October Surprise: print("zine");
The horrors are relentless, but we stay silly! We've got one momentous accomplishment and many minor ones to cover in this month's update.
Salutations, fujoshi, fudanshi, fujin, and friends!
It’s been a demanding month for FujoCoded’s finest, with several of our core members temporarily out of commission due to the demands of capitalism or the flare-ups of illness (and in one case, a prolonged internet outage!) Slowed but undeterred, we managed to hit our most important goals, which you can read all about in this month’s triumphant update.
We want to thank all our supporters for helping us make it this far, and for sticking with us on the long journey towards (spoilers!) the delivery of FujoGuide Issue 1 Digital Preview.
We couldn’t do any of this without you 💖
Company Credit
Ask And Ye Shall Receive: We got a great response to our request for volunteers! We’ve taken on two people to assist with video editing, and an experienced project manager to help us tackle task management. Work has already started, and we’re looking forward to sharing our progress with you in the following months. Still, we can always use some more help in these areas. If you’d like to join our new volunteers, reach out at contacts@fujocoded.com.
Taskmaster Torch-Passing 1: Our beloved task coordinator, Leedie, is taking some time off due to a busy time at her day job. We’re very grateful to Leedie for sticking it out through three major multi-part tasks: digital reward pack, digital zine preview, and backerkit reward shipping. With Leedie’s help, the team was able to coordinate work despite our highly decentralized and “slipping-work-in-the-cracks-of-dayjob” environment. We look forward to more adventures together when she’s free to return!
Taskmaster Torch-Passing 2: …and we were very very lucky to have a new volunteer come in to help us design a system that is less labor-intensive on the task coordinator side—we’re finally in the market for some dedicated task management software rather than relying on a hand-coded Google Sheet. Our new taskmaster took a hard look at our practices and made a great list of recommended improvements that we’ll work on implementing in the coming months.
Secret $upporter Store Section: As mentioned last month, our new intern Fox has been assigned to work on the delivery system for our $upporter perks. Our first perk-delivery method is to add a $upporters-only section to the FujoCoded store, where supporters can use a password to access exclusive items. The necessary coding tasks are all laid out, and Fox has been familiarizing herself with React and NextJS to prepare for the work! Hopefully her internet will be restored and allow her to dive in soon.
Recent Progress on Our Backerkit Campaign
Signed, Sealed, Delivered—it’s yours: We sent out the Digital Goodies Pack! A couple of supporters alerted us that the goodies couldn’t be downloaded as a group due to how GDrive shortcuts work. We quickly added some pre-made zip files to address the issue, and everything seems to have been smooth sailing from there. We hope you enjoyed your rewards. If you haven’t seen them yet, take this chance to go check them out! The announcement is in your email box, but let us know if you need the link sent again…and what you think 🤔
Locked & Loaded: The “confirm your address” email went out last weekend, and now all your shipping addresses are locked in! If you believe there’s an error with your locked address, please let us know at contacts@fujocoded.com as soon as possible and we’ll do our best to catch your order before it goes out.
Pack dynamics: A friend of Ms Boba’s came to stay with her out here on the (way too) sunny West Coast. Given the trying economic times, said friend has opted to pay rent in packing assistance and much-needed moral support during scary indie horror games. The two of them have been hard at work this week making sticker packs. All the sticker-only reward shipments have been packed, with tracking numbers inputted into Backerkit and everything. You know what they say—friends ought to stick together!
What’s Next for the FujoCoded Backerkit
Dis-Countdown: The store discount system has been implemented and the discount codes themselves have been assembled, so all that remains is sending them out! You can expect to get them in your email sometime in the coming week.
Pack, pack, pack, pack it up: Packing sure is full of unforeseen perils! As she was getting the sticker shipments together, Ms Boba ran out of thank-you cards to include in the packages. Once these difficulties are resolved, packing will recommence, to be followed by shipping. Those of you expecting physical rewards will soon receive tracking numbers via email. Wish us luck wrangling BackerKit’s system🤞
Recent Progress on the Fujoshi Guide to Web Development
Styling it out: Soooo much styling has been done on the guide, and it’s complete at last! This final round of styling includes:
- Changing our monospace fonts to a more readable alternative (Monaspace)
- New fun tidbits of world-building sprinkled into our lore pages
- Making sure the visual elements of our zine (like our callout boxes) look cool even when split across pages
- A slew of improvements to our Terminal callouts, with better input/output separation and other visual aids (Ms Boba did say she & Terminal have been Getting Intimate; the rest of us decided not to ask what that meant…)
As we’ve mentioned, all styling done on the first issue of the zine can be carried over to future zines. This means that for Issue 2 and onward, we’ll only need to focus on content.
Typo Review Redux: We had already done both an internal and an external typo review on Vol. 0 Issue 1: Git, but since then, we lucked into two MORE typo review volunteers. Our external reviewer recruited a programmer friend, and the programmer’s coding knowledge helped them catch some technical imprecisions that had been missed. A friend of our founder also hopped in to help and was no less impactful: among other things, they standardized our various bullet lists to follow APA guidelines rather than “whatever looks right to us”. Thanks, nitpickers!
Feed(back) me, Seymour: In anticipation of sending out the digital preview of Vol. 0, Issue 1: Git, we’ve put together a flexible feedback form for you all to fill out in whatever way suits you best. The form has options for simple typo reports, stream-of-consciousness brain dumps, and structured short-answer questionnaire responses. We wanted to make sure giving us feedback was as easy as possible, because whatever you’re willing to tell us, we’re eager to hear! Your feedback is SUPER important to the final product—you funded this zine, and we want to make sure it’s everything you dreamed it would be.
Beta-man Begins: The rough draft of Vol. 0, Issue 2: GitHub has made it through its first round of beta reading! We got some great feedback, including some very glowing reviews:
- “writing was amazing and amusing. overall a very entertaining read.”
- [This exercise] was really cool to me. It’s incredibly simple but seeing [the feature] in action made me think of how useful it could be!
- “Actually really enjoyed going through this!”
Digital Digital Get Down(loaded): The digital preview of Vol. 0, Issue 1: Git is making its way to inboxes near you! If you were a supporter of the FujoGuide Kickstarter and purchased a digital or physical copy of the zine, you’ll receive a link to the digital preview version in your inbox bright and early Monday morning 🤞.
We are SO excited to finally bring this to you, and we cannot WAIT to hear your feedback—whether good or bad, we want to hear it all!!!
What’s Next for FujoGuide
Feedback harvest: After scurrying furiously to finish the digital preview of Issue 1: Git, it’ll be time to turn our focus away from the zine itself for a hot minute and give everyone a chance to get their feedback in. Then, just in time for American Thanksgiving, we’ll give our Beta coordinator your feedback to feast on so she can help us figure out how to digest it.
On the backburner: We’re going to hold off on implementing any major structural improvements to the Issue 2: GitHub zine until we have your feedback on Issue 1: Git. That way, we can make sure your general feedback about FujoGuide’s approach is taken into account as we move forward with the next draft of Issue 2: GitHub.
Budget brainstorm: Finishing the digital preview means we’re getting a lot closer to printing the glossy bound version—but in order to do that, we need to hire illustrators, source a printing service, produce all the other FujoGuide merch you ordered…and all of that costs money! Now that we know what we’re aiming for in terms of how many pages the issue should have and how many illustrations it contains, we’ll be going back over our initial budget projections for these expenses. Our experience sourcing and ordering rewards for our FujoCoded seed money campaign will come in very handy here. We’ll make sure we know exactly how much we can spend on each necessary component as we prepare to evolve our work into its final form.
Around the Fujoverse
Word on the street
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FujoTube: Remember that talk our founder Ms Boba gave at CitrusCon? It’s now available for anyone to watch on the CitrusCon Youtube account. Multiple viewers said it restored their hope for the internet, and we’ve also had some great discussion of the content here on tumblr. If you want to help us spread the good word, you can find our talk release announcements on all major socials:
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Seeing Skies of Blue: Appropos of Musk’s latest nonsense, we decided to fill in our social media grid all the way by getting a Bluesky account for FujoGuide. Now, as they say, “all skeet skeet, motherf****rs!”
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Editorial Oversight: In the Fandom Coders discord server, the need for a high-quality all-purpose post editor that can be used across different fandom projects is a recurring subject. Many projects need a modern, next-gen editor that feels good to use, including not only BobaBoard but also future projects FujoCoded is considering. Our founder Ms Boba had thus already been having thoughts in this direction herself, and will be inviting any interested Fandom Coders folks to join her in discussing the broader question and tackling some of the practical aspects in the coming months.
Hang Out with FujoCoded Live on Twitch 💬✨
Once the digital preview of Vol. 0, Issue 1: Git is sent out, our founder Ms Boba will need to start replenishing her personal finances while continuing to build up FujoCoded LLC…and that means finding contract work. Her first step will be to tidy up her personal/professional website to showcase her work and skill—and what better time to do that than on a weekly stream? In early November, she’ll return to streaming twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. Her Thursday schedule is below, but you can double-check her streaming schedule page for information about potential Monday streams.
October
- Thursday, October 24 @ 3pm PDT: Let’s explore the Astro Content Layer
- Thursday, October 31 @ 3pm PDT: BobaBoard Stream - Post from Discord to BobaBoard via API
November
- Monday, November 4 @ 3pm PST: Let’s build MY Webs…Résumé!
- Thursday, November 7 @ 3pm PST: A Fandom Editor Polish-Up
- Monday, November 11 @ 3pm PST: Résumé Website BTS
- Thursday, November 14 @ 3pm PST: A Fandom Editor Mystery Episode
- Monday, November 18 @ 3pm PST: Résumé Website BTS
Fujostore Highlights
Charm Offensive: This month, we’re highlighting some of our pre-FujoCoded merchandise! Everything in the Charm section was designed and produced as BobaBoard merch and features BobaBoard’s (and now FujoGuide’s) mascot Boba-tan. These clear acrylic charms go great on a phone case, where they can remind you to relax and read some fanfic instead of getting into yet another argument with somebody who’s wrong on the internet. Or add one to your key ring, to give you some much-needed whimsy on your daily commute✨
Buy your own, or share our promo posts with friends and fellow fans on social media:
bluesky | tumblr | mastodon | twitter
You Can Help!
Since last month’s request for help went so well, we’re asking again! This month, we’re wondering (🥺) if anyone wants to help us do the following:
- Draft or coordinate technical writing (for BobaBoard): Getting new coding volunteers up to speed is easier the better our documentation is. We’re forming a dedicated documentation bubble, and would love for people interested in or experienced with technical writing to join us. If you’ve been wondering how to get more technical writing into your professional portfolio, look no further.
- Recruit volunteers (for BobaBoard): Ever done volunteer outreach or onboarding, even just for fandom events or hosting a party? We’re getting together a group of volunteers to brainstorm about volunteer outreach, onboarding, and management. Yes, this means we’re asking you to help onboard yourself—We’re meta like that.
- Grow a Patreon audience (for FujoCoded): Bridging the gap between our BackerKit campaign funds and our projected future sales income from the Fujoshi Guide to Web Development and other consumer-facing projects requires cultivating a base of Patreon supporters beyond just people who know Ms Boba personally. We’d really love to consult with someone who has insight into Patreon best practices.
- Make pixel art (on commission): Unfortunately, the artist who created the 88x31 pixel art badges in our digital reward pack won’t be available for the foreseeable future.This means we’re now putting out feelers for an interim pixel artist interested in our cause and willing to take paid commissions. If that sounds like you, or you’d be up for other types of commissions in the future, go ahead and fill out our artist info form (and tell your friends!)
If you’d like to try any of these roles, or if you’d like to get involved in other ways, let us know via contacts@fujocoded.com.
With the digital preview of the zine’s first issue less than 24 hours from distribution, we’re feel pretty accomplished…and pretty exhausted! We’re looking forward to some extra sleep and some extra peace of mind. We hope you can get some too!
All the best,
The FujoCoded LLC Team
(a set of sapient saddle-stitched sample booklets)
