Year in Review: My Good Dumpling + Outfits of 2024

All images below are linked to their respective posts, so click through if you want outfit details.

(For All Mankind season 3 spoiler ahead)

In the season 3 finale of For All Mankind, a North Korean ujunaut–Lee Jung-Gil–unknowingly became the first person to step foot on Mars. But after losing his partner, the space probe he arrived in, and communication with command during the crash landing (leading NK to believe that the mission had failed), he then suffered seven months of isolation and mental anguish, proceeding to lose hope of ever finding his way home. He planned to end it all with a pistol, but just before he pulled the trigger, a rover appeared in the distance.

The American astronaut and Soviet cosmonaut who arrived on the rover eventually got Lee back to their base, where a former Korean War vet (now American commander of a joint US-USSR mission), with his rudimentary grasp of Korean, said to a perplexed Lee, “my good dumpling… this is now your home” after misunderstanding Lee’s request to be taken back to his post. Viewers presume that after 40 years, the American commander simply mixed up his words, but it is in this confusion that Lee was warmly, if somewhat awkwardly, welcomed to the base.

The episode, titled “Stranger in a Strange Land,” is likely a reference to Robert Heinlein’s 1961 sci-fi novel of the same name and primarily alludes to the events of the episode’s main storyline, but I think it also describes Lee’s predicament: first being stranded on Mars, then being taken to an “enemy” base.

2024 was a year of many joys and also of some disappointments. But like the North Korean ujunaut, sometimes we are all strangers in a strange land, and navigating the unknown can be a thrilling part of our adventure. If we persevere, maybe we can find friendship and commonality in unexpected, even hostile, places.

Have a happy new year! See you all in 2025!