Chapter Text
OKAY, HERE'S MY SUMMARY. WITH PICTURES!! I tried to put it in an order that would make more sense, even if it’s not chronological. If you have any questions or comments, just let me know. Also, if you couldn’t tell, I probably did more research into this than I should have. But I was interested, so… yeah. I also probably shouldn’t have written this this fast. I don’t know how I wrote 30 pages of this thing in a couple days. I can barely write three pages of an essay some days.
Things we should get out of the way first thing:
1. There's three parts of a whole being: the body (fleshy stuff), the spirit/life juice (no one actually calls it that, but it's what keeps them/their bodies alive), and the heart (the most commonly mentioned thing, the soul/emotional center).
2. The original Kingdom Hearts, the thing the entire series is named after, is where all hearts go after people die (and I mean, like, die die, not turn into Heartless/Nobodies or do whatever the heck Sora does. Seriously.) It's called the source of all wisdom and power. It's said that whoever opens it can rewrite reality and become more than human (i.e. essentially a god)
<- This is the original Kingdom Hearts
This is what it looks like about... maybe 78% of the time you see it, unless it's covered by clouds or you're actually playing inside it. Because that is a thing. Apparently. Anyway, yeah, giant heart-shaped moon. (But artificial Kingdom Hearts can and have been made. There was one made with the hearts of worlds [because, yes, worlds have hearts. Those hearts are protected by keyholes, and a majority of the reasons Sora tends to travel to all the Disney worlds, at least in KH1. He's locking the keyholes to prevent their hearts being overrun/stolen/whatever because that leads to the worlds being destroyed.] and one made with the hearts of people [that one happened by killing a bunch of Heartless, so it's not technically murder, but it kinda is.])
3. Light = good, and dark = bad. Simple, but they're actually tangible forces.
4. If you lose your heart or get overwhelmed by darkness, your heart (usually) turns into one of these little guys that kinda attack anybody light/are controlled by other people who are extremely dark:
But Xehanort (more on him later), the one time it happens, turned into this dude:
And Sora (again, more on him, a little bit sooner than Xehanort), turned into the first picture but ended up potentially being capable of semi-rational thought, so instead of attacking everyone, he was just nice/hung around his sole girl friend until she recognized him and kinda just... hugged him back to normal??? Idk, man, I seriously don't know and this is the first game)
Anyway, these two pictures are Heartless (which I don't understand how they're Heartless if they're made out of the hearts, but just go with it.) There's two main types of Heartless (again, excluding Xehanort and Sora's crazy stuff.): Pureblood and Emblem. There's basically no difference, except apparently Emblem Heartless were made in Heartless Xehanort's lab and I think tend to be the boss Heartless...es. They also look different bc they're the boss battles. Anyway. Your body/spirit ends up turning into a Nobody:
However, if your heart is 'strong' (still trying to figure out what the measure for that is), then your Nobody might look like your normal self and be able to like, talk and stuff. (Again Sora proves himself to be an outlier even among outliers, but I'll talk about that later)
5. If your Heartless and your Nobody are killed, they rejoin back together to create you again. I have also heard them called 'Somebodies', but I don't think that's actually a canon term. Actually, there's quite a few terms that technically aren't canon, I think someone just made them up and it's become fairly accepted fanon
6. Keyblades aren't just big keys. Or swords. Or even wands. They're also metaphorical keys. They can do whatever the developers say they can do. They also kinda choose their own master like Harry Potter wands. And during the first game, I'm pretty sure they had no thought of adding more and more people with Keyblades, so for the majority of KH1, you see one Keyblade, and that's Sora's. And there's this whole thing where Riku ends up saying "There can only be one Keyblade Master." because he's got absolutely no clue what he's actually talking about. ;)
7. Most people are Xehanort. Everyone else is Sora. (Man, that should be on a t-shirt) Okay, not really, but sometimes it sure feels that way.
Okay, that's mostly the big things you need. I think. Good luck