currently reading modelland which is tyra banks' YA novel from 2011. this book is so strikingly weird in its visuals. it feels like shaun tan's the arrival and the uglies series had a baby and the baby was bad but there was something fascinating about the baby that made you want to read it. it is also very hard to follow because it feels like it was dictated. i do think tyra actually wrote it instead of having some ghostwriter editor do it because no one else would write like this and it's genuinely magnetic. i keep doing other things and then going god i can't wait to go back to reading modelland.
what the fuck is going on with the smizes. they're like... spontaneously generated orbs that are released into the dystopia's water so it like incentivizes everyone to waste water and swim in sewage for the chance to have one because it bestows a magic power that means you can become a famous fashion model. and then when you find a smize it like expands like a ponyo spell in your hands and turns into glasses that make you beautiful??
another wrinkle is that the world of modelland has nations. one of them is france, but the first guy from that nation who we meet is a homunculus with a giant human hand for a head. he's the only one like that so far so i don't know. another nation has ONLY people with albinism, which is really confusing because they explicitly point out that their whole nation-state has a ton of life-threatening health complications because of it
unfortunately i have a lot further to go before i know all the secrets of modelland
No, we never know when ManAttack will happen.
Still obsessed with how the view count of Tyra’s song for Modelland shot up ten fold in like a week when everyone realized it sounds insane
