extrapenguin

This is Juhno’s new drama on Netflix. It’s short, just eight episodes. And my elbow still hurts and it took me two days to write this post, but I really wanted to tell you about this drama. Because it was amazing and I loved it. 😍

Junho is Kang Sang Ung, a public servant who gains a power of super strength based on the amount of cash he’s carrying. But that cash disappears after he used his power. Since he’s just an ordinary guy it becomes a big problem for him to maintain enough money to use his abilities to help people. But he has a wonderful girlfriend, Kim Min Suk, who is practical and efficient, and who always supports him. He also meets two other people with supernatural abilities - Byeon Ho In, a lawyer with the ability to pass through solid matter with the help of alcohol, and Bang Eun Mi, a telekinetic powered by calories. They start working together to protect their normal lives, and lives of ordinary citizens from villains who seek to destabilize the world.

This drama feels like subversion of superhero genre to me. Or maybe deconstruction would be a better term? Every superpower comes with a price, and often a steep price. And it has a limit you can’t cross, because you might lose your superpower. But it’s absolutely not dark and gloomy, as it might seems from that description. On the contrary, it’s optimistic, touching and uplifting. It made me smile a lot. And it made me cry twice. Once during the 6th episode and once during the finale.

Spoilers for the ending, if you want to know if it’s happy or not.

It’s the happy ending. All the villains get punished, all the good guys live.

One small minus is that the villains were rather annoying to me. Hot, yes, because Kang Ha Na and Lee Chae Min are both very hot, but so annoying that I wish that they had a bit less screentime.

But Juhno is fantastic. And Kim Hye Joon as his girlfriend is wonderful. And Kim Byung Chul as a superpowered lawyer is wonderful, too.

And yes, this drama is not perfect, and the script could be better. But I was so invested in an emotional side of things that a few logistic plot holes didn’t bother me at all.

A few things that I really liked, with major spoilers.

I was very impressed that Sang Ung told his girlfriend about his newly-acquired power. Despite his father telling him sternly “Keep it a secret and don’t tell anyone”. And Sang Ung nods, but later is all ‘nah, me and Min Suk don’t keep secrets from each other’. And he tells her instantly.

And I loved the friendship that developed between Sang Ung and Ho In and Eun Mi. So heartwarming.

And when the final fight between the one of the main villains and Kang Sang Ung started to drag on, I was sitting there rolling my eyes a little over predictability of this all. And then there was that moment when the villain had the upper hand and he asked “Who’s going to help you now?”, since Sang Ung used all the cash he had with him. And then all those ordinary people Sang Ung was saving started to throw money at Sang Ung through their windows, and cheering him on. And I lost it. I cried and cried. I don’t care that it was cheaply sentimental and OTT. It worked for me, it was beautiful and I loved it.

trobadora posting in

sid_guardian

amperslashexchange is an exchange for ambiguous relationships. It has two pinch-hits left, including one for the Guardan novel, Guardian drama and Guardian RPF. The current deadline is January 9, 11:59 PM UTC.

Here are the exchange rules, and you can claim a pinch-hit here if you can help out!

tinny

I was unfortunately not very consistent about writing down things in December. Once I realized on December 6 that I'd already forgotten three things again that I'd failed to note down, my motivation dropped considerably for the next two weeks. Which is why there are now only

( 8 (+2 related) things I learned in December )

toothpastepancake posting in

fandomcalendar

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aurumcalendula

I'm sad the Corporation for Public Broadcasting voted to dissolve, but it helped a little to read that they ultimately chose to do so to make sure it could not be used against public media:

“When the Administration and Congress rescinded federal funding, our Board faced a profound responsibility: CPB’s final act would be to protect the integrity of the public media system and the democratic values by dissolving, rather than allowing the organization to remain defunded and vulnerable to additional attacks.”

I'm glad I have a PBS Passport membership that supports my local station and I'm thinking about upping my monthly donation amount.

shipperslist

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tinny

I had expected the first Snowflake Challenge to be "update your intro", so I did that. :D It wasn't quite that, though. The first part of the challenge was "introduce yourself", so I guess close enough. :D Snapshot of my current dw profile page:

tinny profile 2026

I only updated the icon comms and changed a few icons in the color bars. Nothing much new, really.

The second part was "why do you do the challenge and what you you hope to gain from it"? Idk? I'll just see which challenges speak to me and then I do them. I did this in previous years as well, and it suits me fine. I usually just pick a few challenges that I like, no more than five, usually, and then I do those.

Here's my post from 2025: challenges 2-6 challenges 14+ and my own

Here's my post from 2024: only challenge 5, the icon scavenger hunt

Here's my post from 2023: challenges 5-10, 12 and 13

Lets see what this year brings, shall we? :D

What I'll also do this year is try and think about my creative process, and there's a new comm for that:

cultivativity

I'm looking forward to this, too!

shadaras

Over the last ~week,

hafnia and I went "sooooo what if we ran a multifandom remix event" and now it is up and ready for signups! We're hoping it'll be a fun time, and we'd love to have you join us. <3

Remix Through the Seasons is a quarterly, trope-based multifandom event hosted on ao3.

Participants will write one new story (between 1-5k) and then be assigned another story written for the event to remix. These stories can be in any fandom (including Original Work). Matching will be based on the stories' tropes (and creator DNWs) rather than pairings/fandoms. Remixing works from one fandom into another is allowed (even expected).

Schedule:
Signups open: Now!
Signups close: January 24
Assignments sent: January 31
Original works revealed: January 31
Remix works due: March 14
Remix works reveals: March 21
All author reveals: March 28
All due dates etc are at 11:59pm GMT on the listed date

DW Comm:

seasonalremix
Ao3 Collection

(getting everything finalised involved spending a couple hours on a discord call editing the gdoc full of rules and only occasionally getting distracted talking about other things, which tbh is pretty good for how many moving parts there can be for stuff like this and how easy it can be to get sidetracked talking to your bestie. we think the rules are clear! ask questions [preferably on the comm] if they aren't! <3)

atamascolily

This fall, I wrote 3 pieces for the puppet zine, which will come out in July with the zine (earlier for those buying the print edition), and 3 pieces for Yuletide, which is... pretty reasonable? My Yuletide fics were all for extremely niche fandoms, but the recipients were happy, which is all that matters.

I also posted 2 puppet fics that have been languishing in my drafts for years, plus a fic for a friend I had promised them for YEARS and finally delivered.

I also posted an essay about tragedy and gender in the Godzilla anime trilogy, i.e., yet another Gen Urobuchi series, which came out in 2017-2019 and instantly fell off the radar. ( Read more... )

But, hey, wrestling with "this creator's work has meant a lot to me but also has a lot of problematic elements that we should probably unpack" is a common experience in fandom, so in that sense, this is just par for the course.

...and that about wraps it up for the moment. It feels good to finally be posting again, even if it's mostly shorts, and there's something especially satisfying about clearing out my drafts folder a bit.

Going forward into the year, I have a couple of short one-shots I want to do and two longer projects. We'll see what happens, but I am feeling pretty good about at the moment. It turns out the secret is setting up a regular time and opening up the doc to write - who knew???

trobadora

Third headache day in a row; this sucks. (Today is a bit better than yesterday, but I want it to go away! *kicks it*)

Today's writing

Just a little

fandomtrees work, but I'm really losing momentum here. :(

(I did finish my

candyheartsex letter last night, at least. Now I just have to hope someone requests something I can write ... Sign-ups are still open until tomorrow, btw!)

Tally

Day 1:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

philomytha,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 2:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 3:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 4:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 5:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 6:

china_shop,

trobadora

Let me know if I missed anyone! And remember you can drop in or out at any time. :)

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rachelmanija

Once upon a time, the moon Panga was industrial and capitalist and miserable. Then robots suddenly and inexplicably gained self-awareness. They chose to stop working, leave human habitation, and go into the wilderness. The humans not only didn't try to stop them, but this event somehow precipitated a huge political change. Half of Panga was left to the wilderness, and humans developed a kinder, ecologically friendly, sustainable way of life. But the robots were never seen again.

That's all backstory. When the book opens, Sibling Dex, a nonbinary monk, is dissatisfied with their life for reasons unclear to themself. They leave the monastery to become a traveling tea monk, which is a sort of counselor: you tell the monk your troubles, and the monk listens and fixes you a cup of tea. Dex's first day on the job is hilariously disastrous, but they get better and better, until they're very good at it... but still inexplicably dissatisfied. So they venture out into the wilderness, where they meet a robot, Mosscap - the first human-robot meeting in hundreds of years.

I had previously failed to get very far into The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, so I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this novella. It's cozy in a good way, with plenty of atmosphere, a world that isn't quite perfect but is definitely one I'd like to live in, and some interesting philosophical exploration. My favorite part was actually Dex's life as a tea monk before they meet Mosscap - it's very relatable if you've ever been a counselor or therapist, from the horrible first day to the pleasure of familiar clients later on. I would absolutely go to a tea monk.

I would have liked Mosscap to be a bit more flawed - it's very lovable and has a lot of interesting things to say, but is pretty much always right. Mosscap is surprised and delighted by humanity, but I'm not sure Dex ever shakes up its worldview in a way it finds true but uncomfortable, which Mosscap repeatedly does to Dex. Maybe in the second novella, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy.

And while I'm on things which are implausibly neat/perfect, this is a puzzling backstory:

1) Robots gain self-awareness and leave.

2) ????

3) ~~PROFIT!~~ Society goes from capitalist hellscape to environmentalist paradise.

Maybe we'll learn more about the ???? later.

But overall, I did quite like the novella. The parts where Dex is a tea monk, with the interactions with their clients and their life in their caravan, are very successfully cozy - an instant comfort read. And I liked the robot society and the religious orders, as well as a lot of the Mosscap/Dex relationship. I'll definitely read the sequel.