So I Sent This Question In To A Few Different People, But Here's My Own Take On It.

So I sent this question in to a few different people, but here's my own take on it.

On the assumption that Chase would still want Omi to rule the world by his side, what do you think would change if Omi had been an adult when they first met? I'm thinking like 18 or 19.

I think Chase would have played up the ruling by his side a bit more instead of the apprentice angle. I think their spars would have been more intense (still fun though) because Omi would be an adult.

Honestly while I think it's safe to say that there would be changes to their dynamic in that they're both adults, I think they'd like each other the same amount and still be as invested in each other as they are in canon.

And I think it would be interesting to see how the grumpy/sunshine dynamic would play out between them if they had met when Omi was a young adult.

@grasshopperdoingdogpaddle @writerkatsblog @chasesexpressionappreciationpage

I see this, and I'm left thinking. Because as far as I know, Dashi never abandoned Dojo. But if you're talking about Dashi dying. Well. That's a different story isn't it?

Because dragons are clearly an extremely long lived race, possibly timeless. And in a scenario where people can choose immortality, such as Guan and good!Chase, without becoming villains (like Chase did), well.

Choosing a good but finite life could be seen as abandoning your immortal friend, couldn't it?

(Which of course could also apply to Omi and Chase, shhh.)

It’s being played for comedy, but Dojo clearly has serious abandonment issues because of his last master.

So the first ever showdown was basically Dashi playing catch with his son? 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

Yeah. And to make it even more bittersweet, Dashi can tell that it clearly was not him or Wuya who raised Omi to this point. So a part of his heart was breaking even as he strove to have a fun game with his son. ❤️ 💙 💜 💖 💗 💘

25 Concepts of Scripture

God is our Creator, but He is also our loving heavenly Father.

God is our Provider who meets our physical and spiritual needs.

God wants His people to worship and love Him.

God blesses obedience and punishes disobedience.

God is a God of mercy, love and grace.

God sometimes allows suffering for His own purposes and for our good.

God has identified Himself in three persons— the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

God is completely holy, and He requires that His people be holy too.

God wants His people to find satisfaction and fulfillment in Him.

We are blessed when we remain faithful to God, especially in a challenging setting.

Real religion isn't just ritual; it's loving God and other people in our words and actions.

Faith—believing God and the promises in His Word— is at the heart of our relationship with God; without faith, we cannot please God.

We are to take God and our relationship with Him very seriously, not carelessly.

Jesus fulfills all the Old Testament prophecies of a coming Messiah.

Jesus is God's Son, the suffering servant of all people.

Jesus is savior of all people of all races and nationalities.

Jesus is God Himself, the only Savior of the world.

Sinners are saved only by faith in Jesus Christ.

Jesus will one day return to gather His followers to Him.

Though we aren't saved by our works, real Christian faith is demonstrated in good works.

Suffering for Jesus' sake is noble and good.

God disciplines those He loves.

Jesus was real man, just as He is real God.

God rewards humility but resists pride.

God will one day judge evil and reward His saints.

In the chapter 5 short story, you mentioned there were 10 years post series before the incident happened, so I was wondering how close Omi and Chase got in those 10 years?

Like, it was to the point where if Omi wasn't training, or specifically hanging out with his friends, you could find him with Chase. Sparring or just hanging out, obviously Chase encouraged that, but honestly Chase was just as bad. If he wasn't doing a specific activity he'd be with Omi.

Like Omi could just walk in, bold as brass, and just hang on Chase with no preamble. Of course, in return, he had to put up with Chase just teleporting in behind him and teasing him.

The manipulations were gone, pretty much. They knew that they wanted each other by their side, they were both convinced that eventually they'd succeed. Their friendship flourished, and while almost no one else liked it, everyone knew by now not to interfere.

If in canon, their relationship/friendship were to be measured: it'd be 10/10. After 10 years that rating went up to like 1000/10.

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.