Joe Bob Halloween event + Hazbin Hotel's VivziePop detractors are retarded

It's yet another Halloween, and it's time for another Joe bob Halloween special, this year's special is called "Beelzebub Bash".

I love horror, especially the weird low budget indie stuff, poultrygeist, the evil dead, whatever.

When I think of these kind of films, and how cool, and strange they are, I'm always kinda surprised when they work, and can't quite understand how they managed to get made.

Which in turn made me reflect on Vivienne Medrano's Amazon show Hazbin Hotel.

Honestly, it's not really my thing, but I can't help but gawk at it with the same kind of wonderment, and fascination I feel towards other entries in independent cinema.

Hazbin Hotel is unique, in a couple of different ways, it's an adult oriented animated musical, initially self financed, that despite everything seemingly hyper niche about its premise; managed to resonate with an audience.

I gotta give the devil their due, Vivienne Medrano felt there was something missing in the animation space, and delivered on what I'm sure many people thought was a terrible idea. She deserves nothing but praise for the level of drive, and ambition required to see a project like that through to the end.

Making anything art related with the intention of turning it into a commercially viable product is fraught with serious pitfalls, it can easily torpedo someone's life, people generally don't want to pay for art, and to put up your own time, money, and health to make something like that come together is admirable.

It's hard to be a commercial artist, good "hobby" artists are a dime a dozen, it's different when you need to draw anything consistently at a certain quality, on DEMAND.

Can you imagine needing to animate a fucking teletubby dancing for years cause it's a job, and you need a paycheque; then coming home after 8 hours and working on your own project? I genuinely fail to understand how commercial artists don't kiss the end of a shotgun, especially if they went to university for art, and have to pay off an outrageous student loan afterwards.

Working on your own projects requires a serious amount of discipline most people lack, it's hard to do the difficult thing and turn down friends in order to stay home and work on your time off, it's harder to save than spend, and it's harder still to invest in said enterprise when the outcome is uncertain.

Artistic endeavors that require others for support adds another layer of complexity. Using your skills/talents at your discretion for your own project is one thing, needing to assemble a team, manage, and rely on them to help fulfill your vision is another.

Running a team is stressful, it requires a lot of moving parts, and usually hard decisions. I'm not the biggest fan of Adam Sandler films, but I have noticed a reoccurring element of his films is he often works with the same people. This is because they're probably fun to work with, and professional enough that they can fulfill there obligations consistently. It's the reason people like Sandler, Quentin, and Rogan continue to make films, they have a team around them that they can rely on to fulfill a mutual goal.

ONE person with a bad attitude is all it takes to sink an independent production, relying on the wrong person can wipe out a person's entire life savings, that's true for any new business, but 100% more so for art.

Everybody working under somebody thinks they have it rough, more often than not they fail to see the sacrifice that came prior, to allow them that opportunity.

Look at some of the independent adult animation artists that have "made it", Vivian, Meatcanyon, Bakshi, not to be cruel, but they're corpulent, they all resemble massive beanbag chairs that have been shot with tranquilizer darts. My point is that kind of hard working sedentary lifestyle absolutely takes a toll on one's health. Of course you can find anomalies for sedentary professions, you'll find the rare majestic "code-bros" with six packs (like moi), but in general it's a health/life trade off to work in these industries, unfortunately the level of ambition/discipline to move beyond this is something most can't understand.

For instance, I love drinking, but aside from the fact I hate the government more (and vomit in my mouth slightly at the thought of freely giving them any tax money), the reason I've abstained is to save money for my education, so I may level up faster, it's a heavy sacrifice, but one I was willing to make.

So I feel sympathy for Vivian, now that she's under fire for some of her business decisions. She replaced the staff/voice actors from the pilot for the Amazon funded series, and there is a question of if she's paying her animators enough, ect, ect.

The entertainment business is tough, frankly there are harder decisions than letting people go so you can hire better talent. Her show on Amazon is substantially more polished than the pilot, the meritocracy may not be "nice", but it's at least fair.

Anyway, BYOB, & Happy Halloween!