, but the net of it is this: a rich girl named Zarpessa hates Tookie, Tookie has a crush on Zarpessa's boyfriend, said boyfriend/crush throws out a "vote for me" button for his own political campaign, Tookie fishes it out, and it has garbage covering all the letters on it except ones spelling "Tookie". She takes this as a sign from God that they're soulmates or something because she carries it around, garbage and all, for most of the rest of the novel.
Then school is over so Tookie goes to meet her only friend Lizzie.
Lizzie lives in a tree, eats from dumpsters, and cuts herself. Lizzie is kind of like a cartoon of a child with a messed up family as described by an alien. She gets committed a lot but then escapes to cut herself in a tree while wearing a hospital gown. Also her cutting is portrayed not as hurting herself because the physical pain numbs a deeper emotional pain, but because she has an irresistible compulsion that occasionally overcomes her for self harm, like a psychotic episode.
Tookie and Lizzie dream to one day run away some place that's soft, where there are no rocks where Lizzie can cut herself. Because Lizzie cuts herself with rocks. In this soft place they hope to open a high fashion factory, because it's all they know I guess. This is known as "Project Exodus".
So they talk about Project Exodus then Tookie goes home.
Suddenly shit gets real. Like up until this point it has been Wattpad nonsense about the least interesting people alive in fashion world. Then we get into Tookie's home life and suddenly it's a somewhat nuanced portrayal of a family unit centered around a narcissistic mother. There is nothing anyone can say that will convince me any of this came from Tyra's imagination, she has obviously actually been through some dark shit.
And it all comes tumbling out in like chapter 3 of her idiot Harry Potter meets America's Next Top Model YA novel.
Of course when I say "somewhat nuanced" I'm speaking relatively. It's still extremely broad in places. But in other places it isn't. In other places it's small and personal and way too real to have been imagined by the same person who wrote the rest of this novel. This is the section of the book that got me closest to feeling anything, although it was just pity for the author.
Tookie's father used to be an acrobat until he lost his eye after he performed a really elaborate trick that almost killed him, but then it didn't, but then when he took a bow for recovering so well he slammed his face into a sword.
Tookie's mother is Creamy de la Creme (oh yes). There are some early references, obviously added in a rewrite, to her always carrying around a realistic baby doll with her but this really doesn't become important until the climax. Creamy is a frighteningly psychologically realized narcissist.
Tookie also has a sister called Myrracle. She is very pretty and loves to dance. She's also supposed to use malapropisms to show she's dumb (like Ricky from Trailer Park Boys, or Little Carmine in the Sopranos) but Tyra Banks is too stupid to write them organically so they're so fucking stilted. It usually takes the form of changing the last word of an idiom, like "it's raining cats and frogs".
In the dynamic of their family Myrracle is the Golden Child, while Tookie is the Scapegoat (I told you it gets uncomfortably real suddenly). Creamy favors Myrracle in an extremely over-the-top way, like you might in an off-brand retelling of Cinderella, but when she is cruel to Tookie there are sudden flashes of realism. Creamy being nasty to Tookie is easily, without a doubt, the most subtle characterization in the entire book.
The de la Cremes all live in a crumbling, dilapidated mansion. The difference between the rich and the poor in the universe of Modelland is that rich people live in nice, well maintained mansions, and poor people live in old crumbling mansions so the de la Cremes are supposed to be read as generationally poor, not formerly rich but fallen on insanely hard times.
The family neglects Tookie and favors Myrracle for a while, then we move on to the Day of Discovery (usually abbreviated to DOD, but always capitalized).
Do you see what I was saying when I said there's no way this way ghostwritten? We haven't even gotten to Hogwarts yet.
So the Day of Discovery is the most important thing in the world of Modelland, because it is the day that Modelland chooses new students or "Bellas". Bellas who are picked go to Modelland, which is Hogwarts for supermodels, and if they graduate they become an "Intoxabella" which just means supermodel. In the acknowledgements Tyra points out that her agent told her the world supermodel was "over" so she came up with her own.
Except the Intoxabellas also have superpowers. They're all really funny and sound like someone trying to parody what a 50-year-old man would come up with for model powers. Stuff like "NeverThirty" the ability to de-age yourself back to 21 at will (the best one), the ability to shapechange but only into other beautiful women, or the ability to make any man want to have sex with you, etc. They all have asinine names and some of those names have accents. If you have all the powers you're a "7seven" because there are seven powers.
There are only ever seven Intoxabellas and they are the ONLY famous people on Earth. If you go to Modelland but don't become an Intoxabella you can use your powers to serve the school in some other way. But you can never leave. More on the unexplored dystopian implications of this later.
Everyone wants to become a Bella. Everyone. Without exception. The book goes out of its way to point out that all the women who come out to protest the DOD for being sexist and degrading all immediately throw down their signs and beg to be allowed to become Bellas as soon as the choosing process actually begins. There's a male campus too so no excuses. Literally, not figuratively, everyone wants to go to Modelland.
Therefore the DOD is the biggest event imaginable. In the days leading up to it it is all anyone talks about, and everyone prepares themselves. One of the best ways to do this is by getting a smize.
Okay so a smize is like a feathery thing that goes on your eyebrow, like what a drag queen might wear. It is described as being like 11 different specific shades of yellow (like "taxi cab" and "goldenrod"). It gives the wearer some non-descript boost to their Charisma ala Dungeons and Dragons. Having a smize increases your chance of being selected for Modelland by exactly 88%. This is extremely inconsistent with what we will later learn is the criteria for selection.
Don't ask me to further explain this next bit because it simply doesn't make sense. So the way you get a smize is, in the days leading up to the DOD, they come out of the water. The one time it's described a bubble just emerges from the running water in a sink and it transforms into the smize. So on all the days leading up to the DOD everyone constantly runs all the tapes and every other water source everywhere, across the whole world, because remember literally everyone wants to be an Intoxabella.
So the day before the DOD Tookie's parents have a fight. Tookie's father insists he can't be Tookie's real father, because she's too ugly. He has her toothbrush and waves it around, screaming about how he's going to test it to prove she's not his, and when he does he's sending Tookie away to be a slave in a factory.
Tookie overhears this and so gives Lizzie the signal that they're going through with Project Exodus tomorrow.
Unfortunately Tookie is needed to do her sister Myrracle's hair for the DOD, so Project Exodus needs to be delayed.
So on the day of discovery a bunch of superpowered "scouts" from Modelland come down and just snatch girls off the street to be in Modelland and literally put them in a giant burlap sack. You do not have a choice whether or not to be in Modelland, but luckily literally every person wants to join so it's all fine.
The flying magic people snatchers arrive, but Myrracle isn't being noticed! So in an attempt to help her sister for no reason Tookie climbs up onto a car with Myrracle to try and get the attention of the scouts.
But suddenly the car transforms into a dress, and a scout is wearing the dress. And to the shock of everyone but the reader the scout chooses Tookie instead of Myrracle! The scout grabs Tookie, throws her into a bag, and flies off.
Next: Bou-Big-Tique Nation or "When Are We Gonna Get To The Fireworks Factory?"
