so imagine like. you have this coworker. and hes an asshole in general, you dont like him, nobody else likes him. but the relevant thing is that he is just really, really into arthurian legend. very into medieval literature, very into the post-roman anglo saxons, doesnt really strike you as the nerdy type but he knows a lot about it. he spends a bunch of work hours researching allegedly arthurian artifacts, and even pulls rank and convinces one of your other coworkers to also research this stuff (by lying and saying one of the higher-ups wanted it). in fact, he claims his entire motivation for working at this job is that your boss has promised to give him an actual 5th century sword. but it's like. you dont know how much of this to take seriously. it wouldnt be out of character for him to be entirely bullshitting you. so whatever.
and then after you quit and the company falls apart and you think youre never gonna see him again, you find out that your asshole coworker is, actually, Sir Lancelot, and him working at that job was all part of his preparation for the return of the actual King Arthur.
that would be the experience of everybody who was in Organization XIII finding out that Xigbar is Luxu.
hey hi im having swirling and spinning luxubar thoughts again. let's look at these lines.
i imagine he phrases it this way because it's a casual, laid-back way of expressing this idea. "more recently, i go by the name Xigbar, but you can call me Luxu if you want, I don't care either way." (and the fact that he doesn't have a strong preference about the name he's called still says something about his relationship to his own identity, i think!)
but absolutely i feel this can be interpreted on a deeper level, too. the question is about who he is—about his identity in isolation—but the way he responds defines him relationally—"these days they call me Xigbar, but hey, whatever suits you." a sense of identity that is fluid, dependent on who he serves, on what role he plays.
a sense of identity made even more tragic by the fact that, no, Xigbar isn't his real name, and neither was Braig, but neither is Luxu.
[this is Chirithy, speaking about the Master of Masters.]
even the name Luxu, considered his "true identity", was bestowed on him by his master. every identity we have ever known for Xigbar, every name he's ever had, has been a name he assumed in pursuit of someone else's goal. Braig and Bragi were names he acquired from his vessels. Luxu and even Xigbar were names he was given by his superiors. he has only ever been defined in relation to someone else, by someone else's past or someone else's ambitions.
weird thing: in kh2, xigbar saying "as if" is intentionally dated—the game came out in 2005, and "as if" is 90's slang, popularized by the movie Clueless, which came out ten years prior to the game's release. hes a ~50 year old man (ignoring [gestures at his Whole Deal]) trying to sound like a teenager and failing, maybe on purpose. one of those people who misuses teen slang around teenagers specifically to watch the light fade from their eyes.
however. the years start comin and they dont stop comin. kh4 takes place only ~1-2 years after kh2; the timeline of the games is progressing much more slowly than the timeline of Real Life. xigbar will still be a 50 year old man (ignoring etc.) using 90s slang.
but soon. a 50 year old man using 90s slang will read less as him wanting to annoy teens, and more as him using slang that he would have used as a teenager in the 90s.
though hes also very much still doing it to annoy teens. thats a critical part of his character.
hey, i enjoy a lot of your xigposting and I'm sorry if you got asked something like this before, but I'd like to know your thoughts on the MoM since he's one of my favorites and he's very important thematically to luxu's story.
any opinions, headcanons, or theories?
do you think he gives a single shit about Luxu and the others or are they nothing but a means to an end to him?
how do you feel about the implication that he purposefully isolated Luxu from the rest of the apprentices which is implied by how distant his relationship with them seems to be even back in the day (i feel this mainly because of how we never see him interacting with any of them beside his one very antagonistic encounter with Ava in the original X finale. he's even the only missing apprentice in the cutscene where MoM teaches everybody about spirits and nightmares which would be bizarre to me if it wasn't intentional)
do you think Luxu resents him in anyway?
i don't know how much you find this interesting to talk about i just love Luxu and particularly his dynamic with the master so much and i love seeing other people talking about it too.
people havent really asked me my thoughts on the MoM before (that i can recall LOL)! and oooobh i got planny off thoughts. hes one of my favorite characters too, i'm really interested to see where the story goes with him!!
thus far i have read all of the MoM's behavior as manipulative, top to bottom. every time he jokes around with them it can be tied to a specific way he controls his apprentices' behavior—joking at Aced's expense to isolate him from the others, teasing Invi in his one-on-one conversation with her in a way she does not seem to find funny. i havent seen any indication that he cares about his apprentices at all, or sees them as anything other than pawns in whatever game hes playing. (not to say that isn't possible—thats just how i read his character so far!)
related to that, absolutely i agree he isolated Luxu from the other apprentices! and i dont think it's a coincidence that he also seems to have the closest relationship with Luxu—Luxu is the most relaxed around him of any of the apprentices, cracks jokes with him, even is quick to ask questions and doubt him when the other apprentices only very cautiously raised their own concerns. my interpretation/theory/belief is that the MoM isolated Luxu from the others so that he would be the only person Luxu felt close to, and i think he did that because he needed Luxu to be devoted to him for the next few hundred years or so.
honestly i really love how the MoM is written....every scene i feel like you can go line by line and determine the intended effect of his words. like his conversations with young Xehanort in the keyblade graveyard...starting out by playing into Xehanort's natural skepticism and affirming it as a way to disarm it and get him to trust him. and later on using leading language like "it sounds like you're saying..." to shape Xehanort's thoughts for him and draw him to specific conclusions. so so so so so compelling to me.
also at this point I think Luxu is mostly still devoted to the MoM—hes had to be in order to live this long and see this plan through to the end. there have been non-canon things that indicate that maybe he has some doubts, which i think could be really interesting, but TBH i love projecting this thing onto him where the only way he keeps himself from falling into an endless spiral of grief is by deciding that he believes in the MoM 1000%. the alternative is believing all that suffering he's endured and permitted was meaningless.
damn its been a while since i thought about these characters. you ever think about the MoM? you ever think about luxubar??????
hiiiii i found this character introduction from the official KHDR twitter account, posted around the time the game was first released.
"though he acts aloof, he cant always hide his passion and enthusiasm."
i like the ambiguity in Bragi's characterization in DR, so i understand why someone would think otherwise, but my interpretation of his characterization is that Bragi sincerely cares about his classmates and views them as his friends. i view him as the second-to-last step on Luxu's downward character spiral, one of the bridges between Luxu in KHUX and Xigbar in the present-day games. ive spoken about this before—i think it's more interesting to read him this way, as it's more dramatic, makes him a more dynamic character, and also casts his actions in an even worse light than if he's a completely coldhearted villain who doesn't give a shit.
so that's how i read Luxu in this game. he has, at this point, almost given up on friendship and human connection, thrown it all away to focus on his Role above all else, but not quite. he just needs one more push.
and im taking this reading and applying it to this character introduction, specifically that last line.
im sure that in 2020 when this was posted, this was intended to give us the impression of a prideful teenager who doesn't want to admit that he can get excited about things. but with the context of his real identity, we can interpret it a different way: Bragi actively tries to distance himself from his classmates, but just can't stop himself from getting invested anyway.
what if i walked into the ocean. huh. what if i walked into the cold embrace of the sea to become one with the tunas and salmons
in a recent ask game i got a question about something xigbar has done that i cant get over. well. this is my answer.
[Video ID: A cutscene from 358/2 Days for DS, with high-resolution models. Roxas unsummons his keyblade and says, "Mission accomplished. Xigbar looks up and says, "Or is it?" Roxas says "Huh? Oh, come on, quit playing ar—" Xigbar shoves Roxas away, then jumps out of frame to avoid an attack by an off-screen Heartless. Roxas says, "Whoa!" end ID.]
this one moment is so important to how i think about Xigbar's characterization, in this game, in every game, that i feel the need to. write an entire essay about it lmao
The context here is that Roxas is sent to rendezvous with Xigbar in Halloweentown to destroy a giant Heartless. Just before a fight with a distinctly medium-sized Heartless, Roxas says, "Looks giant enough to me!" and Xigbar laughs and says, "Right. Just keep your head on straight." This cutscene immediately follows that.
After the actual boss fight, Roxas is mad that Xigbar let him think the other Heartless was their target, and Xigbar's like "well you learned a valuable lesson, and I did tell you to keep your head on straight." So there's the moral of the story. Roxas nearly got hurt because he jumped to conclusions and let his guard down.
But if that was the point...why did Xigbar shove Roxas out of the way of the attack, evidently narrowly avoiding getting hit himself? If the story of the mission was Roxas learning this lesson, wouldn't it be scarier and more dramatic if he'd gotten hurt? If Xigbar wanted to show Roxas some tough love, wouldnt he have let Roxas get hurt? What is the game trying to communicate about Xigbar in this scene?
It's not that it'd be tonally inappropriate; the game is absolutely willing to have other characters directly hurt Roxas in order to teach him things. In Lexaeus's mission, when he teaches Roxas about Limit Breaks, he seriously hurts Roxas to get his health low enough to use a Limit Break. At the end of that mission, Lexaeus tells Roxas that the only person he can trust is himself—I think implying that this was another thing he was trying to teach Roxas when he hurt him. Not to mention the several characters who arguably treat Roxas worse. The game doesn't pull its punches when it comes to characters being cruel to him.
It's not like it'd be out of character for Xigbar to stand by and watch, either! Obviously in the broad scope of his character throughout the series, and also in this game specifically. Earlier in the story, he absolutely knows that Axel is going to survive his mission at Castle Oblivion—both from how he talks about it and from his secret reports. When Roxas assumes Axel is dead, Xigbar reminds him once or twice not to jump to conclusions, but after that, not only does he let Roxas believe that Axel is dead, he makes fun of Roxas for it—he tells him it doesn't matter if people died, says things are quieter with fewer people around. He's certainly willing to let Roxas get hurt.
I guess you could argue that maybe Xigbar needs Roxas alive for The Plan, either Xehanort's or the MoM's, but...this mission occurs less than a month before Xemnas says that it doesn't matter whether Roxas or Xion lives. Roxas isn't Ventus; he isn't himself a necessary part of the MoM's plan. He's also not Sora, and in fact him dying would probably just wake up Sora sooner. It doesn't seem like there'd be a pragmatic reason for Xigbar to risk his hide to save Roxas's.
So we're just left with this...thing. This one moment where Xigbar puts himself in direct danger to keep Roxas from getting hurt by his own dumbassery, for seemingly no reason. There are other little moments in this game that can be read as sincere attempts at support or encouragement of Roxas or Xion, but a lot of the time he comes across as, like, condescendingly overfamiliar, more annoying than genuinely supportive. There is no other moment that reads this much like an act of altruism and just an act of altruism.
The people who made this game made an intentional choice here. And I think a lot about what the scene might be meant to communicate.
...And then in BbS and 3 he goes back to seeming like a complete fucking jackass. But considering what we learn about Luxu later in the series—about his motivations, what he used to be like, what he's been through—I don't think this is an isolated out-of-character incident. It's just like...this one short glimpse through a crack in the facade, a hint that there is a lot more depth to him than we realize. What's in there, old man!!
ugghghgh his characterization in this game is so fascinating to me. getting to see him in a completely different context. the only time we see him interact with a teenager who he's allied with outside of Days is in 3. and that also occupies my brain day and night.
another very specific, intentional moment. the camera brings attention to it. what does it mean what does it all mean.....................
anyway. evil little league coach. my mind it swirls and spins.
Xigbar/Luxu IMO is a pretty good example case for Kingdom Hearts' Retroactive Continuity actually working out and being good sometimes (ie; more often than not). Its honestly unlikely that "he's the current vessel of an guy from way ancient past who's been chilling and body hopping this whole time" specifically was the plan from the beginning BUT he was written with enough mystery about what his fucking problem is that the reveal ends up working out really well. Very fascinating writing process
YEAH like...theres a lot of stuff that i think is a little too much of a coincidence to not have been planned in advance. e.g. why does KH2FM go out of its way to tell us that Xigbar was the one who recruited Marluxia, when we wouldn't know about Lauriam for nearly a decade and XigLuxu for for over a decade?
but also the production timeline of the games is so long that i don't think it's too crazy to speculate that they had planned that in advance. we forget that as early as 2013 it wouldve been possible to speculate that Xehanort's keyblade originally belonged to a secret sixth Foreteller named Luxu (and it perhaps even wouldve been possible to speculate that braig was Luxu via body-swapping situation, though with much more tenuous evidence. e.g. the closeup of him being threatened by Xehanort with No Name; him being very mysterious and seeming to have his own agenda from the beginning; etc etc)
and yet if Mr. Tetsuya "Kingdomhearts" Nomura himself came to my door and told me that he had a concrete idea in mind for what Organization XIII's overarching plan was from the beginning i would call him a liar to his face. i know xemnas was textually lying to the Org members to keep them in line [side-eyes the "nobodies having hearts is a retcon" crowd] but some stuff just Does not add up. literally as late as KH3 we have characters wondering aloud what Xehanort is even trying to accomplish by summoning Kingdom Hearts and the χ-blade, and getting the response of "i dunno! nothing good!" and then they had to make a whole 'nother game to actually answer that question.
and then that game was one of the best written games in the series. (getting [allegedly] kneecapped by Covid notwithstanding.) the epic highs and lows of kingdom hearts...
yeah Luxord seems to be missing his studs? and as someone who didn't know about the Luxu twist Xigbar absolutely felt like he was gonna turn out to be the "villain behind the villain" at least since Days. his odd behavior, spying on Xemnas, treating secret knowledge like the funniest of inside jokes, the dissonance between him and his secret reports, his weird uncle shtick, kind of all added together to make it clear something's Up with him. he's also mean and funny so he's always been one of the most interesting org members (to lots of people) but the Luxu deal definitely made all the previous stuff click (the Braig backstory never felt like the full story to me. like what all that build up and he's just? some random foolish greedy crook?) and added that extra layer of implied "horrible backstory" both in the sense of things he did and things done to him that made him go from "weird entertaining side character with potential stuff going on" to "oh. oh boy."
(side note: isn't it great how they point out Xigbar is the first org's primary recon guy? both because he's spying on everyone and is "Luxu the Watcher" but also? they really made their recon expert the guy with only 1 eye huh?)
TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE. xigbar being luxu brings so much into focus. especially Days specifically. i played Days only after having watched most of the series at least once (in the middle of a playthrough of all the games) and after becoming aware of the Luxu Thing and i was really surprised by how much stuff in Days seemed to support and connect to him being Luxu.
something i dont think ive seen discussed and which at least feels like a strongly supported headcanon is that the reason Xigbar specifically is so invested in Roxas's training—he's the one who tells Roxas to get all the high scores in Olympus, and the CtNW training missions very early on take place in Xigbar's boss arena—is possibly because Xigbar is a keyblade master. either he has Overarching Motivation reasons to be invested in the training of Roxas as a keyblade wielder, or he just can't help himself and has to let his Keyblade Master Instincts kick in and treat Roxas as like a pseudo-apprentice.
also kshdkHSDKLFLKSDF to be fair idk how much depth perception necessarily matters. esp. if he's a sniper and only needs to use one eye for that anyway. also i think in general him being kind of unassuming as a Recon Guy works in his favor! ill never be able to find it again (<-could find it again with 15 minutes of effort) but there was a post going around with the booklet from the 358/2 Days case with little bios for each of the Org members, and Xigbar's said something about him being chatty specifically to keep people from asking too many questions, which had been something id read in his character for a while and i felt so validated lmao
