So...how was the con?

Greetings, fujoshi, fudanshi, fujin, and friends,

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.

A photoshopped image of two sea creatures on the ocean floor clinking wine glasses together. The top caption says "Its been one of those weeks..." and the bottom caption says "...Pass the yaoi!!!" It's a common edit of the original image, which said "it's been one of those weeks...pass the detritus!"

As usual, read to the end for our monthly merch promo and new opportunities to work with us 😘

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!

Here’s our booth setup! We got several compliments from the other dealers.

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.

A photo of a coloring page version of Git's character page. His clothes, shoes, hair, eras, and tail have been colored in with colored pencil while his skin is still the blank white of the page. He has brown hair and boots, a maroon tail and ears, and a green jacket over a purple undershirt. His shorts are bright green with orange trim and his choker is purple. — Thanks, 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.

Recent Progress on the Fujoshi Guide to Web Development

Printing Money: We’ve done some preliminary research into professional printing costs based on the number of pages in FujoGuide Vol. 0.1: Git, and they were surprisingly reasonable (and, since we’re using a US-based company, tariffs-proof)!
Priority Switcharoo: Based on our experience selling printouts of the placeholder-illustrations-only digital preview of FujoGuide Vol. 0.1: Git and the feedback from our volunteers, we’ve determined that people are so eager to get their hands on the instructional content that they don’t need the highly polished final product quite yet. This means figuring out illustrations for Issue 1 will be moved down the priority list! Instead, we’ll focus on writing the content for Issue 2 and creating the infrastructure necessary to sell the digital preview of Issue 1.
Scoping it out: Our founder Ms Boba has shared her thoughts on Issue 3 with the team and we’re now enthusiastically discussing what the issue ought to cover. We’ll keep you posted!
No news is good news…right?: We still haven’t received quite as much feedback as we dreamed we would on the digital preview of FujoGuide Vol. 0.1: Git. What we have received has been pretty good, so we’re hoping that means no one noticed any huge problems. But if you still haven’t checked out your digital preview, please do it soon and hit that feedback form!
- If you’re one of our KickStarter backers and need to dig the delivery email up in your inbox, the email that delivered the digital issue files was called Project Update #45: The Fujoshi Guide to Web Development by Essential Randomness.
- You can leave feedback on the digital issue here.

What’s Next for FujoGuide

Volume 0, Issue 1: Git:

Sell, baby, sell: None of the feedback we received requires major formatting changes, which means we’re clear to start moving forward on selling the issue preview more broadly. (As mentioned above, though, we still want feedback from you! Give it to us!!!)

Volume 0, Issue 2: GitHub:

Results are in: As mentioned in the December newsletter, it’s time to integrate the first round of the beta team’s feedback. Guided by our beta team’s suggestions, we’ll rearrange several subsections of the draft for better flow, diversify the skills covered by the practice prompts, and revisit the topics planned for our ‘Extras’ section.
Deadlines are lifelines: We’ll soon set a firm date for the next beta read so that we have a basis for our revision schedule.

Around the Fujoverse

Word on the Street

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.

Hang Out with FujoCoded Live on Twitch 💬✨

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.

February 📆

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

Fujostore Highlights

Photo of a large hime-size cheese paddle emblazoned with the word "slash" in lowercase cursive on a stand behind a smaller chibi-size cheese paddle with the same design. A post-it note of Boba-tan holding a white square has the words "Con Exclusive" with an arrow pointing toward the paddles. A person in a purple shirt and black KN95 mask is obscured behind the paddle display. (That's Dove, ignore her.) — From yaoi paddles to slash paddles…Do you think the next evolution will just say ‘/’ ?

Slash prices: In honor of Escapade’s dedication to slash fandom, Ms Boba made some con-exclusive “Slash” paddles! They’ll be available in person at future FujoCoded con appearances, as well as perpetually available for our Patreon $upporters to purchase, once our $upporter-exclusive section is ready.

They belong together…and to YOU: This Valentine’s Day, treat yourself—or your sweetheart!—to the gift of love with an official certificate of Ship Ownership from RobinBoob. The cost is whatever you feel in your heart your OTP is worth 🥰

Clearing Out Ms Boba’s Storage Valentine’s Day Sale💘: Filled with love for your favorite lovers this Valentine’s Day weekend? Love Metal Gear Solid references…or just love cardboard boxes? We’re clearing out inventory by giving away the LAST of our “Cardboard Love” stickers for FREE with any other FujoStore purchase. We have four lovely designs featuring Sheith, Jaspis, Reylo, and Thorki. Just add both your chosen sticker and your other item to your cart, then apply coupon code SNAKE_BOX!

An animated advertisement for the "Cardboard Love" sticker. Across the top purple bar, white text says "Is this your ship?" Below, a circular sticker featuring an upside down cardboard box hides Boba-tan from view, her raccoon tail sticking out the back and her round glasses shoved through the hole at the front. The design on the side of the box switches through the four sticker designs. As it switches, the name of the ship and a close-up of the ship art also switch on the right side of the ad. The ships shown are Sheith (Shiro and Keith from Voltron), Jaspis (Jasper and Lapis Lazuli from Steven Universe), Reylo (Rey and Kylo Ren from Star Wars), and Thorki (Thor and Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.) At the bottom of the ad, purple text reads "Use code SNAKE_BOX to get a free sticker with any purchase! " — Only the SEXIEST ship will distract Boba-tan’s enemies from her sneaky infiltration. Choose wisely!

You Can Help!

This month, we need artists who take commissions; our business card dropoff is always open. We’re gearing up for a secret project that might possibly be slightly related to a certain annual event and want to have all our artistic ducks in a row well beforehand.

Here’s who we’re looking for:

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!

We’d also still be happy to take volunteer auditors for the ongoing background project of revamping the BobaBoard website and documentation. If you’re good at being a nitpicky reader and critical website user, we could use your input!

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. Or, if you’re an artist, you can use our artist business card dropoff.

That’s All, Folks!

However you’re affected by the political upheaval of the past few weeks, we hope you’re taking care of yourself and enjoying some really good escapist fanfic for Valentine’s Day. Don’t forget: Imagining a better world is the first step to creating it!

💖Love from all of us,

The FujoCoded LLC Team
(a sentient set of seamlessly looping anime gifs)

So...how was the con?

Catch up on our Escapade experience, FujoGuide progress, and new connections with other web projects. We’re also recruiting artists!