Theodore Beale likes to claim that any outcome of the Rabid Puppies sham is a win for him. Of course he does. Why? Because the only way to make himself a winner is to declare it by fiat.
In reality, aside from making threatening noises and encouraging others to do the same, Beale is weak and ineffective. He’s potent only as a bad example and an impetus to cringe. After that, he’s most notable for being able to achieve none of the things he’d like to. A short list:
- Make himself anything but a liability to those he works with.
- Provoke the greatest number of words supporting a specific change to the Hugo process.
- Keep people from making fandom more inclusive.
- Keep fandom from loving the work it loves.
- Keep people from criticizing reactionary work.
- Keep publishers from fixing reactionary work.
- Get himself back into the professional association for his field.
- Make science back up his supremacist fantasies.
- Own his own rhetoric.
- Reverse the effects of religious liberalization and nonbelief.
- Win a debate on inclusive culture on its merits.
- Win a Hugo on the merits of his work.
Face it, aside from threats, Beale’s got nothing going for him. And while those threats are an ugly thing to be on the end of, they’re not getting him any closer to his goals. If anything, he is his own worst argument for his positions.
“Win a Hugo on the merits of his work.”
I tried to read his work, but it was like reading the slush pile for Tor, or the entries to a literary contest.
Your simile is bad and you should feel bad.
The Tor slush pile and the literary contest entries are so much better than Vox’s writing.
He also threatened to sue SFWA if expelled; as soon as he -was- expelled, that threat quickly disappeared.
And a couple of years ago I saw him boast a number of times that he was on the verge of launching an innovative new publishing scheme that would change everything. And, nope, his schemes have not changed anything.
Most recently, he made boasts online implying he will dominate the future of the Hugos and anything else he wants to dominate, because he is getting more powerful all the time, you fools, mwa-ha-ha-ha-HA!, etc., etc.
I just saw VD claim on File 770 that he will outsell SCalzi within the next three years. So we have a specific prediction from him that can be tested. I suspect that he will be disappointed. I also suspect that in three years he will claim he never said that.