iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

It is very frustrating to watch so many good people try to gently nudge them in the right direction only to watch them serially shoot themselves in the foot before the previous hit has even scabbed over.

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Victoria Strauss @victoriastrauss.com · 12/10/2026

And yet mostly I’m sitting here freaking out that I might have hurt the feelings of the people involved. Stupid trauma brain. )-:

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Reposted by Suzanne Palmer

"If the new owners want to right MRM’s sinking ship, they need to offer fair contracts and be open with what is going on....If Must Read Magazines doesn’t do this, their company’s legacy will be simple: They’ll have destroyed three of the world’s most famous and beloved SF/F magazines."

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I had some guy walk up to me after I did a reading (of an SF story) at a con and tell me that he really enjoyed what I read but that he'd never buy anything by me because women can't write SF. The Facepalm Is Mighty.

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I deleted 45 for reasons, 46 is here: bsky.app/profile/zanz...

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(I deleted part 45 as I don’t think it was necessary to the story or helpful in finally setting this behind me.)

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It certainly would have avoided a lot of complication and misery.

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It sucked. I’ve always sort of chalked it up to K trying to protect my feelings and it getting way out of control. And ii acknowledge I’m not the most socially adept person on the planet (see aforementioned AuDHD and everything that comes with that) so it’s fair for people to just not like me.

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If you read all that, here, have a woodland river:

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I think about her & Steve a lot (man, is he brutal in a game of Mafia) & what genuinely good-hearted, generous, smart people they are. I hope the universe gets its shit together & improves things for them, because they absolutely deserve it. Also read their books, bc they are fantastic too. 48/fin

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And TBF I don't know if he was told what actually happened or not, but that's not on me either. We are each responsible for how we treat others, and Laura treated me with kindness and empathy when probably no one felt I deserved that. Be *that* kind of person. 47/x

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I don't take it personally, bc I know who I am & I'm not owning anyone else's issues with me if they don't care to bring it to me directly. Nor do I have less respect for the work that person does or their impact in the field. Honestly, I still even *like* them. But what can you do? 46/x

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Let me reiterate that I continue to believe in the workshop. I am not on the island, though. I will likely never be. The scars are still there, and there is still weird animosity from one of the editor-instructors who was there and is still involved that I just want no part of. 44/x

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I still feel incredibly grateful for my student experience, and for the friendships I have since begun with many of the staff & other instructors over the years, including some who were there that terrible year and had no reason to give me the time of day, but did anyway. 43/x

Ironically--and absolutely unpredictably, at that time--I'm still affiliated with the workshop. For the last many years, I've done their T-shirt design. I *love* doing this, and everyone seems to like the shirts, so win-win? 42/x

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K has not been involved in the workshop in a very long time. I like to think, most of the time, that I have made peace with what she put me through. There was never an apology. 41/x

If not for her kindness and empathy, I would have absolutely walked away from everything writing-related. I was utterly crushed, devastated, and humiliated, but she talked me off the ledge. 40/x

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Laura listened patiently, while I cried at her and tried to make sense of what had just happened, and filled in some (gentle) details from the other side. 39/x

I cannot emphasize enough my distress. I have tried very hard throughout my life to do everything I do with integrity, and to be both of service to others & not be a burden, and this was someone I trusted setting me up to appear the opposite of all those values. 38/x

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I gather there was a lot more said about me, but I still don't know the specifics, and don't want to. Given the workload right at the start of the workshop, no wonder everyone was glaring at me. I would have, too. Everyone hated me. 37/x

Even knowing full well I believed there was no other staff at all, and was deeply worried, K never told me about any of it. On the other side, she was telling the other staff & instructors that I had insisted on coming to the island anyway just to hang out. 36/x

After the workshop was over, I contacted Laura. We had a very long conversation & I learned there had been concerns about me being staff w/ infants (duh) & that K was asked to tell me I wasn't needed that year. K didn't want to tell me this, so just excluded me from all relevant conversations. 35/x

Should I say again, I never wanted to go to the island? I still had no idea what the fuck had just happened. 34/x

The whole (~6? hour) drive home, I was just absolutely devastated and hurt. I'd gone to significant pains to try to keep the workshop from the apparent imminent risk of collapse, bc I had been explicitly and deliberately kept from knowing there were any other staff. 33/x

Eventually they grudgingly gave me a check. 31/x

When I packed up my kids to leave, I checked in w/ the person who handled financial stuff to get the usual reimbursement check for the cost of the ferry, and was told that since I'd "just come to the island to be social" they weren't covering it & were clearly angry I even dared ask. 30/x

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It was excruciatingly uncomfortable, and completely baffling. 29/x

They had the transportation stuff sorted, menus worked out, grocery lists planned, everything all set as it should be. So why the hell was I there? I tried to help anyway, and was very brusquely brushed off. I offloaded the packets, then had nothing to do, no use for me at all. 28/x

And they were all glaring at me like I was the biggest asshole on the planet. 27/x

I arrived on the island, headed to the staff den to meet up with K and get manuscripts offloaded and find out what needed doing, only to find an ENTIRE STAFF there that I had been intentionally led to believe did not exist. 26/x

So I packed up the packets and my kids and off I went. 25/x

I made it clear I could only stay for the first day or two, but was hoping that at least if we got things started off okay, and I could do the grocery runs and get food stocked up and help get a menu put together, maybe the rest of the week could be somehow, miraculously, manageable. 24/x

So I volunteered to come to the island w/ my car (and my 5mo infant twins) bring the manuscripts, help get students picked up from the ferry, etc.. 23/x

I had collated all the manuscript copies (we did this w/ paper back then) into packets for students and instructors, and those needed to get to the island, and I hadn't gotten any sense of how they were expected to get there. 22/x

I didn't want to go to the island, but I didn't want to see the workshop fail, either, and I didn't want all of that to fall on K. 21/x

At this point, I was imagining K trying to run the actual workshop on her own, and how this would be absolutely catastrophic both to the workshop and on her. It's hard enough with a team--on one person? I couldn't imagine the stress being survivable. 20/x

(K also, the previous year, had locked her and her spouse out of their room while their 18mo was running loose inside, with every single kitchen & carving knife in the inn laid out on the coffee table for sharpening. So, I feel some worry on my part was legitimate.) 19/x

I kept raising concerns that we needed more staff than just the 2 of us, especially as I didn't think I could be on-island, but K was entirely not worried and wouldn't discuss options for getting more help. 18/x

I noticed, early on, that email conversations about organizing all these things were just K & myself. K's response to my growing concerns about not having other staff that year lined up, and not having any plans even started over menus, etc., was pretty much that it would just work out. 17/x

However, there is a lot of stuff that has to be done in the months leading up, not just applications and student manuscripts and schedules, but meal-planning, figuring out who will have cars and can haul students to/from the ferries and the airport, etc. 16/x

I had originally been slated to be on-island staff the following year as well, but I was about to have infants, so clearly that was just not going to work. 15/x

Oh, and during all this? I was three months pregnant with twins at the time. Let me tell you how I feel about ferry crossings in storms... 🤢 [Stand right up front where you have the wind in your face and you can see enough of the skyline for your inner ears to STFU, and then pray.] 14/x

But teamwork, right? I don't remember if there were 3 or 4 staff that year, all of us new except K, but we were a team, we got it done, it was a successful workshop, & we all lived to not tell all the tales. It was exhilarating, exhausting, and took everything every one of us had to pull off. 13/x

She was absolutely doing her best at that workshop, and she did a LOT, but part of being staff was not just managing workshop stuff, but also managing K so that nothing reached the point of catastrophe. And it nearly did, several times a day, which is partly just the nature of workshops. 12/x

I liked K then, I like her now, and I don't want this to come across as anything other than accounting of my own experience, which I've been holding onto for a long time. 11/x

At the time, the person in charge of the workshop was a woman I will call K. I'm ADHD (technically, AuDHD) and that makes a lot of things so much more difficult & I don't hold that against anyone, ever, and I'm not now either. 10/x