Rice: On January 30th, 2024, Dreamtonics posted a preview of their then-unnamed upcoming Chinese feminine rap voicebank. I instantly fell in love with her voice and timbre. In March, we learned her name, Yi Xi, and got her product image- a red background with the stark doppled stripes standard to their rap voicebanks.

Many people, myself included, saw her color scheme and was like…. This girl is meat.

So I already liked her because of her voice, but now I had this hilarious bit to work with as well. I like to make character designs for avatar-less voicebanks, so when I made her’s, I gave her design a butcher motif to play off the meat bit, mixed with a stylish jumpsuit and cap to also showcase she was a rap voicebank. Her handsome tomboy vibe was inspired by an idol I was enamoured with at the time, Moonbyul from Mamamoo as she appeared in the “Hip” music video. 

I showed my design to my friends and they liked her. One friend in particular was like: what if I started a song for meatgirl lol, and sent a little beat in the GC. It was a cool beat. 

This friend was also on an album project I was organizing at the time. A special feature of this project was special collaboration songs between Vocaloid producers- since I thought this was particularly exciting, I organized a little interview radio program to hype it up. Since these interviews were to be broadcasted live, I wanted to make sure all the collaborators had on-air chemistry, so I asked each pair to do a short, casual call with me in advance.

And that’s how I ended up in a call together with Vane Lily and JamieP on March 24th, 2024. .

After we’d all said our hellos, we started talking about what we were doing lately. I was like, “well I’ve just made this design for this SV girlie I’m obsessed with” and they were like “omgggg” and then Vane was like “and I started a little song for her” and we were like “omgggg” and then Jamie was like… Hey I use Logic. Gimme that. And then 6 hours later we had a song.

Vane: I’ll be honest, when I sent the first wip I thought it was just going to be an idea I start and never actually finish. I LOVED the idea of starting a cannibal song for Yi Xi and the base I started, but I wasn’t confident in my ability to create the full soundscape that I wanted. So when the idea of coproducing the track with Jamie came up, I was more than excited to get Jamie’s artistic input on it.

Jamie: Me and Vane had collaborated once before, on a song called FIRE!!!, but that was a lot more asynchronous - mostly just sending project files and WAVs back and forth. I'm no stranger to speedrunning song creation, but I actually was really nervous to work on production and songwriting in front of other people… BUTCHER VANITY singlehandedly flipped how I felt about that, though, and now every single Flavor Foley song has been created almost entirely over Discord screenshare.

Vane: In general, I think BUTCHER VANITY and the creation of FLAVOR FOLEY has fundamentally and positively changed how I create music. I am beyond grateful that I can make music with these guys, even if they make me wanna throw rocks at them sometimes <3

Rice: That is so rude I’ve never been mean to you in my life

Vane: He said, like a liar

Rice: I’ve never lied in my life. Anyways, the description of BV says we did the song in 3 days, but that was a lie. The song actually only took 1 day; the MV is what took me the other 2 days. Because I had work. Sorry for being employed

Anyways, this is the song that started it all: essentially a character song for this funny meat girl I’d designed just a few days prior. We can’t thank you enough for all the support you’ve shown. 

Jamie: Seriously!! All the fanart, covers, remixes, and freaky excited posts about Yi Xi using 'boku' in the Japanese translation have been genuinely amazing to see!! I still can't believe the kind of impact our silly little cannibalism song has had on people… I'm pretty sure the amount of energy and life it's given me is enough to finally achieve my dream of immortality. Thank you for helping create a demigod. I will ascend

Vane: I remember as a kid I’d constantly watch Vocaloid fan-MVs/animations on my DSi using Flipnote Hatena. I’ve always wanted to make a song that inspires people to make things like that, and it makes me beyond happy to see all the fan content and support. Truly, from the bottom of my heart, thank you all. You have changed our lives. 

Rice: I think I said this in a comment on the Bilibili reupload (thank you Bilibili reuploaders for our lives) but truly thank you for all the amazing fanart. We will 长生不老 bitch 

Also sorry I have no idea where to fit this into the sappy narrative but I do want to put this in canon somewhere: These are the references from BUTCHER VANITY’s bridge

Cat - Milgram 

Dungeon Meshi Chapter 88

Saturn Devouring His Son

This??? Meme????? 

Jamie: oh my god i didn't realize it was the meme

Rice: She didn’t realize it was the meme 

Vane: This loser didn’t realize it was the meme (I didn’t realize it was the meme)