#not tagging him because i am worried this post might be a little contentious lol. idk.

[catboygirljoker]

because it was last year when i got into kingdom hearts, i had all of the (current) kingdom hearts story available to me at once. i didnt really avoid spoilers at first because i assumed it wouldn't matter to me. so i knew about xigbar being luxu before i really knew xigbar at all—i knew about xigbar being luxu before i knew who vanitas was! i found out about this in the context of looking up kingdom hearts character names in order to make an oc; i saw that Xigbar also went by the names Braig and Luxu. i was like, huh, thats weird, and looked it up.

and i found out that he was an immortal body hopping prophet who had been forced to bear witness to the slaughter of countless child soldiers and whose entire life's purpose is to ensure the second coming of the man who orchestrated that slaughter.

and at first i thought it was boring.

like. i actively thought it was a bad, uninteresting writing choice. now, [gestures,] CLEARLY i dont think that. and because this is my damn house and i feel like it, i wanna make a post about why i thought what i did and why i changed my mind.

at the time, i had never played any of the games and assumed i never would. i'd only ever watched cutscene compilations and a couple of streams, up to DDD, not including KHUX. i hadn't paid very close attention to xigbar, beyond the impression that he was a weirdo and an asshole and pretty fuckin ugly*¹ but also kind of a silly goofster who's fun to watch and maybe he can get it idk.

so i found out about the luxu reveal by reading wikis and posts. and the way the luxu information was presented was this: his entire personality was fake. that he was only putting on an act this entire time. "xigbar" was a persona, and "luxu" was the real person.

i. think that's wrong. and also boring. i think it's boring because that means that we've spent several games getting to know this iconically weird dickish character, forming—well, not necessarily an attachment to him, i know a lot of people think he's annoying in a way that doesnt fill them with unbridled lust—but some kind of connection with him, some kind of idea of him. and if his whole personality is fake, that means that that connection didn't mean anything. he was a blank void this entire time, we know nothing about him. where there was an interesting, memorable character, there's now a stranger instead.

i think it's wrong for a few reasons. one, even if the luxu we see in KHUX isn't very much like xigbar, there are still glimpses of xigbar. the veneer of cold pragmatism in the face of the keyblade war when we first meet him, the bit where he's with the master of masters and goes "sigh.......sigh..........SIGH—" trying to get his attention. he's more innocent and bright-eyed for sure, but he's still kind of a little shit! and is it not believable to think that over the hundreds or thousands*² of years his personality would change?

and also . if his personality were fake. if it were a ruse, if he had put on a character just to hide his true identity and fit in with the organization and carry out his plans. wouldn't he. i dunno. pick a better personality? like wouldn't he be less of a shithead? wouldn't he try harder to get along with people and ingratiate himself to them so they'd spill their secrets or stay loyal to him or whatever?

the reason i changed my mind on whether the luxu reveal is boring/uninteresting is because, well, for one, we do get to meet luxu before it's revealed that he ends up being xigbar. it's shockingly difficult for me to get the timeline on when different story updates in KHUX happened, but at the very very least we get his first scene, and in that scene, him wearing the black coat and holding the Gazing Eye is a pretty compelling introduction. he's not some rando, he has significance in the story, he raises a bunch of questions. (i assume we got a lot more of him before the luxubar reveal, but my point remains.)

also, having paid more attention to xigbar, there are absolutely indications for the entire series that he has More Going On. it's difficult for me to be "objective" about this, as someone who started paying attention to him after i found out what that More was, but ive seen a lot of anecdotes from people who picked up on there being something weird about him, wondering why he has so much presence and significance and power. it may or may not have been setup for luxubar. but him turning out to be a primary antagonist for the next arc of the series doesn't come out of nowhere and isn't a sudden jump in his importance or change in his role. he goes from being a lynchpin in one antagonist's master plan to being a lynchpin in another. he goes from being weird and mysterious to being even weirder and more mysterious. he's had a significant role in every game he's appeared in, and his role remains significant.*³

in conclusion, it was the thing that made me write a fic about him.

[or start writing. ive got 20 pages in that notes document and counting.]

ENDNOTES:

*¹—at the time i couldn't tell the difference between any of his models (besides 3 versus not 3, ofc) and conflated all of them with his model in 2, which, i am world number 1 fucked up old man xigbar simp, and man. his model in 2 is jacked up. i try&try and still have a lot of trouble finding him hot in that game. sad! oh well. there's other games

*²—i dont think it's been thousands of years. or i hope it hasn't. A Thousand Years is a comically long amount of time and multiple of that is kind of ridiculous. i'm willing to accept a few hundred. maybe one thousand at the MOST. ah well, its not that important

*³—in contrast to this, i do not . personally think that "demyx is the master of master" theory is very good. i think that if it were to happen it'd be bad writing. i will spare you my paragraph about this.