I am on a plane in July of 2010 and I discover a new person. I am a 19-year-old college student who is reading about her on io9. It is October 4th. I am afraid that people will not understand what racism is when they watch Watchmen, because I am covering New York Comic Con. I publish my first piece for io9 in January, and I know that my time at Fusion is coming to an end. It is December of 2021. I am leaving G/O Media as well.
I don't have the time or patience to write an entire going away post using Watchmen as a framing device. I want to speak to you all openly about what my time at io9 has meant to me. I came to io9 looking for a pivot out of stories about police brutality, politicians, and corporations that had left me mentally drained and emotionally hardened. I thought that by thinking and writing about art, I might be able to reignite my passion for writing as a whole.
I was surprised to learn that genre entertainment news is an unwieldy beast that can run you deep into the ground if you aren't careful. Working with each and every one of my brilliant io9 colleagues down in the content mines taught me how to be careful with that.
When I first started here, it was hard for me to express my opinions about art, but thanks to io9's editors and writers, that is no longer the case. You cannot read one of Evan's comics dissections, James's treatises and breakdowns, or Cheryl's deep dives into horror and not see how passionate they are about their work. Autumn has been excellent at helping us all better understand how to share our stories, and Germain and Beth have helped me learn how much joy there is to be found in fandom.
The io9 team helped me grow my voice, gave me time and space to figure out how I wanted to fit into the site's larger legacy, and if it weren't for them, I would have left. I will never forget the level of animosity and hostility that my writing about race engendered from people who considered themselves to be inferior, as much as I have cherished my colleagues and my time writing for this site.
I decided to leave because I found myself being told to leave many times by people who were fixated on Black people and writing about them. I have made my peace with the fact that there are some people who take the kind of stories I write, like stories about laborers fighting for better working conditions, and try to pose difficult questions about who we are as people. I found strength and a sureness that I was doing the right thing, but also a confidence in my ability to determine when the time would be right to tap out.
I will miss hanging out with some of the best people in this business, but I am excited to see what the future holds for everyone who has a hand in making io9 the place that it is.
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