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| An exchange from 1953's Tokyo Story |
As of February 27, 2014, I'd been writing for Collider.com for roughly three years. My first article was about which "chunky bois" from the Godzilla canon should appear in post-Godzilla vs. Kong movies. Subsequently, my writing exploits evolved to include movie reviews, deeply personal essays (including my first published pieces about my transness after I publicly came out), and analysis of all kinds of movies, including Agnes Varda works and Kokomo City. I was proud to work here, especially as I secured the privilege of procuring more responsibilities for the site. Heck, as silly as it sounds, it's still astonishing to me that my name appeared on a movie Metacritic's page (specifically Io Capitano), thanks to me reviewing it for Collider.
All that ended with one email. Those three words in the headline revealed a note from an entity called "People Operations Team" that "I've spoken with your editors, and we have decided that it would be best to end our professional relationship." The reason? "Your writing does not match with Collider's current standards."
"Gutpunch" doesn't even begin to describe the agony this email instilled in me. The floor had vanished beneath me. I was now falling through the sky, screaming for aid that would never come. Anger, frustration, and mostly tears bubbled through my body, cascading out of my mouth in a miasma of emotional incoherency. I had just talked to my editors on Slack a few hours earlier. There had been no indication of my writing having problems.
What was going on?
How would I afford my apartment?
Collider provided so much of my monthly income, how could I live without it?
Was my writing career over?
Had I done something fatally wrong?
Things only got more bizarre as I took an Uber ride that day and reached out to one of my editors via LinkedIn to just say "thank you for everything, it's been a pleasure working with you." In response, this editor was immediately confused. They had no clue I was fired, and apparently, none of the other editors I worked with on a day-to-day basis were informed of this either. It was all confusing chaos. To add another layer of bizarreness to this turducken of misery, the next day, the Collider People Operations Team entity emailed me again. Suddenly, they conjured up another new reason for my firing. "25% of your content has failed to achieve 500 sessions and your active session per article has been around the 5k mark which is below the site's average."
This was a totally separate notion from my prose not meeting "Collider's current standards." I'd also never previously heard of problems related to my viewership count. The lack of any concrete reason for my firing, as well as the lack of communication with my editors, amplified my frustration over this scenario. What was going on here? I've still never received a concrete reason for my firing. It'll undoubtedly remain a mystery despite how much it concretely impacted my life. That impact included the site deleting over 600 of my articles, including profoundly personal essays I wrote about being trans. I got no revenue or "residuals" from them existing online. I just wanted them to endure on Collider's servers so that other trans and queer readers could find them in times of hardship. Perhaps they could find solidarity or temporary relief in my words. Alas, they were obliterated in one fell swoop. All that effort. All those words. Eliminated.
In the aftermath of this traumatic event, I was immensely grateful to have friends who reached out to Colldier via e-mail and social media posts to chastise my firing and request my rehiring. They didn't move the needle with Collider's parent company, Valnet, but the kindness in a time of sorrow was tremendously appreciated. Meanwhile, without Collider consuming my day-to-day life, I began reaching out to new places to pitch freelance pieces. From these endeavors came my exploits with AutoStraddle, Salon, Pajiba, Culturess, Dallas Observer, Xtra, and other outlets. At least in that regard, a door closing led to some windows opening.
Still, in the last 14 months, I've encountered a discernible extra level of difficulty getting any freelance pitches accepted. Outlets centered around experiences from queer and/or marginalized gender perspectives, like Culturess and IntoMore, have been shut down in the last year. Major outlets have begun removing their film critics and art sections. Nobody is safe from layoffs. Everywhere I look on social media, there are talented freelance writers pining for stable work or even just a freelance gig. In some warped way, the Collider firing at least helped provide a "trial run" for navigating the journalism-based heartbreak of 2025 and 2026's earliest months.
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A few months after this Collider boondoggle, I was talking to my therapist about how I still sometimes felt like crying over what had happened, especially whenever I looked at my struggling bank account. Given my proclivity for self-criticism and minimizing my anguish. I off-handedly remarked that it was "silly" to feel this way about a writing job. My therapist responded back that it wasn't ridiculous and I was navigating very real trauma over this experience. Trauma. I hadn't thought about using that word for these circumstances before then. I just couldn't imagine they'd apply, much like how I long thought I couldn't possibly have depression.
Two years later, I can firmly say that my therapist was (once more) right. I did experience trauma that day. The unresolved nature of this whole ordeal means I'll probably always have a kernel of that trauma somewhere in my system. Lord knows I can't see a Collider piece shared on social media without getting flashbacks to how abruptly my stint there ended. Two years later, I can't say the pain has vanished nor that "everything has gotten better." Money woes persist. An RT-approved site I wrote film reviews for, Culturess, was shuttered last June. Sometimes, I dream about what it would've been like if I'd kept going at Collider and kept on writing for them (including penning that Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire review I'd been assigned days before my firing).
But to quote Past Lives, "this is my life now." That life has been fully disconnected from Collider for two years to this day. In the wake of that firing, I was greeted with immense kindness from others in the wake of this firing. Opportunities, like speaking at the 2024 NLGJA conference, opened up that wouldn't have been possible if Collider hadn't cut me loose. I met so many great people and writers (like Eva Raggio, Drew Burnett Gregory, Henry Giardina, Charlie Jane Anders, etc.) after leaving Collider's orbit. My life has grown in exciting ways that have allowed me to evolve and discover so many incredibly human beings.
Still, torment continues on. That doesn't erase the kindness I've been graced with nor the good events that have occurred in the last two years. That reality just shows how complicated existence is as well as what a dire landscape journalists are caught in. If it were just me struggling in the last two years, that'd be one thing. What really makes my heart ache, though, is that my firing now feels like a microcosm of larger, more serious issues plaguing the journalism world in the 2020s.
Film critics all over are feeling the burn and anguish of unstable employment. It's staggering and disheartening to see so little care being given to writers. It is because of people like Lisa Schwarzbaum, Nathan Rabin, Pauline Kael, Siddhant Adlakha, Roger Ebert, and so many more that I even thought of film criticism as a career option. Those guiding lights will be greatly diminished in numbers for the next generation of movie fans, who deserve to know that talking about cinema can go deeper than clickbait YouTube or TikTok videos. These souls deserve to live in a world where journalism isn't molded by David Ellison, Steve Bannon, and Bari Weiss.
That's not the world they're getting. Skydance securing a winning bid for all the Warner Bros. entities last night only reinforces how dystopian everything is. The company that's allegedly kept a blacklist of pro-Palestine artists will now own multiple news organizations and Warner Bros., the studio that just gave the world Sinners and One Battle After Another. Whoopee. Hooray for capitalism. Worst of all, in the last two years, journalism and artists have been constantly under attack, including ICE agents apprehending and attacking journalists. It's a vortex of awfulness that just keeps getting worse day in, day out.
Much like Dan Olson wrapping up his video about direct-to-video Jarhead sequels, I don't really feel compelled to end this piece on an upbeat note. "Maybe things aren't so hot right now....maybe [these thoughts] don't need a chipper final note," to quote Olson. This current hellscape's immense gravity cannot and shouldn't be diminished. If I can provide any sense of hope for navigating all this misery, though, it's this:
Two years ago, I woke up to a day that would change everything in my life. My bank account and psychological state wouldn't be the same. Art I'd poured my soul into vanished in the blink of an eye. I knew something screwy had gone on here, that I didn't do anything wrong. Yet my mental proclivity towards self-criticism and hatred meant I was still beating myself up for "ruining everything." If anything made this unspeakable torment remotely manageable, it was other people. Collider editors. Online film friends. My therapist. Hugs from real-world comrades. These are what made me feel like I could face tomorrow and that there was a future beyond Collider. Three words from a corporate email can change everything. Tenderness from other human beings, though, can be even more impactful.
We have each other. That doesn't erase the agony or the fascism bearing down on us all. But we don't navigate all that alone. Even if you think you're alone, I promise you, you're not. Your life is meaningful, and so are the words you put down on paper.
The pain persists. So do art and the communal bonds making life worth living.
Recently, hundreds of Washington Post journalists were laid off. Want to help these journalists? Here's a GoFundMe you can donate to that will help laid-off workers cover basic needs.
Here's also a GoFundMe for laid-off Vox employees, as well as a GoFundMe for Tonya Abari, a journalist facing housing insecurity. There are countless other crowdfunding campaigns going on right now for imperiled journalists, so be sure to donate to any you encounter.
On a personal note, I've salvaged some of my deleted Collider pieces and wanted to share just a handful that I'm proud of. Considering how many of my pieces (including a Trenque Lauquan piece I was super proud of) have been lost to time, preserving these essays brings me so much relief. The pieces are:
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