ButterflyBones

The other version is usually posted as 'Stitches', I think.

I'm sorry, but what? Melanie wasn't "following a trend".. This music was clearly personal to her, and was finished by the end of 2022, before the people I was referring to even shared their own stories(one of them literally being today). And I don't think you can call the chick walking around in a pink alien fairy costume a "trend follower" anyway, lol. Second, the mixing on certain songs is bad because CJ decided to go crazy on the de-S'er, not because Melanie decided to write a few songs about her shitty ex. She produced VOID all by herself and it still has better mixing than a lot of the songs he worked on. I also think you're misunderstanding how much freedom and choice an artist has under a label like Atlantic Records.. There's no way they'd let her release years worth of back-catalog, press records and CDs, and give her a promo budget. They really don't even let their top artists have that kind of control over their releases. Lastly, I'd definitely call putting a recording of Oliver Tree on cocaine attacking her in her own home at the end of 'LEECHES' a nuclear move. And good for her, he deserves to be exposed for the bitch he is if that's how he really is behind closed doors.

"Left me all by myself to let the garden grow Planted a seed, then ran Hey, where'd the water go? Lay me on a bed of dead roses, though Dug out a hole, then sowed That's where your body goes Garden, it won't grow Tied the hose, off you go Next time you jump the gun Better be walkin' slow" Such a good fucking song. Wish so badly that it made the final cut because it would've been a #1 for sure, and showed so many people what she's really capable of writing-wise.

Such a good question actually, @Coloringbooks might be able to give you a legit answer. If not, the easiest bet is to pull up the PORTALS timeline and look closely at sessions made after they supposedly broke up, but before she announced it. And then of course, everything after that too. I just think it's pretty telling that October/November of 2020 is when she starts writing songs like Void, Garden, etc., then in late 2021 - early 2022, we get songs like EVIL. As if she was trying to be subtle in the beginning, and not draw attention to who she was really talking about, but after a couple years decided he didn't deserve that much.. personally I support that. This just genuinely seems to be the year that so many people, Melanie included, have decided to go nuclear on their narcissistic exes. As a survivor of a violent narcissist myself, I truly hope to see the trend continue.

KOI finally restocked Mel's collab, and a bunch of fans spent good money with them(a single pair of their shoes can be fairly expensive) only to get emails that their orders wouldn't be shipped if they used discount codes.. codes worth less than $15 off, that the website literally asks you if want to enter, with no notice that your order will be denied if you do. The emails were confirmed to have come directly from the owner too, saying at the end "You should not reproduce, distribute, store, re-transmit, use or disclose this email to anyone(this is not legal). The views expressed in this communication may not be official policy of Koi Footwear, but the personal views of the originator(neither is this lol).” It's really shitty and weird, and I feel bad for all the people who shopped with them and either don't get their order at all, or get nickle-and-dime'd by this scammy owner over a discount worth an average of $6-$10 in order to complete their shipment. Doesn't seem like a business worth supporting, IMO.

Mestre Ensinador, now known as "Mestre Martinez"

Whoops, I don't keep up with him at all(and I'm sure all of us here know why) so I thought it was more recent than that when it came up. And I'm not surprised if it is edited, but a ton of people were claiming to have seen it live themselves so I believed it at first, lol. This one is still funny if it's fake tbh

Holy shit, guys. Somebody hacked the speakers at Oliver Tree's concert and played Moon Cycle, lmao. The way he RAN off stage

I typed a reply to this a few days ago and decided not to post it, but now this is BLOWING UP and exaggerated articles are being written about it and pushed all over SM, so it's back on my brain.. I get that PORTALS has become her passion project and she wants funding really badly. But that shouldn't mean using her(mostly teenage) fans for money, pushing them cheaply made jewelry(for $700), NFTs, hologram "meet and greets", etc. Next thing you know they'll be paying for a M&G with a her cardboard cutout for $300/ticket, and it'll be "okay" because "she told you that's what it'd be, didn't you read?". Like, just open a GoFundMe. We'd probably all pitch in. Besides, if she'd used more of the leaks for the final tracklist, set aside more promo budget, and put out less but higher quality merch, she'd have made so much more money off initial sales. She's intentionally put herself in a corner and I wonder if it'll be worth it in the end, let alone what she envisioned.. Especially after we've seen her waste opportunities on the music videos to save ideas for the movie almost no one wants. All in all I guess I'm just confused and have no idea how to feel other than being exhausted by the constant controversy chewing on this fandom ever since 2017.

Don't worry, we'll find out in about 5 more years

So she's saying in a recent interview that she has "scars all over her body now" from the "intense stunt work" in VOID.. what stunts is she referring to? 90% of the video is just her thrash-dancing and running around in front of green screens.

I actually prefer this one over most of the others, but I think that's just because it's so simple yet effective, and I've been struggling to get used to a lot of the wardrobe we've seen so far. Like, I LOVE the concept of fairy clothing and earth themes, but the execution with all the torn fabric, grunge elements and randomly sewn patchwork pieces just hasn't been my thing. I'd love to see more detailed costumes and changes like we got in the K-12/AS era, or at least get more outfits like the mossy 2 piece instead of these Depop fairycore dresses. Some of them look more like streetwear to me than anything. Doesn't really fit the "fairy from another world" vibe.

Before PORTALS released, I genuinely thought this was going to be her best era yet, and draw a ton of new fans and followers to her. Now, I'm not so sure what to think. If anything, she seems to be losing more original fans than gaining new ones. It just feels like she's pushing herself even further into a corner here, even lowering the quality of her art to pull off certain ideas, and the aesthetic(mostly the costume) is even more divisive than Cry Baby/K-12 which says a lot.. it makes me doubt that the movie all of this effort is going towards is even going to be worth it for her in the end. This is a metric fuckton of effort for what might amount to a huge, extremely expensive misstep.

Respectfully, fuck that.. send her the link to Mrs. Potato Head and tell her to get a grip

Probably because she(and every TikToker, apparently) uses it for almost every single video and "teased" more than half of it before it even released. It's a great song, even better that she did it all herself, but the fact that it already feels overplayed and it's only been out for like 3 months says a lot, lol..

Exactly. These videos were probably intended to be placeholders that are nice to look at, but have little to no plot or substance because she's "saving that for the movie"(that most of her fans don't even want now that she's cutting quality elsewhere to make room for it). I get that this is her vision, and to an extent I was willing to sit back, shut up, and appreciate that. But now it just feels like she's more or less given up on her art outside of the film medium, which isn't giving me much hope. Even K-12 was more fun than this.. like, right off the bat. I'm just confused I guess. This era feels like it should be so much more fun than it has been, but something's so off.

I am feeling so gaslit right now by all of the people on IG and Twitter saying this is her best video ever made...

I'm not sure she's trying to look insane so much as desperate, but I know what you mean. It'd be nice to see her do more actual dancing than all of the violent thrashing and head-whipping. And I wonder what Cry Baby era Melanie would've done with these songs.. She would've killed it with the budget that these videos must be getting. Even when she hardly had a budget, she still created some of the best, most creative videos I've ever seen. Just compare the clean CGI and set design in Mad Hatter to VOID, for instance.. it's probably just me, but I feel something missing here.

The opening WAS really good, pretty much up until the first chorus for me. After that it just felt kind of messy and fell a little flat. I'm hoping she's going to give it a much better treatment in the movie(if it even gets approved), but I really don't see the point in having both when she could've just put out some really great, high budget music videos and left it at that.

I can appreciate what she's going for but I'm not really into these visuals. It's just missing the immersive feeling and "magic" of her past work. VOID was 90% violent dance-thrashing and blurry CG IMO, particularly the scene where she's being chased by herself, which looked a little.. low budget? I just expected something completely different I guess. I'm glad we at least got to see her again outside of the costume again, though. For that alone, 10/10

Well that looks... Interesting

VOID thumbnail is up, what are y'alls thoughts? It's certainly not what I expected it to look like.

Mrs. Potato Head is my personal favorite Cry Baby video, but I'm really into both of the Soap videos too. Wish she hadn't taken down the original! It really fit the song. I love that she had it playing on the TV in the second one though.

She also said in the latest interview that she's looking to produce most of her songs by herself in the future. I'm happy for her, but I'm also not sure how I feel about that. Her best work has been with K+OL in my opinion and it'll be sad if we never hear more from them. I get why she was upset about the mass leaks, but I still think they were really robbed of their spot on the PORTALS album.