#cabbage man

[pears-palette]

On my recent cabbage merchant art someone commented on this man’s sheer resilience and how he was the Sisyphus of ATLA and that inspired me.

[ID in Alt Text]

[the-bluespirit]

[timeofdeathnote]

can’t wait to see this legend again

[lesbianasfuckwomen]

HE SAID THE LINE

[aboutiroh]

Why would a greengrocer travel the world to sell a single cart of cabbages? Are the cabbages so bad that the news spreads like wildfire (“I heard Sung’s cousin’s skin turned green and that he hasn’t left the house since”), forcing him to move towns every few days? Have we actually ever seen him sell a single cabbage? Or is his cart always full? If he does sell cabbages off-screen and is not travelling with the same cart of cabbages, where does he get new ones? Is it plausible he's first travelled back home every time we encounter him in a new Earth Kingdom town? Is it plausible we just happen to stumble upon him whenever he's gotten new products? Or are the cabbages merely a cover for a larger conspiracy? In this essay I will

[dracosleftarsecheek]

sokka: nothing scratches my brain more than hearing the cabbage man scream in anguish as we destroy his cart again and again

zuko: baby.. I'll book you in for another therapy session, alright? and I thought I was the angsty one...

[xan-from-space]

Damn, the Ember Island Players were actually kind of radical, weren't they? The more I think about it, the more it feels like the only way it makes sense in-universe is if being Fire Nation propaganda wasn't the point of their play at all. Aside from a barely tacked on ending where Ozai kills Aang, the play is remarkably sympathetic to the Avatar and a bunch of enemies of the Fire Nation, even framing them as being heroes. Even at points in the story where theyre literally killing Fire Nation soldiers, the narrative still seems to be on their side; they're the underdogs, the relatable ones. Its true that the Fire Nation values strength, but still, you'd expect that in a propaganda play they would be portrayed as at least a little bit more sympathetic... And sure, to some extent the gaang's characters could be seen as defamatory caricutures (the slander on Iroh specifically was probably intentional), but that also might be due to the Players getting a lot of their information from the cabbage man, someone who actively hates the gaang and only ever really sees the worst of them. (And notably, that also means that the Players had worked with an Earth Kingdom merchant to produce the play.)

Mocking the gaang is also just clearly not the point of the play or what people are there for. Sokka's actor says that he's constantly being approached by fans; people genuinely love these characters. The gaang have built entire dedicated fanbases in the Fire Nation because of this play. Honestly, the fact that they're on a remote island is probably the only reason they're able to perform the play the way it is. I imagine it would get shut down pretty quickly on the mainland. Considering all the propaganda in the Fire Nation that we've seen so far, I wouldn't be surprised if the ending was only written that way because it's illegal to write a story where the Fire Lord doesnt win. The play reads less like propaganda and more like 'we're doing the bare minimum to get this story past the censors.'

I'm really curious about what it's like behind the scenes for the Ember Island Players. Are their shows just simple, shlocky entertainment, or could they also be deliberate political commentary? With no recording technology, a play is easier to slip under the radar than something like a book: it's impermanent, stays in one theatre, and performances can be easily tweaked if, say, Fire Nation royalty happens to come by. It's interesting to me that Ursa seemed to like them, while young Zuko had a disdain for them, saying they 'butchered' the story of Love Amongst the Dragons; in all likelihood the version of the story Zuko grew up with in the palace was heavily propaganda-filtered itself. Although, to be fair, they're arguably just not very good playwrights. When it comes to the characterization, I do think some of it only seems bad because we know what the actual characters are like, but a lot of it is just bad writing clearly meant for cheap entertainment. For example, they sexualize Katara quite a bit (and there's other, better analysis out there I've seen that examines how they fetishize her as a Water Tribe girl). And, of course, all of the characters are reduced to shallow and stereotypical comedy.

Still, I think they're worth commending for doing their research and telling a story about enemies of the state that's both sympathetic and surprisingly accurate to actual events, if not the characters' personalities, amidst the Fire Nation's rampant propaganda and misinformation. From the little amount of information about them we can extract from the show, they seem like honestly very interesting people. They're walking this tightrope line between being very close to the heart of the Fire Nation but also separate from it; between being cheap, inconsequential entertainment and being a source of actual news for Ember Island citizens; between telling the underdog story about a ragtag group of children and still trying to make it look like Fire Nation propaganda. I'm not trying to make any big argument on whether they were 'actually good people' or whatever, I just want to know more about them. I kind of wish we could see their production of Love Amongst the Dragons now...maybe I'll write something about them someday

[cryptidbait]

Kung Lao, descendent of cabbage man

[dorkphenix]

[character-of-all-time]

ROUND 2: ELAINE BENES (seinfeld) VS CABBAGE MAN (avatar)

(I DID IT RIGHT THIS TIME FUCK YOU)

[personinthepalace]

Aang disguised as the Cabbage Man

from Farnaz Khaki-Sadigh’s instagram (costume designer)

[pears-palette]

This man needs a break and not a breakdown.

[ID in Alt Text]

[starfish-locks]

Avatar the last airbender lockscreens

°Reblog/ like if you save

[kyshiwarrior]

the true jet apologist is the cabbage man cuz jet never did that man wrong 💚

[ketchuplaser]

[azulasnailtech]

ATLA If they were allowed to swear

part 20/??  [suggested by @to-taste-all-this-dawn] [I’d love to hear suggestions for more]