#fujoguide

[essential-randomness]

I can't believe this is real and I'm physically holding it

(digital preview of @fujowebdev Issue 1 is shipping soon to our Kickstarter supporters 👀 )

[fujowebdev]

✨(G)IT'S DELIVERY DAY✨

The first issue of the Fujoshi Guide to Web Development has been drafted, edited, alpha-read, beta-read, possibly even omega-read—and starting today, it'll be backer-read!

After 18 months' work, the digital preview hit our backers' inboxes this morning.

As you can imagine, A LOT of work from A LOT of incredibly talented people went into making this day possible.

Our mission was not easy: creating an approachable and engaging learning experience for beginners with a technology as complex as Git? "Impossible!", many would say.

And yet, according to our beta readers, we succeeded in doing just that. So it's time for the penultimate test: put the digital preview in the hands of a slightly-broader public and find out if our backers agree with our betas!

As you can imagine, we're scared but excited 🫣

Thanking everyone who participated in this issue would fill the whole tweet, so here's the zine credits in the pics👇, featuring @essential-randomness, @enigmalea, @starfieldcanvas, @ymkse, @elendraug, @doubledeadstudio, @ikam177, @sgt-spank, @tarantasina, @a-brilliant-loser, @mappapapa and beyond!

Remember to sign up for our newsletter on to follow along with our progress, or sign up at the bottom of our site to get notified when Issue 1 is available to the general public!

And you can always get updates by following us here!

[xieliansbignaturals]

It’s him! Old Man Yaoi!

Character is from here: fujoweb.dev/characters

Inspiration (“why does “old man yaoi” sound like fujoshi santa claus”)

[enigmalea]

Why I Contributed to FujoGuide

If you follow me here or mastodon you may have noticed that I've been reblogging/boosting a lot of posts for something called The Fujoshi Guide to Web Development (@fujowebdev). There's a good chance you followed me or know me from the Dragon Age fandom where I run communities, events, and zines and write fanfic, and you might be wondering why the sudden and drastic departure from my normal content. Why would a writer contribute to something related to webdev? Why have you stopped seeing thirst for Dragon Age characters and started seeing… whatever a FujoGuide is?

The answers to those questions (and more!) are below the cut.

My Coding Journey

I wrote my first lines of code in 1996 (yes, I'm old AF). It was the early days of the internet and tutorials for how to make your own websites were literally everywhere. You couldn't go more than two clicks without finding a how-to written in plain language. But it was painstaking and tedious. CSS didn't exist yet (literally, I started coding about six months before it was released) and even when it appeared it wasn't widely adopted or supported.

It was the "glory days" of Geocities, Myspace themes, Neopets, and Livejournal. If there was a cool site, you could use HTML and/or CSS to customize it. I honed my skills by coding so many tables character profiles for RPs, creating themes, painstakingly laying out user info pages, and building my own site.

Gradually, things changed. Web 2.0 showed up with locked down profiles and feeds you couldn't customize, free website hosts became more difficult to find, and point and click page builders became the way of the web. Shortly after, I took a long break from fandom; frustrated and disappointed with site closures, lost communities, and general fandom wank… it felt like it just wasn't worth it anymore.

I eventually came back, and when I did it meant customizing themes, figuring out how to create tools for my communities, coding tumblr pages (and learning they're not really supported on mobile), and looking at automations for my common tasks. One day, I woke up and thought, "I'm going to make a Discord bot… it can't be that hard."

So, I did it.

An Unexpected Friendship

About a month after I launched my bot to the public, I received a random Discord message from @essential-randomness. A friend had told her about my bot, and she was working on BobaBoard which needed volunteers. I was shocked. First, people were talking about my bot. Second, I wasn't a real coder. I didn't know anything! I just googled a bunch of stuff and got something working. I had no idea what I was doing.

She assured me it was okay. She was willing to teach me what I didn't know - and most of all, that she wanted my help. I took a day or two to think it over, and fatefully filled out the volunteer form. I didn't know if I could be useful or how I could be useful, but I wanted to try.

Programming Is Awful

In the years months that followed, I spent a lot of time in @essential-randomness' DMs complaining about programming… at least once I realized she wouldn't judge me. I was still very much doing things the hard way, taking hours to update a site to add a single link on all the pages. I knew there were easier methods, but I either couldn't find them or once I found them, they were filled with dense jargon which was terrifying.

"An all-in-one zero-javascript frontend architecture framework!" Is that even English? "A headless open-source CMS." Cool. Sounds good. "A full-stack SSG based on Jamstack extending React and integrating Rust-based JS." Those sure are words. With meanings. That someone knows. Not me, though.

I spent so much time looking at what sites claimed was documentation and losing my mind because I had no idea where to even start most of the time. With @essential-randomness' encouragement, I kept at it, experimenting with new things, and jumping in headfirst even when I had no idea what I was doing. And I was so glad. Where I used to struggle keeping one website updated, last year I managed to deploy and update 7 websites. Yeah, you read that right. It was amazing.

The new stuff made it all much, much easier.

An Idea Is Born

Meanwhile, we spent hours discussing why it was difficult to get fandom to try coding. Part of the barrier was the belief you must be some sort of genius or know math or that creative/humanities people can't do it. It is also partially coding communities being unfriendly to newbies and hobbyists; a culture which often thrives on debasing people's choices, deriding them for not understanding, and shouting rtfm (read the fucking manual) and lmgtfy (let me google that for you)- all of which are unhelpful at best and humiliating and abusive at worst. The tech dudebro culture can be unforgiving and mean.

The number of coding-based Discords I've left far outnumbers the ones I've stayed in.

We determined what fandom needed was a place for coders of all skill levels to come together to help and support one another; where they could learn to code and how to join open-source projects they love, and where they could make friends and connections and show off their projects whether they were new or experienced programmers.

And thus… Fandom Coders was born.

What About FujoGuide?

Of course, running a coding group and working on BobaBoard together means we spent a lot of time talking about the state of the web. We both lamented over poor documentation, jargon-rich tutorials, and guides which assume a baseline of knowledge most people don't have. What we needed to do was provide tutorials which start at the beginning… from the ground up (what is a terminal and how do I open it?) without skipping steps. What we needed to do was make those tutorials fun and appealing.

I don't remember exactly the journey it took to get us here if I'm honest. I have no clue who said it first. But I do remember I first started thinking about anthropomorphizing programming languages when we attempted to cast the languages as the Ouran High School boys… and again when I suggested we do a [TOP SECRET IN CASE WE DO IT] group project in Fandom Coders to help people learn about programming.

What I do know is that as last year ended, @essential-randomness became laser-focused on creating our gijinka and moving forward with FujoGuide… and I couldn't say no.

Okay, But… Why Contribute?

To be honest, it's not just that I was around for the birth of the idea. It's ALL of the things in this post - the culmination of three years of frustration trying to figure out what I'm doing with coding, of wading through dense documentation, of wanting to give up before I even start. It's three years of dipping my toes into toxic techbro culture before running away. All added to decades of watching the web become corporate-sanitized, frustratingly difficult to customize, increasingly less fun, and overtly hostile to fans who dare enjoy sexual content.

To sum all of this up, it's the firm belief that we desperately need a resource like this. Something that's for us, by us. Something that builds fans up, instead of tears them down; that empowers them to create for themselves and their communities what no one is creating for them. It is a project I'm deeply passionate about.

And I can't wait until we can bring it to life for you all.

[sgt-spank]

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?

[holyscream]

[ROBOT VOICE] WELCOME TO VERSION CONTROL

It’s already the 7th where I live, so

Happy 10010th Birthday, Git! I don’t use you as much as I should anymore (or… at all, currently 🙇🏽) and I would like to change that this year. Let’s make it happen!

the fujoshi guide to web development: kickstarter · @fujowebdev

[mappapapa]

Sketches of Terminal, a character I designed that is appearing in the very real April 1st surprise project The Fujoshi Guide to Web Development. Learn more about what this entails on @fujowebdev and consider supporting the project on Kickstarter!

[reanimatedheart]

why i joined fujoguide

i joined this project because ms boba commissioned me to make a hot twink and i was like, "nice, i'd love to do tha!." only when i got on did i find out the whole scope of the project, and i was so thrilled because 1) this sounds like a fantastic educational resource, and 2) it's one i'd like to use myself!

finally, like boba-tan, i can learn how to code using the help of hot sexy men