Zaozao is a tired fish ☸️☭

@lotuscarp.bsky.social

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魚藻藻 Yu Zaozao (they/she/佢/他) is a disabled TME ungendered lesbian. LotusCarp is where their stories live. Autistic. 30ish. 🪷 Read a lesbian Buddhist fantasy: https://1000lotuses.carrd.co https://alterspring.org/@lotuscarp https://lotuscarp.com/

Mutual Aid 101:
virtual class +
Workshop with Rose
Rose (she/her)
Saturday, August 15. 1-3 PM PST (4-6 PM EST)
Learn how to raise funds for mutual aid! A 30 minute class will teach the strategies Rose has used to raise $75,000 for 30 different QTBIPOC community campaigns:
-Social Media
-Direct Outreach
-In person flyering
Then, we'll apply these strategies together to support Saturnia, a community member raising funds to get re-housed! We'll try to meet their mutual aid goal together in a supportive, low-pressure environment.
There will also be open time for questions, advice and support on any general fundraising + mutual aid related topics. All are welcome to attend!
Saturnia (they/them)
About the organizer:
Rose (she/her) has been organizing grassroots community mutual aid efforts in the Bay Area for the last ~2 years. She's a white trans femme in her early 30s who believes in decolonization and liberation from all systems of oppression.
She started these workshops as a way to get oppressed people the money they need to survive and fight back, when social media algorithms are increasingly censoring mutual aid. She also hopes to help people with more relative privilege show up in solidarity with their community members.
Free! Sign up at:
bit.ly/mutualaidworkshop (all lowercase)

Yan Wei from the baihe Couple of Mirrors. This Chinese lesbian canonically fought in WWI for some reason and here she is flexing on her European male comrades with her butch/tom drip and a sniper rifle casually propped on her shoulder. Anyway I enjoyed the show which is saying a lot considering I can't really stand pregnancy plots.

Alterspring screenshot

Anonymous: if you had to pick one, which of your ocs would you rather see fanart of?
lotuscarp: CRUEL question but I think I'm going to say Zanghong so she can always be trying new beautiful outfits

Frame of the show Iron Chef where a chef appears to be furiously whisking(?) with chopsticks(?) and the subtitle for the commentator is "I have no idea what he's doing." That's you when you don't ask me questions.

When you are an important person in Buddhism, you can hit people with sticks, as demonstrated here by Hijiri Byakuren of Touhou fame in these panels from the Lotus Eaters manga.

Osmanthus soup from Road to Empress being preferred to you, caption "I'M NOT GONNA SUGARCOAT IT."

Calico oranda goldfish. Belly full and head empty, as we should all strive to be.

Bodhisattva telling you "If I were not a holy woman, I would beat you senseless."

Li Zanghong is a trans lesbian character from my webnovel 1000 Lotuses. She has long, dark reddish brown hair with a loopy bun over each ear, secured with red ribbon. She is wearing clothes based on Tang Dynasty women's fashion: a peach/coral jacket with a long green skirt. She is sitting on a giant pink lotus that she manifested with her bodhisattva powers. The design is by me and the art is by my friend paintbrushDjinn.

“You’re not afraid of me?”
Li Zanghong shook her head. She wasn’t afraid of anything.
But Xia Chengyuan liked it when people were a little afraid of her, and she would not be satisfied until this foolish, innocent girl understood exactly who she was dealing with.
“May I look closer?”
Li Zanghong only smiled.
“Open your mouth.”
To Xia Chengyuan’s astonishment, she promptly obeyed. Xia Chengyuan then took Li Zanghong’s chin in her hand once more, and she kissed her.
Li Zanghong remained still, hardly daring to even breathe. She let Xia Chengyuan’s tongue caress every part of her mouth it could reach.
All I wanted was an idea of her powers and how she uses them—how did we end up like this?
Once Xia Chengyuan felt that she learned all she needed to, she withdrew. Li Zanghong could have believed that several years had just passed. She quietly stared at Xia Chengyuan, who was stroking Li Zanghong’s hair again.
“It’s so funny. Now that I know you’re just a doll, why shouldn’t I treat you like—”

Pride Book Fair 2026 Bundle #3: Live Free or Pride Hard
1000 Lotuses Yu Zaozao; Black Hole Guns for Hire Friday Strout; Blade Broken Niranjan; Blood Desi Hart; Blood Dhampir H S Kallinger; Blood of the Gods Wren L Rivers; Bloody Spade Brittany M Willows; Cat Mouse Eliza Mares; Cheerleaders From Planet X Lyssa Chiavari; Duckett and Dyer Dicks for Hire; Firewing Jennifer R Povey; Fractures Between Beatrice McKinsey; Ghost of a Life Ruth Miranda; Guitar Concerto S Morgan Burbank; In Good Company Nicola Kapron; In Spite of the Inevitable Morgan Biscup; Lambent T D Cloud; My Lord L B Shimaira; No Love in LA Katta Kis; Off the Beaten Path Sienna Eggler; Rebecca and the Grinning Worm Gareth Barsby; Reins of Magic R Dawnraven; Riyati Rebirth Kai Zeal; Shadows Dark and Deadly Andrea Marie Johnson; Songs of Broken Bells Lilly Lockwood; Stars of Destiny Melissa Stone; STAWBAISTDIFMRRD Eskay; Stray Dogs Freya Faust; Structural Integrity Tabitha OConnell; The Clockwork Empire Lucas JW Johnson; The Dragon Next Door Vanessa Ricci Thode; The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle Steve Hugh Westenra; The Lucky Machine Aimee Cozza; The Nightstalkers Mark Joachim Heijndermans; The Silence of Storms Nico Silver; Well of Souls Harmonia Grey; Wolfsbane Franklyn S Newton

Email from Stripe with subject line "New AI-powered Smart Disputes will be enabled in June 2026" received at 1:12pm local time today

California poppies blooming in my yard

Green bean plant with little purple flowers

WIP snippet

Li Zanghong sat at the same balcony table at Yinliu Teahouse where she met with Shiyue twice before. Earlier that day she’d gone to Chang’an and purchased a large basket of longyan. The bulk of it would be going to the manor with her, but she placed a handful in front of her on the table, next to her calligraphy manual. Then she took one of the longyan and peeled away its tough, brown skin. She stabbed it an incense stick from her personal stash and made it stay upright with the help of a full teacup—that, too, was an offering. Finally, she blew a puff of air at the stick. The tip flared orange, releasing a ribbon of smoke fragrant with sandalwood.

She heard a noise and looked up. Shiyue had plopped on the seat across from her as if he’d just fallen out of the sky. He stared glumly at the items arranged on the table.

“Are you displeased?” she asked.

“You’re acting like you’re visiting a grave, so I’ve assumed—” He limply gestured at his face. “—the appropriate demeanor.”

“What? No! This is my Shiyue summoning ritual!”

He scrunched his brow. “Your what?”

Li Zanghong pointed at the manual. “I put out a book because you’re a civil official. I poured a cup of tea because you seem to like tea. We’re always drinking it together. And the longyan…well, these had just arrived from Lingnan, and I was told there wouldn’t be more until next spring, and they look good. And the incense is for…well…incense should be a part of any ritual, shouldn’t it? It smells nice.”

Shiyue pinched the glowing tip of the incense stick. “Burning incense in a place like this is rather conspicuous, don’t you think?”

“Nice work, nice work!” Zhang Chenghua waved her arms. “Daozhang is as talented as she is beautiful!”

If Zhang Suming was surprised to see her sister out of bed, it was well hidden by her scowl of disapproval for the cheeky comment.

If the disciples were surprised to see their shizun’s patient there, they quickly forgot it because of the lunch bell or because they were distracted by Zhang Chenghua’s words. Who had ever dared to compliment Shizun so boldly before? Yet none of them could find fault in the statement, for Shizun was indeed very pretty and skilled in many things.

If Ouyang Chakou was surprised, she made it impossible to tell as she marched to the window. Zhang Chenghua’s grin very nearly faltered before her cutting glare.

“No one told you it was safe to leave your bed.”

“Daozhang, I’m a physician, and I know my body.”

“Go back to bed,” Ouyang Chakou calmly ordered.

“Daozhang, I—”

“Bed. Now.”

“Daozhang…” Zhang Chenghua dropped her voice to a near whisper. She knew her sister could still hear, but she didn’t care. And for good measure, she let a wicked smirk peek from the corner of her mouth, with a matching sparkle in her eyes. “When a pretty girl insists that I go to bed, it usually means she’ll follow me there in short order.”

The Lesbian Visibility Week Mega Bundle has raised $2900.69 from 69 contributors with an average contribution of $42.03. This is funny to me because I am 12 years old and desperate for any sliver of joy I can eke out of The Worst Timeline

Excerpt from Dragonwings by Laurence Yep

Chapter 1

The Land of the Demons
(February-March, 1903)

Ever since I can remember, I had wanted to know about the Land of the Golden Mountain, but my mother had never wanted to talk about it. All I knew was that a few months before I was born, my father had left our home in the Middle Kingdom, or China, as the white demons call it, and traveled over the sea to work in the demon land. There was plenty of money to be made among the demons, but it was also dangerous. My own grandfather had been lynched about thirty years before by a mob of white demons almost the moment he had set foot on their shores.

Mother usually said she was too busy to answer my questions. It was a fact that she was overworked, for Grandmother was too old to help with the heavy work, and she had to try to do both her own work and

Lesbian pride flag themed banner. Transcription is as follows:

Lesbian Visibility Week Bundle
94 sapphic & lesbian books for $40 USD
4/20-4/26
Exclusively on Itch.io

The date 4/18/26 written on dot grid paper with sky blue ink. A steel fountain pen nib stained with the same ink hovers over the paper. Please note the perfect coordination of the ink and the color of the pen's grip.

It's that Hark a Vagrant (Kate Beaton) comic about the pirate who sleeps with a picture of his nemesis, except the pirate is Zhou Yu/Gongjin and his nemesis is Zhuge Liang/Kongming. The screenshots are their actors in the 2010 Three Kingdoms cdrama, which has a lot of fun stuff but also it made every female character worse and exaggerated the existing hetero content

Vintage poster promoting peaceful relations between the Soviets and the PRC. The guys in the middle are embracing. It looks gay. And I love it

Packaged cheese labeled "LOL WHITE AMERICAN"

You really think someone would do that?
[Illustration of the perfect sweetie who is asking these questions]
Just go on the Internet and tell lies?

WIP excerpt: Zhang Suming turned it over, and she was stunned by what she saw. Li Zanghong once mentioned that her handwriting was so bad that even she couldn’t read it. That statement failed to convey the true magnitude of the tragedy she enacted upon this paper. Not one character was redeemable; their strokes melted and drifted in all directions as they searched for their proper places. This woman was employed as a clerk. Didn’t she have to write reports all day? Weren’t reports meant to be read?

On the left side Ouyang Chakou (a Daoist exorcist) and Li Zanghong (a woman in Chinese scholar-official garb) are labeled "chronically ill babygirls". On the right side Zhang Suming (tall strong woman with tiger ears) and Zhang Chenghua (tall drunken boxer) are labeled "the bad bitches they pulled by being autistic". They're all lesbians, WOW!

Narrator: The public are more familiar with the various pastiches of him in the 1940s and 50s, ones that whittle him down to a deranged surgeon or a serial amputator - a Negro causing problems by stepping out of line.

Pastor Bean: There is precedent for fire being used as a cleansing tool in the Bible. Luke 9, 1 Corinthians 3. They do usually refer to divine fire, however, imbued with the power of God to destroy evil. Mortal fire lacks that quality, and therefore may be bound to mortal corruption and be misused….

This is all to say that, as a rule, I am going to say that setting people’s houses on fire is generally a bad thing…. In this specific scenario, however, I will say it is warranted.

—Pastor Lamentations Bean

The Freestone Letters, or: The Trials and Tribulations of One Victor Freestone
freestoneletters.com
The Trials & Tribulations of One Victor Freestone © 2022-2025 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Lin Chen (蔺晨) (played by Jin Dong) is the master of Langya Hall, an omniscient business that answers all questions and doubt as well as list the most talented in the world, a list similar to Forbes.

WIP snippet: The tip of her tongue darted out to wet her lips, and she sat across the fire from Fu Yanhui. He opened his mouth to warn her about the pile of discarded squirrel offal near her feet, only to watch her plunge her hand right into it and bring a large helping straight to her open mouth. He had to screw his eyes shut and turn his head away.

Zhang Chenghua, a drunken boxer and healer in simple clothes for traveling, sits on her medicine cabinet, drinking wine out of her gourd. Ouyang Chakou, a Daoist exorcist, sweeps leaves on the ground with a dour expression. This version is by me.

On the left is Zhang Chenghua, a drunken boxer and healer in simple clothes for traveling. On the right is Ouyang Chakou, a Daoist exorcist who looks back at the teasing Zhang Chenghua with a stern expression.

Screenshot showing that the post I'm quoting currently has 69 likes (nice)

Breathe, she commanded her body again. There is nothing to fight here.

She still couldn’t move, but the red haze began to lift. Her hands were hovering in front of her chest, and framed between her claws was the pink lotus sitting on the table.

Look at the lotus. This is not a place for fighting.

The flower came into focus. Her fingers relaxed slightly, though her claws didn’t retract.

There. That’s good. Can you smell it?

The voice directing her body was no longer her own. It was the pleasant, ringing chirp of the woman who had sent this lotus to her.

Isn’t that a nice scent? Let’s try to pick it up.

Her hands finally did as they were told. The claws receded as she reached to scoop up the lotus. She stroked the velvety petals and held it up to sniff. Her heart slowed; it no longer beat in anticipation of violence.

Zhang Suming wondered, Did I always like the scent of lotuses this much? Or is it because I smell that incense of hers, too? Some incenses are supposed to be calming…I’ll ask her if I can have some.

Bsky tells me my feed is empty even though I follow like hundreds of active accounts

FAT tiger lying on its side. resplendent in its thiccness

LotusCarp Studio's Message to Proponents of Gen-AI

Piss your fucking pants.

video zooms in on cat with a menacing smirk

Receipt for $26.01 donation to help send solar generators and panels to Cubans suffering under the fuel blockade. Death to the U.S. empire and all its running dogs.

Three of the main characters from my webnovel 1000 Lotuses. From left to right: Zhang Chenghua, a drunken boxer and healer in simple clothes for traveling; Zhang Suming, a tiger woman with simple robes/skirt, who is taller and wider than her sister Chenghua; and Li Zanghong, a very short woman wearing the outfit of a minor civil official. THEY ARE ALL LESBIANS

The aforementioned wife. Li Zanghong is a trans lesbian character from my webnovel 1000 Lotuses. She has long, dark reddish brown hair with a loopy bun over each ear, secured with red ribbon. She is wearing clothes based on Tang Dynasty women's fashion: a peach/coral jacket with a long green skirt. She is sitting on a giant pink lotus that she manifested with her bodhisattva powers. The design is by me and the art is by my friend paintbrushDjinn.

screenshot from my word processor where I accidentally typed "a petite womamn who"

"Your eldest sister is a god in this life. That is your misfortune to bear."

Li Zanghong is a trans lesbian character from my webnovel 1000 Lotuses. She has long, dark reddish brown hair with a loopy bun over each ear, secured with red ribbon. She is wearing clothes based on Tang Dynasty women's fashion: a peach/coral jacket with a long green skirt. She is sitting on a giant pink lotus that she manifested with her bodhisattva powers. The design is by me and the art is by my friend paintbrushDjinn.

1000 Lotuses files can be accessed for FREE if any one of the following apply to you:

- Are living in a country affected by U.S. imperialism
- Are a trans person struggling to afford medical care and/or relocation expenses
- Have contributed to direct aid to persons affected by the above (such as Palestinians under attack by the genocidal settler state of Israel), or reputable organizations that distribute aid to such persons, in the past 7 days

Email thepond@lotuscarp.com (with receipt of your donation if applicable) to receive your itch.io code(s). Linking to your social media so I can verify your status is NOT required but appreciated, especially if you have any fundraising links you would like me to boost for you.

"Lay the second fillet flesh to flesh" (this is a screenshot of a gravlax recipe)

A chibi style drawing of Li Zanghong, a trans lesbian from my webnovel 1000 Lotuses. She is depicted here in clothing based on Tang Dynasty women's fashion: a peach/coral jacket with a long green skirt. She is sitting on a giant pink lotus that she manifested with her bodhisattva powers. The design is by me and the art is by my friend painbrushDjinn.

Drowning child pool meme to affectionately poke fun at people who check out my Littlest Red Books zine series. The mother is labeled "Littlest Red Books downloaders", the child that she's playing with is "#1 Combat Liberalism" and the drowning child is labeled "the other three whatever they are idk"

Asa/Yoru from Chainsaw Man says "I made a contract with the governor of California. In exchange for me not attacking California...the citizens of California will shoulder the burden of my deaths."

Hidden Meanings in Chinese Art by Terese Tse Bartholomew, a big illustrated book plopped on a green blanket

Me holding The Trial by Franz Kafka (Modern Library Definitive Edition, 1956 reprint) over floral bedsheets

euphoric leaping dolphins rainbow ocean meme with the text "relationships where the woman is taller than the woman"

Zhang Chenghua, a drunken boxer wearing simple clothing that suits her life on the road. She has a sly look about her.

Zhang Chenghua, a drunken boxer wearing simple clothing that suits her life on the road. She has a sly look about her.

Tall lesbian tiger furry in hanfu who is wondering why you are looking at her

“You’re not afraid of me?”
Li Zanghong shook her head. She wasn’t afraid of anything.
But Xia Chengyuan liked it when people were a little afraid of her, and she would not be satisfied until this foolish, innocent girl understood exactly who she was dealing with.
“May I look closer?”
Li Zanghong only smiled.
“Open your mouth.”
To Xia Chengyuan’s astonishment, she promptly obeyed. Xia Chengyuan then took Li Zanghong’s chin in her hand once more, and she kissed her.
Li Zanghong remained still, hardly daring to even breathe. She let Xia Chengyuan’s tongue caress every part of her mouth it could reach.
All I wanted was an idea of her powers and how she uses them—how did we end up like this?
Once Xia Chengyuan felt that she learned all she needed to, she withdrew. Li Zanghong could have believed that several years had just passed. She quietly stared at Xia Chengyuan, who was stroking Li Zanghong’s hair again.
“It’s so funny. Now that I know you’re just a doll, why shouldn’t I treat you like—”

EBABZ (East Bay Alternative Book and Zinefest) is taking place on December 13, 2025 at the David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA from 12-5 PM.

She tapped her finger on Li Zanghong’s lips. Xia Chengyuan so dearly wished that this doll could blush, but there was still plenty to enjoy about the wide-eyed look of shock on her face. “The more talkative a girl is, the more adorable she becomes with a gag in her mouth.”

Stickers! Depicting a little bodhisattva on a lotus flower. She is smiling ar you because she wants you to try your best every day