Year: 2014

Looking Back at 2014

12/31/2014

I wasn’t going to do one of these posts — I’m bad at putting retrospectives into words, writing about feelings, forgetting to include something, and all of that — but other blogs I follow are and I should probably acknowledge that 2014 was certainly better than 2013 in many ways (despite my feelings about how the end of this year is going). So here’s a super last minute look back at 2014.
In January of this year, I started interning at the Gotham Writers Workshop. I took TV writing and Sci-Fi/Fantasy Writing classes, a one day workshop on Children’s Book Writing, and surrounded myself with writers as a way to constantly inspire myself to write. It’s somewhat worked, lol, but the lack of discipline is still there. To more writing in 2015! Also early in the year, my work with TVOvermind gave me the opportunity to interview Penny Johnson Jerald, Seamus Dever, and Juliana Dever of the show Castle. I was, of course, very nervous, but I had a lot of fun breaking out of my comfort zone.
Around spring, I got to go to a dear friends wedding, got hired by a temp agency into my current long-term assignment, and got approved for my NYCC Press Pass for Black Girl Nerds! In September, I went to the Paley Fest Previews and got to watch 10 fall pilots before they aired. It was a great way to bring new content to this blog and I got to recommend (or warn away from) new shows for my friends and whoever reads this blog. It was a good year for lots of diverse faces on television. Let’s hope this year’s successes bring even more stories from people of color to both the small and bog screens.
Comic-Con was in October, which was amazing. The week before, I’d gone to the Black Girl Nerds NYC Live Podcast event, where I met a few other black girl nerds like myself. We had a great time and I made some new friends. This helped the following week, during NYCC, when I got to hang out with at least one of them while online for a panel. I saw some panels, bought some art from black artists, and took lots of cosplay photos. My live reporting skills have some ways to go, but I am ready for more learning experiences like that one.
Stemming from one of my purchases at Comic-Con, I was asked by Jamie of BGN to co-host a podcast with her and graphic novel author Eric Dean Seaton, because I’d bought his book trilogy at NYCC, I was nervous for my first podcast, but I also really enjoyed getting to do something new like that. I’d never thought about podcasting before and hadn’t listened to too many, but it was a great opportunity that I am glad I did. It’s already leading to more opportunities — be on the look out for at least two additional podcasts co-hosted by me in January!
Also in November, Keith from The Nerds of Color emailed me and asked me to join their website. I was ecstatic! Someone cold-called me and read my stuff and wanted me to write for them! It felt really good and the people over at The Nerds of Color and cool and nerdy and a lot of us are on the same wavelength. It also gave me a place to get out all of my Arrow and The Flash feels — outside of the comment section of fellow my fellow blogger over at Just About Write. I wrote a lot of Flash and Arrow stuff and even participated in a video podcast after the Flash/Arrow crossover.
In the fall, I also rebranded my blog. Formerly titled ConStar Studies TV, I decided I wanted to sound more active about what I want to do on this blog — and that’s write. I want to write for and about TV, so I changed the name and bought a URL: constarwrites.tv. I paid extra for the .tv but I kind of love it. I hope to do more writing in 2015. Smarter (more efficiently written) episode reviews, I gotta work on those pilot ideas I have, I need a new show to spec (my Parks spec is unfinished and no longer useable, Scandal’s pace is too fast for me right now, every time I get a good idea, it’s done in some alternative fashion on the show. =/). But I’m feeling good about 2015 writing wise. I think it will be a good year for learning and growing and getting better at this writing thing. Feeling less self-conscious, doing new things, experimenting, finishing something?, sending something out?, it’s a whole new world of possibility for growth and change and discovery. I’m excited for 2015.
To complete my look back at 2014, here are some of my favorite posts on this blog this year:

If you have ideas on how to make this blog better, want to ~~yell at me~~ gently inspire me to write more, or just want to chat TV or diversity, tweet me!
Happy new year!

Constar Clicks

12/23/2014

ConStar Clicks #2, a little later than usual, but full of Jane the Virgin, Annie and Shondaland goodness.

I Was Quoted in Bitch Magazine on the New "Annie" Movie

12/23/2014

A while back, I wrote this article on Annie for Black Girl Nerds (still super proud of it’s title), then Emily Hashimoto of Bitch Magazine asked for more of my thoughts on having a black girl lead in a movie, which I happily provided. Here’s the quote:

“Having more images of [young women of color] on film, which everyone absorbs from a very young age, could be so inspirational and allow girls to look at themselves as heroes, as conquerors, as worthy of rising above whatever problems they may have, because someone who looked like them was able to do it, even if it’s just on film,” writer Constance Gibbs explains.

In another article I wrote for Black Girl Nerds, I talk about “People of Color and the Empowerment Fantasy” and the lack of stories starring PoC protagonists who get to have superpowers. The great thing about Annie is that she is a poor girl who gets to live richly. There are very few stories where people of color get to live that fantasy. There was a film in the 90s called Blank Check where a kid finds a millionaire’s signed but blank check and he puts $1 million on it and deposits it. Then he has days and days of fun until he spends all the money. Could that film have been made with a black kid? I doubt it. We rarely get to rise out of the media portrayal of blacks in poverty (which is why The Jeffersons and The Cosby Show and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air were so important, showing the other side of the coin), so movies like Annie are important in showing black kids, especially poor black kids, that they can be themselves and have fun and that its still possible to escape whatever problems they’re living in. It’s all about hope; sometimes that hope is all you need to see a better future for yourself even when things are bleak.
Anyway, please read the rest of the article In Praise of Difficult Girls | Bitch Media.
P.S.
She called me “writer Constance Gibbs.” Ahh! 2015 is about living up to that title even more than this year.

Shonda Rhimes is Winning Awards Left and Right and It's Only the Beginning

12/17/2014

Shonda Rhimes has been winning awards left and right recently! There was the Director’s Guild Diversity Award last year (which got all sorts of controversial press because of Shonda’s statement that she was “pissed off” that they even needed an award for such a thing) and recently the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award, which made headlines as Shonda broke the glass ceiling analogy by explaining that all the women who came before her cracked it first. Now she’s set to receive another award: The Paddy Chayesfsky Laurel Award for Television Writing Achievement (isn’t that a mouthful) from the Writer’s Guild of America.

Named after one of the most influential writers in entertainment history, the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television Writing Achievement is the WGAW’s highest award for television writing, given to writers who have advanced the literature of television throughout the years and made outstanding contributions to the profession of the television writer. Past Television Laurel Award recipients include Steven Bochco, Susan Harris, Stephen J. Cannell, David Chase, Larry David, Diane English, Marshall Herskovitz & Ed Zwick, Joshua Brand & John Falsey, and, most recently, Garry Marshall.

See the names of those who have previously won this award? All white people. Only two women. Shonda will be the first black women, or woman of any color to receive this award — the guild’s “highest” award. That’s amazing. That’s inspiring. In a world where people of her gender and color are often marginalized, Shonda is not only making strides but giving opportunities to others who are pushed to the side. She’s showing us that you can have black leads and a diverse cast and dominate the ratings (competing even with football of all things). She’s providing complicated characters of varying colors who aren’t stereotypes but aren’t perfect either. And she’s writing (and/or producing) compelling television that has people tweeting and talking about episodes weeks after they air.
I love that she is getting all of this recognition and while Grey’s Anatomy is in its 11th season (!!), this should still be considered just the beginning of her career. I can see her name being attached to loads of TV shows, even if she’s not writing them, à la a lot of the other names on that list of Laurel Award recipients past.
Shonda’s not a perfect writer. There are think pieces all over the internet with regard to her characters and her writing style, but she hadn’t written TV before Grey’s Anatomy and all writing is a process. I think she is, more and more, realizing her brand and sees what’s working best for audiences and is adapting to it. Rhimes herself, in awards speeches she’s made, has mentioned how competitive she is, so receiving these awards means she’s only going to continue to grow and try to outdo herself. And I am excited to see what she’ll come up with next.
Check the press release here: Shonda Rhimes to Receive WGAW’s 2015 Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award.

Midseason Diversity Check-In

12/17/2014

How are your favorite PoC characters doing so far this season? Have they survived the midseason slaughter (as I am now calling it)?

ConStar Clicks

12/12/2014

Weekly links to do with TV, screenwriting, and diversity. Click away!

NOC Recaps Arrow: A Battle He Was Always Going to Lose | thenerdsofcolor

12/11/2014

That major moment in the Arrow midseason finale? Nothing new for sci-fi/fantasy tv show viewers. And it's not the important part of the series, what comes after is.