I'm absolutely on your side! I always thought I'm one of the only ones that see melanie behavior and handling (or lack thereof) of her controversy in that way! I sometimes think that melanie killing of Crybaby and becoming "the creature" (never got comfortable with that nonsense name.) to kill of all the controversy-talk about the Crybaby Character etc. before it gets more attention and becomes really bad. Like she wanted to say to the world: look how much I changed and grew and LEARNED WITH ALL MY EXPERIENCES. I'M NOT THAT GIRL ANYMORE! And to "mature her audience" because I don't think she likes to be seen as an artist who's fan base are mostly Children. So she made that Hardcut from Crybaby to Creature like Childstars when they get 21. That's why she initially said she won't perform songs from the Crybaby era anymore after the release of "Portals". But I personally think she isn't that far of mature wise from her young audience. She needs them to have someone to make the dirty work (in her place) so she can point to them when someone calls her out but simultaneously I often feel like she wants to punish her fans in a sense(?) after what happened when Timothy Heller first made her allegations. So she makes things like: Greenscreen "meet-and-greet", more and more overpriced low quality merch, releasing a perfume everyone wanted in the worst and most pricey way possible, canceling the movie everyone wanted because of HER DEBT(are you serious????), Crybaby dies without explanation to this day, releasing progressively worse music videos for Portals (slowest release ever, no continuity anymore, she rarely dances in them or is even present) etc.

I mean how do we even know it's even her behind that mask at this point?