what up my channel? welcome back to
another video.
i'm jesse and you're watching....
welcome to a special edition unboxing of
the illumicrate! i am so excited to see
what is in this box. i love that i am one
of the lucky booktubers that illumicrate
has recently reached out to
in order to start partnering with and i
opened my first
illumicrate box on this channel last
month.
absolutely fell in love with it and i
honestly was really nervous about
whether or not i would like
a book subscription box because i'm a
really picky person.
y'all know that i cannot stand so much.
like i have so many pet peeves. so you
know that i was nervous about trying
this out and i absolutely ended up
loving it and i'm really excited for
this special
black edition, because you know how it is.
but before i hop into what is going to
be the most exciting unboxing ever... i
have to talk about this
incredible comic book that i literally
want all of you to be reading. now a
representative for kugali media reached
out to me and asked if i would be
interested in checking out their volume
one of
their flagship comic nani. from the
introduction i knew that i absolutely
wanted to read this book
because the introduction of the email
talked about the mission state of
kugali which is a comic book publisher
that centers african afrofuturistic
works,
the voices of african diasporic writers
getting those voices
out to international readers. that
mission statement alone i was like yep
i'm interested in whatever you're trying
to push to me and so they ended up
sending me nani
and
i finished this book in one sitting. and
usually i take my time with my graphic
novels.
i eat them like a slow meal.... with this i
just devoured it.
first of all it has these glossy very
high quality print pages
that are just pouncing colors onto the
reader.
one of the things that i loved about
this book is that the book made use of
the full color spectrum. a lot of times
you see these beautiful black characters
painted in these soft sea foam greens
and sea blues and other times you'll see
neon hot pink
and like a neon hot yellow and i just
absolutely loved it... but of course one of
my favorite
use of colors was all of the dark scenes
which were depicted
as kind of heavy inky blues deep robust
purples that just kind of set you off in
this creepy
undertone but on top of that i loved the
character costumes there was some really
fantastic costumes in this comic. and oh
my gosh look.
yo i literally just started gushing
about it and didn't even tell you what
the comic is about.
i don't think i've ever forgotten to
give a synopsis on this channel
before um okay let me go back. i'm
i'm just i'm really i really love this
comic y'all. set in nigeria we are
following
two sisters... incredibly high achieving
martial artists but one of them
struggling to recover from physical
assault. set two years
after the attack took place both sisters
end up being abducted and taken
into the magical world of sama, which is
a parallel world
full of mythical creatures, african
deities gods and goddesses,
as well as literal walking legends. so
these girls do get to go into this
incredible land but they both have some
trauma to work through and will have to
stick together and rely on their
sisterhood
in order to survive and potentially get
back to planet earth. and oh my gosh
which leads me to talk about the--
storytelling in this comic was
absolutely phenomenal. but what really
sold me on it was
the freaking themes of womanism,
sisterhood,
even boys that are kind of working
through expectations of masculinity, it
is such a female forward comic.
beautiful celebration of black girls of
all tones black peoples of all tones
and also representation for nigerian
clans nigerian myths and
nigerian legends. another thing that i
really loved about this comic was that
the action scenes were so easy to
understand. one of the biggest things
that seems to turn people off of comics
that have action
is that the panels are confusing but
these panels are so
logically drawn out and you know exactly
what's happening at all freaking times.
it touches on real world issues that do
affect black people across the diaspora
i love that even though it deals with
some incredibly heavy topics it knows
exactly when
to break up the heaviness with with
humor and with love and light. there's so
much black joy, the trauma
that the book does discuss is all done
very off the page.
um it's not gory or gruesome but i will
say some of the action scenes
do have a bit of gore in it but it's
just enough
gore to satisfy those of us who like our
comics to be dark
but and not enough gore to turn off
somebody who doesn't like reading that
sort of thing. there's very very little
use of
blood imagery for example. i have to
finish by talking about two of my
favorite freaking quotes from this book
"did you think the dome of darkness would
be enough to defeat my light?"
"without the heart to guide the mind what
you get
is a coward" the reason i'm trying to
sell this book to you is because
in order for volume 2 to come out, kugali
media's kickstarter has to meet its goal.
kugali media is a small
publisher and in order to make volume 2
happen
the absolute minimum of the kickstarter
goal has to be met. i literally am dying.
i am dying to read volume 2. i love this
comic i gave it 5 out of 5 stars and i
honestly would have rated it higher if i
could.
it is the epitome of black girl magic. i
loved everything about it the art the
writing,
everything. the storytelling. it was truly
incredible
and i will be so upset if i don't get to
read volume 2. so if this comic sounds
interesting
i do highly recommend it. it would mean
so much to me and to kugali media if you
could donate to
their kickstarter in order to give a
sequel to this amazing
book of black girl magic. now to get into
the actual video.
i am so excited to see what is in this
freaking box.
okay so the first thing i see here is a
spoiler card
but we're not gonna we're not gonna look
at that.
my teardrop came off and i tried to fix
it ....i don't know if it's symmetrical and
if it's not symmetrical..... if it's not
symmetrical it's fine because my face
isn't symmetrical... i'm basically a
picasso painting.
so the first thing i see here is is this
a blanket what
what is this okay
wow it's really soft-- that's what she
said--
oh my gosh. this is so soft. illumicrate
is gonna be like yo
we need to not send jesse any more of
our boxes because they're so
highly inappropriate and childish. okay
what
is this. i am short i don't have the arm
span to show this off.
oh this is beautiful wow okay
so you can't tell but this is a blanket
it's got this beautiful
it looks like london architecture and we
have the outline
of a dapperly dressed individual who has
flames
on fire behind them so this is the
top that's their head um
and then these are the flames....
i'm short okay?? this is... that's as good as
it's gonna get. okay i'm
on to the next thing in here --is it...
feels like it's made of rubber ?? is this a
laptop case?
holy cow okay so this is a freaking book
sleeve. it's like a leather
book sleeve. i've never um encountered a
book sleeve that was made of leather.
and that's freaking dope. um wow this is
beautiful.
this is really beautiful what fandom is--
this y'all i'm not cool. i don't know
what booktube has been reading lately.
um "you two are circling each other like
stars you come
asking after one another when only a few
strides
and a handful of stars divide you" v e
schwab.
beautiful. so i'm guessing that this is
going to be
a ve schwab book. just a guess.
and i'm guessing that the book is in
here i'm not going to peak yet though
so the next thing that i see in here-- yes!!!!
it's a pin. okay so shades of magic. so
i'm guessing that this book is going to
be
schwab's darker shade of magic um and
ve schwab is an art uh an author that
i've been dying to read i really want to
do a video where i
binge myself reading all of her works.
so this pin has it looks like a ram on
the face of it and it has a quote below
that says" there are many shadows in the
night"
yeah obviously. is this the lens cleaning
cloth? because that would be sick
oh my god please be a lens cleaning
cloth.
it is it's totally a lens cloth. and i
don't know if you know this but i wear
glasses
um literally any time unless i'm filming.
it's got these two characters which i
assume
are from the darker shade of magic. this
is too cute. i don't even think i want to
use this though.
i don't want to spoil it it's too pure.
okay so i see some tubes so i'm
wondering if there are posters in here.
and then there's this thing so let me
prop this open.
prop this open? that's not proper english
get it proper.
get prop like um.
ok... dog illumicrate you came through with
this! como se dice.. um
the thing! that you and then --oh the
bottoms are in here!
look i'm not smart okay. i'm not smart!
let me just show
you what this is because there's i
clearly can't explain it. i literally
haven't struggled that much to do
something since i was actually depressed.
you know that you put them on your desk
they stand they what are these called????
Cual es su nombre? i'm hoping that if i keep making
it dance..
um i'll think of the name.
i too wonder why i'm like this so don't
ask me
so we have that one i'm just gonna take
these,
these cuties out of the box.out of the
box!
what's in the box?! okay and i'll show you
what they look like. i'm assuming that
these are
characters from the darker shade of
magic series.
and i literally just need to read this
freaking series y'all.
why have you not made me read ve schwab?
yet tell me which of ve schwab's books
um including the books that are not
authored under v e schwab's name
instead are authored under her pen name
let me know which of her books that i
should
start to read. let me know which of her
books were your favorite .there are so
many of these characters in here that's
why i'm talking for so long. pika-- oh
she cute-- i'm so glad that my girlfriend
isn't here and
didn't hear me say that. just kidding my
girlfriend is
not at all the jealous type she is so
chill.
she could be a little jealous let me
stop lying.... and i don't think i've
actually officially announced on my
channel yet. i did a partner reveal over
on my instagram.
um and also over on my twitter so if you
don't follow me there i do post like
news
on my instagram like any time i have
news. so definitely follow me there
if you're curious in keeping up with my
day to day. but i announced that i am now
partnered
and incredibly happy@ and we have an
instagram it's called
um black queers joy. and we started this
instagram
to talk about how revolutionary black
joy is
and how much black joy matters
especially in
today's climate. black people across the
world y'all you know we are tired
we're tired emotionally. and it's so
important for us to take
time to create virtual spaces to sit
and and ponder it to do whatever you can
every single day
in order to feed your own joy because
trauma kills people.
and i've talked about this on my
instagram but one of my best friends
ended up committing suicide *dying of suicide
largely in part of him constantly
enduring anti-blackness
and and racism. anyway uh the point is
black joy
matters and we're so happy and we're
just um we're over there on that
instagram we're going to be talking
about
ways that black people can preserve
their joy in their day-to-day.
um we're also going to be talking about
unlearning things like anti-blackness.
we're going to be talking about pleasure
politics and queerness in the black
community and basically blackness at the
intersection of queerness
because both of us are trans non-binary
partner uses she
and they pronouns and i only use they
pronouns. but we're talking about what it
means to be black and non-binary and
what it means to be queer but also
non-binary and how black joy matters
so uh we're really
excited and
we had a q a and it went super well and
thank you so much all of y'all who have
joined in
on kiara and my journey to find find
happiness in one another
these are the they're not figurines i
still don't know what the heck they're
called but these are all
of that's what they look like okay that
was
a whole lot of i made that way more
complicated than it needed to be
not unlike my birth the last two things
in the books
i'm weak and then we can look at the
book
who is this a flag please... be a flag. oh
it's a
ducking scroll!!! and now i'm swearing in
the video.
oh my gosh i'm sorry illumicrate.... i'm
don't send me your
your merchandise. i'm a bad influence
okay so this
says the essen tosh.
am i supposed to know what that means um
stasion elsor camerov los--
she couldn't have written any names that
were more
complex she was like-- how can i make this
name
be a workout for the tongue there's a
sex joke in there but i'm not going to
make it.
kasamir vasren okay now you're going too
far.
aloo card emery. okay that one was fine.
so it's a scroll and i feel fancy and
now i want to go to a ball
except you know if i had been alive
during the time
in which there were you know like
medieval
balls? that's not what they were called --
you know i
would have been in a kennel or something
okay
um oh nice and then there's a bunch of
uh oh oh okay so two posters i like the
diameter
of these posters. this is beautiful um
really really nice quality and the
colors
just pop they're gorgeous i really hope
this is a queer couple.
"a conjuring of light." beautiful okay
and then there's oh there's two there's
two more
that's that's what she said okay um
this is the next poster and
this is the final poster so i assume
that those are all scenes from the book
speaking of
which now we should take a peek oh wow
this is really nice
and illumicrate special editions.
oh look at this cover. i love that
there's no jacket on it like this
is literally its dust jacket. is that how
it's being sold because if that's true
that's going to be really cool.
wow i'm re this is going to definitely
become a book that i prize
um simply because of the aesthetic of it
alone oh and it's signed!
wow that's so cool! um yes and this is a
darker shade of magic.
"for the ones who dream of stranger
worlds" beautiful.
it's got these really nice matte silvery
edges that i really like.
so that is gonna do it for this video if
you made it this far comment down below
with the word
nani n-a-n-i because nani is
the name of the comic book that i really
want y'all to donate to the kickstarter
for
um the kickstarter information is going
to be linked down below and i will also
leave a link for
where you can purchase volume one of
nani for yourself
so if you made it this far in the video
comment down below oh--
i already did that-- man i'm tired. thank
you so much for watching another
bow ties and books production. if you
liked this video please give it a big a
thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. i
would absolutely
love it if you became a part of my
bookish family. all of my social media
links are in the description
box below. stay safe wear a mask and i
can't wait to see you
in my next video.
 
