The Marshmallow Ranch Gazette (Patreon)

Vol. 1, Issue 20 - Tuesday, August 16th, 2016

Howdy, patrons!

Here's the plan: The Cult of Maximus #18 will drop tomorrow, August 17th; #19 will hit on Friday, August 19th. We'll make sure that chapter five (Orientation) gets started off right! I'm working on #18 as we speak, and will be working hard tomorrow and Thursday to make sure #19 hits on schedule. After that, I'll be taking the weekend to focus exclusively on the Cult of Maximus and hopefully build up a buffer that will allow a more regular posting schedule.

As always, life is busy here at the ranch! I had a grand time for my birthday way back on August 6th, and helped another friend ring in his birthday the next weekend on the 13th. There were a few other writing deadlines that I tried (and failed) to meet, and the day job has been as brutal as ever. We're losing two of our more experienced colleagues this week as well, so it's going to be pretty difficult for the foreseeable future.

Not to worry, though! I've been trying a few tricks to make better use of my time, and they've had some pretty promising results. I'm hoping that I'll be getting into a good rhythm just in time for classes to start at the end of this month; after that, it'll take another month or two to shake things out and see what else I might have time for.

I've been getting feedback on the Cult of Maximus that I really appreciate, and I wanted to talk about it just a little bit. The events of chapter three and four kicked the story into high gear and laid a lot of cards on the table (just to mix metaphors), and the draining aspect of muscle growth caught many people off-guard. It's been interesting to gauge the general reaction, which has been mostly surprise and a hearty "this isn't really my thing." I can sympathize with that -- this isn't really my thing, either, but I thought it would make a really nice framework to bundle in a few things that have been top of mind lately.

I think a lot of us have a complicated relationship (at best) with our gender role. What does it really mean to be a man? What are the best traits that make up an idealized masculinity? Traditionally, men focus on strength and conflict and stoicism; many of our societies gauge a man's worth by how much of a conqueror he is, or how much he can shoulder without breaking. As time has gone on and this role has become more rigid, we've seen a weird thing happening. Most of us will never hope to live up to the Platonic ideal of manhood, no matter how hard we try. Some of us simply reject it and ignore the very idea of masculinity; others of us construct a patchwork ideal of our own; and then there are those of us who try on society's ideal like an ill-fitting coat. We curdle and rot inside of it, and lash out at anyone who tells us we don't have to do this. Sometimes, we even diminish others to make ourselves look better.

This is, I think, what toxic masculinity is -- a desperate attempt by people who fall short of the ideal to misdirect anyone who might notice. No matter how destructive it is to the people around them, or how much it traps them in a prison they never had to design in the first place, these people are never going to stop trying to be more masculine -- to be the toughest, roughest hombre out there. And if you get enough of these people in places of real power, the devastation they can cause is unimaginable.

What I wanted to explore with the Cult of Maximus is the effect of toxic masculinity on a variety of people, and what can be done to break its grip. The muscle draining aspect of it is an externalization of this idea, and Tom struggling to deal with it is the crux of his arc. I wanted to make this a police story for a number of reasons -- cop culture feels like a breeding ground of toxic masculinity, and no matter what you're really like just putting on the uniform sort of traps you in this expectation. Once you're behind the badge, people stop seeing you -- they only see what you represent, for good or for ill. Monsters hide behind that; really good people are distorted beyond recognition. What can we do about that? Anything?

I'm not sure how much of the subtext (if any) is getting put across through the story; one of the reasons editing the first few chapters has been so slow is that I really want to find a way to bake it into the fabric of the story a little better. Everyone has their place, and a reason for being in that place; I'd like to find a way to draw attention to it without making it too obvious.

Anywho, I hope this helps explain what I'd like to do with this story and where it's going from now on. This will give you a better sense of the ride; I'm sorry I didn't talk much about it before, but I wanted to have things arise organically. Little did I know that the "seat of my pants" style of writing is absolutely terrible for serials!

I'll see you folks here tomorrow with the first part of chapter five. Until then, have a good evening!