This is a test episode for a podcast I want to do that gives me and my guests space to delve into the more controversial sides of fandom. Be prepared for taboo and adult topics, or skip this episode entirely! We'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming next week!
Have you ever felt shamed for your interests within a fandom community? Join me in a revealing conversation with guest @sgt-spank, known for his Bro Strider body pillow, as we tackle the topic of Homestuck fandom purity culture and its impact on fans. We share our personal experiences with this damaging mindset and discuss how it has affected our enjoyment of fandoms while navigating the path to self-acceptance.
Sgt Spank's Etsy
Sgt Spank's NSFW Twitter
Sgt Spank's SFW Twitter
This podcast's transcript is entirely automated and I have not yet gone through and edited it outside of adding speaker names, so sorry for any inaccuracies!
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After an intense 30-day campaign, The Fujoshi Guide to Web Development has officially raised $18,039. 🎉
We're immensely grateful for your trust and support, and look forward to the journey to come 💜
As we salute this feat, let's now cheer for those who made it happen.
✨Final Spotlight: The #FujoGuide Team ✨
You’ve already met many of our amazing contributors (if you need a refresher on our spotlights, find them at the end), but today we want to focus on those behind the scenes and highlight the incredible team that made our success possible.
While the hot men did a lot of heavy lifting in attracting (😘) people to our cause, a lot goes into successfully hitting ambitious goals like ours: planning, organization, research, marketing, and writing (omg so much writing).
It's impossible to accurately list everyone's contributions. This Kickstarter campaign, pulled off in only 2 months, is the collective work of an incredible team of people who came together with a mission: make programming accessible to fandom in the most hilarious way possible.
As project lead @essential-randomness found out, setting up a Kickstarter is a daunting task, even more than it seems to those who’ve never run one. Thankfully the @bobaboard community came together to her aid and managed to pull off the seemingly impossible.
Together with Slogbait, who did incredibly vital work, like setting up deadlines, budget, & rewards, a team of Kickstarter connoisseurs researched similar projects to understand what would go into making our campaign a success: the incredible @a-brilliant-loser & @elfwreck.
With data on our side, we started building. A fundamental part of this process was the research on expenses and manufacturers for the book and potential merch. Here, Candle provided us with his expertise in publishing and helped us understand the best options available.
At the same time, @tempural, @mizunotic helped us untangle the questions surrounding merchandise. What is popular with our audience? What are the best manufacturers around? What beautiful items can we afford to deliver to our amazing supporters?
Next, it was time for the practical setup: project lead @essential-randomness provided the first draft of our amazing campaign story, while @enigmalea and Heidi whipped it into the beautiful shape that will forever be immortalized on our Kickstarter page.
To decorate our riveting narrative, we needed graphics to match. As is April 1st tradition, project lead @essential-randomness got together with trusty pinch-hit designer CatBathingSun to create character cards and other campaign graphics, including the ones you saw on our socials.
But no Kickstarter campaign page is complete without captivating reward tiers. @a-brilliant-loser led this charge, coming up with our creative "GIT"-based naming and taking care of other copy needs. On the art side, @cmdonovann contributed the Boba-tans decorating our limited tiers.
Launching the campaign was a lot of work on its own. But that work, while important, could not have pushed us to these incredible heights without our incredible social media and marketing team, who worked tirelessly this whole month to reach and inspire old and new supporters.
While many people worked on this, we want to first shout out the amazing work of @owlpockets, who whipped our content calendar into shape, taught us social media strategy (and alt-texting), and helped us navigate the unknown waters of relentless promotion.
Then we have project lead @essential-randomness who spent an uncountable number of hours devising our marketing strategy and writing the threads that entertained you during this campaign.
As she herself writes, "May she now finally get to go back to coding, instead!"
But she could not have done it without collaborators like @elendraug, @enigmalea, and, again, @owlpockets, who painstakingly reviewed and improved her drafts and provided immense support throughout this extremely intense, exhilarating, month-long tour de force.
There are many other contributions-smaller, yes, but not less integral to our success. Like @thebiballerina, who first helped us wrap our heads around the inner workings of social media strategy, or @cmdonovann who kept our Discord updated on the week's happenings.
And then all the people who supported us with small (and big) bits here and there, like our very own Secret Final Boss, @thunder-the-ranger-wolf, Tovanish, @madgastronomer, Cante, Mantra, @pamuya, @playerprophet, @ignitiondork, @nianeyan, @codeargent and so many more.
Our artists, obviously, like our art director @brokemycrown; character designers @sgt-spank, @mappapapa, and @ymkse_art; illustrators @ikam177, Ererifan915, @kiwipon, @catter-bug, @admiralexclipse, and @tempural. Sensitivity readers, like @admiralexclipse and @angelfeast.
And then our project organizers, like our aforementioned anonymous contributor and @enigmalea who worked tirelessly on logistics and wrangling and showed up repeatedly to pick up all the dangling bits and pieces that a project this ambitious inevitably has.
Last but definitely not least, our project lead and director @essential-randomness who brought-and kept!-everyone together, oversaw and pitched in on every aspect of the project, designed our notepads (she's proud of them), and provided the initial investment that made this a reality.
And with this, our last spotlight comes to a close. We'd pitch the Kickstarter link here, but we're done with that for now. ;)
Thank you everyone for your incredible support. This campaign blew all of our expectations out of the water, and we'll forever treasure this experience.
We'll be back soon with more updates on the road from here. We're incredibly excited to get to work on delivering what we promised, and also pumped to get a small vacation break before we do :)
Hey there, I’m Sgt, and I’m the artist who brought ARIA to life in this project.
I joined the #Fujoguide project out of love for the idea of bringing Queer content creators together for a chance to make something fun and educational for people to better curate their own online spaces and experiences. Ms Boba’s drive for coming up with unique and interesting ideas is an exceptional talent, and I looked forward to working on a project that can help folks that struggle with textbook-style guides to have a better grasp on coding so that we don’t have to settle for the platforms created by social media bigwigs with pockets deeper than the Mariana trench.
This was a brand new experience for me, as this was the first time I ever had a chance to participate in a project quite this big with so many other wonderful creators who share the same goal. I’m a very visual learner, as are many people, and I feel like this project is such a good way to get folks like me engaged and focused on learning to code and create our own little personal corners of the web where we don’t have to follow anybody else’s rules. Not only that, but I was absolutely tickled to participate in something involving a lot of queer representation with a team of fellow queer folks from many walks of life.
The care and love that went into this project—and that will continue to be poured into this project—is so special, and I’m so happy to be a part of it. We have so many things still in the works, and we can’t wait to share more of our passion project with you.
Also, have you seen the gorgeous men? Absolutely incredible. All of them are hotties. Can you guess who my favorite is?
Today we're here to tell you all about the currently released characters of Browserland: HTML, CSS, and ARIA.
Follow under the cut to learn more about the #FujoGuide world and the wonderful people that brought it to life!
If you’re coming in with no context, our Kickstarter page has all the answers. Help us reach our next stretch goal—$600 to go!—and beyond by backing our project and spreading the word!
So, what is Browserland? While we have some ideas about how it might look (regular world, but more high-tech? with tubes?) and about its politics (what if the Browser Wars were about geographical territory?), for the most part we don't need to know how it works...yet.
Still, we knew we wanted some bonus characters to beef up the lineup of our first volume. And since this is a project about web development, who better than the awesome trio of technologies that power every website we visit? We're talking of course about HTML, CSS, and ARIA, portrayed here by ereriren.
We wanted them to work as a trio, so, our trusty @tvtropesorg always at our side, we got to researching. After consulting MANY entries, we landed on the Comic Trio trope, one of the most popular examples of which is the (in)famous Team Rocket from Pokemon.
🌐 Browserland Character 1: HTML 🌐
Early on, we decided to portray websites as places where HTML & gang would work. As the backbone of every site, we made HTML the team lead and immediately assigned him the "overworked millennial" trope.
We also wanted HTML to be a constant, unprotesting victim of CSS' penchant for fashion. Putting all this together, it soon became clear he'd be the “Straight Man (trope)” of the group.
@ymkse was tasked with his design, and oh boy did they deliver.
Only one issue: they made him extremely hot, but also extremely tricky to get right. Whenever someone else had to draw HTML, he required a significant number of revisions as we struggled together to get him to look the way we wanted. (We're learning, slowly... The eyes are key.)
The sacrificial hero of our first "HTML is really hard to draw" discovery was @catter-bug, who took on the arduous task of trying to make sense of his infuriating face. Thanks to their hard work and incredible patience, our HTML character card eventually came out 🌈AMAZING🌈.
You might have noticed that HTML is the only character whose roster pic (by @ymkse) differs from his card. This last minute change happened when @essential-randomness jokingly swapped him for his catmaid version, and realized the comedic (and storytelling) potential of him staring at his phone while everyone else looked to the audience!
All in all, HTML is the only character who has four different official designs. Rumors say this might be because our project lead is extremely biased towards him, but she obviously denies such baseless accusations.
🌐 Browserland Character 2: CSS 🌐
As the language in charge of styling, we knew right away CSS would be a tailor and HTML his chosen guinea pig/model. Most importantly, if HTML and ARIA were working at every website, we wanted CSS to be the one making their uniforms!
Once again, @ymkse was in charge of the design. We wanted him to be tiny, energetic, and disheveled. We also wanted to have a character with Native American inspiration and, after some research, the team turned to the Mi'kmaq tribe for guidance.
We were lucky to have @admiralexclipse consult with us as a sensitivity reader for CSS's design, and even more #blessed to have them join us as the official illustrator for his character card.
Something else you might notice from CSS' character card: he's deaf! We were thrilled to work with @angelfeast as a sensitivity reader to make sure we understood how to handle this in our material.
We're excited to portray him in our guides soon! (art by @admiralexclipse).
🌐 Browserland Character 3: ARIA 🌐
This brings us to the third member of our trio: ARIA. As a technology intrinsically tied to HTML, we knew we wanted them to work closely together. And as the "screen reader" technology, we knew we wanted him to be the group's "conversationalist"
Aside from this, he remained a mystery. That is, until we realized ARIA stands for Accessible *Rich* Internet Applications, and it all fell in place. The heir of a wealthy family, ARIA was sent to mingle with "the plebs," where he fell madly in love with the dashing HTML-senpai.
Our last-minute hero @sgt-spank swooped in to make ARIA a reality and complete our set of characters. He also happily obliged—and encouraged—our requests of adding increasing quantities of tattoos and leather straps. Too many, you think? No such thing.
While we won’t get to fully explore the trio until later (where there’s an Issue 0, there may one day be an Issue 1), we're stoked about them and their dynamics. And given that Git(Hub) needs actual files to operate upon, they'll feature heavily in our first guide's examples.
And that is all for the Browserland spotlight! If you like the amazing work of our team, you can hire our artists and writers (and help us reach our stretch goals) by backing our Git Art/Fic tier! (art by @cmdonovann)
Please help us by reblogging this thread and sharing our kickstarter link with friends, family, colleagues and Discord servers!
You've already met the stars of Issue 0 (Git, Github & Terminal). Today, we're excited to release the FULL character cards for their guest stars + future protagonists of their own issue: HTML, CSS, and ARIA!
Help us bring them to life by backing Issue 0 on Kickstarter!
Over the coming weeks, we'll focus more on our characters: who they are, how they were developed, and which team members helped bring them to life. Be sure to follow for all the details!
(whispers) by the way, they were roommates... oh my god, they were roommates
Behold, a behind-the-scenes look at a topic sure to interest and entice: how did the FujoGuide team come up with such a shippable cast of characters?
If you're just joining us now and need to catch up on what #FujoGuide is all about, read our pitch (and back our project) at our Kickstarter page. (TL;DR: we’re making web development more accessible to fandom communities.)
As with most things in our Kickstarter, our character creation was a collaborative effort. We wanted our cast to embody tropes beloved by shippers, but also to prove to existing developers we know what we're talking about!
This was not an easy task. So, how did we accomplish it?
Follow the cut to find out!
At first, we didn't know which characters we needed! When our project lead @essential-randomness wrote the initial pitch, she jotted down a couple examples of how the characters MIGHT behave.
Why these characters? Well, she loves TypeScript, and Git wrote itself.
Character creation was a collective process and TV Tropes, our best friend. Which characters did the team like? What tropes did they embody? What were genre must-haves? What made them undeniably hot?
We watched classics like Ouran or Fruits Basket to get ready! Hetalia, even!
During this process, we got to teaching! Our lead @essential-randomness held some learning sessions for collaborators explaining modern web development technologies and their relationships.
You can see the resulting diagram here.
While we researched, we discussed possible topics and created more characters. We even have some yet-to-be-released work-in-progress hotties who unfortunately didn't make it into our first guide: [REDACTED] and [TOP SECRET], courtesy of @cmdonovann.
Eventually, we landed on Git(Hub) as a topic: widely applicable, complex enough, and yet self contained–the perfect test for our educational prowess!
And (we'll admit it) the words "tentacle catboy" were all the team needed to get really sold on the vision.
Documents were made and filled with technical details, references, and character tidbits we brainstormed together. Character designers worked closely with the rest of the team to tastefully include technical references, such as Git's branches, Terminal's cowsay, and CSS' owl.
Want to know more about these “masters at work”? Go follow them! @brokemycrown (Git & GitHub), @mappapapa (Terminal), @ymkse (HTML & CSS), and @sgt-spank (ARIA).
Throughout this process, our team wanted to balance creating just enough canon for people to latch on, while having "blank slates" characters open to wide reinterpretation.
Most of us come from transformative fandom, so what is canon if not just a sandbox for us all to play in?
But then how DO we make a cast of characters that people will love to ship while leaving the door open to interpretation? @playerprophet answered our cry for help with their amazing cast creation tool!
You can get it here on their Patreon!
Shoutout to all the amazing creators involved in developing our characters:
@enigmalea @elendraug @mizunotic @a-brilliant-loser @tempural (and more not on this platform!)
This concludes our tale of breathing life into our characters. We hope people will come to love them as much as we do. The response to them already has blown us out of the water!
Check out all their character cards (and back us!) on Kickstarter.
Questions? Comments? Our team is always here for them 👀
It's 413 YOU FILTHY HOMESTUCKS. Recognize these locations? With the help of some friends, we have hidden FOUR HOMESTUCK LOOT BOXES in Sacramento, CA. Norfolk, VA. Miami, FL. And Oklahoma City, OK.
Inside these four boxes is a GRIST HAUL, A TOBLERONE, AND A TON OF MERCH. There will be nobody watching these boxes so snatch them up quick!
DAVE is located next to some VERY SUSPICIOUS PONIES in SACRAMENTO, CA
JADE -- someone snatched Jade 10 minutes after she was placed so JADE HAS BEEN CLAIMED
ROSE is located next to a friendly stump in a gorgeous park in OKLAHOMA CITY, OK
JOHN is well hidden in the UNTAMED WILDS of a nicely trimmed bush in NORFOLK, VA
GOOD LUCK AND HAVE FUN EVERYONE!
How are all the characters so hot? What ingredients did the mad scientists put into them?
The unstoppable fudanshi passion for a good uke seme well-balanced character, obviously!
Jokes aside, our character designers have done an excellent job building up on the work of our technical experts! In particular:
@brokemycrown set a super high first bar as Git and GitHub's designer, as well as our official sluttification consultant "art director".
@mappapapa made all grandpafuckers salivate with the excellent work on Terminal (the unrivaled king of being thirsted over in tags).
@ymkse just came in and blew away all our expectations out of the waters with the HTML and CSS designs.
@sgt-spank swooped in like a hero to put the final bow on our cast with ARIA.
Make sure to give them a follow, and remember: you can commission them directly, or back our "GIT Art" tier to support both them AND our mission.
We also have excellent writers who have worked diligently to ensure only the highest quality tropes and character traits were mixed into our cast; they're standing by to write you a FujoGuide dream fic if you back our 'GIT Fic' tier.
Stay tuned for next week when we'll publish more content focusing on our process of character development (and the characters themselves).
The Fujoshi Guide to Web Development, now on Kickstarter
Thank you all for joining us yesterday for the Git's Birthday Bash, and for helping us celebrate his 10010th birthday. As a token of appreciation for your generosity, we have now unlocked a new add-on item for our backers: exclusive catboy bath water.
I mean, how often does one get to help support a more independent web AND get catboy bath water in return? Hurry up though, cause there is only a limited number available 😽
[Bonus under the cut]
Seriously: help us reach our goal by backing us on Kickstarter, reblogging this post, and sharing it with your friends!! Every little bit helps!!
[Catboy Bath Water Promo art by @sgt-spank + bonus GitHub by @brokemycrown.]
The Fujoshi Guide to Web Development, now on Kickstarter
Thank you all for joining us yesterday for the Git's Birthday Bash, and for helping us celebrate his 10010th birthday. As a token of appreciation for your generosity, we have now unlocked a new add-on item for our backers: exclusive catboy bath water.
I mean, how often does one get to help support a more independent web AND get catboy bath water in return? Hurry up though, cause there is only a limited number available 😽
[Bonus under the cut]
Seriously: help us reach our goal by backing us on Kickstarter, reblogging this post, and sharing it with your friends!! Every little bit helps!!
[Catboy Bath Water Promo art by @sgt-spank + bonus GitHub by @brokemycrown.]
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