YMMV / Different Tales, Different Lessons

• Harsher in Hindsight: Seeing how close Ochir, Xiong, and Jin Hu were (and how the latter two were even on-again/off-again lovers), is quite painful after having already seen Chao, years later, forcing them to kill each other with his Ki Manipulation. The closeness between Chao and Kuan, Chao and Dog, and Chao and Sudu also becomes hard to read in this light.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: There's certainly a few similarities between how the old masters gave Chao their chi to free and purify the yuan gui and how Tigress, his dads, and the other pandas did the same to help Po defeat Kai.
• Nausea Fuel: The War Is Hell scene with Vachir is chock-full of this. To some degree some of Long Shi's harsh punishments and the things Shou Feng's men have been doing also count.
• Nightmare Fuel: Nowhere near as much as the original story, but...
  • The last vignette has a great deal of this. The very concept of the yuan gui, as well as how they are described and act, is terrifying, with particular emphasis given to the moment when they first all gather around the inn where the masters are staying, but the fate of the miners who became the yuan gui, when related in direct memories, is just as horrifying. In a way there's Chao's own fate, condemned to being bound to the Hall of Warriors until the Lords of Death feel he has atoned enough to move on to his next expiation of bad karma and eventually, some distant day, being reborn. And there's Yang's fate at Oogway's hands (as deserved as it is), especially the way it is described.
  Yang screamed. It was a sound like none he had ever heard, as if each of those who had died by the hare's orders were now crying out through his throat in one voice. It came again and again, heart-rending, throat-wrenching, awful cries that echoed to the vaulted ceiling, and it seemed it would never stop. Those eyes were filled with unspeakable horror, but he did not have to see them for long before the Emperor had clapped his paws to his face to cover them...pound at them...scrape at them as if he meant to gouge them out.
  • A few of the shuffles have this too, literally. While Tai's nightmare isn't really any worse than what he suffered for real in Chorh-Gom, the more twisted versions of his escape and rampage count. Even worse is Po's nightmare of how he could have acted during his final battle with Tai Lung, and what would have happened if he had used the Wuxi Finger Hold to kill the snow leopard rather than purify him.... And there's also what Xiu is encountering inside her own mind (or is it only in her mind...?).
• One-Scene Wonder: Readers seem to agree, while Tai Lung's older brother, De, has very few scenes in the stories as a whole, said scenes are always quite memorable thanks to his very casual and very shameless Dirty Old Man behavior.
• Schedule Slip: The first six vignettes came out on a fairly regular basis (albeit not as quickly as the chapters of the original story). However, after this they began to lag, and then there was a huge gap of about four years before the last six were written. Word of God is that this was due both to problems in Real Life and writer's block, but at least unlike some Fan Fic authors who claimed they were still going to finish but never did, this didn't become a Dead Fic.
• Tear Jerker: For the happier variety, there's Tai Lung and Tigress's wedding, Po's reunion with his parents, and Jia and Mei's So Proud of You moment with their father's spirit. The usual sort occur when Long Shi talks about her past, Xuan has to say goodbye to little Jia, the large amounts of painful Dramatic Irony in the last two vignettes, and when Shou Feng recounts his own Freudian Excuse.
  Peace? You speak of peace? I cannot have that, I will not have it, until that murderer is brought to justice and my father is avenged... You preach of forgiveness, absolution, harmony and balance, but you cannot possibly know what it was like to experience what I did. I was only eight years old! My father was an elder of the Valley...he was only doing his duty... And what was his reward for this? To be killed before my eyes. To have his throat ripped out like a savage beast. To be thrown aside like so much carrion, while Tai Lung went on, uncaring and heartless. Left to bleed to death in the road, while I wept over him and could do nothing. I was left an orphan. I had nothing. I was alone. Where was the balance in that?!

  This was also an in-story version, since Jia almost broke down in tears from hearing it.

  • Almost the entirety of vignette thirteen is this—even the first half, as funny, heartwarming, and light-hearted as it is, remains tinged with melancholy and wistfulness because of the reader already knowing how Zhuang and Xiulan's story will end—but the latter half is especially so, particularly the couple's last ghostly embrace and approximation of a Last Kiss before he departs.
  • The very last vignette also has a number of moments thanks to the Harsher in Hindsight mentioned above, but of particular note are the ending and the moment when Chao realizes how much the other masters truly care for him.
  Chao gasped again—he could feel it, not only their individual power, the strength of their hearts and souls, and the energy bound within their weapons, but their emotions regarding him. That Cheng and Kuan brimmed over with fondness, warmth, and kindness did not startle him; but the others...Jin Hu actually admired his intelligence and knowledge, was embarrassed by how ignorant he seemed in comparison? Sudu hero-worshipped him? Even the Weasels regarded him with sly respect.
  He hadn't known. He'd had no idea.
  You can do this. Ochir, his presence as steady and boulder-like as his muscles.
  Do not despair. Xiong, a flame of such compassion and wisdom.
  I told you so. Dog, smirking up at him rather smugly, but the Shar Pei had every right to be, after how many times he had insisted the other masters saw him as a friend.
  C'mon, Chao. Show us how frickin' awesome ya are! There was brightness, so much brightness in Sudu. He shone like Heaven's Tear.