I decided to lump these together because we need all the SMIZE answers, and we need them TODAY.
[Ed. We got a SMIZE answer from commenter I Rell Vatch: “ Thanks to the Power of Pedantry, I can offer at least a smidgen of insight into the SMIZE lottery. Increasing one’s chances by 91% doesn’t mean you have a 91% chance of being selected, it means whatever your base likelihood of being selected is not quite doubled. A mid-tier candidate who has a 50% chance of being selected on their own has a 95.5% of being chosen if they find a token. A completely “no” candidate who has a 1% chance of being selected normally would have a 1.91% chance with the token.
How this is a recognizable thing that nonetheless can be acquired in the shower, I have no clue. Nanobots that give you a trackable RFID tag once ingested?” Now, having just finished Chuck Tingle’s Bury Your Gays, the nanobot thing has me a little paranoid. But thanks, I Rell Vatch, for the math!]
First, the narrator tells us about Tookie’s house:
Ah, the De La Créme residence! A splendiferous, luxurious palazzo of a dwelling with a marble façade, grand archways and columns, wrought-iron balconies at its second-floor bedrooms, and a fountain in the center of the yard, complete with a nude male statue with rippling musculature.
But, the narrator warns us, it’s not all it seems:
What’s that? There, in the corner, in the foundation near the koi pond and the birdbath made of bronze. That zigzagging line shaped like a witch’s profile. Is that…a crack? And there, next to the crack, that silvery mass crisscrossed on the stucco—that can’t possibly be duct tape? Watch your head! Did a chunk of slate just fall off the roof?
I continue to struggle to understand what’s so allegedly bad about this book, apart from the bit where it’s a celebrity novel. This is Terry Pratchett-level description here.
My only issue is that the narrator has a habit of telling us stuff that’s already in the non-narrator bits of the chapter. Literally two paragraphs later:
Tookie walked up the seven stairs to led to her front door, tripping on the crooked third step. Another piece of slate broke off from the roof and fell to the ground, nearly slicing her skull in two.
Why tell us about the slate falling off the roof if you’re just gonna show it happening less than thirty words later? My working theory is that the narrator parts were from Tyra’s original draft and notes, and they were worked into the overall book by the ghostwriter. And if that’s the case, it’s a goddamn tragedy that the narrator’s voice didn’t continue through the entire book.
The repetition continues once Tookie goes inside:
But if one were to go around the room with a not-very-strong magnifying glass, it would soon become clear that duct tape, electrical tape, caulk, industrial-strength glue, and other binding agents held the walls upright.
Not only has the duct tape thing been repeated from the narrator’s description… this is just unnecessarily long. This is a weak spot in the writing that keeps popping up. “duct-tape, caulk, and industrial-strength glue” would have gotten the point across fine. And really, the point had already been gotten across by the narrator, so…
It’s time to meet Tookie’s mom! When Tookie gets inside, she finds her mother, Creamy, throwing out perfectly good produce if it has even the most minor flaw.
Her other arm held Bellisima, a lifelike baby doll dressed in a multilayered butter-yellow dress with lace trim, complete with a pacifier in her mouth.
This woman is using a loupe to examine produce while cradling a reborn doll. Tell me we weren’t absolutely robbed of seeing this on screen.
Today, Mrs. De La Créme—or Creamy, as she insisted everyone call her, including her children—wore a perfectly tailored white one-piece pantsuit with dramatically pointed shoulder pads and a cinched belt to accentuate her small waist.
Creamy is the regional manager for a beauty store, which is why Tookie’s family lives in a nicer house with newer things (even though the house is falling to pieces). Most people work in factories in Metopia.
And though her body and soft, lineless, tan-skinned hands were remarkably well-preserved, her face was a different story. Thick makeup clumped heavily in permanent lines on and around her mouth. Deep crow’s-feet fanned out from the corners of her eyes all the way to her ears. Even her nose was covered in wrinkles.
Is this not a Roald Dahl character? Look me in the face and tell me that this isn’t a Roald Dahl character.
That’s why I think this ultimately fails as a YA. It’s too cartoonish for an audience that’s seeking more realism. As a middle grade, this would have become an instant classic.
Tookie’s value to her mother is basically having small enough fingers to get pickles out of jars. No joke. And, like everybody else, Creamy has all the fucking water on all over the house.
Every year, on the eve of T-DOD, the world’s reservoirs ran dry because everyone kept their taps open, looking for a SMIZE.
I see you, critique of the global effects of fashion on our planet’s climate.
The news is on, reporting about a group of girls who fought each other to the point of hospitalization in an abandoned pool when they spotted a SMIZE floating around in it.
The screen showed the girl who’d battled for the SMIZE and won. She was covered in pond scum and had a mix of black muck and blood all over her face and body, but she held a glittering, golden glasses-shaped object over her head and whooped with glee.
The SMIZE looks like glasses. I repeat: the SMIZE looks like glasses.
Via the TV still being on, we learn that there are no leads in the disappearance of that one model with the name that’s shitty to have to type out. Then, Myrracle comes dancing in with her friend…
Brian.
Dude is in a book with characters named Creamy, Tookie, and The Myrracle, and he’s Brian.
Sorry, Brian.
In the grand tradition of best friends the world over, Brian and Myrracle have a dance routine. They show it off to the unimpressed Tookie and Creamy, and Myrracle ends with a “‘Da-tahhhh!”
“Myrracle, baby, it’s not da-tah—it’s ta-dah. And what have I told you? Every hallway is a runway, not a dance hall! What you need to be doing is practicing your walk!”
“But I love dancing.” Myrracle pouted.
“Yes, honey, I know. But you don’t love it better than becoming an Intoxibella, do you?” Mrs. De La Créme shrieked.
Now, at this point, I will fight someone in the street for criticizing this book in any way. However, I can admit that there are a few flaws. One is that I’m on chapter three, and I need a fucking glossary to keep some of this terminology straight. There are Intoxibellas, who are models, from what I understand. But there are also models who are 7Sevens, but some are Triple7s? This might have been a case of “pick one, stick, and move.”
Brian says that he thinks being a dancer could help Myrracle in the T-DOD, an acronym that I’m only just now realizing doesn’t make any fucking sense. The-Day Of Deciding? What the fuck is the hyphen for?
“What I have to do first to prepare is to get my dancing to perfectness-ness. That way, I can pose the best of the rest in a vest and pass the test and be the guest and walk with zest unlest they want me to walk from the east to the west and…” She launched into a tap number.
Myrracle, if you don’t get chosen, you can always write for Drag Race. Or headlines for the New York Post.
Mr. De La Créme comes in and praises Myrracle’s dancing because he’s a former dancer himself. He’s younger than Creamy but past his prime and is even more of a Roald Dahl character than his wife:
He closed his left eye, which was made of glass, an unfortunate souvenir of an acrobatic performance gone awry many years ago when he was The Incredible Chris-Créme-Crobat and not just Christopher De La Créme.
The Jealous Patrons Clubhouse door shatters inward as a furious Feyre barges into the neighboring recaps and screams at yet another father for being disabled. [Ed. If you haven’t read the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps, they’re here on the blog and over at the Patreon.]
Mom and Pop have a fraught marriage. They fight over money and infidelity in the span of two pages. One of those pages also includes an update on that Baroness, who apparently also caused the De La Crémes to lose their fortune.
Realizing we’re reading another book about a suddenly impoverished family with a disabled father, Jenny tries desperately to barricade the shattered clubhouse door. An ash arrow explodes through the wood beside her eye.
Creamy tells Tookie to make her some tea, and Tookie tries to remind her mom that she doesn’t actually like tea, but Tookie has a speech impediment whenever she tries to talk to her mother directly. Her stammer when speaking to Creamy is so bad that they tried speech therapy to clear it up in the past, to no avail. So, Tookie does exactly what her mom tells her to and makes the tea.
But something comes out of the faucet.
Brace yourself.
The small yellow bubble began to expand, filling half of the kitchen sink. Then it changed color, from spicy red to sooth blue to emerald-green and, finally, to a plethora of yellows. It was strangely beautiful. Tookie carefully picked up the bubble with her hands. And then, before her eyes, the bubble flattened itself and transformed into a cellophane-thin, golden cat’s eye sunglasses without the frames.
A SMIZE is a pair of Elton John’s sunglasses, and I will brook no argument from here on out.
Tookie looked from her sister, Myrracle, to the true miracle that had taken shape in her hands.
Ouch, sorry, Myrracle.
A SMIZE.
That’s the hook that leads us into chapter four.
Tookie is shocked that a Forgetta-Girl would find a SMIZE. I’m still not sure if a Forgetta-Girl is a thing Tookie made up or if it’s something these monstrous, beauty-obsessed nightmare asshole people actually call kids. But that’s not why we’re here today, okay?
The SMIZE was made up of ornate eye-shadow-like flourishes in strokes of taxicab-, Dijon-, baby-chick-, banana-, and lemonade-yellow.
I wonder what Tyra Banks’s favorite color is.
Thinner than a sheet of paper, it was surprisingly heavy, and seemed to hum ever so slightly as it rested in Tookie’s palms.
The SMIZE isn’t just a golden ticket for T-DOD. It’s the thing upon which this entire famiy’s future rests. Their house is falling apart, their mom spends money on stupid shit like tea kettles when she doesn’t even drink tea, and they’ve pinned all their hopes on Myrracle getting chosen. They put the SMIZE on the counter and everybody stares at it.
Soon the SMIZE began to shake. Waves of yellow of every shade popped out from all sides.
A miniature flag emblazoned with a SMIZE then deployed from the middle of the object, fluttering in its own mild breeze. Words began to scroll through the air.
There is no chance that this thing doesn’t immediately give you cancer.
The words greet the family by name, causing Daddy De La to freak out about all the patch jobs the SMIZE can see in their kitchen. Creamy reads the words aloud, which are a combination of instructions and scathing personal insults:
“‘[…] Perhaps you’d be able to rid yourselves of this ramshackle asylum should your spawn reach the pinnacle of success.'”
Okay, one of us just oozed out of a damn faucet, but have a hoity-toity attitude if you’re gonna, I guess.
“‘Might I bring your attention to the myriad of golden colors on the SMIZE. When choosing your attire for The Day of Discovery, pay close attention so that your ensemble complements and does not clash with this precious SMIZE specimen. Many of the left-behind nine percent of SMIZE holders during previous Days of Discovery deviated from dashing dress design decisions. You have been warned!'”
Be a ho, but make it fashion H2T. No dreckitude. Got it. [Ed. What the fuck? I don’t “got it.” What does that even mean? Did I have a stroke back in 2023 and I just forgot about it? This sounds like something a queer person would write, but like, not this queer person, because I’m not cool.]
A siren blared, and fine print with no spaces between words scrolled almost faster than Mrs. De La Créme could read:
“‘Now for the rules:
Now for the rules?
The wearer of the SMIZE must only wear it in the Day of Discovery Square. It must only be worn by a female.
This is pre-cycle twenty. [Ed. Cycle, or season, twenty of American’s Next Top Model was the first to include male models.]
Do not inform others that you possess a SMIZE.
Um. The news is like, reporting who has them. This better be addressed.
Although a SMIZE comes from water, do not get it wet.
Or what?! I’m not sure this thing is safe to have in your house. [Ed. Let alone be on your face.]
“‘Violation of these rules may cause serious side effects: face-aches, nausea, vomiting, blurry vision, visions of fashion-police brutality, designer knockoffs knocking you upside the head, stinging bees in your hair bonnet, biting wolves in cheap clothing.'”
Yeah, this fucking thing is definitely giving you cancer. [Ed. The Skyrizi of it all.]
The words disappeared, the colored ribbons and the flag retreated, and the SMIZE let out what sounded like a contented sigh.
I assume the sigh is the noise of the nerve agent being released.
It’s a good thing that Myrracle has a SMIZE now, because her family has been putting like, bonkers amounts of pressure on her to save them by getting on. And Myrracle… she just wants to dance.
Eight crowns hung from hooks on the wall in Myrracle and Tookie’s shared bedroom, each saying THE MOVER OF METOPIA in glittery letters across the front. Myrracle had won the Mover of Metopia contest every year she’d competed—it had become so predictable that few in Metopia even bothered entering anymore.
Their daughter is such a good dancer that she’s won this city-wide contest for almost a full decade, but they’re putting all their stock in her randomly becoming chosen to be a model?!
Creamy tells Tookie that she’s going to have to come along on this massive shopping trip to get Myrracle ready for T-DOD, because they’re going to need someone to do up buttons and zippers and pick dresses up off the floor. Again, just cartoonishly selfish and neglectful in a way that does not work in a YA novel, but would have been perfect for a middle grade.
So, that’s the story on the SMIZEs. Definitely raised more questions than anything answered, though.
Before I leave you, I want to point out something kind of weird in these two chapters. Like uncomfortably weird. In chapter three, Myrracle is described as being thirteen but looking “womanly,” and it’s noted that she’s gotten her period and Tookie hasn’t. Then, in chapter four, Myrracle mentions that she’s on her “periodical” and has to be corrected. In response, she mocks Tookie for not having gotten her period yet.
Myrracle never resisted an urge to remind her that she had gotten her period already, even though she was two years younger.
I’m not against age-appropriate references to human bodily functions. I just think it’s really fucking weird that it got brought up in two consecutive chapters, apropos of nothing, because… we really didn’t need to know that Myrracle gets her period in the first place. Why was it included?
My prediction: cessation of menstruation will be the first indication of SMIZE-related illness. There’s no chance that thing isn’t radioactive. No chance.
