So, a while ago, I did a video that was the top ten books I hate that everyone else loves. And that one was books that everyone seems to really be into. Like, the general consensus is very positive, and I just don't like them. Like, for one reason or another, I just couldn't stand them. Like, I had the giver, the road, things like that. And this one, as the title suggests, is gonna be the other way around. These are books that I don't necessarily love. I'm not saying that there are no problems with any of these, but I do view most of them in a positive light. There is one entry on this list that I think is bad, but the general consensus for it is like way worse than I feel it should be. And that's basically all these. Like, the general consensus for them is way more harsh and negative than I would have thought it should be, but, you know, just I feel that there's more positive stuff to be said here. Because obviously this is always going to be subjective, it's always going to be a matter of opinion, and I'm not saying I don't understand why people don't like some of these, because again, like, I recognize the problems with a lot of them, and I'll go over those. But sometimes I just, I just don't care about the problems, or I look at them and say, yeah, that's not great, but why are you people so harsh on it? Because, I don't know, in this day and age, it seems like people will have a mild distaste for something, and then they'll just get locked into an internet echo chamber where they're constantly trying to one-up each other for how much they hate it and how bad they think it is. Like, it's this bad. Oh yeah, it's actually this bad. And just trying to go more and more ridiculous with it until by the end they've just bought into their own hype, essentially. And so they genuinely hate it with a seething passion when before they just had a mild distaste for it. Like, that seems to happen a lot. And I don't see it getting better anytime soon, but whatever, that's not important. We're about to start now, and there will be spoilers for everything I mentioned here, so be aware of that. Like, there's chapters here. You can just skip to the next one if you find something you don't want to get spoiled. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Starting off the list here at number 10, we're gonna have The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. This is the prequel to The Hunger Games, which the movie of it is coming out later this year. Maybe it'll be good, maybe it won't be. And this one is odd to me because I read it and I was a little disappointed for like the first third to half of the book because, like I said, it's a prequel to The Hunger Games and I wanted it to be about like the origins of Panem, the original Rebellion, and the origins of The Hunger Games, but that's really not what it is. It's about the origin of President Snow, the primary villain of the original series. And once I got over that this book was not what I wanted it to be and I just took it for what it was trying to be. I realized, okay, what it's trying to do, it's doing extremely well. Like upon hearing the setup for the story, you would probably just assume that, okay, it's gonna try and make President Snow out to be all sympathetic. And he'll be like, oh, I only became evil because my dad was mean to me. And at first it does kind of seem that way. Like it's like, oh, I suffered so much during the rebellion. Can you believe how much I suffered? It's not like they suffered really. Like they just started it for no reason.  And especially once you get to the ending, you're like, oh yeah, this dude was always just crazy.  Like he's just always been entitled and he has always wanted more than he has. And when I realized that, I was like, okay, this is a more interesting villain origin story than I originally thought it would be. There are so many parts in this story where it seems like it's going to go like a really traditional route and then it just goes in a completely different direction. Like the romance, it seems like it's gonna be traditional. Oh, we come from two different worlds, but we just are attracted to each other and we wanna make it work. But it turns out much, much different because again, Snow is just a psychopath and he's willing to sacrifice her in order to go back to his old life where he has wealth and riches and everything. And so once you understand that, you understand why he's willing to go to such crazy lengths to keep the districts under control and why he fights until the bitter end in the final book. And on top of that, I just appreciate it because for a while, The Hunger Games was the biggest book franchise in the world by a huge margin, like Suzanne Collins could have shout out 100 prequels and sequels and spin-offs and everything and people would have read them and she could have cashed in on that like crazy but she decided not to. You know, like she wrote a prequel and it wasn't a super marketable prequel that the fans were clamoring for. It was something that she wanted to make and had a part of the story that she wanted to tell and it does add to the original story. So I don't know, I just appreciate it for that. Number nine is gonna be Bleach. That is Bleach the manga series, not Bleach the thing you clean clothes with. Now, this is a series that for whatever reason has gotten a lot of hate over the years and I don't mean like people dislike it or they just aren't into it.  Like a lot of people just despised it so much and back then I didn't understand why. Now like again, I see there's problems with it but I still don't understand why. Like it is at least on the surface a pretty standard shonen battle manga story.  On the surface that does seem like very traditional shonen stuff and in a lot of ways bleach is. I'm not trying to say it's like completely subversive or completely different or anything but it is different in some key ways. Like for example, the main character Ichigo is not a kid like a lot of them are or at least a lot of them were at the time that the series was written because some of this doesn't seem quite as innovative now because it's like 20 years later but still Ichigo is not a kid he's a teenager and he's not like super energetic and optimistic and just wanting to go off and like be a Pokemon master or whatever like he's surly and at the beginning it seems almost like he's forced into his role as a Shinigami and he's forced to go around and help save people and it's really satisfying to watch him grow from somebody who has this responsibility thrust upon him and looks for any excuse to get rid of it into somebody that accepts it and just decides yeah he wants to do his part to help save the world and that's great. On top of that the artwork is just fantastic like again this is a manga series so I have to talk about the artwork or well I guess I don't have to but whatever the artwork is fantastic because they say a picture is worth a thousand words in Bleach a lot of them are worth like three or four thousand I mean the way that he can draw characters and give them just so much emotion and so much history in a single panel is incredible and yeah admittedly he does like to not draw backgrounds which is kind of obnoxious sometimes but I'm willing to put up with that because that just means he has more time to spend on giving detail to the character models and everything and that's great and then the fights are all amazing too like the amount of time between them is perfect they all get the perfect amount of hype and build up you know it's not just getting thrown out there so we're just being hit with a bunch of noise all right in a row they get a little repetitive but I mean it's not that big a deal like there's only so many different ways you can have dudes swinging swords at each other anyways like it it didn't bother me that much like the fact that the fights are similar is fine because the build up to them and the emotional payoff and everything for them is also fine but on top of all that Bleach is a bit smarter than people want to give it credit for like for a while I've been contemplating doing a video about how Bleach is really all about religion specifically how religion works in Japanese society and culture and I might do it at some point I don't know but basically one of the ideas I would put in that is that the series has a lot of really strong Buddhist themes in it like the idea of balance is a huge part of the story like it's not about killing the bad guys in a lot of cases it's about finding a way to coexist with them which often times means like killing the leaders of the bad guys and everything but it doesn't mean subsuming and destroying and taking over other groups like and this is all represented in the character of Ichigo himself because at the beginning he's a human and then he has his shinigami powers thrust upon him and at first he doesn't want them he tries to get rid of them but no matter how hard he tries he just can't get rid of this it's a part of him whether he likes it or not and it's only once Rukia gets taken to the soul society and he has to go and rescue her that he finally accepts these powers and realizes okay I need to accept this part of myself in order to save my friend and he unlocks his Zanpakuto and achieves his true potential like he's not giving up his humanity he's just merging his shinigami powers with his human side and so they achieve balance and then later on he finds out okay he also has hollow powers at first he tries to subsume that part and destroy it and cast it out and that doesn't work so what does he do? again he like embraces it and makes it a part of himself and brings it into harmony with the other parts and then in the final arc we have the same thing with his Quincy powers and while yes it is definitely a bit of an asshole that all of this is him like this clearly wasn't planned from the beginning and you could say that about a lot of parts of Bleach to be honest like once you get to the final arc like yeah some stuff does come together and it does come to a head but it doesn't feel like oh yeah this was all written out from the beginning however it still works because the arcs all thematically build on one another and do tie into that idea of balance you know and even on top of that I do kind of like how a lot of the world building is not overly explained like it's just kind of hinted at and a lot of the characters don't understand it that much so it gives you the sense that this world is much bigger and deeper than we see on the surface it's just enjoyable that's all I really like Bleach number 8 is Light Lark and I just want to remind you all I don't necessarily like everything on this list I just think that the general consensus is way harsher than it should be and Light Lark I've done multiple videos on it you can go watch them if you don't believe me I do not like this book it is a freaking mess the characters are I was going to call them two-dimensional I think it might be more accurate to call them the outlines of two-dimensional characters the world makes no sense and the plot just meanders all over but overall I would just say that yeah it doesn't make sense and most of the pieces don't fit together but that makes it nonsensical it doesn't make it horrible you know like it's bad because like yeah the character personalities are great, the story is kind of a mess and doesn't really lead anywhere until like the very end and the world doesn't fit together well so like I couldn't get into any of this but that doesn't make it horrible like I wasn't actively offended by any of this except that it wasted my spare time which I have increasingly little of as my life goes on but the thing is everyone just despises Light Lark and YouTube it seems I don't know why people feel the need to make like multi-hour long video essays on how awful this book is because like yeah it's bad and yeah you can point out all the ways in which it doesn't make sense but I just can't summon the hate for it like a lot of others seem to and I don't know if I can explain exactly why maybe it's just because I do like some of the ideas brought up here you know the idea of like an island being hidden by a storm 100 years at a time and that storm lifts and then people can travel there in order to fight in a tournament and try and end the curses which have afflicted their kingdoms for hundreds of years now like okay that could be that sounds cool okay I can't explain exactly why but it sounds cool and then a lot of like the individual bits of world building and some of the individual plot points do sound cool on their own it's just that the way they're put together doesn't make sense and they're usually not written in such a way which justifies their inclusion in the story so it doesn't fit together and as such it's a bad book but I just can't summon the hatred that everyone else has for it I I don't know I just can't and for number seven we have Rhythm of War this is the fourth book in the Stormlight Archive the most recent one as of the time in this recording and in my personal opinion the second best in the series because Way of Kings is still the best for me but the Rhythm of War is like right below that and again I understand a lot of the problems people have with this those books are crazy long to begin with and Rhythm of War is the longest by a decent margin I think it's around four hundred and sixty thousand words that is insane like how could you possibly just even write that and call it a single book that's like an entire series it's it's absolutely ludicrous I can't I just can't and large parts of Rhythm of War straight up didn't need to be there or could have been condensed significantly like I've heard from people who said like yeah it's at times one of the most boring books I've ever read and I I feel you on that one like I was into some of the subplots like I was into Calladin pulling a die hard and just trying to fight bad guys in the magical tower I was into that I was into Calladin also trying to essentially invent therapy and become the first psychiatrist in this world I especially like that because like it makes it clear that Calladin has not gotten over his problems and he probably never will like becoming better and healing is a process that never ends it's a road that just continues forever and that ties really closely into one of the central themes of Stormlight Archive which is journey before destination the journey is what shapes us and they're like I got that put on my arm for a reason I mean not the journey is what shapes us but whatever you get my point it's a quote from the Stormlight Archive and Calladin having to do this it invent this therapy idea is part of that theme it ties into it very well and then other parts of it were really obnoxious but then we also like learn more about the world and we learn a bit more about the nature of magic and you know just things like that which are really cool so I was into that don't get me wrong but it is really long and at times really really boring and at times it feels like almost like a commercial for later books as opposed to just being a book right now but then you get to the ending and the ending is insane like the main villain of the series the evil god named odium is killed by taravangian who is a minor villain in the series and then taravangian takes on all his powers and taravangian is far smarter than odium and also seems to have a lot more self-control than odium ever did and so he's way more dangerous like we see in the epilogue he's the first person to ever outsmart hoid like hoid has been 10 steps ahead of everybody else throughout the entire cosmere including in the stormlight archive and at the end hoid at the end he gets outsmarted by taravangian and I mean I can't help it that just caught me so off guard like taravangian stabs him with the magic sword and then takes on his powers and it makes total sense like it's not the first time in the cosmere that somebody has taken on the power of a shard after killing their host like I'm sorry if you don't understand what I mean by that but I just I do not have the time to go over a lot of cosmere lore in this video we just we just can't but the point is like it makes sense it was properly built up to and foreshadowed like they mentioned that taravangian has to have really strong emotions and very strong intellect at the same time and so he's the only one that can not only take on the powers of odium but control them so that makes perfect sense and I just really want to know what happens next like the fact that this is an epic fantasy story where the primary villain dies less than halfway through it just makes me want to know what happens next I'm sorry I just loved the ending of Rhythm of War so much that it blows all the other problems I had with it earlier out of the water number six love Hina and also if you're wondering why my thumb is so stiff here it's because I sprained it yesterday so I'm just trying not to move it right now hopefully I don't have to go to the hospital because that's expensive but yeah love Hina and again I want to emphasize I don't necessarily love all of these but love Hina I do have a soft spot for you know it is a really dumb harem manga from the 90s right it's about a guy who tries to get into university and he keeps failing and he goes to live with his grandmother but finds out that his grandmother runs a dormitory full of a bunch of other girls who live there and he just now lives on his own with a bunch of girls like it's something that probably sounds very familiar to you if you have seen any anime or read any manga over the past like 30 goddamn years it's a harem story you know how it's gonna be there's gonna be stupid hijinks there's gonna be some romantic tension or at least what passes for romantic tension in most manga between the main character and a whole bunch of girls there's gonna be like risqué shots there's never actually gonna be any full on nudity and characters are never gonna be allowed to actually have sex but they will be surrounded by it you know how it is but the thing about that is that after a long time it just became a cliche which has been so done to death that even joking about how it's been done to death has been done to death but back in the 90s when love Hina first came out that wasn't the case these tropes hadn't been beaten into the ground yet and so they were still relatively fresh and at the time I read it it was still relatively fresh to me as well you see something becomes a cliche when people stop trying to justify it and just start throwing it into the story because they feel like well it's what you're supposed to do like that's what makes something a cliche really as opposed to just being something that you've seen before and love Hina was made again at a time where this hadn't really been faked into the entire industry yet so the author Ken Akamatsu was actually trying to justify it you know he was actually giving the character some personality and even though they do ridiculous things and go through ridiculous hijinks and everything their personalities do usually justify it and this odd world that it takes place in also justifies it and so I didn't find myself hating all the weird jokes and everything as much because like it feels like there's a bedrock it feels like there's a foundation there even the tsundere trope which I despise because it usually just boils down to a girl is really mean to somebody but he is still in love with her and still treats her very nice and does everything great for her I don't know I don't like that cliche I don't like that archetype but it is done at least passively in love Hina and on top of that I can't help it it's just a cute story you know it doesn't go on forever it is a reasonably short manga and I just liked watching the main couple fall in love and at the end they get married and it genuinely warms my heart and I had a couple of really dumb laughs along the way because the humor here is extremely juvenile I'll admit and I don't know it's not that deep I just I was into it and if I read this today I would probably not like it very much but again that's just because I've seen similar things done so often but this was done back when they were still fresh and they were at least trying to do something good and different with them number five is going to be the inheritance cycle aka Aragon now this one years ago I did a video on it explaining why I really liked it even despite all its flaws and I stand by pretty much everything in there you know it is basically the best Star Wars with dragons you know like the story is pretty derivative but it was written by a 15 year old like yeah what would you expect no one is going to write something super world changing and unique when they're 15 like you've all seen the two and a half hour video I made years ago about the crappy novel I wrote when I was 15 like Aragon is leagues beyond anything I could write at the time well yeah it is basically just the original Star Wars trilogy but with dragon riders instead of Jedi the books are pretty long and they use that extra time to do different stuff for example it spends a lot more time really hammering home that Aragon is just a farm boy who is in way over his head like in the first book he can't read at the beginning he has to be taught how to read later on in the story and other characters are like oh yeah I guess it makes sense he wouldn't know how to read and that is just a small detail but number one it makes sense in this world because like yeah again he's a farm boy why would he know how to read but probably more importantly than that it illustrates that this kid is just being thrown into the deep end you know he has all these powers and the responsibility that comes with those powers thrust upon him kind of out of nowhere and he has no idea how to deal with it you know he doesn't know how to use magic he doesn't know how to fight he doesn't know how to read he doesn't know how to navigate all these politics and he's probably going to have to be the leader of a new dragon rider order and he knows that from pretty early on in the story but he has no idea how to do that and so it's really satisfying to watch him learn to do all this over the course of the story I mean if Aragon had just said oh I got these powers cool show me how to use them and then he'd been like super happy and he just somehow knew how to read from the beginning and he somehow knew how to fight at least a little bit from the beginning then it wouldn't really hammer home as much that yeah this kid is going to be in trouble and he needs all the help he can get and on top of that the world again it's derivative cliched but it has depth to it and it has breadth to it there are a lot of different races and cultures and locations and I did really like how at the end it breaks away from the traditional hero's journey format because again the original Star Wars trilogy has that where the hero leaves home, goes on an adventure, comes back home grows over simplification but that's the general idea and then Aragon though in the final book he realizes I can't go home like I am a completely different person than I used to be and even if I wasn't I have all of this responsibility I can't just abandon that so I am not that farm boy anymore and at the end he leaves home forever and that was just different I liked it and also the romance between him and Arya is also very different it didn't work out between them because Arya was never really into him because he was just really young he's a young child and she's over 100 years old and she just has a much different view of the world than he does so it's almost like a small school child having a crush on someone much older than them and on top of all of that I just really liked that Aragon got me into fantasy like if I hadn't read this I don't know if I would have read a lot of other stuff that I've loved over the years so for that reason I just love it number four is another series of books that I have made a video defending in the past sort of and this is The Mortal Instruments again I made a video on it but that one I just concluded that The Mortal Instruments is fine and I'm talking about the original trilogy there which is City of Bones, City of Ashes and City of Glass I am not referring to the 18 shit gazillion prequels and spin-offs and sequels that Cassandra Clare has written because in contrast to Suzanne Collins who wrote The Hunger Games and just kind of left it at that because she didn't feel the story needed more Cassandra Clare saw dollar signs and just decided to keep pumping out more and more and I believe she's still writing more today and I mean I guess if people are buying them then sure more power to you but it just really detracts from the story when you have the original trilogy and like everything wraps up and they're like oh no actually there's more after that there's a lot to complain about here I hate Jace the main love interest of the story I hate him he is an asshole to everyone and the story treats that as like oh he's snarky because his dad was mean to him he has to have this harsh exterior in order to hide the sweet sensitive soul that's inside except they never show us the sweet sensitive soul so there's not a whole lot to like about him there I did like some of the world building like them putting runes on their skin in order to give themselves power was kind of cool but the way that the different races like vampires and werewolves and shadow hunters all coexisted was pretty cool as well I like some of that I did like the climax at the end where Claria confronts Valentine but then at the same time again there's many more problems like how they're supposed to be demon hunters but they do very little demon hunting the weird pseudo incest subplot is bizarre and not handled super well the main romance isn't great but at the same time there's just there's genuinely stuff I liked here you know I liked that other characters also got to have romances which were fairly well written it wasn't just Jason Clary being focused on all the time like the other side characters and other members of the main cast also got to have their own little love stories which were halfway decent I did like some of the fighting and action bits there wasn't a whole lot of them but they were cool I did like the villain Valentine there's not a lot to him but he has some cool bits and like I said I like the climax of the series at the end where Clary manages to summon the angel whose name is escaping me right now and just uses him to take out her dad I did like the pseudo incest plotline that was kind of weird but I did genuinely feel bad for Jason Clary because they think that they're siblings for a while and they still have this really strong attraction to one another and they're trying to fight against that and just like they're not sure how to deal with it like I did feel bad for them and I think that was the point but I think the main reason I have a soft spot for the mortal instruments even though so many other people have just hated on them for years is that I've also seen a lot of other young adult fantasy over the years and let me tell you it can get so much worse like a lot of young adult fantasy like thrown of glass and such is just so soulless and so paint by numbers and so just not even trying that I look at something like mortal instruments which has a lot of flaws and a lot of stupid bits and a lot of things and cringe but at the same time it does feel earnest enough that I just have to say you know what you were trying something there and plus it has a pretty equal focus on romance and like the actual story you know it doesn't just have romance overtake everything like again a lot of young adult fantasy does so I feel like I should hate mortal instruments more than I do but honestly just comparing it to what it could be I just don't I think mortal instruments is fine number three is the death cure and that is the death cure is in the final book in the maze runner series and you could kind of put just the series as a whole on here but the thing is people will generally think the first two books are fine and you know I'll defend both the books and the movies they're pretty different from another but they are enjoyable in their own ways but talking about the first two books people will point out plenty of problems which I agree with like how the world building makes very little sense and the story doesn't have a great setup even if like the events and the pacing and everything are pretty good and working towards the end goal is pretty good and the mystery in the first book is pretty good like people will point out problems but then also point out the positives so the overall consensus on the maze runner books is yeah they're alright there's a couple people that really like them a couple people that really hate them but they just think yeah they're okay except for the death cure which a lot of people seem to hate and I'm not sure why because at the end Thomas realizes along with some others that they're not gonna be able to make a cure for the flare virus which is essentially a zombie virus if you haven't read them or seen the movies and all they can do is take the small percentage of people who are immune take them somewhere far away so that they can escape the collapse of civilization and then they just wait for the rest of the world to die and then they can rebuild and it's a bit of a downer ending yeah and I think that's part of why people don't like it they just don't like downer endings they prefer something happier which I mean if you do more power to you but I also think part of the reason people don't like it is because they were mistakenly thinking that Thomas the main character was working towards making a cure and then he doesn't do it at the end but Thomas wasn't like the villains were working towards making a cure and they were torturing all the characters in order to do so and Thomas was just trying to save himself and his friends and in fact in the last book he straight up comes out and says I don't care if we have to let the entire world die it is wrong to torture people like this and that's you can disagree with that I probably would if I that he was a real person but you can't deny that that's a very strong uh trait let's say for a main character to have and going into the ways in which the movies are different than the books like again I do enjoy the movies but I didn't like the ending of the last one quite as much because in the last movie there is actually a cure that's made like it's made from Thomas's blood but it's just it comes way too late and it doesn't actually save anybody like the cure but then he and the others have to go off to an island away from everybody else and then they're still waiting out to the death of humanity and it seems to end kind of ambiguous like oh maybe Thomas will go out and try to make more of the cure in order to save people but like obviously there's nothing after that in the story so we're not going to get more and I feel like that kind of misses the point of the ending of the book because there's a scene in the movie where he just really dramatically yells there is no cure and they like show that in every fucking trailer before it came out but the thing is that was the point you know in the book at least that that was the point there is no cure no matter what they did they weren't going to find a cure for the flare virus like sometimes things are broken and you can't fix them all you can do is get out of the way like we all pay for the mistakes of others we we pay for the mistakes of powerful people who live now we pay for the mistakes of our loved ones who live now we pay for the mistakes of our ancestors who died hundreds of years ago like we're still feeling the ramifications of some of that and there's no avoiding that sometimes all you can do is get out of the way of the disaster and like that is the message at the end of the death cure or at least the one I took from it and that's a very powerful one so again in addition to the ending catching me off guard because it really did I just really liked that it made me stop and think for a while number two is an ember in the ashes and despite being number two on this list I don't think I have a whole lot to say about this series like it is overall good I think like I wouldn't say it's amazing with the exception of the first book which I genuinely think is great but overall it's like yeah I enjoyed that and I don't have a whole lot of justification why other than that it feels very earnest because again this is another young adult fantasy series and again I've seen just how awful those can get and at ember in the ashes does follow a lot of the like cliches we would expect from that genre nowadays but it does them like kinda similar to the moral instruments it does them earnestly like at the beginning of the first book main character girls grandparents are killed like her parents are already dead long ago and her older brother gets kidnapped and she escapes and so she goes on this quest to rescue her sibling which is something we've probably seen a lot like that's just the Hunger Games still echoing throughout the larger culture but anyways the point is she's going out to save her sibling and she does that by being a spy in a place full of wealthy people which is again something we've seen a lot but hey at least it feels earnest you know and that's the thing everything that happens in these books feels earnest like the characters don't feel like they're just meant to feel an archetype they feel like a person who just happens to fit into that archetype and also breaks away from it in some small ways not in big ways but in small ways the storyline and the world building as well also feel like yeah they're following stuff we've seen before but it does break out of it in some small ways and there is justification for it so like that's what I mean when I say it feels earnest at the end of the day on top of that it's not generic medieval European fantasy world it is based much more on Middle Eastern mythology and folklore which is a little bit different at the very least that's kinda cool I did like that but probably the number one thing which really just made me actually get into this series and care about what was happening is that it doesn't half-ass the fact that this is a very dangerous, deadly situation that the characters are in and a lot of them are going to die there are a lot of books especially ones aimed at younger audiences where they try to act like things are super deadly dangerous but then they will not have any characters die or they'll have one maybe two die near the end or they'll just have like one die at the very beginning to show oh look anyone can go but then everyone is just fine after that you know what I mean whereas Ember in the ashes people meet horrible fates throughout you know like the villains do not shy away from the fact that they're committing a genocide throughout half the series and people are on the receiving end of that and sometimes they get like heroic last stands where they get to be the heroes one last time before finally succumbing and then they manage to let their friends escape other times they just die and it doesn't really lead to anything like sometimes the villains just kill them to make a point and again because these are actual characters that I was kind into I felt bad for them and I also felt bad for the main characters who like they're losing their friends and loved ones so it doesn't half-ass it you know it doesn't pretend to be dark and gritty and then act all light-hearted and sweet like thrown a glass often did it is just kind of a dark story at times or I say kind of again there's a genocide here like it is a dark story and it doesn't shy away from that but at the same time it doesn't revel in being dark and gritty it is just characters trying to find light in the darkness you know that that's where the title of the series comes from it's an ember in the ashes like it's all dark but there is one little spark of hope which you can use to start a fire and the number one book that I love that everyone else seems to hate is the dinosaur lords I've mentioned this multiple times like I read this series a little over a year ago and I've brought it up several times since then because it's a it's a great series it unfortunately it's only half of a series really because the author wrote three books and then died before the next three because he planned for there to be six and that is very unfortunate but the first three are just so great that I don't care that much you know it is as the title suggests it's about knights who ride dinosaurs and fight each other and they also fight evil angels who bring down hordes of undead well not exactly undead but we'll get to that in a minute and religious fanatics to just exterminate all of humanity and that's awesome I can't help it that's just awesome it actually surprised me after I finished reading this series and I looked at other reviews of it online to see that people didn't seem to like this one that much it got pretty mixed reviews and it never really took off in terms of popularity either which is I think the main reason why we're not seeing the rest of them like you know they could hire somebody to finish off the series but that's just not going to happen because it's not that popular it's not gonna make much money but it's just it's so good like one thing I really appreciate about it in addition to just having a bunch of cool shit because again it's knights riding dinosaurs what's not to like about that one of the main villains is a knight who rides an albino t-rex named snowflake into battle that just makes my inner 10 year old go oh yeah it's so cool but one thing I do appreciate on top of that is that it's not really a fantasy story it is a fiction story disguised as a fantasy story because this is kind of a cliche at this point but it comes to light over the course of the story that this is some point far in the future and they're not on earth they're on another planet which was colonized by humans and all of the magic we see is actually just very advanced technology like the evil angels who are trying to wipe out humanity are implied to just be some sort of androids it's it's weird but okay kind of interesting and it's it works better than a lot of other things that try to do this because normally it's like a big twist near the end of the story where it's like oh my gosh it's science fiction it was earth all along what that's crazy but it's usually even if it's foreshadowed it winds up detracting from a lot of the story whereas in this case it is none of the characters come right out and say it because none of them seem to know it it is just hinted at from the beginning and if you pay attention you can figure it out yourself and go oh okay that makes sense but why is the world like this and instead it just opens a mystery and that mystery is part of why I wanted to keep reading and unfortunately we never got it you know revealed but still it's cool all of the fights and battles in here are just fantastic especially the giant battle at the end of book 2 that's just straight up one of the best I've ever read and if we just count like battles in epic fantasy that would have to be easily top 3 I think there's not many others that would go about that it is amazing and part of the reason it's so amazing is because this series does like a different take on a zombie apocalypse formula for a while which is not something you see often like zombie apocalypse is something that has been done a lot it's been done to death but it's not something you see that has any real changes to it most of the time it is usually stuff we've seen 100 times over but this was different because a grey angel comes down and starts a grey angel crusade which is you know go out and kill a bunch of sinners and a lot of people join with him out of like genuine religious devotion they're like oh yes we have to go kill the sinners we shall do that yes of course and then some people feel coerced into it like I don't want to join but there's an angry army that says join or die I'll just join up with them and go along with them which it's hard to blame them for doing that and then there's a whole bunch of people who are just straight up brainwashed by the angel like and they don't turn into mindless husks like you imagine when you hear zombies like they are still themselves they have all the same thoughts and they can still talk and use weapons and tools and everything they're exactly as they were before except that they just have this insane religious fervor inside them and they will not stop until they've killed everyone in their path as the angel tells them to like you can cut off their legs they will crawl after you and try clawing you to death with their bare hands like it's scary to think about but it is way different than any other zombie apocalypse thing I've seen before and so that's when we get the giant battle at the end of book 2 where a whole bunch this just a gigantic horde of these people is coming up against an army and the giant horde is also getting the locerefters and the angel is riding in in dominus rex which is like a t-rex but bigger and just it's so cool like at the end of the day that's what this boils down to like a lot of people just thought the dinosaur lords was stupid I didn't care it was just there's so much cool stuff it makes me giddy and I loved it and I really wish we could see an ending to it we're not going to but you know what journey before destination you know I just love the dinosaur lords so much and if you don't like it bite my shiny middle ass and I don't know do you have anything like this you know book series or comic series or anything like that where everyone seems to really dislike it the general consensus is sharply negative but you just really like it or otherwise you just don't see where all the hate comes from you know just I don't know let me know down below and also rate the video and comment and subscribe on it because I'm supposed to say that at the end here and also follow me on social media and stuff look at me promoting myself like you're supposed to and yeah that's about all have a nice day goodbye wow you you're still watching I I mean I guess I appreciate it but I'm not sure why I mean at this point all that we have left is all these names here these are my patrons and including my ten dollar and up patrons Appo Savilane and Olivia Ray and brother Santotis Buffy Valentine Carolina Clay Dan Anceliovic Dark King Dawn Dio Echo Flax Carcat Kitsune Lexi DeLorm Liza Rutakova Lord Tiebreaker Microphone Mist Boy Peep the Toad Robi Reviews Sad Martigan Celia the Vixen Stone Stairs Tesla Shark Vei Victus and Wesley these are all great people you know let me just let me tell you if you want to get your name on here then consider donating to me once a month become a patron or if you don't feel like doing that or you just can't because you know you're like poor or whatever no shame in that then just you know rate the video comment on it subscribe share it around spam it to all your friends and yeah goodbye


Hi, everyone. So glad you could join us for another episode of Adweek's Most Powerful Women in Sports. I'm Lisa Granitstein, and it's here where the world's greatest marketers, media pros, athletes, and coaches share their remarkable career journeys and how they achieve peak performance. We'd also like to hear from you. So hit us up with your questions. Today we'll be speaking with soccer great Carly Lloyd. We'll hear from Carly on grinding to glory and what it means to play with head and heart. Carly is a two-time Olympic gold medalist and two-time women's world cup champion. Known as the clutch player, Carly scored the gold medal winning goals in the finals of 2008 and 2012 summer Olympics. In all, she spent 17 years with the U.S. women's national team retiring in 2021. Endorsement deals include an impressive roster of brand partnerships such as Nike and Volkswagen. Carly also is the author of the 2016 New York Times bestseller when nobody was watching my hard fought journey to the top of the soccer world. Lots to unpack here. So let's dive in. Carly, welcome to the show. Hi there. Good to chat. It's good to chat for sure. So let's start from the beginning. We have so much to get into here but I want to know where did you grow up? Tell us a little bit about that and how you got into soccer and who was your biggest influence. We'll start there. Yeah, so I grew up in Delran, New Jersey which is a very small working-class neighborhood, nothing special. Everybody knows everything about everyone. It was my roots. It was where I grew up. I had so many friends and neighbors that I was outside playing with around the block and just a really special childhood. I played any in all sports. My parents got me involved with soccer at the age of five. They also signed me up for swimming, softball, basketball and they also signed me up for piano and ballet and dance and it was torture getting me out of the house to go to those recitals and practices. I absolutely hated it. So it was a very good indication to my parents that sports were my thing and soccer. There was just that love for the ball. It was almost love at first sight and I just brought a ball with me everywhere. I went to my friend's house, my aunt's house. I was always practicing on my own and that's really what shaped the foundation for me. Wow and that passion really turned into a career. Obviously you went to Rutgers, you were on the team, you went through some of the different camps and the different programs and you write a lot about the fact that this was no fairytale. It was as you said freaking hard. In what way would you say that? I mean what don't people know about what it means to be an athlete at this level? Well when you're young and you're just playing on teams there's nothing to do but just play. It's for love of the game. There's nothing that really gets in the way of that. You're not an adult dealing with outside distractions, you're not dealing with the media, you're not dealing with business endeavors and just the pressures of having to perform day in and day out. It's just fun and as I've climbed the ranks and I've gotten through college and then onto the professional scene it's not as glamorous as people think. It is very very hard. I have talked about it openly in my goodbye letter and the player's tribune called it so hard to say goodbye. There's so many things that you have to navigate and you have to still perform at your best and there's things that are unpredictable. There's coaches who bench you, there's injuries, there's failures at major championships, there's losses. There's dealing with so many other things and it's really really challenging and that's why very few make it and I think the biggest thing that's gotten me through is that I just have always loved the game. I've always played for love of the game and that has always stood at the top of the mountain top aside from anything else. You're also known for your work ethic and your determination. Where does that come from? Was it just something you had to work on or was that always part of you? No, it wasn't part of me. I would say the will and the dedication and that inner motivation was always there for me but I didn't understand how hard I needed to work. I didn't love running when I was a youth player. I didn't understand the importance of running but when you get to the professional level and you're then immersed with the best players from all over you really need to be able to separate yourself and thrive and continue to perform. I had to learn that my work ethic always had to be there. I had to be the hardest working player at every single training session, every game, nothing else mattered but to give it my all for my teammates and so I think that over the course of my career just became my DNA but I had to work towards it. I had to get myself fit. I had to do all of the things that no one ever sees, run in snow, run in heat, run in rain, get up really early before a flight and get a workout in. It never stopped and I grew to love running and just pushing me to become a lot more mentally strong so it was definitely something I learned a little bit later on in my career but it's the biggest thing that kept me on the national team for so long.  You guys both take the hard road and it could be so easy just to be quiet. Why do that? Why go there? You know it's funny. I've played for 17 years on the national team. I was always different. I always went against the green not for any other reason but for what I believed in and what I thought was authentic to myself and I was never afraid to voice my opinion. I was never afraid to be different and I'm proud of that. I'm proud to have spent my 17-year career doing it the way that I wanted to do it and going out the way that I wanted to do it and speaking with Hope, things just kind of come out. You talk about a certain subject and it's not groundbreaking news. We won a bronze medal in Tokyo and we were disjointed the whole tournament. We didn't play well. We weren't a team. Collectively we weren't on the same page so this isn't breaking news. I just think that no one wants to speak about it and in order for the culture and the mentality of the team to change it's important to talk about it because there's a lot of younger players that won't talk about it because they're a bit scared to. I feel like it's kind of my obligation to help make the national team next generation of players continue to play for that that way and that mentality. People have a lot to say these days. So with that, and I do want to talk about the culture and ways to change it, the women's soccer is going through so many changes right now. There's waiting on a new commissioner. There's a whole slate of new coaches. There's new teams even. What is it going to take to change this culture? Let's talk also about the equal pay settlement, which I know you're not so wowed by but let's talk about all that. Yeah, I'm all about doing things the right way and sometimes doing things the right way is going to take time and you have to build things from the ground up. You don't build a building and put the roof up. You build the building with the first layer of brick and then you just layer brick after brick after brick after brick then you put the roof on. What people don't understand is you can't half-ass things. You can't do things the wrong way. What we're finding with the NWSL, the National Women's Soccer League, and some of the things with the national team that we've been going through on the equal pay front is things just weren't done the right way. Now it's like we've had all these issues come out and now it's like, okay, we're in year 12. Now we have to put all these things in place and it just doesn't work that way. We're almost now starting at year one because the things weren't done in actual year one. So my hope is that this is a lesson for all, that it's not about what things look like from the outside in. You can't have all these flashy things and sponsors and this and then your team not have a field to practice on or proper field to practice on. Everything's a bit backwards. So my hope is that this is a reset and teams, organizations, owners, they all start to figure it out because you have to do things slow the right way and just build it year after year after year. On the equal pay front, yes, it's definitely a historical moment. It's been a long fight, it's been six years of this and what I've said in various podcasts with Hope and Lexi Lallis is there's still a ways to go. I'm in this newly fresh retirement phase and I'm not expecting to have gazillions of amount of money where I can just put my feet up and not do anything. But we're not really prepared for the future. We're not as professional soccer players. We leave the sport and then that's it. There's no health benefits, there's no retirement funds, there's no pensions, leagues all across the country, NFL, Major League Baseball and I'm sure the NBA, players have these pensions that are set up. If we don't invest in our own retirement, we will not have anything. So it's a historical moment but we still have a ways to go and my hope is that in the next coming years, players that retire will have some sort of security because we are retiring in our 30s, close to 40s. This isn't a 55 or 65-year-old player that's retiring from the sport so we still have a lot of years left and it would be nice to be able to have some of those benefits. Do you see yourself getting involved in more of the legal battles to do that or is that for maybe another generation to fight another player? Yeah, I've been talking about it a lot with our Women's National Team Players Association. I've been mentioning it a lot. I know some former players have had to sue the Federation when they have retired because of all the injuries that they've had. You're not protected. We give everything to the sport and our bodies take a huge hit. In order to avoid that, we need to set up something that can help provide that. I think that that is obviously on the next generation of players. I don't know how we get there. Even in the National Women's Soccer League, hopefully we can get there at some point. I've always been hopeful and would help in any way possible, but I think that that's definitely a big thing. Do you think it's harder now to be a professional athlete or now or when you were coming up, especially in women's sports? I think now is harder. The first half of my career was without social media. You just played. There wasn't much outside noise. Then second half of that, you've got more people invested. You've got news outlets and coverage, which is great because that's what we want. Then you have the social media world. You have the critics. You have the doubters. You have people that just want to slap labels on you, people that want to push certain narratives against you and whatnot. It's really hard. It's a really, really hard world to navigate. That's why I think it's so important, which I've spoken upon on culture of a team. It's so important to collectively have the will to win championships be the biggest focus because as soon as players start to have other things that become bigger than that, that's where the problem lies. It's a very, very tough world to navigate. It's amazing the opportunities that some of these players are having, being able to earn extra income, being able to make posts, being able to build the brands. I'm all for that. I'm the first to admit I've built my brand. I've done commercials. I've done shoots. I've done endorsements. My number one focus was always that I'm a professional soccer player and that is my ultimate duty to be the best version of myself, to help my teammates win.  They have a lot to navigate. It'll be interesting, but I'm definitely rooting them on. What was it like to watch the Olympics, the Winter Olympics and actually the Summer Olympics with both Michaela Schifrin and Simone Biles going through their struggles, through their performances and taking heaps of social media abuse? You must have been really feeling for them. You get a lot of that too on social media. That must be really tough. Oh, yeah. The block button comes in really handy. It's just like I just don't have time for negativity. If you have the audacity to write something that is just so degrading, you deserve to be blocked. I don't need to see that. Dealing with and seeing Simone and Michaela, those two sports are, those are like prime Olympic sports. They have the weight of the world on them. I couldn't imagine. They're so successful. They've been champions through and through. We as athletes, we aren't always on top. There's days where we perform amazing. There's days where we're average. There's days where we're poor and it just happens. We're all humans. I just don't think people understand that. There's so much that goes into preparing for a moment like that. There's so much pressure. I was really, really proud of Michaela and even Simone of just how they dealt with it. People can be really cruel. We as athletes are doing the impossible. We are a very select few that actually reach this top. For people to have the audacity to say the things that they do, it's just a shame. I wish the world were kinder and nicer and unfortunate. What sports do you like to watch? We'll start there. What are you watching these days? What's fun for you? I actually, I do watch some golf. I used to think golf was very, very boring. Your husband plays golf. He does, yes. I'm always like, man, why do we have the golf channel on? I've really grown to like it and I'm going to start golfing as soon as the weather breaks and gets nicer. Golfing, I watch NFL. Soccer obviously is big. I tune into any and all sports that I can. Tennis is fun. I enjoy watching tennis. I'm a sports fan through and through. What about growth areas for women in sports? Where do you see the next big sport? Is there one on the horizon? I would have to say I'm a bit biased. Techball, one of my sponsors. Techball really just took off in the last couple of years. It's a table, almost like table tennis, but it has curves and it's with a soccer ball. But they are trying to become an Olympic sport and ESPN is airing a lot of the games. It's really fun to play. It's really hard, but I see that sport on the horizon. I'm going to have to look that up. I've actually never heard of it. Wow, okay. We're almost out of time. Two more questions for you. What would be the best piece of advice you'd give to women now entering the sports arena? We'll start with as a pro athlete and then maybe if there's front office you want to share. Speaking on the experiences that I went through and I don't know how to have it all figured out, but what's worked for me is staying true to myself, really valuing that. I think right now in a world that we live in, it's very hard to get pulled in so many different directions. It's really hard for some people to stand alone and not follow the crowd, but it's been the most rewarding and proudest accomplishment that I've ever felt at the end of my career to really go through 17 years and to have been my true authentic self. Another thing I would say is just competing against yourself, worrying about yourself. So many people want to compare themselves to others. They want to judge and say, oh, that person isn't as good as me. Just focus on yourself. Put all your time and energy into being the best version of yourself and you'll really start to thrive and you'll really start to become a better version of yourself. I think that that is so incredibly important. Another thing, the last thing I would say is there's challenges, there's obstacles, there's setbacks, there's so many things, but I really believe we grow as human beings when we face those head-on and when we use them as opportunities. They can be the biggest teaching tool ever in our life, and it's okay to be uncomfortable. It's okay to go through some challenging situations, but just be open to growing and learning from them. So what's next? What's next for you? What's next? I've got some things down the pipeline that can't really share at the moment, unfortunately, but staying involved within the game, I don't want to leave the game altogether. So definitely men's World Cups, women's World Cups, things with US soccer, broadcasting perhaps, maybe a book on the horizon, and from a personal standpoint, just enjoying time with my husband, family, friends, nieces, and in the very near future, starting a family with my husband. So that's some goals as of now. That's some big goals. Well, best of luck. This has been fantastic. I really appreciate it. Before we go, I just want to get your takeaways, and then we will send you on your way to do whatever's next. Yeah. So I touched a couple, two and three, I touched on a little bit, but my number one, better every day. That is my motto. That is something that I lived for every single day of my career. There were good days or bad days. There were some days I didn't feel like getting out of bed. There were some days where it was easy to get out of bed and go work out, but I just always remained focused on doing something every single day to just be better every day. And it doesn't have to be a two-hour thing, or it could be 15 minutes. It could be 10 minutes. It could be reading a book that can help you make you better. So that's a big one. Number two, competing gets yourself, only worrying about being the best version of yourself. Like I said, you can spend all your time and energy worrying about all these other people, but the best way to continue to make yourself better is to just compete against yourself. You're just trying to be better than you were the day before. The last one, turning setbacks, challenges, or obstacles into a positive and opportunity to learn, grow, and become better. Like I said before, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to fail. Don't be afraid to be challenged. Don't be afraid to fall. Just get back up again. Tackle it head-on and use it as an opportunity. There's so many lessons that we can take away in life, mostly from our own experiences and from others' experiences. So it's very important to use those as an opportunity. Carly, thank you so much. This was awesome. Thank you. Thank you. So next time, we'll be back for most powerful women's sports on March 9th with Naz Aletaha, the global head of League of Legends e-sports. So hopefully we'll see you then. Until then, have a good rest of the week.


In today's video, we're exploring tattoos. The method of permanently adding ink to the human body by applying it underneath the outer layer of the skin. We're experimenting with some of the ancient origins of this art and attempting to make our own tattoo from scratch. Tattoos today come with a lot of stigma, but younger generations are getting more and more tattoos and this perception is beginning to change. As of right now nearly half of all millennials in the US have at least one tattoo. Of the four millennials that make up the HDMI team, half of us have tattoos, myself being one of the ones without. Still unsure if I'd be willing to get one myself, I was able to find a willing guinea pig among the team. Hi, I'm Joey. I'm typically an editor at How to Make Everything.  I've never gotten a stickin' poke tattoo before, but I'm very excited to do this. But perhaps by the time this is done, I'll be willing to commit myself to this. Everything we use comes from 8,000 generations of collective innovation and discovery, but could an average person figure it all out themselves and work their way from the Stone Age to today? That's a question we're exploring. Each week I try to take that next step forward in human history. My name is Andy, and this is How to Make Everything. Be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss the next step in this journey. If you're like me and are hesitant at the idea of making long-term permanent alterations to your body, the sponsor of today's video might interest you. Today's episode is sponsored by Inkbox. Inkbox makes realistic-looking temporary tattoos that last one to two weeks. Their semi-permanent technology sets them apart from the shiny temporary tattoos we had as kids. They have a huge catalog of designs from the world's top tattoo artists. They also offer a freehand ink for those who want to draw their own design directly onto a skin. Head to the link in the description to check them out. I sat down with Rishim from Inkbox to learn more about the science behind permanent and temporary tattoos. I've never tried a tattoo before. I've bought it. Just kind of jump in with two feet and that's it. So what is Inkbox? They're temporary tattoos that last about one to two weeks. They react and stain the top layer of your skin. As your skin just naturally regenerates, they fade away. You said that it's just on the top layer. Is that kind of the same as like you know those glittery tattoos you'd get in like a quarter machine or is it different? Totally different. So those tattoos would actually just sit on top of your skin. It wouldn't actually penetrate any of the layers.   Where in between the skin would that be? There's like the outer layer pretty much like a really thin outer layer of your epidermis and then your dermis. It would fill the epidermis which would be on top of the dermis. What layer of skin is like a real tattoo in? Ink from an actual tattoo will sit on the dermis. So the dermis is actually underneath the epidermis. The skin in the dermis is a lot denser which is why it can hold the ink a lot better and it doesn't actually regenerate. It doesn't need to. You have stick and poke tattoos. Do you have you done them to yourself? I've done one to myself. Okay how was that? It actually wasn't bad. I thought it would hurt a lot more than it did and I actually liked that I could be in control of my shirt and you know everything and it stayed very well. I have a little X on my ankle. Like a year now and I thought it would kind of just like reject out but I actually got it down to that dermis layer so it actually stayed. So how do you really know how far to go? You kind of just have to feel it out. Okay. One thing you'll notice is once you're going along and you kind of wipe the excess ink away you'll see sort of what's staying and when it's really light it's about going over and over again until it's a thick enough line that you can actually physically see it. Okay well thank you so much for that interview. Joey you got this! First up, some history. The oldest known tattoos exist on Otsi, the Iceman, the 5,300 year old body of a Bronze Age man found in the Alps, mummified by the cold. His body was so well preserved that the scientists were able to identify 61 different tattoo markings in 19 different places on his skin. It is theorized that the tattoos were created by puncturing the skin with a knife or other sharp object and rubbing charcoal onto the top layer. So not all that far off from the modern technique of pushing a needle and ink in Otsi just didn't go as deep. The 19 different clusters are thought to have possibly been for medical reasons as most of the clusters are located over joints on his lower back that he was suffering from joint and spinal degeneration and would be experiencing aches and pains. Tatooine has been seen in numerous cultures around the world such as ancient Egypt believed to be connected to the religious ceremonies with markings discovered on preserved mummies like the priestess of Amunet. In ancient Greece and Rome, tattooing was used for identifying prisoners and slaves. Many other cultures around the world developed tattooing as a part of their culture often using similar techniques of using needles made from wood, metal, bone, or even porcupine quills. Their designs have specific meanings and purposes used to signify their coming of age, protection from harm, represented in achievement, and many more. Traditionally their tattooing is most often made with soot or charcoal as these materials were often believed to ward off evil. While practiced by many cultures around the world with different methods and forms, they all accomplished the same process of inserting an ink under the outer epidermal skin allowing to permanently remain. So first up, let's get the item we'll be using for a needle. After a chance discovery on the side of the road while vacationing in Wyoming, Dan, our camera guy, found a dead porcupine that offered a unique tool. So usually I'm the camera operator for the show but we need this porcupine quill and I found this dead porcupine. So I'm gonna grab one. Let's do this. It got me in the glove. You would not want to do this without gloves. Let's go. Porcupine quills are recorded as being used to apply tattoos by the Mandan tribe in North Dakota using charcoal ink. Meanwhile, Lauren checked out a local tattoo artist to learn a bit more on the now modern methods of tattooing. Okay, well we're at Black Coffin Tattoo and I'm here with a very special guest, Jesse. So tell us a little about yourself. Yeah, my name is Jesse Skaggs. I've been tattooing for a little bit over two years. I feel like tattooing is kind of one of those things where it kind of picks who gets into it when I was a little kid and you know people are just like, what do you want to be when you grow up? I was like, well I want to be a bartender, a tattooer, and a rock star. It never feels like going to work. I'm always just going to the shop to make a tattoo for someone. It's fun and awesome and the fact that I get paid for it is amazing. I know the feeling. This is the tube that the needle's going to sit in, be held in place by. This is the needle. You usually put a little bend on it and it goes in the tube. Tube's going to go in the vise. A little grommet to keep it nice and tight on the needle bar. Held down tight by a couple rubber bands. It's like that. Easy peasy. So right now I'm just working here but I'm getting ready to just go out on the road and go traveling out west and see what happens. Yeah. Maybe even some tattooing out in the woods, you know. Yeah, well speaking of tattooing in the woods, I know our episode this week, we're making tattoos out of a porcupine quilt so I'm going to show you. So do you think you'd use this? Or if you don't like that one, we have this one. Yeah, they're made of keratin so we have to sharpen it and sanitize it of course. But how does that hold up to your tattoo machine do you think? I mean I think it would probably still get the job done. Pretty rudimentary. It looks sharp. It'll do the trick. But do you have any advice for us when we're giving it a go?  Sick. It looks exactly the same. Right? No difference. Lauren also went and got herself another tattoo and documented the modern process on herself. Now to try and apply these concepts to our own tattoo and prep the needle and make the ink. Oh hey it's me Lauren from How to Make Everything. I'm here at How to Make Everything headquarters to teach you about porcupine quills. As you saw in Dan's video, the North American porcupine coil has barbs. That's what caused it to stick into his glove. We're gonna need to remove the barbs. We don't want it to stick in the skin and resist as we're pulling it out. The African porcupine quill does not have barbs but we will be doing some additional sharpening. In order to see the barbs we have to first magnify it. So I'm gonna come in here. Yeah so you can see that the barbs are facing backwards. They would definitely catch the skin so we have to get them out. Gonna rub it against this copper here. I can physically feel that it is getting a little bit smoother. The bigger barbs are definitely gone. I think that this is probably good enough. This is the African quill. It is not barbed. Oh wait a gosh darn second. What is that? Barbed junior. We'll give it a couple scrapes in the copper just to be safe. Oh yeah, much better. Well not always available for many of the historical tattoos. We wanted to make sure we had invented a disinfectant before we did an episode on tattoos for personal safety. Thanks to our last video on building our own still to extract fermented food waste, we were able to produce a strong solution of alcohol that can be used to both disinfect our needles, skin, and even use it as a base right. Cool okay. All right last week we used the trash juice to make moonshine and this week we're gonna use it as a disinfectant. Pour a little bit in here. Oh still doesn't smell very good. We're just gonna take the porcupine quill, dip it in there, give it a little swish. Oop I dropped it in there that's okay and it should be sterile. Do the same thing with the African quill. Next for the pigment of the ink. Using the oil lamp with olive oil fuel we produce by crushing olives at the beginning of the year we can place a dish over it and collect the soot produced by the lamp. Then scrape off and collect the soot to produce lamp black pigment. Then just need to be mixed with the moonshine to make a paste of our ink. Hi it's Lauren again and we are here today to make tattoo ink. We are gonna use some of the moonshine from last week and mix it with some soot. Before putting Joey under the needle Lauren tested out the quill and ink to make sure it's gonna work. Are you the best baby in the entire world?  Oh my god I need to brush that girl. So an orange peel is similar texture to human skin so sometimes tattoo artists before they move on to human skin will use an orange peel. Dip some of our ink on here and wipe it away. In stick and poke they go over multiple times so we'll just keep trying the circle. Minimalist circle. Confident of success? Time to do it for real on our Joey guinea pig. For safety we brought an experienced stick and poke tattooist who applied the actual tattoo. It's now been about a week since we did the porcupine quill tattoo and it's healing up pretty nicely. Early on we accidentally went through the dermis which you're not supposed to do with tattooing so it might end up blowing out in one spot but so far it looks pretty good. So it felt about like getting poked with a sewing needle, hurt a lot less than like going to the doctor and getting a shot or something like that. With a modern tattoo machine it actually hurts a lot more because it's poking you way faster. We started with the North American porcupine quill and we had to switch to larger one because the smaller one was just a little too soft. Wouldn't actually puncture the skin very well after we debarbed it. Compared to a modern tattoo the lines are not quite as clean but I think we did a really good job with keeping it all together. It really depends on who's doing the actual tattooing. Decided on this symbol which is the air symbol from Avatar at the last airbender. So in total gathering all of the materials took about an hour. The actual process of doing the tattoo took about an hour. The longest thing was actually making the moonshine in the last episode which took about 15 and a half hours. So in total all of the labor was about 17 and a half hours. So rounded up with Minnesota minimum wage this tattoo cost about $145. Most tattoo shops have a minimum of about $50-$200 which just covers like the cost of the needle and the cost of the ink. So this was a little bit more expensive than just going into a shop but compared to a lot of our other projects the price of this was pretty decent. All in all this was a really great experience I had a great time. I definitely don't think I would do one of these to myself not that confident with my drawing ability but it was really fun. Always remember to tip your tattoo artist. I was surprised how painless the process appeared. It was curious to see how well I could do it to myself. I decided I'm going to bite the bullet and actually get one myself. I'm going to do something really simple and try and do it myself with the porcupine quill. I'm going to take a little inspiration from the oldest tattoos that were discovered on Oatsie the Iceman. He had over 60 different tattoos all over his body. All pretty simple usually just lines and crosses. There are some theories that they are correlated to different areas of pain he had and they might have been some attempt to remedy it. So I've twisted my ankle when I was younger. I'm going to try and do one of his type of tattoos on my ankle. See you while it turns out. Maybe it'll feel better. I definitely don't recommend giving yourself a tattoo but because we hadn't experienced tattooists onside to help guide me make sure I could do this safely, I felt comfortable to give it a shot. Completely tattoo here and I think it turned out fairly good. Got pretty solid. Say the hardest part was probably the needles. It seemed to be kind of one time prick only. They started to bend a little bit. So a little difficulty. I just switched it a few times. A few different ones to get it all. Got it pretty solid. Also pretty hard to tell how deep to go because it seemed that if I could feel it it was probably too deep and it was starting to bleed. We'll see. We'll see how well it turns out. Definitely seems to be under the skin. I don't know if it's supposed to be oozing. I don't know if it's a blood or pus or what but something's coming out. I don't know if that's a good sign or bad. Probably not a good sign. Is it? I have no idea. I've never gotten a tattoo before. Yeah so let's see how this turns out and I did it. It was a lot less painful than I expected. The most painful bit of this process was my leg falling asleep halfway through but I got it. I got a tattoo. So it's been a day now. Tattoo is still looking pretty good and no regrets so far. So thanks everybody for watching and thank you to all of our patrons. Don't do this at home. If you enjoyed this video be sure to subscribe and check out other content we have covering a wide variety of topics. Also if you've enjoyed these series consider supporting us on Patreon. We are largely a fan-funded channel and depend on the support of our viewers in order to keep our series going. Thanks for watching!


I was born blind but I was very lucky and when I was five months I was operated and now on I only see with my right eye, the left eye is a prosthesis and I can handle right a little bit myself alone and I can do almost everything by myself. Since I had the opportunity to go to a normal school with some kind of help with my special glasses that were provided by ONCE, I could access to the culture so I could go to the university so finally I'm a lawyer so I was very lucky that I could work and as I wanted to work for ONCE because it's my organization and I believe what they do and they do a great thing. I'm happy to work in the international department. I'm actually the director of the technical office of European Affairs so I go to Brussels and I open their minds over there to let them know how important are the legislation to be clear and to take into account people with disabilities in general and blind people in particular. In Spain we have a lot of books, we are talking about the 5% of all the public works so this means nothing compared to what a normal person can do. We can share the amount of books we have, there are a thousand of them and we cannot do this because there is no international law that allows us to share so this is a shame, a real shame. I hope we can finally have a good treaty or a reasonable treaty that is going to be used it's going to be easy and workable. This treaty is really needed for people who are not only in the countries that can allow to access to books but also for those who cannot access so easily.


Thanks for checking out this unboxing video. This is for the November Snaku box and if you're Checking these unboxing videos out of mind for the first time. This is a Japanese snack box that you can get every month They also have a tasting size, which is a lot smaller if you don't want to commit too much and you want to or you want to spend less So the the tasting size actually ships from New York in the United States I believe and but the actual like full-size box ships from somewhere in Japan So it takes a little bit longer for this to get here. So I Got to be honest I'm not actually all that excited about this month's box just because it is like a tea themed and I think it's Specifically like matcha and I don't really like matcha I find it to be way too vegetal for my flavor or for my palate for what I like flavor wise So I'm not that excited about it But I'm sure there will be like one or two things at least that I'll like in here because that's you know How it's been with these boxes. I always find at least something Check this Make this No, okay. It's weird. It's just kind of like low lighting. I'm trying to see if I can fix it But oh well, I'll fix it in post potentially Okay, so as you can see the theme is there we go tea With a little teapot some little biscuits biscuits or cookies depending on where you're from You would call it that okay, and if people want I'm not gonna read the thing at the top But here you go if you want to you can You can pause on that and then we have the featured snacks. We have the popular snacks Oh, they said they decided to lay it out differently because usually it's like one on one side and one on the other side It's um It's usually the featured snacks on this side and the popular snacks on this side So, oh no, they're laying it out differently. Okay, so let's get into it I'm sure you what it looks like in there. Have I been doing that? I hope I've been doing it look chock full of stuff All right, so hopefully I find some things I really like in here. All right, so first Let's jump to this Okay, so there's a few of these look kind of similar so first we're going with this Salty senpai and this is under the popular snacks area very light and airy rice cracker topped with Japanese salt. It's a pretty run-of-the-mill looking senpai no frills just gonna be Salty I assume Does smell a little fishy Not a lot though see that I Smell that it's salty though very nice and crunchy very typical rice cracker flavor And it does have a decent saltiness to it. Actually usually the salt is lower on these things But I actually like this really Kind of aggressive saltiness that it's got going on here. It's kind of a nice change of pace I like something real salty every now and then This would go very great with you know having a beer. I like to have some craft beer here in there I actually do a craft beer podcast. It's called brutal battle BRW TAL battle And this this nice salty senpai would go very well with some with some beer I love that crunch love senpai love salt love crunch I'm a texture guy so That's a good one. All right I'm feeling better Already I already found something I like I do have to drink water after that though because that salt level is high But it's good. It's good. All right. Let's go here now This I believe is the Hojicha Florentine Things was supposed to be yes Hojicha Florentine, you know, so I don't really have anything so Way first topped with honey glazed almond and Hojicha tea tea cream the Hojicha is from the tea farms in the Shizuoka prefecture, which is known to produce some of the most premium teas in Japan Okay, this actually looks like it could be pretty good and sounds like it could be good Just in case of crumbs. I got to open it over my plate that I brought here. Oh, this is no it actually looks gross Look at this that looks nasty actually that looks gross But it smells I Mean I smelled the tea to it for sure other than that Smells like kind of grainy and tea and a little bit of chocolate It's supposed to be chocolate.  Yeah. Well, sorry hmm So So there's a sweetness to it. It's definitely a bit sugary. I Definitely taste that tea in the tea. The tea flavor actually is pretty good It's not coming off. It's like a matcha. It's it's way less vegetal It's just more of like a kind of a light tea flavor It doesn't taste chocolatey Well, maybe just a slight bit, but it's the honey That sweetness from the honey definitely comes through. Um, I don't love it. I don't dislike it. It's decent I'm okay with it. I'm not gonna have a problem finishing this off I'm not gonna do it on camera, but It's fine. It's fine, especially for something primarily focused on tea Am I right with that? I'm not bad. Okay, let's go to this. Whatever this is next I'm probably gonna have to open this to figure out what it is first. I think this is the hojicha waffle is my guess Hojicha waffle Nothing on the back a few of these Oh Okay, well that's not opening The best way the thing came off.  Just fell apart. It's not the hojicha waffle. It's actually the hojicha lungade dichot So as you can see the other part of the cookie fell off That's what happens in transit. So but it's kind of better because you can see a better Kind of cross section of what's on there. You can see that cream in there So this is delicate hojicha infused butter cookie from kiyoto's tea growing region Hojicha chocolate is sandwiched between roasted tea flavored soy butter cookies one of our favorite cookies from kiyoto Oh Kind of smells like white chocolate And tea mixed together I smell the butter too. I smell that butter cookie. It's a little sweet, but it's not crazy sweet I'm going in and kind of like Starts to melt immediately definitely tastes like white chocolate mixed with tea The tea is more at a medium level on this So it's a little bit more vegetable. So it's not my favorite, but I think that the kind of butteryness of the cookie and that white chocolate kind of bounces it out a little bit yeah That's all right It's not my favorite, but It's not bad I wouldn't intentionally want more of them. I wouldn't be like, oh send me more of that Because the tea flavor actually starts to build a little bit more as you keep eating Yeah All right Not a huge fan. All right. What are these? What is this? Let's figure this one out. This thing is It's a big cake. I think this might be the matcha milk manju but I'm gonna I mean, it looks like it's matcha on the front. So When I see that like Really green powder. I usually think matcha so Yeah, I think this is the matcha milk manju It's like one of these cake things Okay, we've had things like this before so it's very green that would indicate matcha, buddy It's very soft. It's very very soft Bite-sized manju cake stuff with matcha cream white bean filling The matcha used for this snack is handpicked by farmers in fukuoka and okinawa It smells like matcha So vegetal So much matcha Matcha just smells like aggressively green God, I don't like that smell All right, um This has a few things working against it for me personally one The matcha flavor To that little bit of weird bitterness that goes along with matcha sometimes three the texture Because it's bean paste But this bean paste in particular is a little more jelly-ish Then it is grainy like bean paste is Although it does taste a little buttery on the finish Which I kind of like that buttery note. It's too much matcha to it though. It's too much matcha No, thank you. No, thank you. I don't like it Pass That's probably for me personally one of the most offensive things that they've had In this in in any of the snackers I've gotten and that's including like shrimp stuff I can handle that better All right. Let's let's you know speaking of shrimp stuff. I have one here that's a shrimp shrimp senpai Rice crackers made with powdered dry shrimp Caught off the sea of japan This one is like really beat up obviously, but you can see the sorry you can see the shrimp Yeah Pretty easy to see that shrimp on there.   It's very ocean-y very fishy a lot crunch Tastes like shrimp There's a decent saltiness to it. I love the crunch on that It's a little heavy on the shrimp flavor to be honest. Um If you're okay with that, you're gonna be fine with that particular one, but It's a little high for me personally on the shrimp flavor We've had a few Like shrimp snacks in in the snack you that like the shrimp is kind of like on a lower level or like a medium low level And i'm good with that, but this one is a little higher. I had that flavor out of my mouth now too This is not going the best. Okay, so this is the hojicha waffle. We're gonna do this one now Now the hojicha waffle There you go Uh twice baked hojicha infused waffles filled with a lightly sweetened hojicha cream Morihan has been making these snacks since 1836 That's a while That's a long while All right, here we go. These look cool Oh the way they feel they're probably gonna have some good crunch to them But then that also means i'm gonna make a pretty significant mess Hmm they smell They kind of smell like waffles a little bit, but it's like a mix of like that waffle that typical like baked waffles smell and tea Because I assume it's a tea cream All right, here comes the math I like the crunch and flavor of the waffle cookie portion And it's sweet. It's like a little bit sugary It tastes pretty good And then you get that little hint of tea in the middle. Here you go. You can see the tea in there It's not too bad Um the tea isn't crazy pronounced Oh here I need you to cream a little bit better There you go It looks gross. It looks like brown green.  I actually really like those waffle cookie pieces Those are really awesome You put a different type of cream inside there like one of the most awesome strawberry creams that they do like february In japan I would be killer Yeah, I like the cookie portion of that. Okay moving on What is this? What is this? Oh, I got two of those. It's like I only got one. No Azuki matcha More matcha Sweet azuki red beans from Hokkaido covered with matcha green tea chocolate Made in Kyoto It's one of these kind of like, you know Pyramid packs Tear that open So literally it's like a little red beans covered in white chocolate and matcha on the outside So it's like matcha. So it's very vegetal Little bit of sweetness You know what? I actually don't really taste the matcha that much on this The flavor of the red bean And the white chocolate combined to really overpower that matcha. I get it very slightly. So I'm I'm good I actually kind of like that I'm usually not huge on white chocolate either, but for some reason The way white chocolate's done in japan. I like it a lot more than the united states Maybe a part of that has to do with Like a lot of candy Especially like chocolates in the united states taste very chemical driven and in japan. They really don't They're also a lot sweeter. So No, I actually dig these. Um, it's a nice little snack. I like that plus you're getting protein because there's beans in there, man Hopefully it doesn't cause a problem. If you know what I mean All right, here's a big bag of something that i'm kind of afraid of It looks a little weird. It's called satori matcha Look at this Doesn't that look like it looks intimidating.  Is there's like a little bit of a sugary sweetness and that smells like matcha Um, I think it'll be crunchy though Oh Oh I actually kind of like that There is matcha But once again, just like those beans I just had There's a white chocolate That's coating the thing that is overtaking the flavor of the matcha, which I really like and the actual like biscuit of it Is just like this really light fluffy thing once you chew through it Like it's a little bit crunchy, but it's kind of fluffy like it's the consistency of like the really puffed Cheetos That's what it's a consistency of and it actually tastes kind of like that without the the cheese on it Yeah, it's got like just kind of nice like corn type cereal note Kind of tastes like a corn pop. You know that Without all the sugar Kind of like that. It's actually kind of good. Wow. Okay. I was afraid of that one. I thought I was definitely gonna hate it I was actually pretty solid. I like it Once again, there's something about the Japanese white chocolate that like I'm actually on board, you know Okay, we're winding down. We I've got like two more things and then we're done here I feel like I'm going faster than normal. Maybe it's because I just want to get through it because you know matcha bomb roll BAUM bomb Matcha bomb. I don't know which way it goes. Oh like that The picture would indicate it to me, right Okay, so The Muramaki period of Japan 14 to 15th century was when tea culture was popularized in Japan And with the advent of tea ceremonies Confectionaries that would be eaten alongside the tea began to be increased in popularity Madaseika Was founded in 1924 to keep this tradition alive and the shop is now one of the most influential snack stores in all of Kyoto That's cool. No Get this open with minimal. Okay. This this one's gonna get messy. I've we've I've had one of these bombs before actually We've had it at least two times Um, they're kind of like these you remember like they're cakey And it's like really small so you can see like these really thin layers here Of like cake and then a cream on the inside Smells like matcha though Dang it. It's a little bit sweet and matcha. There's a theme here. I like the I like to texture the buttercream on the inside. It's soft on the outside Then you get that nice real fluffy Smooth buttercream on the inside But there's a decent matcha flavor to it. So if you like matcha It's like matcha mixed with vanilla. That's the flavor. I'm getting from the cream in there So I like the vanilla aspect of it, but the matcha is a little too high for my personal taste But if you're good with matcha or if you really like matcha, you would probably love this like this is Amazing almost for a person who likes like some matcha flavor I can see where people like that. Um My wife might like it. I don't know how she actually I don't really know how she feels about matcha to be honest We haven't really talked to matcha before So let's get to our last thing um Traditional yuji or uji candies Variety of candies all handmade by a tiny candy shop in uji Kyoto flavors include kiyoto maple matcha powder gyo kuro matcha and hoji tea Hojicha tea, uh, can I get the kiyoto maple please? That's what I want to try. I want to try the kiyoto maple, but I don't know which one's which because look There's a bunch of different I feel like this one this one might be safe because it would be least matcha-y because it's least green This would probably be I mean, I feel like this would be the maple But I don't know All right. Look. All right. I'm just gonna go for this one because maybe it's the maple and I kind of want to try that But I might be making a big mistake to be honest Because it's not like I don't know. I can't smell anything. It smells a little vegetal Okay, it's matcha No, thank you. It's not crazy though. I was actually when I first figured out it's matcha I was expecting that it would build a lot more and be like super super matcha It's not it's actually a much lower level than I think so if people like just, you know, kind of a bit of matcha That's cool. But for me, I'm not into it because the only flavor is matcha. So It's not my thing Uh, but once again like with these hard candies. I'm always amazed at how Low the sugary-ness of them are because something equivalent to this in the united states would be like crazy sugary Just crazy sweet. That's why I can't eat it. But because it just it kills me in my in my old age But um these I can do not this one in particular because of the matcha, but you know what I'm saying I'm gonna keep that So my wife can lick it, but I don't think she's gonna want to Just because I don't think she's gonna be turned on by a matcha Hard candy. So okay Well, that was it. Uh, what were my favorites in this? Uh, the story matcha Actually very surprised by those these things. Those were actually pretty pretty darn tasty And obviously that salty senpai. Let me yeah this one the salty senpai Probably my favorite. I know that's kind of boring. Oh and also these um These little red beans I was pretty surprised by those. I like these. I'll munch on these. This is just like a little snack I'll take them to work. That'll be good. So This is one of my least favorite boxes as people could probably guess just because all the matcha stuff. It's not my thing um Yeah, I like the jelly Box better that was that was a lot more fun. I was nervous about that box too But that ended up being a lot more tasty and fun than this matcha one But you know, that's what happens. I'm still holding out for a uh, like strictly senpai box. That's what I would love I Man, I would love especially that there's twice baked ones that are just like kind of sugary and salty at the same time Uh, I I want that I want that so bad, but I love snacky if people can't tell I'm gonna keep going with it I enjoy doing these videos even though they don't get a crazy amount of views But if you're watching this, thank you very much for checking these out It always encourages me when I see that there are some views on these things Kind of like doing this put some comments down there. Do you get snacky? Should you get snacky? What do you like snacks wise? Japanese or otherwise Hit that subscribe for me though. If you're not a subscriber That's the way you can repay me for putting my time and money into these things because i'm not making money or anything I just want to grow the channel so I can interact with more people You know get my reviews of movies out there my box reviews out there stuff like that And then if I eventually get to a point where I can make some money, maybe I'll add boxes Um, potentially more food boxes. I thought about potentially getting a boxu Which is another japanese snack box Which looks pretty good It doesn't look on the same level of what I like like snack who gives me typically But it it looks like just like a little bit under that so I would consider that one maybe But anyway, thanks everyone for checking this out and until next time keep it brutal


And so I walk up, I talk to the barista and I show them this presentation in the box, marketing materials, we heard of mushroom coffee, he was like, oh, that's so cool! And he was so into it and then he started taking photos of it.  You know what you should have taken from that is every pitch that you had lined up after that, have someone waiting outside and be like, all right, in two minutes I want you to walk in. And he's like, oh, Chagachino's here!