My Brethren, Be Not Many Masters, Knowing That We Shall Receive The Greater Condemnation. For In Many

My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body.

Behold, we put bits in the horses' mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body. Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth.

Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.

For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: but the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.

Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh.

Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom.

But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.

James 3:1‭-‬18 KJV

In your fic where Chase goes back in time/astral projects into his season 1 self after Omi dies, is the reason Chase goes back to a time a bit before he first met Omi because he wants to have more time with Omi this time around?

While Chase is certainly happy for more time with Omi, it's more that he didn't want them to have any idea who he was, and therefore have no way to be prepared against him.

My own personal headcanon is that, while they were clearly told offscreen at some point, the monks had no idea who Chase was in the first season. And after, quite likely never actually seeing hide or hair of Chase in their lifetimes, Fung and the elders also might not quite remember about him without a refresher. And Dojo probably forgot about him until he came face to face with him again.

But in this, Chase will definitely have more time with Omi. All the time in the world, as a matter of fact. 😀

merry christmas tolkien fandom

Your analysis' are always fire. 👍🏼 👏 👌

If the Bird of Paradise met these characters, what do you think the Bird of Paradise would call their best qualities?

Grandmaster Dashi

Master Monk Guan

Chase

Wuya

Jack

Well, the qualities the Bird of Paradise were their deepest values and most apparent traits that were so strong, they could be a double-edged sword.

Like how Omi's loyalty leads him to keeping his word even in situations where that's disadvantageous. His loyalty is what allowed him to be trapped by the plan in X-ing Omi, and it’s also what gives him his strength and shows how much he cares for his loved ones. His greatest strength and his fatal flaw, all in one. At his best and at his worst, Omi is and strives to be, loyal and honorable.

Similarly, Kimiko's courage often leads to recklessness and she gets especially reckless and defensive if she feels like her bravery is being called into question, like when she lets her temper get the best of her or accidentally let Sibini loose because she was trying to handle the broken Wu on her own. Clay's strength has been "stolen" by others multiple times (such as when Sibini took his body or when Hannibal turned into him), and that strength has weighed so heavily on him that it puts him in tight spots about how best to define and show strength which led to his clashes with his dad and his sister. They always are and always want to be courageous and strong, respectively, even when it’s to their detriment.

It’s also the trait easiest to lead them by. Chase, Hannibal, Jack, Vlad, and others have successfully manipulated Omi using his sense of loyalty. Dyris and Sibini manipulated Kimiko using her sense of courage, and in a way, so did the boys in the episodes where she wanted to prove herself, like with the monkey staff. Daddy Bailey manipulated Clay using his sense of strength.

(Although the “kindness” trait for Raimundo is just... iffy? It sorta breaks the pattern.)

So, with that framework in mind, I think if asked, the Bird of Paradise would say... 

Chase’s is definitely ambition. 

Both good or evil, that’s Chase’s defining trait. He wants to be stronger, wants to be better than he is, always strives to improve and rise above, which was always his greatest strength and brought him a lot of happiness and cockiness. He loves training and takes pride in his skills. He loves to stand above and always seek greater things.

It’s what led him down his dark path though, both because he wanted the power that Hannibal offered and the recognition that Hannibal said Chase would only find on the Heylin side, and because he feared Guan overtaking him and leaving him behind, forgotten to history. Chase threw away every other thing he believed in and everyone he’d grown close to for the deal that Hannibal was offering him, and even now, 1500 years later, he still aspires to greater and greater heights. He clips the wings of his competitors and trusts almost no one.

But it’s also what saved him from staying stuck as Hannibal’s puppet forever. It’s what’s led him to acquire this huge array of skills over the year. It’s a big part of what started him on the path of building a bond with Omi and how they grow so close. So maybe one day, it’ll be the trait that saves him?

Dashi was freedom.

A creative free-spirit, nothing could tie Dashi down. He’s bright, independent, untethered.

He doesn’t get trapped in rigid, pre-existing patterns or tripped up by less obvious solutions. A perpetual outside-the-box thinker who’s able to take a step back and look at a problem from an outside perspective, no matter how involved in it he may be. He’s airy, and has his own goals, marches to his own beat. It’s very difficult for others to understand him or follow his line of logic a lot of the time. Adaptable to the point of seeming unstructured. (Kind of like Clay.)

That free-spirited creativity can often be mistaken for stupidity, or laziness, or even for being uncaring. But that’s not the main problem. Dashi doesn’t really care how he’s seen or perceived by others, he doesn’t let outside opinions tie him down either. He doesn’t even get attached to his reputation as a big hero. He’ll go bum around pigs and hide in town to try not to get recognized.

The problem is that it makes it a little difficult to maintain long-term relationships.

It comes most naturally to him to just... let others go. Chase and Guan both left him, and as wise as Dashi is, he didn’t know how to stop it. And if you lean into DashiWuya headcanons, Dashi had to learn to let her go and choose to protect the world from her instead of being with her. There’s a limit to how deeply he can connect to others and how well they’ll ever really be able to understand him, and no matter how much love is there, neither side can really ever tie the other down.

Even the fact that he’s the only member of the original trio who didn’t seem to be immortal or become immortal in some way. Dashi’s not so attached to his mortal life that he’d cling to it. In fact, he possibly couldn’t really cling to anything that strongly, even if he tried. And in the end, he’s the greatest, most legendary warrior in Xiaolin history, he’s left behind this legacy and all these different Shen Gong Wu, but also, in the end, he was all alone.

Guan is diligence, or maybe focus.

He works hard and is stable as a rock, and when he wants something, he makes a plan to get it. It’s just, that focus and that diligence is for the goals Guan sets himself. And he’s very narrow in what he plans to do. Plus, anyone to the wayside, he’s fine with using a collateral. Guan is single-minded and devoted in pursuit of a goal or a lifestyle, and he gets results 100% of the time, even if it mean playing the long game.

He wanted his Spear of Guan. He has hundreds just like it, but it’s his, he wants it, so he’ll sacrifice Dojo and even these four random kids to get it done. He wanted to clear his good name after Omi insulted him, so he challenged Chase for the first time in a long time, and he won. He was tasked with retrieving the treasure of the blind swordsman, and if he had to traumatize and put in harm’s way 3/4 of the dragons-in-training in his care to do so, he’ll do it with no remorse. He can be dominating, punishing, demanding, and he won’t hesitate to lie to people’s faces.

He’s very selective about what goals he’s willing to devote any time or focus to, but once he decides, he’s on it. It’s how he’s made his name as a hero and how he’s managed to get this strong and get this far. It’s why he’s easily the greyest morality the Xiaolin side has and why he usually isn’t doing anything to help them.

It also makes it hard to tell where you stand with Guan. He’ll tell people what they want to hear with so much charisma and so little sincerity that even people he does care about end up feeling unable to read him, which is part of what made Chase wary enough to buy Hannibal’s manipulation, and consequently, part of what drove his original trio apart. It’s hard to say if he’s genuinely cared about anyone sense then; he’s only gotten more diligent and single-minded over the years. 

That diligence and focus also comes into play in the alternate timeline, where Guan remains a devout follower of Hannibal, unlike Chase, who sealed Hannibal away to be number one himself.

Wuya’s is power, in a similar way to how Clay’s is strength.

We never truly get to see Wuya at full strength for any length of time. Her powers are always put under a limiter, or stolen from her, or sealed away. But it’s fair to theorize that Wuya was the most powerful entity on Earth in her heyday, and gravitates towards everything she can do to get that power back.

And no matter how much power people take away from her, she’s never quite left helpless or hopeless or even truly powerless. She commands a really interesting soft power, and is opportunistic enough to bounce between how to use it. She uses Jack, then tries to use Katnappe, finds Cyclops to use him, uses Raimundo, etc.

She’s also the most knowledgeable in arcane magic. She knows where to find monsters like Cyclops and how to summon beings like Mala Mala Jong, she can sense all the Shen Gong Wu, she knows all the ancient baddies. She has access to the sort of knowledge that is easy to transform into actual threats.

And even if you take away all her magic, she’s still an excellent fighter. She messes with her opponent’s heads, can take down people twice her weight, can meet most other characters blow-for-blow.

No matter what state she finds herself in, Wuya will always find some sort of power to command. Power’s almost as drawn to her as she is to it, in a way. If the bad end of the timeline is anything to go by, Wuya does eventually manage to get at least some of her rock golems back, somehow.

Jack is tenacity. 

The boy may be cowardly, whiny, and duplicitous, but he sure never gives up, no matter how many times others knock him down or how many times he runs straight into trouble and trips himself up right off a cliff. In fact, he doesn’t know when to give up. He’ll run headfirst into a bad decision and stick to it, and keep doing it. His refusal to quit during the rare moments he’s ahead usually results in it being his own fault that he ends up losing the lead or throwing the match. He never assesses his actual chances and gets in over his head a lot of the time, too.

He is probably the most determined character in the show, considering how many failures he has blow up in his face without faltering to get back up and rebuild.

It’s a good skill in tech and computing, which he works with. Lots of unexpected dead ends and little things that can fall apart there, so Jack’s tenacity is what’s allowed him to manage all this technology and develop so many different things in the first place. A less hard-headed person would never have gotten that far. It’s also probably why in that bad end, Jack eventually managed to take over the world (that, and Omi being gone).

But it’s also what leads Jack to annoying everyone and to sabotaging every bond he could possibly have. He betrays literally every temporary alliance he gets, or tries to at least, whether it’s on the Heylin or the Xiaolin side, so everyone has a really good reason to never trust Jack as far as they can throw him. He’ll never stop trying to get one over on them, even if they’re actively helping him at the moment.

It’s so consistent that even good!Jack is just as tenacious, just like evil!Omi is just as bound by loyalty to whoever he follows. Good!Jack pulls off some pretty ballsy gambits because giving up just isn’t possible for him.

Glad to hear it! 😀

Sorry my last ask wasn't completed. Hi! How are you?

Very good, thank you!

My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons. For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment;

and ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool: are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts?

Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him? But ye have despised the poor.

Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats? Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called? If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture,

Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well: but if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors. For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.

For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law. So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty. For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment.

What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?

Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.

But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?

And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God. Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way? For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

James 2:1‭-‬26 KJV