Well, I was wrong about Tookie getting a SMIZE in this chapter. Instead, Tyra Banks attempts to address homelessness, self-harm, and mental illness.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Our narrator is back. Because nothing says "respectfully exploring real world issues" like a narrator who calls everyone "dahling." I had to suffer through her/his/its narration, so I'm going to share the pain.
Which could have easily been avoided if she weren't digging through trash for possessions of her future victim the boy she has a crush on.
Please, spare me the laundry list of cleaning products. I've had trash bags and diarrhea diapers leak all over me. All it took was some soap for me and detergent for the clothes. It was disgusting, sure, but it's not that bad.
I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND GUT YOU LIKE A FISH!
Tookie exits her last class of the day (which she decided not to skip). It's a class called Autology. It has a very stupid philosophy.
Because, they're all poor and are doomed to lives of misery. Get it? Get it? And if you don't, there are more anvils where that came from.
Since the book is trying to build sympathy for Tookie by making her suffer, the principal gets on the intercom and says that the water is being shut off due to the "SMIZE craze." Tookie is annoyed because she can't wash her hands off.
I'm annoyed because she just exited a class. That means she sat through at least one class with trash covering her before bothering to get cleaned up. Aside from pure stupidity, there's no reason for this. It's not like she cares about skipping class.
There were no lockers left when Tookie started school, so she improvised by using an old dumbwaiter. The dumbwaiter is big enough to hold her school books, novels, and a cooler. Aside from the lack of a lock, this is actually much better than a normal locker. It's certainly much bigger.
She takes some wipes out of the cooler and cleans herself off as best as she can.
She then grabs some strawberry whipped cream out of the cooler. The cooler also contains "buttermilk biscuits, plastic containers of sausage gravy, vanilla sandwich cookies, every condiment from spicy ketchup to Dijon mustard to mesquite, honey, and chipotle barbeque sauces." I've seen fridges with less food than that.
Tookie likes all food with the exception of chocolate. She dislikes chocolate because her mother once took her to LaDorno (the rich part of town), where the best chocolatiers in the world are located. Tookie ate so much she got sick in the car, since her mom refused to pull over. Her punishment was being "literally" grounded: having to sit and sleep on the floor for a month.
Add "literally" to the list of words Tyra Banks doesn't know the meaning of.
While walking away from her fully stocked locker, Tookie hears another student reading aloud from a newspaper about T-DOD.
What is it with Tyra Banks and characters named after butts?
Blah, blah, blah. T-DOD will have a huge turn-out.
We then learn more about Metopia, which is apparently a city. (I'd assumed it was a country.) It has four sections: Shivera, Pitter-Patter, LaDorno, and Peppertown.
Pitter-Patter? Last chapter it was spelled PitterPatter. Also, Dorno is masculine, so it should be IlDorno not LaDorno. Including Gratuitous Italian does not make you seem smarter if you get it wrong. I don't even know Italian, and I knew it was wrong.
This is really grating on me, so I'm starting a count for all the blatant mistakes. Blatant mistakes include the text contradicting itself, grammar/spelling mistakes, misusing words, and any other errors that could have been fixed in less than a minute with the help of the Great and Powerful Google.
Weather does not work that way! You do not get weather systems like that right next to each other. (No, I do not care that this is a fantasy setting. There is no mention of the weather being magical in nature, ergo, it is stupid.)
Remember, kids. Factories that produce fashion and beauty products are evil. Tyra Banks said so!
Tookie leaves school.
Frizzy hair does not work that way. It takes longer than two seconds to frizz out. (I have extremely frizzy hair. Trust me on this one.)
Because Peppertown is extremely hot, all the trees have crispy brown leaves, no birds are there and insects are absent. The sidewalk is even hot enough to burn your fingerprints off. Ouch.
We get a bunch of random interruptions of Tookie's walk. There's a newspaper article about a baroness who is on the run. She had run a "Yonzi scheme of sorts" and fled when she was discovered. (The term is "Ponzi scheme." Blatant Mistakes+1) Then we see two girls sitting by a fire hydrant that's spouting water.
Monique squealed happily. "Our chances will improve by forty-five-point-five percent! Not bad!
Truly Tyra Banks is a master of natural sounding dialogue.
The fog over the nearby mountain parts slightly to show The Eye of Sauron a glowing eye for a few moments before the fog covers it again.
One of Zarpessa's friends offers her a ride home (so she can see Zarpessa's mansion), but Zarpessa declines.
And yes, Zarpessa talks like that all the time. I've been sparing you so far. You're welcome.
Tookie sighs because she's forced to walk home. Why this is necessary when her mom owns a car is not explained. She looks down at the pavement and sees messages paint-stamped on the sidewalk that say "WHERE IS Ci~L?" and "WHERE THE HELL IS Ci~L?"
Woo-hoo! Time for another infodump.
What is a Triple7? (And, for that matter, what is a 7Seven? It really hasn't been explained beyond "models with vague magic surrounding them.")
Ci~L used to have her picture everywhere, but recently announced she wasn't accepting any new work. She won't even be the face of her new Jurk Perfume.
Gee, I wonder if that will be important later.
Unless you have a first person narrator, you really shouldn't be making value judgments in the narration. You don't need to beat the readers over the head with how evil your villains' actions are. The readers are smart enough to figure it out on their own.
I, for one, welcome our greedy industry overlords.
Oh, and servants get paid for what they do. The word you're looking for is "slaves."
Tookie goes down an alley between two factories. For some reason, this alley leads to an oak tree. Tookie's friend, Lizzie, lives in the tree.
Hoo-boy. This is the part I was dreading.
Lizzie is clearly mentally ill. She is paranoid, suffers from delusions, cuts herself, and has severe mood swings. (The mood swings may just be bad writing, though.) The girl needs serious help.
Tookie hasn't seen Lizzie in six weeks, so she is worried about Lizzie. Lizzie is there and drags Tookie up the tree.
O_o
Uh, okay . . .
Lizzie is shown to be twitchy and paranoid that someone is coming to get her. She is wearing a gown from the "shivera county hospital" stitched on it.* She was forced into The Melancholia Ward, which is said to be worse than the worst prison in the city. She has some burn scars from her time there, and was presumably the victim of some pretty horrific abuse.
But who cares about that? Lizzie isn't the main character, so we don't learn about that until we deal with Tookie's problems first.
Tookie shows Lizzie the button she fished out of the trash.
Tookie loved that Lizzie got her so quickly. No one else did.
I'll forgive this, since Lizzie is Tookie's best friend and people interpret much weirder things as signs all the time. I'm just hoping that the book doesn't actually treat it as a sign that Theophilus and Tookie belong together.
The subject turns to Theophilus' girlfriend.
My Theophilus? My Theophilus!?
Excuse me, Theophilus is not yours. You barely even know that guy. He is in a happy relationship with another girl. It's sad, but moping about it or getting possessive about it isn't going to change it. (And it only makes you come off as creepy.)
"What? What are you talking about?" Tookie prodded.
Lizzie leads Tookie to the only nice restaurant in Peppertown, Juan Jorge's, which caters to politicians. There, the two girls see several people dumpster diving. The people are wearing masks, but Tookie recognizes a girl wearing a "tattered comedy-tragedy mask" because of her familiar $5000 purse.
It's Zarpessa. Turns out that Zarpessa has been pretending to be rich, even though her family had lost her fortune. Lizzie believes that Zarpessa has been dumpster diving for years. How Zarpessa managed to get a $5000 purse and nice clothes while dumpster diving is not explained.
The talk about Zarpessa is interrupted when Lizzie has a psychotic episode. She mentions that "they hurt me", and that someone named Robyn was also hurt.
She then grabs a sharp rock and uses it to cut herself.
This is the best written scene so far. Although not great writing, Tookie is obviously upset about her friend's pain, and Lizzie comes off as genuinely disturbed. However, it's hard to take it seriously when the chapter opened with Tookie covered in trash, and the two girl's felt the need to talk about Tookie's crush on Theophilus before we explored Lizzie's problems.
Lizzie was missing for six weeks. Her problems are a hell of a lot more important than Tookie's stupid unrequited crush or hating Zarpessa for existing.
If it's undiscovered, it's a platinum deposit not a mine. And depending on the size of this deposit, it could be worth millions or billions. Tookie and Lizzie should sell the location of the "mine" and buy a nice house for Lizzie (along with a good therapist). But that would make sense.
Instead, Tookie and Lizzie plan on the "Exodus", where Tookie will run away from home and the two will leave Metopia, so they can scavenge off the land.
They talk about how they'll build factories (a whipped cream factory for Tookie, and a "grilled-cheese-dipped-in-jelly factory" for Lizzie).
"And Theophilus would be our mayor!" Tookie swooned.
"And we'd give our leftover lunches to Zarpessa as she waited outside every night in the cold ocean air for our staff's scraps," Lizzie said with a devilish grin.
ಠ_ಠ
So they want the guy Tookie has a crush on to be in charge, while his current girlfriend can just be homeless and beg for scraps at their door? You'd think Lizzie, who is also homeless, would have a little compassion for Zarpessa. But, nope!
Screw you both.
Tookie tells Lizzie she's not sure if she's ready to run away from home yet. Tookie then finally tries to get Lizzie to tell her what happened at the hospital, but Lizzie becomes paranoid and decides to leave.
Cue shippers!
May I suggest "Lookie" as a name for the Lizzie/Tookie ship, and "Thookie" for the Theophilus/Tookie ship?
As Lizzie leaves, she picks up another sharp rock. With that, the chapter ends.
Blatant Mistakes
Prologue:- +1 for Tookie De La Crème when it should be Tookie de la Crème.
Chapter 1:
- +1 for misusing the word "contradiction"
- +1 for misusing the word "ironic."
- +1 for Theophilus saying his second sentence to Tookie which was really his fifth.
Chapter 2:
- +1 for Tookie sitting through a class while still covered in garbage.
- +1 for misusing the word "literally".
- +1 for inconsistent spelling of Pitter-Patter / PitterPatter.
- +1 for LaDorno instead of IlDorno.
- +1 for "Yonzi scheme" when it should be "Ponzi scheme".
- +1 for not capitalizing "shivera county hospital". (It's even at the beginning of a sentence.)
Total so far: 10
Comments
, so she could've been trying to create a "fantasy feel" by changing the name around. So, yeah.
. No mention of it having to pertain to flight.
- reads the liveblog*
