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Weekly Woundup 1: Tutorial Complete

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Weekly Woundup 1: Tutorial Complete

The first EASY ANSWERS weekly content roundup newsletter. Love u betch

Sinistra Black
Mar 23, 2022
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Weekly Woundup 1: Tutorial Complete

www.easyanswers.xyz
A tweet by @NotEasyAnswers that says: "I’m finally out of tweet drafts again. This sweet feeling of release will probably only last a day or two, but I just wanted to share it with you while it lasts."
The struggles of a singular, historic mind.

Opening with a Whimper

Wound-up Wednesday, comrades and confidants!

Welcome to the first-ever EASY ANSWERS Weekly Woundup newsletter. This is where, no more than once a week, you’ll get a roundup of all our content for that week direct to your inbox — plus some special sauce unique to the weekly post.

Unfortunately, I have to start with an apology: sorry I’m emailing you more than once this week! I’m still getting used to all the knobs and dials of the Substack interface, so when I posted my piece on Ali Wong’s standup specials on Monday, I accidentally sent it out as an email. If you read the piece via that email even though it wasn’t what the email list was advertised as, thank you for your interest and patience. I’ll be more vigilant in the future to keep to my stated terms.

On a brighter note, as of yesterday, EASY ANSWERS now offers a paid premium membership! Of course, during this difficult miserable time, I don’t expect anyone to be able to support this project financially — but if you can, please know that it means the world to me during a time that’s been especially “difficult” for me and mine.

Over time, we’ll be figuring out more ways to reward premium and Founding members for their support. For now, the benefits you’ll reap include the ability to comment on our posts — plus some special paywalled surprises in the newsletter and elsewhere.

I’m not completely sure, but since you’re probably already a free subscriber if you’re reading this at all, I think this subscribe button will also let you upgrade to premium…?

Pre.S. — Because I am a genius, this “summary” email is going to be too long for an email, so you might have to click this link (ooh, time travel) to read it all. Oops lol srry


Contents of This Newsletter

  1. Prelude: The Cocteau Twins Series and Marvel Netflix Series

  2. Tom Hanks May Have Read My Podcast Review

  3. Marvel Netflix Series: Daredevil Good Still

  4. Ali Wong, or Kanye East

  5. Cocteau Twins, Abridged

  6. Slaying the Spire on Hipsters of the Coast

  7. Something Else I Haven’t Figured Out Yet


Prelude: The Cocteau Twins Series and Marvel Netflix Series

When I set up the Substack last week, on Monday, March 14th, the first thing I did — in order to have some “launch content” preloaded and give the site a false veneer of professionalism and history — was clean up some pre-existing social media posts I’d done recently and make them look like they were actual articles. Movie magic.

EASY ANSWERS
Cocteau Twins Series: TREASURE
If “Sugar Hiccup” and “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops” were the first dream pop songs, then TREASURE is the first true dream pop album. With the trio that would stick it out newly minted, this is where Cocteau Twins really cement themselves as a force to be reckoned with and become the band we know them as now…
Read more
a year ago · Sinistra Black

There are two topics I’ve been posting about regularly in recent times, which seemed like ripe avenues for tricking you into thinking this is a real journalistic endeavor. The first of these two consists of a series of reviews on the discography of Cocteau Twins — the iconic, indecipherable, hyper-Scottish 80s goths who pioneered “dream pop” — whose records I’ve been giving a long overdue chronological listen-through.

The pre-existing Cocteau Twins content I adapted for Substack comprises a piece apiece on each of their first / three / albums, plus some EPs they released in between.

EASY ANSWERS
Marvel Netflix Series: JESSICA JONES (Season 1) ... Is Way More Racist Than You Remember
Season 1 of JESSICA JONES has more authentic notes of mystery, horror, and detective noir than I ever expected from Marvel, and the trauma/abuse narrative runs as deep as I’ve been told over the years. That said, it meanders more than Daredevil S1 — and…
Read more
a year ago · Sinistra Black

The second topic I’d been posting about for a time prior to starting this site is the ex-Netflix, now-Disney+ Marvel Cinematic Universe shows. The truth is that when it was leaked that these shows would be leaving Netflix at the end of February, I got conned into impulsively starting them. Then it was revealed they’d come to Disney+ a week ago today, on the 16th, and now I’m stuck in the middle of a 13-season behemoth.

The pre-existing Marvel “Netflix” content I adapted for Substack consists of a lazily titled, positive piece on the first season of Daredevil, which is very good, and a more critical hot take on the first season of Jessica Jones, which is so-so — and racist!


Tom Hanks May Have Read My Podcast Review

EASY ANSWERS
DEAD EYES: On Hating the Nicest Guy in the World
In case you haven’t already heard about it from your Twitter trends tab, actor/comedian Connor Ratliff’s Headgum podcast DEAD EYES is one of the oddest, most rewarding rollercoasters I’ve heard in the age of infinite audio. Hosted by the brilliant, gentle-voiced Ratliff — already a parasocial darling thanks to his imp…
Read more
a year ago · 1 like · Sinistra Black

On Tuesday, the Ides of March, I posted a deep dive and personal response to the fabulous, tragicomic podcast Dead Eyes, a project by actor/comedian and world’s leading George Lucas impersonator Connor Ratliff. I’m very proud of this piece.

The podcast in question delves into Ratliff’s traumatic experience of being cast for the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, then forced to re-audition in front of series head honcho Tom Hanks, and then un-hired — because, as someone regrettably told him, Tom Hanks said he had “dead eyes.”

Dead Eyes has been trending recently for reasons that constitute spoilers, and to my surprise — in a promising turn of events, given this was my Substack “debut” and first post written specifically for this platform — I received an email that very evening from the show’s producer:

I just wanted to thank you for your piece about Dead Eyes. […] you pulled some quotes that don’t usually get discussed, and you’re the first person to reference the way I credited Bebe in the transcripts. It’s been my favorite review of the show to read by a long shot, so thank you again.

I sent a brief reply, feigning as if I know how to act like a non-stalker and thanking him copiously for bestowing on me the divine light of a comparatively famous person’s attention. Then, early the next morning, I got this mesmerizing Twitter reply:

Twitter avatar for @connorratliff
Connor Ratliff @connorratliff
@NotEasyAnswers @DeadEyespodcast @headgum @tomhanks @HBO This is such a thoughtful piece, thank you for writing it! 💀👁👁 Some supplements to the @rianjohnson episode: An archive of the website I made in 1998 as the fictional character "Ryan Johnson": web.archive.org/web/1999050814… And a few other ep6 things:
Twitter avatar for @DeadEyespodcast
Dead Eyes 💀👁👁 @DeadEyespodcast
Episode VI https://t.co/zBtXhLAAVg
3:12 PM ∙ Mar 16, 2022
6Likes1Retweet

In a small, bittersweet Dead Eyes moment of my own, senpai Connor himself actually noticed me, thus validating my existence and assuring me of the riches and celebrity that await me on the path of *reads from palm* “starping a stub sack.”

And there you have it: there is a non-zero chance that Tom Hanks has read my several paragraphs about how he’s been kinda one-note for the last 20 years.


Marvel Netflix Series: Daredevil Good Still

EASY ANSWERS
Marvel Netflix Series: DAREDEVIL (Season 2) ... Is the Best Rambo Movie Since First Blood
It’s even more explicit the second time around that DAREDEVIL is trying to be Marvel’s Batman. It leans harder than Season 1 did into the eternally intoxicating (if historically problematic) iconography of the “city on the brink” — pushing Matt Murdock’s moral dilemmas and rela…
Read more
a year ago · Sinistra Black

On Wednesday the 16th, the day the Marvel Netflix shows came to Disney+, I continued my series on them with a piece I’d already been procrastinating on the second season of Daredevil, which enabled me to then convince myself that it was good, actually, that I’d put off finishing writing it for over two weeks.

This piece doesn’t have a critical hot take like the Jessica Jones piece, and it’s even more glowingly positive than the first Daredevil piece, which is an obnoxious level of simp shit coming from such an extreme taste-haver and Born Hater as myself. That said, this review goes into much greater depth than the first two Marvel pieces — and sadly, there’s just no getting around the fact that Daredevil is very, very good so far.


Twitter avatar for @NotEasyAnswers
Sinistra Black (she/her) @NotEasyAnswers
St. Patrick’s “driving out snakes” is a euphemism for the Christian colonization and wipeout of pagan Druids, i.e. the original indigenous faith of Ireland, and I had to learn about it from @LetterkennyProb anyway enjoy your beers
9:27 PM ∙ Mar 17, 2022
6Likes1Retweet

Then it was Thursday and Friday and the weekend. I took a break. Fuck you!

Twitter avatar for @NotEasyAnswers
Sinistra Black (she/her) @NotEasyAnswers
oh wow wait Queerness is literally about gender before it’s about orientation. the epithet, before it became reappropriated by its own targets, is first and foremost about failure to conform to socialized gender norms
8:47 PM ∙ Mar 18, 2022
2Likes1Retweet

Ali Wong, or Kanye East

EASY ANSWERS
Ali Wong's Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Without knowing I was doing so in a timely fashion, just a couple of weeks after the release of DON WONG — an hour of comedy shrewdly titled like a hip-hop album — I recently found myself watching all three Netflix standup specials by meteoric comedy ascendant, actor/writer/Fulbright scholar…
Read more
a year ago · 1 like · Sinistra Black

This Monday, on my sister’s birthday, I wrote a kind of big-picture reaction piece on Ali Wong’s three Netflix standup specials on the economics of sucking dick: Baby Cobra, Hard Knock Wife, and the recent Don Wong, slyly and sardonically released on Valentine’s Day. The piece also takes a critical view to the underwhelming way I feel standup comedy is often covered in press, neglecting the way a performer’s specials necessarily tell us an overarching story about the trajectory of the artist’s life.

(It’s also the first post I made under the project’s new domain, EASYANSWERS.XYZ!)

In Ali Wong’s case, that trajectory is one of transformation from hungry young comic to thirsty celeb goddess. As of this writing, Wong has yet to reply to my requests for comment.

Twitter avatar for @NotEasyAnswers
Sinistra Black (she/her) @NotEasyAnswers
In this piece I ask a number of hard-hitting questions: 1. Why don't we view standup specials as telling an ongoing story about their chief artist, like we do with albums or movies? 2. Can I, an unemployed woman with a dick, be the meat in an @aliwong/@michaelb4jordan sandwich?
11:24 PM ∙ Mar 21, 2022

Cocteau Twins, Abridged

EASY ANSWERS
Cocteau Twins Series: THE PINK OPAQUE
THE PINK OPAQUE by Cocteau Twins is one of the best entries in a category of albums that seems to have been especially prevalent in the 80s: early-career, single-artist compilations that were neither “just the hits” nor strictly B-sides and oddities — more like a comprehensive ad for an artist’s w…
Read more
a year ago · Sinistra Black

Yesterday I posted another entry into the Cocteau Twins Series: a rhapsodic review of their fourth full-length, a compilation album titled The Pink Opaque that does a great job of summarizing their career to that point. Although this piece is the first new Cocteau review I’ve done since starting the Substack, it’s adapted from a draft I had already typed up in the form of a Twitter thread, so the style of these reviews is still evolving toward some as yet unforeseen final form. I’m sure that form will be yodeling.


Slaying the Spire on Hipsters of the Coast

EASY ANSWERS
SLAY THE SPIRE Defines Deckbuilder Games — For Better and Worse
Deckbuilder games seem to have collectively realized, at some point over the years since I first played Ascension on my phone, that they’re at their true potential in a roguelike format. Of the games I’ve played of this kind, SLAY THE SPIRE is by far the deepest, at times feeling like a nascent but full-fledged …
Read more
a year ago · Sinistra Black

Early this underslept morning, my review of the influential deckbuilder game Slay the Spire went live over on the popular NYC-based Magic: The Gathering blog Hipsters of the Coast. I have ties with HotC going back many years to when it was a one-person project, and in 2016 I ran a column there on the intellectually bankrupt topic of how to make money from collectible cards. Those pieces are full of names I don’t use anymore, so thankfully, you’ll no longer find them on my HotC archive.

I think this is a very strong review piece and analysis of a new genre’s genesis, a topic that always fascinates and excites me. Crucially, moreso than my sparkling praise for Daredevil or Treasure, this writeup reflects the approach to criticism that most speaks to me: Even Things I Like Can Be Better And I Am The One Who Knows How.

Twitter avatar for @NotEasyAnswers
Sinistra Black (she/her) @NotEasyAnswers
Here's the much more truncated original thread, which led to developing the piece above:
Twitter avatar for @NotEasyAnswers
Sinistra Black (she/her) @NotEasyAnswers
Deckbuilder games seem to have collectively realized they’re at their true potential in a roguelike format—and of the games I’ve played of this kind, SLAY THE SPIRE is by far the deepest and most fun. It shares its genre’s struggles, but I love it. Some arguable spoilers follow: https://t.co/E2XViK621p
2:38 PM ∙ Mar 23, 2022

That said, this review too was overhauled (though much more significantly than the Pink Opaque piece) from a Facebook/Twitter post I had already written. I’m excited to unshackle myself from the chains of social media going forward, ascending toward the siren’s song of the Moon herself, acquiring powers untold and spitting in the insidious eye of small-minded social norms like brevity and tone.


Something Else I Haven’t Figured Out Yet

Twitter avatar for @NotEasyAnswers
Sinistra Black (she/her) @NotEasyAnswers
Most importantly, I just want to say I'm truly grateful to @aliwong for speaking out on behalf of one of the most marginalized communities on Earth: funny women with mental health problems who know they are geniuses and deserve to be treated like queens by a horny, adoring public
11:27 PM ∙ Mar 21, 2022

This is where I was going to put in a surprise bit of content for premium members only. Then I actually got this far in the draft and remembered that I don’t have any yet.

Therefore, consider this your one and only full-on guilt trip — this week — imploring you to consider upgrading to a paid premium membership to EASY ANSWERS.

What’s the worst that could happen?

I hope you’ve enjoyed this first outing of the shakily titled Weekly Woundup. It’s been fun to write, and it’s nice to look back over the past week and a half and see how much writing I’ve actually done in such a short span of time. Don’t get used to it lmao.

Have a great week/end, and I’ll see you probably-on-Wednesday-again with another roundup of EASY ANSWERS content across all platforms. Thank you for your time.

Your friend(ly neighborhood Spider Queen),

Sin Black

Twitter avatar for @NotEasyAnswers
Sinistra Black (she/her) @NotEasyAnswers
I’m finally out of tweet drafts again. This sweet feeling of release will probably only last a day or two, but I just wanted to share it with you while it lasts.
8:25 PM ∙ Mar 19, 2022
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Weekly Woundup 1: Tutorial Complete

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