A Helluva Mess - I

Demons! Drama! Salvadoreans! It's the dark and twisted tale of the showrunner that Twitter loves to hate.

Recently, I started going to Mass with a friend. After an atheist upbringing in the American Imperial Satrapy of Deustchland, he’s found himself keenly invested and interested in joining the Catholic Church. There’s a myriad of reasons to this decision, but, among them is simply that, the more he goes, the more he learns, the more he discovers a long-dormant spirituality, he feels as if he is, in his own words, healing from a disease I didn’t even know I had. The church has offered him a sort of peace and comfort that he claims to have never experienced before.

I had a similar experience when I returned to church for the first time as an adult. I’d gone once or twice with my long-time ex, since her family - her not withstanding - were pretty dedicated Evangelical types, and I was basically forced to attend their mega-church services for Christmas and Easter every year to stay within her parent’s good graces, but it wasn’t until 2021 that I seriously began to attend church services like I had when I was a child. Living in Austin, Texas during the thick of the lockdown era, which was pretty much the place in Texas you didn’t want to be and the only city that really enforced any of the restrictions at the time, my mental health had taken a severe hit from months of isolation and suffering two premature departures from jobs in short succession, both of which forced me to return to my long-time home of Dallas-Fort Worth. Even though, ultimately, I was glad to be gone from those jobs - one of which had stressed me to the point that I developed serious health issues that threatened to permanently damage my body - and relieved to be in a place that was not completely enveloped in the throes of Pandemic-era delusion and fervor, I still felt entirely defeated; I had left home, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, for grander things in the state capitol, only to limp back to the suburbs a few years later in ignominy.

Yes - this really was a Beach Boys album cover for the record, Surf’s Up, based on the 1894 sculpture by James Earle Fraser, titled End of the Trail. Who’s ready for some fun in the sun?

Even though many of the circumstances had been far beyond my control and, in many ways, I, as many of us were at the time, was a victim of macro-societal trends in both the culture and economy, I internalized a lot of guilt, shame, and negativity at my inability to hack in… in a city overrun by the indigent where you were basically required to have a upper six figure income to have a decent quality of life, but hey. Still sucks.

Upon my return, one of my closest and oldest friends invited me to attend church with him as a way to offer some help during that time. It was the same church I’d attended with him and his family when we were younger; his parents would drag me along to service with them when I spent the night, which was kind of the price I had to pay for being allowed over. Even though it did nothing for me when I was young and dumb - well, dumb-er - I found myself experiencing the same kind of revelatory sensation that my Teutonic friend has is currently feeling with the Catholic church. In many ways, it felt as if every sermon I heard from the pastor and everything that everyone I met there was saying was, strangely, exactly what I needed to hear at the time to help me back onto my feet and get my head on straight. I can’t say that it fixed all of my problems overnight, or even during the time that I was attending, but it certainly was a crucial step in finding my way again, and the people I met during that time offered nothing but support and assistance in getting me back on the metaphorical horse so I could ride on to bigger and better things. Truly, I owe them all a debt of gratitude for many, many things.

Since moving across the country, I have yet to find another church to regularly attend. It’s mostly out of self-admitted laziness - as I was adjusting to life in a totally alien part of the country, I was expending a lot of effort in a lot of different things, and my spiritual journey fell by the wayside. Having met a lot of very devout, very generous, and very kind Catholics since moving, I ended up attending Mass a few times after being invited, but it wasn’t until this year that I resolved to take it more seriously. Even though I’m not sure if I will end up staying with the Catholics, or finding another denomination, as I have many invites to attend many churches from many friends, I am making a serious attempt to at least understand the church and its teachings. Regardless of whether I do stick with it, it’s been a very enlightening and educational experience, and, like my friend, I think I’m getting a lot out of it. I even bought a Missal. Turns out the Catholics have an entirely separate book from the Bible you need just to keep up with and understand the liturgy, which no one told me when I started going. Would have been nice to know ahead of time, but, hey - I’m nothing if not committed.

Last Sunday, the closing prayers came in quick succession, delivered in a kind of call and response fashion where the priest would say something, and the parishioners would repeat or reply. Following along, I found myself getting worked up. There was almost an electricity to it, a sort of infectious energy - the quick, snappy repetition of Jesus, have mercy, or Jesus is King, stuff like that, really got me feeling like, Yeah! Yeah! Jesus is King! Christ is risen! God is good!

When the priest started talking about the devil and how he was - and I’m paraphrasing here - basically a weasely little shit and, one day, is gonna get his ass beat by the big J-Man¹, I found myself incensed, juiced up, in a way, feeling like, Yeah, man, fuck that guy!

I was feeling like I could beat a hellhound to a pulp with a crucifix, or at the very least, punt an imp through a stained-glass window. The power of Jesus compels my boot right into their asses. I was about ready to pick up a shotgun and go Doom on some infernal bitches.

Which, by the way, Sandy Petersen - one of the developers of the original Doom game - had this to say when asked if he felt as if the Satanic elements of the game conflicted with his Mormon faith.

Based.

Petersen’s comment here aligns with my own when it comes to most media that involves the depiction of demons. If anyone really played Doom and took away the message that Demons are badass, I would say that they really didn’t pay attention and are probably not very intelligent. There’s a lot of hand-wringing, especially in Evangelical sphere, about the validity of writing or creating media that features the demonic, especially when they’re not specifically portrayed as the unambiguous bad guys that you’re supposed to reduce to a fine, scarlet mist with lead projectiles. I don’t think that’s completely unwarranted; there are a lot of people out there that, to be generous, just don’t quite get a lot of things.

There’s a depressing amount of people who aren’t able to grapple with nuance, subtlety, or think for themselves, and, for whatever reason, when they watch or read or play something, they think, Wow, okay, I guess I believe that now, but this phenomenon seems to be much, much more prevelant in the realm of audio-visual media. I’d argue it’s why the boob tube has been one of the most disasterous inventions of the 20th Century, right behind hydrogenated oils, leaded gasoline, and New Coke. I’d say it’s becoming an increasingly worrisome problem, too, given that media literacy, reading comprehension, and critical thinking that are rapidly and quantifiably diminishing skills among the American population.

It’s troublesome for many reasons, including the fact that, if an easily-impressionable smooth-brain watches, say, Good Omens, where Crowley - a demon - is presented as a sympathetic character, they might not be able to read between the lines and understand that sympathetic does not equate to aspirational, or even good. It doesn’t help that the character is portrayed by David Tennant, who, for as annoying as he can be in some roles, is still capable of turning on a charm offensive when he wants to and probably one of the best actors in England working today, so he comes off as a precious cinnamon roll - or maybe sin-ammon is more apropos - than he does an evil, conniving demon.

I can think of another demon named Crowley - this one from Supernatural - who might come off the same way, given that he’s one of the best written and most interesting characters in the entirety of the show’s long tenure, which, again, is no small part due to the way actor Mark Sheppard takes most of the scenes he’s in and runs away with them.

However, what one must remember when engaging with these media is that Crowley (Tennant) and Crowley (Shepperd) are fictional. They aren’t real demons. They’re the idea of demons reinterpreted and re-imagined by human creatives. This may sound absurd, but, in a lot of ways, demonic characters like them are no different than a walking, talking, humanoid animal in an animated Disney movie.

They’re anthropomorphized. They’re inhuman entities re-imagined through a human lens and given human shape and human emotions. They’re fictional abstractions.

Reality is, as it often is, quite different. Like any aspect of the occult, demons and demonology are tantamount to fooling with loaded guns - playing with them frivolously is inviting trouble and, even if you do know what you're doing, you need to exercise extreme caution when handling it. The best way to keep yourself safe is to not touch it to begin with, and most people should be kept far, far away from it for the sake of themselves and everyone around them.

I’ve done more reading on the subject than most, but I make no claims to be an expert on demonology. Frankly, given what it would entail to be one, I don’t want to be. Even the self-professed experts, I’d argue, don’t understand demons as much as they like to think they do, and I think the real experts - most of whom are wearing a clerical collar - will tell you that they only know that they do know for certain is that these things are bad news.

If we operate under the assumption that demons are extant, incorporeal intelligence or entities that exist on a different frequency from humans, their ontological nature alone makes trying to figure them out a fool’s errand. But, I don’t think we really need to, either - not to know that they should be strictly avoided. Taking what we do know, it’s safe to say that, at worst, they’re actively working to antagonize humanity with malicious intent, for one reason or another. At best, they’re akin to the djinn of Islam, the fae of traditional European folklore, or any other race of invisible people that populate pretty much every spiritual system since the dawn of time - maybe they’re not outwardly hostile or predatory, but they’re certainly not friendly, either. Whatever the case may be, they don’t have our best interests in mind.

However, there are people who fail to realize this. Many, in fact. Fairy lore is rich with stories of humans that thought they could win one of the good folk’s favor or, more foolish still, outwit them, which always results in tragedy for these poor souls. The Western literary tradition is equally rife with stories of humans fraternizing with diabolical forces for personal gain, which, again, always end in tragedy. There’s a reason that the story of Doctor Faust is one of the most persistent myths in Western literature and folklore.

Copies of Faust should not have to come with the disclaimer, Don’t Do This.

Unfortunately, there will always be the foolish and proud who believe that these otherworldly forces can be tamed, manipulated, outsmarted, bargained with, or reasoned with, despite the fact that, time and time again, it is always shown to result in destruction and tragedy.

Even worse, there are people who take this one step further and see these demonic figures as being alluring. And, I won’t lie - there is a kind of mystique to them, a kind of allure akin to a forbidden fruit. With that shroud of mystery and danger comes that pesky human urge to know a just little bit more. Peek a little closer behind the curtain. That innate desire to know what you aren’t supposed to know, just because you were told you aren’t supposed to know it.

Of course, we all know where that leads, ultimately.

Just as the prime mother succumbed to temptation, so will many of her offspring, repeating the cycle of the first sin again and again until the end of time.

It really is just part of human nature.

It’s also just part of nature for rebellious teenagers to act like morons in order to epically own their parents, which leads us to another group of people who end up duped into doing the devil’s handiwork… though, I don’t think many of them realize what exactly they’re doing. Most of them, I’d wager, don’t even really believe that demons exist.

When it comes to the Church of Satan and many practitioners of Satanism - at least, the kind most common in America - this is the case. Most Satanists are, as many would tell you themselves, atheist; they just do what they do because they want to piss off the fuddy-duddy Christians.

The most reasonable among them have legitimate grievances with the church or suffered previous religious trauma that soured them on the idea of organized religion, which, yes, I understand that does happen, but I’d also say taking the tack of invoking dark forces to get back at one’s ultra-fundie parents is less like cutting off your nose to spite your face and more like dousing yourself in gasoline and striking a match. I also understand this is painting with a broad brush, but I’ve known several self-professed Satanists in my time, and they were all - with one notable exception - fundamentally immature individuals who all thought they were vastly more intelligent than they really were. These guys - again, with one exception - seemed to have an obsessive, almost pathological need to be different, which, in doing so, made them exactly like everyone else who suffers from such a condition. I think a lot of their issues came down to not getting enough attention as a child, and, as adults, they still craved that need for it, and sought to get it by acting out and shocking people. It’s kind of like aping the Shock Rock gimmick, but without being in on the joke, you could say.

Exhibit A.

Bad attention is better than no attention, after all. Keep that in mind next time your kid brings you a picture they scribbled out with crayons and your first instinct is to just blow it off; today, you may blow off their artistic endeavors, tomorrow, they’re going to come home with a pentagram tattoo on their back and tongue piercings. Put that shit up on the fridge - I can’t make any guarantees that your kid will grow up to be well-adjusted, but it’s a good first step.

Unfortunately for these guys, and everyone else, demons don’t care if you worship them ironically. Evil and malicious works can be done just as easily, if not easier, by the hands of the ignorant and unwilling than by those of the knowing.

This is all to say that I don’t think that, while I don’t think that concern and caution are unwarranted, I also don’t think media that features demons or the demonic should be strictly censored, as some on the Evangelical right would. I don’t think any creative’s creativity should be stifled on account of an unintelligent audience, nor do I think anyone with even a modicum of common sense and critical thinking skills should be kept from enjoying said media for the same reasons. That, to me, is like keeping the entire class inside during recess because of the inability of one kid to behave, which really does nothing but ruin everything for everyone.

The thing is, if a story features a demon or demons as characters, I don’t think that inherently makes it a bad or tainted piece of media. Hell, if we go by that logic, this book’s gonna have to be the first one to go.

Sorry, folks, but it does say that Satan is the god of this world, right there in the text. 2 Corinthians 4:4, if you don’t believe me. Sounds a lot like satanic propaganda to me. We can’t have that getting into impressionable hands…

However, every now and then, I see something that challenges this belief. Sometimes, I see something, and I think, You know what? Actually, there’s people out there that should absolutely not see this, because I just know that there will be a contingent of idiots who will consume said media, process it, and then proceed to be utterly incapable of being normal about it in any way. I’m not saying that it should be banned, per say… but if I have to show my ID to buy a forty and a tin of zyns because they’re bad for my health, well, maybe we should consider having some sort of critical thinking test you have to take - and pass - before you’re allowed to log on to a streaming service and consume any ol’ media that could be harmful to your health. Your mental health, I mean.

Case in point - the recently released animated series on Amazon Prime, Hazbin Hotel.

I’d argue that there is a segment of the online population for which the release of Hazbin Hotel has been more devestating than the government spooks peddling crack in black neighborhoods. If you wanna see what unhealthy consumption of media looks like, you need look no further to see what this series is driving people to do. And, would you look at that - it happens to be a show about demons! Curious.

It isn’t just Hazbin Hotel, either. No - you see, the creative team behind it has another series that is being released to YouTube that shares significant thematic overlap and takes place in the same universe, called Helluva Boss, both created and helmed by Vivienne Medrano, who is often referred to by her online handle, Vivziepop.

Medrano’s very flattering self-portrait. Also, note that she put an X by Chimpanzees. I’m hurt.

I mentioned the series in another article about the meltdown of YouTuber Verbalase’s, who found himself so enamored with the lead character of the series - before it even aired, mind you - that the man spent over fifty thousand dollars for an animated music video that featured said character being so madly in love with himself that she chases him down, ties him up, and, er… well, just read the article, if you haven’t already. I spoke about it enough there, and I don’t really want to go into the gritty details again.

Since the inception of these projects and the debut of Hazbin Hotel’s pilot in 2019, predating the full series release on Amazon Prime by a full five years, it, it’s sister show, and the creator have been embroiled in non-stop controversy and accrued a large and dedicated following of hate-watchers that have devoted themselves to the singular cause of tanking Medrano’s career and smothering the success of the shows she’s created. The result is years worth of drama and entire arcs of conflict between Medrano, the fans, the antis², and even her own staff and collaborators that are so complicated, convoluted, and numerous that they require their own Wiki just to archive them.

I’d say that the perpetual hurricane of strife that’s surrounded these series, Medrano herself, and others involved in the projects is more entertaining than the actual shows themselves, but, in reality, if you’ve read through one of the tangled mess of mouth-breathers bickering on Twitter, you’ve read them all; it gets tedious, and fast.

Still, despite the individual controversies being so prolific to the point that they’ve become mundane, there is something morbidly fascinating about the entire affair that continues to draw the attention of outsiders in the same way that you might find yourself hypnotically entranced by a never-ending pile-up of cars slamming into each other on a highway, or, perhaps more accurately, drawn into watching a violent fist-fight between a small army of clowns in full regalia.

The thing is that, for series that boast such a profusion of controversy around them, Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss aren’t bad…

Okay, well, I wouldn’t call them good, but they are, if nothing else, competently made on a technical level. My reservations don’t really come from the shows themselves and their quality - or lack there of - so much as what they seem to be doing to people. Whether they be stans³, anti-stans, or the cast and crew of the series themselves, there seems to be something odd surrounding them all and their increasingly absurd and deleterious conflicts.

Perhaps something… unholy?

---

There’s a not insubstantial chance you’re already aware of Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel. After all, if you haven’t been exposed to the seemingly perpetual tempest of drama that appears to follow the creator like her own personal hurricane, you might have heard about it from a friend, or a friend of a friend, who told you, bro, you have got to watch this epic new show! It’s totally peak.

Or something like that.

Personally, I was aware of Hazbin Hotel since the pilot first aired in 2019, but the only reason I ever watched Helluva Boss was because a friend told me that just had to watch it. There’s a pattern I’ve noticed from talking to others and reading the online discourse around the show, where someone’s friend or acquaintance will tell them to watch Helluva Boss and, now, Hazbin Hotel, and when pressed as to why this person thinks that someone else should waste their precious, finite time on this earth watching some cartoon on YouTube, the answer invariably comes down to a character that’s totally cool and awesome and, er - ravishing, perhaps, and, yeah, sure, okay, the show itself… it’s got some problems. But hey! This character is really cool! You gotta check out the show, because you need to see the immaculte greatness that is [Insert Character Here].

This usually results in the same thing; you watch the show, the character trots out, does a silly dance, and goes, Ha-cha-cha! Fuck, fuck, fuck! I love doing fucking drugs and being fucking gay! Emotional abuse! God damn!

And you wonder what, exactly, your friend saw in this aside from a neat character design.

This deep adoration of a fictional character, in Tumblr parlance, such a character is called a blorbo; a term that originates from this post.

Prev Tags means Previous Tags, referring to the tags that the previous user left on a post.

A blorbo is, simply put, an silly word for a character that someone holds great affection for. It’s kind of like a waifu, but the attraction is not, and usually isn’t, romantic in nature; most often, a blorbo is just a character you really, really like, and you think would be cool to get a beer with, if they were real. Or sometimes you hate them, but you love to hate them, and you know that if you were ever actually in a room with your blorbo, you’d probably both try to strangle each other, and someone would most likely die. Sometimes, it is a term used for a character that - again, if they were real - you would absolutely tear up in bed like with the ferocity of a rabid dog. Sometimes, it’s all of the above and more.

And, yes - Tumblr does effectively communicate in their own pidgin dialect of English, at this point.

Generally speaking, when I think of blorbos from my shows, I like to think that if we ever hung out, it would result in something like this.

Ironically, this video is probably the most accurate visual representation of how most Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel fans act when it comes to discussing their blorbos, and those who hate it act when detracting it, because both absolutely love shrieking incoherently and screaming at the top of their metaphorical internet lungs about their respective love and/or hate for [INSERT ASPECT OF THE SHOW HERE].

If you’ve seen anyone talk about any of the characters from either of these show, it was probably this one.

Her name is Luna and you probably saw her because she is the most popular choice of blorbo in the entire cast of both shows. I’m not sure I need to spell out why that is. People absolutely cannot be normal about this character in any way. And, uh… well, I’m not going to say I get it. But… I don’t not get it, either.

Failing that, you might have heard about Helluva Boss when they secured the presence of Kesha - yes, that Kesha - to voice a character. Now, Kesha, apparently, is not exactly a pop star these days, but she seems to enjoy a healthy respect from the public, which probably stems from nostalgia for the early 2010’s when she dominated the charts, and partially in part from her very long, very public legal dispute with her former producer Dr. Luke, which put a hard stop to her career, and I do not know enough about the case to speak about it any further than that. Let’s just say it was ugly. Needless to say, the whole ordeal engendered a lot of good will towards her from a lot of people⁴, and even though her music career is basically dead in the water and she’s thirty-six, no one’s calling her a has-been. Or perhaps I should say Hazbin.

Haha.

Anyways, Helluva Boss got a lot of attention when they got Kesha to provide her voice for a character, who also became a lot of people’s blorbo, which, naturally, is a minxy fox furry.

You’re probably noticing a pattern, here.

Oh, and, by the way - that’s the Hazbinverse’s take on Beezlebub.

You know. This guy.

What a cutie.

Now… humor me for a second. I’m gonna get a bit weird. But… if demons exist, and if they can, say, manifest visually, or perhaps even take on corporeal forms, which, I know, I know - very unlikely, but, again, just bear with me - I suspect that if they can do that, Mr. Bub and likely the rest of them can take on a whole host of different forms or appearances, being unrestrained by the bounds of conventional logic. So, I’m not saying that Beezlebub has to be depicted strictly as a giant, monstrous botfly.

But I am saying…

Something about this interpretation - it just doesn’t jive with me. I will give credit where credit is due; as the embodiment of the sin of Gluttony, it’s nice to see a take that doesn’t go the cheap, easy, and lazy route of making them a fat slob, and this particular design does have apian features, which… well, it’s certainly a unique take on the concept of the sin of gluttony. I guess there’s some overlap with the traditional association of said sin and flies. I mean, bees are like flies. Kind of. They’re both flying insects. I guess.

One of the reasons I find Beezlebub’s design to be so puzzling is that Vivziepop very much prides herself on doing research into demonology. She often touts that her designs of notable Goetic demons incorporate lesser known elements from their lore and history. This claim is not entirely inaccurate. Let’s take a look at her interpretation of Stolas - another popular choice of blorbo for Helluva Boss fans. Fortunately, when you search Google for Stolas, all you get is Helluva Boss results, which makes me wonder how the actual Stolas feels about all of this.

Compare and contrast with the traditional appearance of Stolas.

As you can see, not totally off base. Tall. Thin. Owl-y. Didn’t forget his crown, either, and is appropriately regal and august, befitting Stolas’ traditional title as one of several crowned Princes of Hell, which never really made sense to me but whatever. It works.

What about Mammon, the classic embodiment of greed?

Okay. Can’t say I’m a big fan of the clown/jester motif here, and I’m not really sure what that has to do with the theme of greed (aside from the dollar signs, which is pretty low-hanging fruit). There’s also a spider theme going on with this one that I’m not entirely sure about it, and he speaks with an Australian accent because, uh… it’s funny? I guess? Just throw out a crikey or g’day, mate. Knocks ‘em dead, every time.

But, going off the traditional appearance of Mammon…

Well, let's just say there’s room for more exciting artistic interpretations, since apparently Mammon’s classic look is just every third person you see in Seattle, these days.

Regardless, Beezlebub’s introduction made a big splash because, even if she - he? - wasn’t voiced by Kesha, s/he’s also a slutty fox monster, so, yeah, there was always going to be an inordinate amount of love for this character, and it was always going to breach the fandom’s containment like some sort of virulent, lab-engineered virus.

The debut of Beezlebub’s featured episode in 2023 was something of a shift in the trajectory of the Hazbinverse as a whole, even though Hazbin Hotel was still in development. The collective project was, as stated many times before, steeped in controversy from inception, but from my recollection as an outsider, the discourse shifted from petulant to catastrophic. Despite Beezlebub’s immediate popularity, a portion of the fanbase also found the design of the character… wanting. This sparked something of a trend in the fandom where fans redesigned the character to show what they would have rather seen, rather than what they got, which has since set a precedent for both fans and haters to constantly present their own redesigns of characters in what appears to be a perpetual contest of who can make the ugliest character design imaginable.

Vivziepop handled it as she handles most things.

Not exactly well.

Many, it seemed, were perfectly willing to accept the lord of plague, famine, flies, and general nastiness as a wily scene hoe furry - one can only wonder why - but added more insectoid features to the mix to more concretely bridge the gap between furry and Beezlebub’s traditional depiction of a monstrous, grotesque fly. Others still nixed the furry bit all together and reimagined the character as strictly apian; given that she does call herself Queen Bee in the series, and the term itself is the name of the episode, that makes sense. Yet, the most contentious reinterpretations and criticism leveled against Vivziepop’s design for Beezlebub was this - that lithe, slender little slip of a demon?

Yeah. No. Not big enough to be a proper fit for the sin of Gluttony.

Somewhere, as thousands of words were frantically typed into Twitter demanding that Beezlebub be expanded, the Patron Saint of Thickness nodded in approval.

You see, some people interpreted Vivziepop’s depiction of Beezlebub as a coked-out⁵ rave slut was an offense and sleight against people of size everywhere. It was very anti-body positivity of Ms. Pop to not make the Lord of Gluttony plus sized. It was fatphobic, even. Because, you know - nothing is more flattering to the obese than being compared to the literal demonic embodiment of mindless and self-destructive over-consumption. That’s what fat people want for representation, right?

This criticism of Vivziepop perfectly illustrates the Catch 22 that she often finds herself in. If she had depicted Beezlebub as some lumbering fat-ass riding on a mobility scooter, I’m fairly certain that she would have been accused of being fatphobic and making a joke out of the morbidly obese. If she didn’t depict Beezlebub as… fun-sized, well, she was also going to be fatphobic for refusing to engage in body diversity in a cast that features dimunitive imps, an eight foot tall owl man, and a fucking werewolf.

Simply put - she was never going to win. Not with these people. Whether these antis that constantly harangue Ms. Medrano sincerely care about the plight of the glandurally-challenged is up for debate, and, ultimately, doesn’t really matter, because the thing about any Twitter Anti worth their salt is that they will use whatever argument they can as ammunition against the object of their ire, whether they truly believe in the cause they claim to champion or not. That’s the thing about bad actors - you’re never going to win against them because their one and only real victory condition is to elicit a response to begin with. They don’t mean to engage in meaningful discussion or criticism or critique. By replying to them, they’ve already won. The only winning move is not to engage with them at all. It’s classic Dealing with Trolls 101.

Of course, that didn’t stop her from trying to one-up them. In the course of my time on the internet, I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone, let alone a content creator, with quite the knee-jerk reflex to jump down someone’s throat quite like Ms. Medrano. Sure, J.K. Rowling and Spoony both loved to spoil for fights on Twitter, but Vivzipop makes those two look like boddhistavas in comparison. She may not tweet as much as Spoony, but when she goes in to attack, oh, she goes. She’s like Beetlejuice - say her name, and there she is. And make no mistake, if you say something about her on Twitter, she will find you. Her knack for sniffing out people talking about her, positively or negatively, is unparalleled.

This snafu over Beezlebub is more or less a microcosm of the cyclical nature of drama surrounding Vivziepop and her creations. An episode of Helluva Boss comes is released. People criticize aspects of it. Vivziepop writes a passive aggressive diatribe that adds more fuel to the fire. Rinse, lather, repeat.

As I am literally writing this article, it came to my attention that just today that yet another shit-storm had cropped up around Vivziepop and Hazbin Hotel after official art depicting a character with voodoo iconography was released.

Apparently, they made the claim that it was racist to depict a white character using voodoo magic, or to be associated with voodoo iconography, or some such nonsense. Even if that patently absurd claim held any water, if any of these people actually watched the show, they’d know that the character in question is mixed race and originally from New Orleans which is, you know, kind of a place known for voodoo. Of course, that didn’t change the fact that Vivziepop was still racist for drawing it, because, ah… uh… well, she just is, okay?

This is all to say that, to a not insignificant amount of people, Vivziepop can not do anything right.

This recently culminated in an incident that took place during a YouTube livestream, featuring Vivziepop, several voice actors and other staff that participated in the show, which was not only raided by antis that spammed the chat with explicit material to ensure that it was shut down, but also doxxed everyone involved with the stream and spread personal information across various Discord servers and other sites. Nominally, this was not just an attack on Vivziepop, but another creator present in the stream that goes by the handle of Gooseworx. Even though Gooseworx is something of a newly minted indie animation darling themselves, being the creator of the upcoming online series The Amazing Digital Circus, Gooseworx seemed to be relatively untouchable until they began to associate with Vivziepop in 2019 and make music for her various projects. There’s also a tangible irony to the fact that Gooseworx is also a transwoman; I was under the impression that trans lives mattered, but I guess that maxim doesn’t apply to the ones who work with Vivziepop.

Given that simply working with or being associated with Vivziepop is enough to put a target on your back in the eyes of people who, apparently, are not above escalating their harassment from the realm of cyberspace to reality, I think it can be safely said that the situation has graduated from ridiculous to dangerous, and it is both utterly unconscionable and, frankly, stupid that the situation has become so volatile. It should go without saying that this is not something that should be happening. Not under any circumstances. Vivziepop is… flawed, yes, but so far as I see, nothing she’s done warrants what’s happening not just to her, but to everyone else in her orbit. Harassing a creator is bad enough, but when that is expanded to include family, friends, and employees who have zero control over her conduct and, in some cases, only maintain a strictly professional relationship with her, is another level of severity entirely. Working on a television show for a paycheck so you can make rent should not be an activity that results in having your personal information leaked to a bunch of braying lunatics on Twitter.

But, I think I’ve said enough about the tempestuous whirlwind of controversy that surrounds Vivziepop. So, that leaves us with a question - just who is at the center of this hurricane?

---

Trying to pin down Vivziepop is a Herculean task. It’s not that she’s particularly evasive about her early life; rather, it’s that she’s said too much. Much like any terminally online Twitter-fiend, she’s divulged plenty of information about herself - too much, I’d argue - in various threads and posts that litter the cyber-landscape. You’d have an easier time trying to collect the seven Dragon Balls than compiling a coherent and cohesive timeline of Vivziepop’s lore, both online and off, and, worse still, if you put in the effort to do it, you wouldn’t even get a giant dragon descending from the sky to grant you a wish for your trouble.

This isn’t helped by the fact that Miss Vivzie seems to be something of what we in the literary business call an unreliable narrator. I’ve heard a lot of conflicting information about who she is, where she came from, and what she’s done. Given the sheer glut of acrimonious actors that have a vested interest in making her name worth less than mud, I don’t think this is entirely her fault. While I won’t say that she hasn’t given contradictory information about her past, when digging into her past through third-party sources, it’s difficult to tell what she said about herself, and what was said about her by other people that gradually worked its way into her lore. This is all to say that I’m only going to the stick to the most reliable sources of credible information I can find - Wikipedia, and the Hazbin Hotel wiki. You know; bastions of reliability. But, at the same time, it’s better than trying to pick through Tumblr and Twitter call-out posts that equate her to a certain middling Austrian artist from the first half of the 20th century.

What we do know for certain is that Vivienne Medrano was born in Fredrick, Maryland on October 28th, 1992, and lived there for pretty much the entirety of her upbringing. Fredrick, for those unaware, is the second largest city in Maryland, only a quick jaunt from both West Virginia border and an hour outside of the pulsating heart of darkness that is Washington D.C.

I have an uncle that lives out there. I always liked it well enough. That doesn’t have anything to do with Miss Medrano. It’s also the location of Fort Detrick, which was the center for the United States Army’s biological weapons program, and a place where they continue to meddle with all manner of biohazards, viruses, and God only knows what else. Given that the base was temporarily shuddered in 2019 due to a containment breach, I believe that Ungodly pathogens and the like may have escaped before. This may or may not have something to do with Miss Medrano, but I can’t say for certain.

The Blair Witch Project was also filmed nearby, which, again, may or may not be connected to Medrano in some way.

Medrano was born to a Salvadorean immigrant father and a mother of unspecified ethnicity, though, in the pictures she’s posted of her family, I think it’s a safe bet to say that she’s of Yakubian descent. Medrano’s lack of comment on the matter is another indicator that her mother is most likely a Euromutt, like myself, since Medrano’s the type of person who really, really plays up her minority status, and if she could claim to be partially anything else besides white, I imagine she would. You see, Medrano wears her Hispanic heritage on her sleeve; she’s a self-described fiery Latina, proud member of the Latinx community - a term that she’s quite fond of - and considers herself a leading figure in the Latinx animation movement, which, for those not in the know, is having something of a moment in the industry recently. Examples being successful animated programs such as Villanos and Las Leyendas being two such break-out series that enjoyed international success.

These shows, among others, were produced in Mexico, by Mexican nationals, and made by Mexican creators, which would lead one to assume that this is really a renaissance of Mexican animation rather than one that encompasses broader Latin America, but since we decided that we were all just going to lump all the brown people south of the border into one ambiguous and amorphous blob of Hispanic at some point… well, others - namely Americans of Latin extraction - have decided to throw their hats in the ring and ride the resulting explosion from south of the border.

And, don’t worry - if you forget that Miss Medrano is part of La Raza, she’ll remind you. Often. Which, I mean, I’m not sure why you would forget. Just look at her.

The woman’s practically oozing so much Latin flair I can feel the heat radiating from my screen.

By the way, here’s a funny meme a Mexican friend of mine sent me.

My friend falls into the first category and is keenly aware of it.

It’s not really pertinent to anything at hand, let alone Miss Medrano. I just thought it was funny, and I wanted to share it.

Miss Medrano isn’t just more Latinx than a poncho-wearing, tequila-slugging, sombrero’d vaquero strumming a vihuela and crooning narcocorridors upon a noble burro steed; she’s also a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, too. Specifically, she’s part of the B bloc, and is a proud and open bisexual. And queer. She’s used both terms, but since queer just seems to be interchangeable with every other letter in the LGBTQIA+ acronym, we’ll just stick with bisexual for ease of reference. Her romantic history, however, is shrouded in mystery. She doesn’t seem to be romantically involved with anyone at the moment, and, I assume if she was, she wouldn’t be shy about showing them off like a fresh-off-the-lot Bugatti, to which I say, ah… Miss Medrano… if you ever feel like trying some cuisine a la polonaise to balance out that Salvadorean spice, well - you know where to find me.

Given that I just spent several paragraphs belaboring the torment that Medrano constantly weathers from her own constituents among the Progressive Bloc, I think it should be noted that, for as much as she categorically does not deserve even of a fraction of the absurdly vitriolic and hateful online abuse she’s been subjected to, I do think that, in a way, she brought some of it on herself. And not just because she, at times, seems to seek out this conflict. That’s part of it, sure, but there’s another element I believe is at play.

As stated, Miss Medrano is very quick to play the race, gender, and sexuality cards when it’s convenient. To be honest, I don’t totally fault her for that - in a industry as cut-throat, competitive, and narrow as commercial animation, it only makes sense that she’d use every advantage she has, and, in an entertainment industry where identity politics reigns supreme, it only makes sense she’d play up her Hispanic heritage and sexuality for everything they were worth to get eyes on herself as an up and coming minority creator. I’m not saying that I condone it, but I understand the logic. However, such a ploy is, perhaps befittingly, Faustian in nature. She cemented herself as a firm member of the Progressive Bloc, yes, and she rode a wave of support from being one, too, yet, time and time again, this group has proven to be fair-weather allies. Once a member of the Bloc strays away from the party line, or begins to step on the toes of other members belonging to the increasingly sizeable and incongruous mix of disparate sexualities and ethnicities, those erstwhile supporters will be the first ones to get the knives out and come for their scalp, which is something I think Miss Medrano is learning the hard way. As the old adage goes, if you lay down with the dogs, don’t be surprised when you wake up covered in flea-bites. Thus, we’re left with a puzzling situation where the same people who bandy about supporting women, Hispanics, and members of the Rainbow Coalition in animation are actively trying to sabotage the success of someone who checks off all those boxes, and ruin the reputation of a series that boasts a very sexually diverse cast.

The irony is palpable.

Now, I think that Miss Medrano would have probably encountered her share of controversy whether she willingly allied herself with the Progressive Bloc or not; the field of animation is one largely populated by some of the most vehement and ardent supporters of identity politics, and I’m fairly certain that, at some point, she would have drawn their ire for some minor infraction or another over a long enough period of time. However, had she been less vocal about her own membership as one of the party’s faithful, I think she would have received less heat for her transgressions. Then, she would have been viewed as a simple offender. A sinner, if you will. Instead, she’s effectively set herself up as an apostate.

That aside, it would appear that Miss Medrano and I had similar childhoods around roughly the same time - kids with hyperactive imaginations that had stable, middle-class upbringings in (relatively) affluent and largely Caucasian suburbs, with and two working parents in the house that let us watch way too much fucking television. We grew up on a steady diet of cartoons and developed a certain affinity for the occult, paranormal, and horror media. She even stated that she has ADHD, which, despite never being formally diagnosed, I would say that I most certainly have myself. Or, I would, if ADHD wasn’t just a scam made by the pharmaceutical industry to pathologize normal human behavior and sell chemical lobotomies in order to create compliant corporate neo-serfs. But that’s neither here nor there.

As for Vivziepop and I, our similar paths, I assume, diverged when she began to attend the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2010. Despite having perhaps the most plain name of any institute of higher education I’ve ever seen in my life, this is, apparently, a respectable art school for those interested in breaking into the field of animation. I, on the other hand, abandoned my artistic inspirations and instead fell victim to the siren song of a respectable degree path; I bought in, sold out, and have been paying the price every god damn day of my life ever since. Miss Medrano proves that, if nothing else, if I stuck to making cringe-inducingly sincere amateur art, I, too, might have my own animated series on Amazon Prime right now. There may be some alternate timeline in which Miss Medrano is a work-a-day office stiff who, in her off hours, is on that universe’s Substack equivalent, feverishly typing out an article about me and my successful animated series, The Chronicles of a Yakubian Ape, and all the Twitter drama surrounding it.

I even dug up my old high school notebook and found some of my sketches for The Chronicles of a Yakubian Ape.

Don’t you just feel robbed that this never became an animated series on Amazon Prime? Because I do.

Don’t ever give up on your dreams, kids. Especially not for a quote-unquote respectable career path. Regardless of what happens, you’ll probably be unhappy, so I’d suggest that you at least follow a career path that doesn’t exacerbate the every day difficulty of getting out of bed. As they say, shoot for the moon, because if you miss, you’ll quickly succumb to catastrophic depressurization and you won’t suffer long. Or something like that.

Before she adopted the name Vivziepop, Medrano launched a YouTube channel under the extremely mid-2000’s handle of xZoOPhobiAx, which reads more like a GamerTag from a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare lobby circa 2007. This channel was dedicated to posting animatics pertaining to Medrano’s first public creative endeavor, which was a webcomic called… well, Zoophobia.

Zoophobia is an interesting beast. Despite being successful by the standards of a webcomic in the early 2010’s and amassing a respectable following, information about it is scarce. With the original hosting site long defunct, I can’t even find when the project began outside of the nebulous date of 2012, which doesn’t seem right, as there are sketches and drawings of the characters I found floating around that date at least a year earlier, and the art style looks like something one might find on DeviantArt on 2008. Hell, the earliest scraps of it I could find were dated to 2007, though it would appear that the story, concept, and characters all changed dramatically between then and it’s official debut.

She’s always had a thing for Hell, apparently.

Nominally, Zoophobia is the story of a neurotic young woman named Cameron who suffers from a crippling fear of - can you guess? I’ll give you a hint; it’s in the name. No prizes if you get it right. An aspiring counselor/therapist, Cameron is given a job on an island called Safe Haven, which is, of course, populated by a panoply of talking, magical animals. Obviously, this is not ideal for someone who has a panic attack at the sight of a bird. Of course, Cameron just can’t leave the island, either, because… reasons.

I say this is nominally the plot because it doesn’t take that long in the narrative for the relatively simple presence to spiral out into a more complex, convoluted, and tangled story that rapidly shifts focus from Cameron learning to cope with living alongside talking animals to bullshit about some cosmic conflict between angels, demons, old gods and the like. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but even from the beginning Medrano is constantly pelting the reader with new characters at a rate of what feels like one per page, which rapidly bloats the cast into an unmanageable, candy-coated menagerie of humans, animals, demons, and angels that all look remarkably similar despite having nothing in common whatsoever. That ADHD diagnosis really bleeds through, because it seems that she just can not commit to one idea at a time.

Just like the art is distinctly Vivziepop, albeit less refined than her signature style is today, Zoophobia’s narrative suffers from the same condition that her two current animated programs do - and yes, I do mean condition, because the name for the affliction dogging her work is one called Cerebus Syndrome.

Cerebus Syndrome is a term applied to media that begin in an episodic format, often light-hearted and comedic in tone, and shifts towards more dramatic and dark thematic content and a more cohesive continuity, eschewing the general plot of the day style of storytelling in favor of a more continuous narrative.

The term was inspired by Canadian cartoonist Dave Sim’s independent comic series, Cerebus the Aardvark, which begins as a parody of sword and sorcery fantasy tropes… but with an Aardvark as the main character. Because aardvark’s can’t be fantasy heroes. That’s just silly! 6,000 pages and forty years later, after vicious copyright disputes, fighting with fans via mail-sent letters, and consuming enough psychedelic drugs to fry his brain…

Yeah. It got pretty fucking weird.

Half the comics would consist of pages and pages of Sim’s unhinged ranting about copyright laws, philosophy, and responding to various accusations leveled at him by acrimonious fans-turned-haters, submitted through fan mail (I use that term lightly) because the advent of Twitter was several decades away.

Sound familiar?

Medrano and Sim don’t just share a mutual habit of being unable to let anything fucking go, apparently, because Zoophobia trends in a similar direction to Cerebus, though I doubt that Miss Medrano consumed nearly enough mind-altering substances to rival Sim’s descent into madness. As Zoophobia continued, the subject matter is considerably darker, demons are running all over the island, and the appearance of profanity in the dialogue increases exponentially. Medrano, around this time, seemed to discover that her new favorite turn-of-phrase was Holy fuckin’ shit.

Near the end of Zoophobia’s run, Medrano would begin to write entire chapters and draw pages that would be scrapped and replaced with others, which makes following the already tangled plot even more difficult to decipher. It’s pretty apparent that Medrano had lost interest in the original conceit of Zoophobia and had begun to use it as a playground to workshop new ideas, new characters, and new concepts with the thin veneer of still being in the same continuity as the first few chapters.

During this period, she would create the core cast of what would go on to be Hazbin Hotel, four years prior to the show’s pilot, and almost ten before the series full release. Charlie Morningstar - the protagonist of Hazbin Hotel - her significant other, Vaggie, Angeldust, and more were all introduced in Zoophobia, albeit most with vastly different appearances than those they would end up taking in the show. These characters were dubbed the Misfit Demon Gang, and significant influence from her classmates at the School of Visual Arts shaped their final forms, most notably the fact that there’s more demi-sexual aro-ace gray pansexual queer cosmic-gendered labels than you can shake a stick at. It’s very… 2014-era Tumblr, in that way.

The panel layouts in this comic range from acceptable to, in this case, absolutely atrocious.

Interestingly, Medrano’s favorite character in Hazbin Hotel (and the favorite of many fans), Alastor⁶, was also meant to appear in Zoophobia as well, but the project had been shelved before he could debut.

In fact, Alastor, she claims, was a character she first drew up in a high school notebook all the way back in the dark ages of 2008. I have a feeling I know exactly what kind of creative genetic lineage he descends from, too.

I see you, Vivienne. I see where you’re coming from.

If you see it, you see it⁷. If you don’t… well, you probably weren’t in middle or high school when Gorillaz was the hottest band and Feel Good Inc. was the best song of the year. I’m not sure anyone had more of an outsized influence on my generation’s creatives than Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett.

Ultimately, Medrano couldn’t quite squeeze in the story she wanted to tell with the Misfit Demon Gang into the pre-existing framework of Zoophobia, and realized that there was more potential telling a new, independent story with them outside of it. So, in 2016, Medrano would announce that the comic would be on indefinite hiatus in order to shift focus to a new project starring this cast of infernal characters - Hazbin Hotel.

There’s conflicting information of whether or not Hazbin Hotel was intended to be a webcomic in the vein of Zoophobia, or if Medrano aspired for it to be an animated series from the beginning. By 2016, Medrano had been jobbing for various studios and was already making inroads in the industry. She’d also established herself as a presence in the independent animation scene with another YouTube channel that bore the name she’d become known by. On the Vivziepop channel, Medrano would upload various pieces of animation independent from Zoophobia, many of which were projects she was working on for her courses at the School of Visual Arts. She would become best known for animated music videos, two of the most successful featuring tracks by none other than Kesha.

So, if you wondered why it was imperative that she secure Kesha to voice a character in one of her shows… well, there you go.

Zoophobia’s shelving did not go over well with all of Medrano’s followers. The comic, as previously stated, had amassed a rather impressive readership, especially for its time, and many were unhappy to see Medrano go in a different direction, even if her later projects would, in essence, be spiritual successors to Zoophobia. Over the years, Medrano has hem-hawed on whether or not she would ever return to Zoophobia, often stating that she’d like to when she has the time, which, in my opinion, translates to Don’t bet on it. If it’s any testament to the webcomic’s popularity, there’s still a sizeable contingent of Medrano’s fanbase that does legitimately want to see her revisit the project. Several fans have even taken a swing at rebooting the series or continuing the stories themselves. Still, as recently as 2021, Medrano would upload a new animated short featuring characters from the comic.

It is a token of good will towards the fans that still hang onto her first creative endeavor? A legitimate attempt at continuing to narrative she put on hold years ago? A cynical grab to keep the intellectual property rights in her name? Opinions vary.

Ultimately, however, upon exchanging Zoophobia for Hazbin Hotel, Medrano had more supporters than she did detractors. With money provided by Patreon, she would finance the pilot of Hazbin Hotel -an endeavor that would take three years to complete, finally bearing fruit in 2019. Around that same time, Helluva Boss would materialize as a spin-off of Hazbin Hotel, starring a cast of other demon characters that didn’t fit into the framework of the project, further cementing the fact that Miss Medrano has trouble focusing on just one thing at any given time. I understand. I can sympathize. It’s part and parcel of being a genius ADHD.

This more or less brings us to the present, where, four years after animating a pilot for Hazbin Hotel, the first season was released in January of 2024, with another already on the docket, two seasons of Helluva Boss behind us with another two on the horizon, built on top of the carcass of a semi-abandoned webcomic that may or may not return some day.

A pretty twisted tale, wouldn’t you say? Just like much of Medrano’s tendency to create entire casts of characters and story arcs that never end up materializing in the final product, I had to leave a lot on the cutting room floor for the sake of brevity.

I have to admit, for all her faults, I do find Medrano to be an aspirational figure. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not at all saying that you should start a webcomic and pick fights with every faceless rando you come across, but, if nothing else, Medrano is living proof that, with enough determination, your wildest dreams don’t have to be dreams; you, too, can break into the animation industry and inflict your mental neuroses upon the unsuspecting public, too. It’s a big win for weird kids who sat at the back of the classroom in high school drawing comics instead of taking notes everywhere.

That’s a joke. Mostly. But I am serious when I say that Medrano’s commitment to her own artistic vision and work ethic are admirable and impressive in equal measure. I think she represents a quote that I’ve always found quite poignant, even if it did come from certified lunatic Jim Carrey.

Medrano took that chance, and, by God, against all odds, she made it work. Whether she can make it continue to work… well, only time will tell. But I hope she does.

In a world of color-by-numbers, cookie-cutter, ticky-tacky schlock being designed by committees of office stiffs that don’t have a single original thought rattling about their empty skulls, it’s nice to see something unique, distinct, and original breakthrough a find success. Even if the finished product isn’t great, its flaws are uniquely those of the creative that crafted it, and those can be interesting, entertaining, and even endearing in their own right. An artist that can be identified by their weaknesses is still one that’s original enough to be distinct even when they’re flopping. Even a failure is unequivocally, unmistakably their failure, and you wouldn’t mistake it for anyone else’s. There’s something to be said about that.

This, in turn, leaves us with the question - Hazbin Hotel. A passion project that, ultimately born from the creation of Alastor in 2008, hazbin almost fifteen years in the making. After all that time baking in the oven… how did it turn out? That’s a question that we’ll have to answer…

Next time.

1. Is it a sin to call Jesus that? Do you think he would understand? I like to think he would.

2. A term cribbed from the K-Pop sphere of Twitter, which refers to those that vocally and vociferously both hate and oppose a certain piece of media, artist, or creator.

3. Another term originally spawned from the bowels of pop Twitter, stan refers to a devoted, almost zealous fan of a property, artist, or creator, which was derived from the 2000 rap track Stan by Eminem, itself a song that tells the fictional story of a violently deranged follower of the rapper who claims to be Slim Shady’s biggest fan.

4. And, to be perfectly clear, I don’t like Kesha’s music, I’ve never liked Kesha’s music, but I do have a certain respect and sympathy for her, as it seems that she was another victim exploited by Big Entertainment, and that’s a fate I wouldn’t wish upon anyone.

5. Literally.

6. Alastor is an Aromatic Asexual, for the record. He’s also a serial killer with implied cannibalistic tendencies. Epic win for Aroace representation, amirite!?

7. Hint: It’s Murdoc. Alastor is Murdoc.