Winter break is long behind us, and it’s time to face the music! After a wonderful weekend representing FujoCoded at the 35th Annual Escapade Convention in Los Angeles, we’re back to work on all our ongoing projects, filled with new enthusiasm after some inspiring con-nections (😉) with fellow fujin. No matter what the world throws at us (and, boy, is it throwing!), we’re committed to our mission of empowering fujoshi & friends to build a better web together.

FujoCoded, LLC: Company Credit

• Lounging around: Our programmer-for-hire Ria has made some great progress on the $upporters-only section of FujoCoded.com. She’s calling it the FujoLounge! It will feature some exclusive goodies for our Patreon members 😎
• All grown up: We’re transitioning the Fandom Coders server to sociocratic self-governance! To facilitate the transition, we’ve been recruiting server members to be on the transition team. Soon, we’ll be meeting to put that team together!
• Bsky Business: Our founder Ms Boba has been making connections with the BlueSky developers community in order to, among other things, ensure fannish interests are represented in the  BlueSky ATprotocol development ecosystem. ATprotocol Dev hosted her for a Tech Talk about the importance of getting fans involved in decentralized web development.

FujoCoded went to Escapade 2025

• Guiding lights: Since this was our first con, we weren’t sure what would sell. We came equipped with Fujoboards, T-shirts, tote bags, notepads, stickers, prints, and even catboy bathwater, but our best seller was actually printouts of the digital preview of The Fujoshi Guide to Web Development Vol. 0 Issue 1: Git. So thrilled to confirm that a wider audience is also eager for FujoGuide!

• From paddles to panels: When not selling cheese paddles with con partner Dove, our founder Ms Boba led three different panels: Personal Fannish Websites, Creating a Fandom from Scratch, and BlueSky & Decentralized Social Networks. Read more in the Around the FujoVerse section below. 
•  Coloring Preview: We also donated some coloring pages to the conference for people who like to keep busy while listening to panels, thus creating an accidental preview of our future coloring book reward! Here’s a screenshot of a colored page kindly donated by DarkDanc3r!

Recent Progress on our BackerKit Campaign

• In’n’Outline: As you may recall from December, we interviewed entry-level npm users about the difficulties they encountered while learning npm. A volunteer used those notes to write an outline for a very long npm article; we’re now editing the outline for a second review pass.  It will likely end up split into a series, just like our Terminal quickstart!

What’s Next for the FujoCoded BackerKit

• Ma’am, I am the (package) manager: When we’ve collectively agreed our outline for the package manager npm is fit for purpose (and our legal contracts have passed the final lawyer review), we’ll hand it off to a real life tech writer to manage the article-writing for us.
• Scheduling Conflict: Our founder Ms Boba will be lending some of her favorite reading material on conflict resolution to our communications coordinator Dove who is currently reading over it and brainstorming what we most want to cover in the Conflict Resolution article you helped us fund as a stretch goal.

  Around the FujoVerse 

• Bonus Bsky Business: If you’d like to learn more about the Tech Talk our founder Ms Boba gave to BlueSky’s ATprotocol development team, you can watch the talk on YouTube, see the slide deck with the talk transcript, or read about it on BlueSky’s ATprotocol development site.
• Escapade 2025: Our intrepid founder Ms Boba spoke at several of Escapade’s unique discussion-style panels. These panels gave us a chance to absorb new info from the collective wisdom of the fannish hivemind, and to help dispel confusion around the future (and present) of decentralized socials! Read on for details:
  • What’s Up with BlueSky (and Decentralized Social Networks)?: “What is BlueSky and how is it different from (or similar to) platforms like Tumblr, Twitter, or LiveJournal/Dreamwidth? And how is it different from other efforts to create decentralized social platforms like Mastodon? But most importantly, can fandom use it, and should we?” (Hosted by Ms Boba)
  • The Fujoshi Guide to Web Development - Building a Fandom from Scratch: “Come hear about our adventures attempting to build a “slash fandom” from first principles (for a good cause), and let’s talk about what makes fandoms and ships stick!” (Hosted by Ms Boba)
  • Personal Fannish Websites: “What types of personal fandom websites have existed throughout the online ages? Characters and ship shrines, art galleries, quizzes…and what else? What new types of websites would be fun to see? Any websites you miss?” (Hosted by Ms Boba & Elf Herself)
•  At ATprotocol: In service of advocating to make Bluesky friendlier to fujin and the transformative fandom community as a whole (as well as the time-honored practice of networking), Ms Boba will be attending @tmosphere Conference—the very first ATprotocol Dev conference!—in March. 

• After a healthy crop of two-stream weeks during which we developed our BlueSky experiments, our founder Ms Boba will be returning to a one-stream-per-week cadence as we gear up for our annual April event.
• You can always get updates on Ms Boba’s streaming schedule on her website. 

• Thursday, February 13 @ 3pm PST: Fanworks Labeler Wrap-Up: NixOS Edition
• Thursday, February 20 @ 3pm PST: Fanworks Labeler Wrap-Up(?)
• Thursday, February 27 @ 3pm PST: BobaBoard Special

 FujoStore Highlights 

You can help!

• BACKGROUND ARTISTS - URGENT!!!. Specifically, we need an artist who is experienced with room interiors. Think VanillaWare games  or Lo-Fi Girl—shallow perspective with a foreground character.
• Graphic artists: Can you do cool typography for stickers and beyond? FujoCoded wants YOU!
• Animators & GIF creators: Can you do minor “idle” animations for static scenes, like OG Neko Atsume, A Young Man Stands In His Bedroom, or the cat’s tail in Lo-Fi Girl? Do you know someone who can? Send them our way!

FujoCoded, LLC: Company Credit

• Nudging the Newsletter: As mentioned above, we’re sending this at the beginning of the month, rather than in the middle. This is because we’ve decided to shift our schedule going forward, which makes this the last newsletter of the year! From our team to all of you, happy holidays and thank you for your support throughout 2024 and beyond 🎇
• A January Escapade: In January, we’re heading to Los Angeles to table and mingle at EscapadeCon! We’ll skip our usual in-depth newsletter that month, so the next time you get a normal newsletter will be the beginning of February. Come get your news in person at one of the oldest slash conventions out there (it’s been going since 1991!). You can buy tickets on their website—they even offer scholarships! 
• FujoSky: BlueSky offers a similar user experience to Twitter, but it also offers a bunch of fun customization opportunities under the hood. Come hang out with us on stream, we’re building AtProto-based tools to learn how it works. We’ve been making custom labelers: 
  • Labeler 1: What type of fujin are you? 
  • Labeler 2: Give your BlueSky account an AO3 rating tag! 
  • Labeler 3 (work in progress): Posting fanwork? Label it by type! Looking for fanworks? Follow feeds by type!

Recent Progress on our BackerKit Campaign 

• That Ship Has Sailed: All physical BackerKit campaign rewards have officially been shipped! When you get your rewards, please consider posting them on social media and tagging us 😎 If you haven’t received a shipping notification yet, let us know at [email protected]!
• *hacker voice* “You’re in”: 20% off store discount codes have been shipped to all our eligible BackerKit backers. Thanks for your support—hope you enjoy the stuff in the store you helped us finance!
• Article Physics: One of our stretch goals was raising funds for an article on the Javascript package manager NPM. Here’s the progress we’ve made so far: 
  • Our founder Ms Boba talked with NPM beginners to get a sense of the information they needed the most, then dumped all her observations into a single document with a draft of a potential outline. We’ve also recruited another volunteer to finalize this outline and prepare it for our future tech writer!
  • Long-time BobaBoard volunteer and core FujoCoded supporter enigmalea has been selected as the lead of the BobaBoard/FujoVerse Documentation Bubble. They’re putting together a team that (among other things) will:
     
    • Research license options for the articles we’re planning to commission
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    • Work with our legal recruit (introduced in October) to finish drafting tech writer contracts for both BobaBoard and the rest of the FujoVerse projects
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    • Draft work requirements for prospective tech writers  
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  • BobaBoard volunteer and FujoCoded supporter Dove has been selected as lead of the BobaBoard/FujoVerse Volunteering Bubble. She’s putting together a team that (among other things) will:
     
    • Finalize work requirements for prospective tech writers 
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    • Publicize our need for a tech writer and make job postings
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• (Article Physics con't): It’s been really great to watch more of the BobaBoard organization take shape in a way that will continue to empower the FujoVerse to get things done even after this specific campaign has wrapped. 

What’s Next for the FujoCoded BackerKit

• Blowing Bubbles: We’ll be using the coming month of December to have the first meetings of the Documentation and Volunteering bubbles (see above).
• Cons & Contracts: While much of our focus in January will be on our con appearance at Escapade, our other focus will be collaborating with the Documentation bubble on wrapping up our own contract efforts and getting them approved by our lawyer.
• Budge(t) up: With all the production and shipping complete, we can now accurately determine exactly how much money we have left to pay article writers.
• It’s drafty in here: We’ll continue revising the draft outline of the NPM article based on the research our founder Ms Boba put together with the help of fannish NPM beginners. The clearer our draft is, the better our tech writer will do!
• THE END IS NIGH: With the digital and physical rewards distributed, we’re well on our way toward wrapping up campaign fulfillment. All that’s missing are the articles and the legal contracts we need to get them done! 😌

Around the FujoVerse

• Escaping to Escapade: We’re heading down to Los Angeles to table at EscapadeCon from January 31 to February 2. Escapade bills itself as a “slash slumber party” and has been a celebration of fujoshi, fudanshi, fujin, and friends since way back in 1991, which means it’s exactly the right crowd to introduce to the Fujoverse. Both our founder Ms Boba and our communications manager Dove will be there selling merch and preaching the good word about the Fujoshi Guide to Web Development, FujoCoded, and the rest of the FujoVerse.
  
  You can buy tickets here on their website—and if your budget is tight, they offer scholarships! 

• Thursday, December 5 @ 3pm PST: BlueSky Hacking: Let’s Learn AtProto!
• Thursday, December 12 @ 3pm PST: BlueSky Hacking: Let’s Learn AtProto!
• Monday, December 16 @ 3pm PST: BlueSky Hacking: Let’s Learn AtProto!
• Thursday, December 19 @ 3pm PST: BlueSky Hacking: Let’s Learn AtProto!
• Monday, December 23 @ 3pm PST: BlueSky Hacking: Let’s Learn AtProto!
• Monday, December  30 @ 3pm PST: BlueSky Hacking: Let’s Learn AtProto!

FujoStore Highlights 

• A Folger’s Christmas: It’s time for the annual FujoVerse Holiday Special! You can use our discount code FOLGERS_SEASON for 15% off everything in the FujoCoded store. Brighten the holiday of your nearest and dearest fujin & friends with yaoi cheese boards, snarky stickers, or even an official Ownership Certificate of their favorite slash pairing!
• More discounts?: Remember, if you backed our FujoCoded launch campaign at $15 or above, you should already have a unique coupon code in your inbox that gives you 20% off. 
• EVEN MORE discounts??: And if you become a sustaining monthly supporter on Patreon, you’ll receive a coupon for 25% off your order! Tiers start at just $3 per month, and every bit truly does add up to support our mission: building a kinder, weirder, more diverse, more collaborative internet. 
• Shipping deadlines: If you need to receive your order on or before Decmber 25, here are your target order dates:
   
  • United States: Wednesday, December 18th (USPS Ground Advantage) 
  • Africa, Central America (including Mexico), and South America: Monday, December 2 (International Shipping)
  • Canada & all remaining countries: Monday, December 9 (International shipping) 
• No time to wait? Whether you gift a RobinBoob ship certificate to a friend or buy your own OTP to treat yourself, your recipient will receive it in their inbox right away!

You can help! 

• Nitpickers (for BobaBoard): Volunteers to give feedback on the BobaBoard home page, help us identify things that are outdated or confusing, catch typos, and find broken links. All you need to bring to the table is your opinion!
• Astro coders (for BobaBoard): Know the Astro framework, or willing to learn? The revamp of these sites will involve moving from React-based frameworks (NextJS, Docusaurus) to Astro (and its documentation framework, Starlight)! This is a great chance to gain some relatively entry-level experience with one of our favorite technologies to build personal websites with and learn more about frameworks.
• Copywriters, UI/UX folks, and/or web designers (for BobaBoard): After we move everything to Astro, we’ll need to rewrite, redesign, or rebuild the outdated parts of the home page. Whether you have decades of experience or just a hobbyist level of interest, we’d love to have you.

That's all, folks!