before i talk about this, i wanna say that it is perfectly fine for people to choose who can participate in their collabs. however, i also think communication and transparency are the golden rules of managing any collab, especially in big ones where anyone can apply. organizers must be able to talk to EVERYONE that is willing to spend time and work on a contribution, no matter who they are. this includes doing things that are not easy to do, like being honest and not leaving them with radio silence as that is far worse than a simple "thanks but no thanks" type message. with all that said, this post is about @shleptboi and how he silently replaced toast, an animator he approved for the FLCL reanimated collab.

for some background, i myself tried to apply for the xbox collab, another thing shleptboi was hosting, through both newgrounds DMs and email. the app was on time and i got no response. plus, the spot i was open to make ended up being taken by someone else in the spreadsheet days later. a while after that, i wanted to contact shleptboi to see what was going on. i left a reply on the xbox collab post with no luck. then, i tried looking for his twitter. not only was it gone and still is at the time i'm writing this, but i came across toast's twitter post, disappointed that his FLCL reanimated collab entry was replaced.

here's toast's completed entry from 2022.

and here's the timestamped replacement.

as seen in the twitter post, toast's contribution was approved by shleptboi and seemed ready to be added to the collab. but years later, he got removed from the collab's discord server. he tried multiple times to contact shleptboi about this and received no explanation or hint as to why he got kicked. instead, toast was blocked by him on all places including the FLCL reanimated account, discord, and the FLCL out of context account (which is also gone). it wasn't until the collab's release that he confirmed he got replaced by another artist. this is very grimy and unprofessional.

now the only valid reason i can think of for shleptboi doing all of this is if he learned about something bad that toast probably did and was advised somewhere to not give him attention. but considering shleptboi changed credits for Topium_, another contributor to the collab who is a known master manipulator and sociopath, that theory makes less sense. it makes even less sense cus i remember when he posted Topium_'s part as a preview on the FLCL reanimated twitter before the release. he accidentally pinged the name of his then-and-now-stolen account, and deleted it after. shleptboi may still be manipulated by him into not worrying about it but i really don't know if it's that or him genuinely not caring.

(NOTE : the stolen account posted documents centered around Topium_'s shitty behavior so for more information about that, go here.)

anyway, i think this gives people who actually manage these projects well a bad name. collaborations in this scale are complicated from the get-go, but that's not an excuse. if anyone here wants to organize a project with others, big or small, know that being open and clear is VERY important for both sides. it's common courtesy and wasting an artist's time like shleptboi did toast should NOT be tolerated ever.

thank you for reading.