The response to 1000 Lotuses Part 2 has been great, and I had fun at EBABZ this year. I love you all so much. It’s especially fun to see people get so excited about the Littlest Red Books! Do remember to review 1000 Lotuses Parts 1 and 2 on itch.io and share it widely on socials/with your friends because the content excludes it from itch.io’s own indexing system. Without the ability to be indexed, I rely SOLELY on word of mouth to promote 1000 Lotuses!

That’s the only positive stuff I have to share right now. If you don’t want to get severely bummed out this Christmas Eve, this is the place to stop reading.

UPDATE January 2026: we have VERBAL confirmation from a social worker over the phone that we were APPROVED FOR FULL ASSISTANCE but I won't consider it official until we get the letter in the mail. The money we've raised so far can still go to my dad's ER bills (he had a stroke one week ago ;_;)

I’ve spoken to some people privately and posted on Bluesky about the situation with my mother. Basically, she needs medicine to stay alive, our healthcare provider yanked financial assistance from us, and now want to charge us 2x-4x our entire income for the treatment that she got for free this year.

I’m looking for work now, even though I’m not terribly well myself and do most of the cooking/housework for my parents. And even if I got the highest paid job that I reasonably qualify for and gave my parents every penny, they would still have to pay tens of thousands, and will have barely anything left for living expenses, if at all.

It’s a patently absurd situation. It’s also our reality. My mom is going to die without her monthly infusions.

Nothing that the internet can do will make a dent in the exorbitant amount that our healthcare provider is demanding from us. I feel absurd even trying to ask for help. But my ko-fi is linked at the bottom of this newsletter by default. There is a post that goes into a little more detail about what’s going on.

I’m still writing. Frankly, I don’t know how to make myself not write. But all LotusCarp projects are going to move very slowly for a while.