Kingdom Hearts

Kingdom Hearts is a video game series developed by Square Enix and Disney set in a giant crossover between various Disney movies and several Final Fantasy games. The first game follows Sora as he fights evil while travels among the worlds looking for his friends Riku and Kairi, accompanied by Donald Duck and Goofy.
==Games==
The Kingdom Hearts franchise consists of the following titles:
* Kingdom Hearts I (2002)
* Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (2004)
* Kingdom Hearts II (2005)
* Kingdom Hearts Coded (2008) 
* Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (2009)
* Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep (2010)
* Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (2012)
* Kingdom Hearts X (2013)
* Kingdom Hearts Unchained X (2015, renamed Union X in 2017)
* Kingdom Hearts X Back Cover (2017)
* Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep - A Fragmentary Passage (2017)
* Kingdom Hearts III (2019)
* Kingdom Hearts Dark Road (2020)
* Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory (2020)
* Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link (To be released)
* Kingdom Hearts IV (To be released)
There are also novelizations and a manga adaptation, plus supplementary materials such as concept art and official guides. Kingdom Hearts: V Cast (2005) was a non-canon game developed by Disney Interactive and Superscape exclusively for the Verizon Wireless V Cast cellphone network.
==Characters==
Many Kingdom Hearts characters come from Disney and Final Fantasy franchises. Characters that originate from Kingdom Hearts itself include:
* Destiny Island Residents: Sora, Riku and Kairi.
* Organization XIII: Xemnas, Xigbar, Xaldin, Vexen, Lexaeus, Zexion, Saïx, Axel, Demyx, Luxord, Marluxia, Larxene, Roxas, and Xion. 
* Twilight Town Residents: Hayner, Pence, Olette
* Keyblade Masters: Eraqus, Master Xehanort, Odin
* Keyblade Apprentices: Terra, Aqua and Ventus.
* The Foretellers: Ira, Aced, Invi, Gula, Ava, Luxu, and The Master of Masters.
* Daybreak Town Residents: Ephemer, Skuld, Brain, and Strelitzia. 
* Scala ad Caelum Residents: Bragi, Hermod, Vor, Urd, Baldr, Hoder, Vali, Vala, Sigrun, Heimdall, Helgi, and Vidar
* Others: Ansem the Wise, Naminé, Vanitas, and Yozora.
==Fandom==
The games have an extensive cast. Many fan works focus on the original characters, or the Final Fantasy crossover characters that had large pre-existing fanbases. Due to Kingdom Hearts story taking place over multiple games, many of which were on different hand-held consoles, theory and timeline explanation videos have become common on YouTube. 
As the series has developed, some fans have noted the fandom fracturing somewhat as opinion on the games direction and characters differ.
At some point between 28 March 2014 and 7 April 2014, FanFiction.Net’s volume of Pokémon fic surpassed KH,https://web.archive.org/web/20140328121507/https://www.fanfiction.net/game/ and—as of this writing—the two fandoms have since remained respectively first and second in fic volume within the Games category.https://web.archive.org/web/20201101211038/https://www.fanfiction.net/game/ As of January 2015, Kingdom Hearts had the tenth highest volume of fic out of all fandoms on FanFiction.Net (FFN), at 72.1 thousand works.https://archiveofourown.org/works/16875867 As of this writing, Kingdom Hearts is the second-largest game fandom on FFN, with more than 71 thousand stories.Kingdom Hearts on fanfiction.net In terms of crossovers, Kingdom Hearts has the third highest volume of fic out of all crossover fan works on FFN as of this writing with more than 5 thousand crossover stories.https://www.fanfiction.net/crossovers/game/
===Notable Fanon and Tropes===
*Kairi joining Sora on his adventures instead of being left behind, captured, or comatose.
*Sora, Riku, and Kairi reintegrating back into their mundane lives on Destiny Islands after returning home at the end of Kingdom Hearts II before they receive Mickey's letter summoning them for their next adventure.
**Due to the fact that Re:coded and Dream Drop Distance are unclear about how much time has passed since Kingdom Hearts II, the idea that Sora, Riku, and Kairi had about 1 year on the Islands before their next adventure to mirror the 1-year timeskip between Chain of Memories and KH2 became a popularly accepted fanon.
*Based on a flashback in Kingdom Hearts I mentioning that Kairi was staying at the mayor's house after she arrived on Destiny Islands, it's common for fanworks to treat the mayor of Destiny Islands as Kairi's adoptive father.
*Kingdom Hearts III: Prior its release in January 2019, Kingdom Hearts III was a major source of speculation among fans of the series ever since the release of Kingdom Hearts II in 2005, with many fanworks being created that attempted to guess aspects of the game ranging from plot points and character designs to its box art and gameplay.
**After the game's release, many fans dissatisfied with KH3 pivoted to creating fix-it fics to correct elements of the game that they disliked and portray what they think the game's story should have been.
See also: KH FANFIC STEREOTYPES
See also List of Kingdom Hearts fandom terminology
===Meet-ups===
*Disney Bounding
===Shipping===
The Kingdom Hearts fan community has a large amount of shipping within its fandom which is only bolstered by it's crossover with Disney and Final Fantasy. 
When the game was first released common pairings included Sora/Riku, Sora/Kairi, Riku/Kairi and occasionally Sora/Riku/Kairi. Once the characters of Organization XIII were introduced in Chain of Memories there was a general rise in slash/yaoi pairings as 12 out of the 13 (eventually 14) members are men. From this, Axel/Roxas went on to be one of the largest ships in the fandom. 
In zettaLOL's 2010 post The Most Popular KH Pairing According to Fanfiction Is..., they showed data collected from FanFiction.Net on which pairings and characters were most written for. There were 7 slash and 5 het ships to be in the overall top 12.
As of this writing, the three most popular Kingdom Hearts pairings on AO3 are Sora/Riku (4,138), Axel/Roxas (2,301), and Sora/Kairi (1,485). 
At the time of this writing, the only canon ships in Kingdom Hearts are those that originate from other Disney media. Word of God has yet to confirm any pairings involving characters that originate from Kingdom Hearts, and nothing definitive has been said within the actual games. However, the idea that Sora/Kairi is the intended endgame pairing for the series is a popular fanon among fans of the series, even among those who do not ship the pairing, to the point where many assume it is already canon. This has resulted in an ongoing ship war between fans of SoKai and SoRiku that has lasted for most of the fandom's history. 
====Ship names====
English-language fandom uses either portmanteaus like SoRoku or Zemyx, or transliterations of Japanese ship names like AkuRoku, which is constructed using the Japanese pronunciation Akuseru. Because Kingdom Hearts fanworks were once under severe threat due to Disney's lawyers, Japanese fandom developed certain codes for ship names, along with hiding their work on personal sites behind complicated passwords.
The codes use kanji to approximate a sound from the character's name; for example, Axel, written in katakana as Akuseru, becomes 悪, the kanji for evil, which is read as "Aku". Roxas, written in katakana as Rokusasu, becomes 六, the kanji for six which is read "roku". These codes are still more popular on Pixiv than the katakana versions of ship names. As of late 2021, there were over 400 works tagged 悪六 compared to under 100 for アクロク. Characters are usually tagged with their names in katakana, as they appear in the games: Sora is "ソラ" as an individual and only becomes 空 when constructing a ship name or a grouping like 空組, Sora-gumi.
The codes are usually used for BL couples, since that was the content originally felt to be at risk. On Pixiv's "Kingdom Hearts Pairings" dictionary entry, it can be seen that there are similar constructions for het couples like 六潮 (RokuShio, Roxas/Xion). However, it doesn't see much use compared to ロクシオ, and ships like SoKai have no code names entered at all.
Ships involving members of Organization XIII paired with each other have sometimes been referred to by the combination of the members' numbers.
====Gen relationships====
*Destiny Trio (Sora & Kairi & Riku)
*Sea Salt Trio (Axel & Roxas & Xion)
*Wayfinder Trio (Terra & Aqua & Ven)
*Lost Trio (Naminé & Riku Replica & Vanitas)
*Axel & Kairi
*Lauriam & Strelitzia
===Holidays===
See List of Kingdom Hearts Fan Holidays for full list
Since Organization XIII members have assigned numbers, holidays are usually decided with these numbers taken into consideration. A list of holidays (mainly shipping dates) was compiled by raberbagirl on deviantart. Other holidays have included Kingdom Hearts' 10th anniversary and the years 2014 and 2015 being considered the years of Xion and Sora respectively.
Following the trend of Disney treating the date of a character's first appearance as their birthday, series creator Tetsuya Nomura stated that the anniversary of the original game's Japanese release on March 28 was Sora's birthday. In honor of that tradition, some fans declared that Riku's birthday was November 11th, the original release date for Chain of Memories, the game where he became a playable character for the first time--and similarly Kairi's birthday has been declared 23 January.
==Notable fan works==
===Fan fiction===
*SERVED https://www.deviantart.com/ladychimera/art/SERVED-pg-I-62606851WBM
* Those Lacking Spines https://archiveofourown.org/works/16498976/chapters/38641982 by Gexegee of Organization VI 
* Kingdom Hearts: The Antipode by Dorked
* (i don't need you to) Worry for Me by Cygna_hime 
* Remember the Tides by Regiss
** The Tides Go Out, the first sequel
** On the Way to a Smile, the second sequel. Now discontinued. 
* Why The Sun Sets Red by Perosha 
* Quite a Glittering Assemblage by GAvillain
* Take a Heart, Leave a Heart by PhantasmagoriaKnight 
*https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13185587/1/The-First-Regret
* Brutality by Gundam Kaiser
*http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3254812/1/ 
*https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8534820/1/The-Road-to-Light
*"Wild Card" by BlackRoseDragonCK (2013)
*https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5851435/1/Lux-Aeterna
*https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4910445/1/Organization-XIII-We-Fit-Because-We-Misfit 
*Kingdom Hearts: The Third Epic (2005) series by Lord Cavendish, one of the longest Kingdom Hearts fan fiction stories by word count
===Fan art===
* https://ir-dr.tumblr.com/post/136532873070/day-18091810-23-january-2016-kingdom-heartsWBM by ir-dr/projectTIGER (2016)
*https://ir-dr.tumblr.com/post/167525789385/day-2261-15-november-2017-kingdom-hearts (2017) 
*https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/72656268 (2019-01-04)
*Fan art of Rex from KH3 as a terrible Twitch streamer playing Verum Rex by OptimusPaula (2019)
*https://twitter.com/smovs/status/1191381688024211456WBM (2019)
*Explaining the Kingdom Hearts LoreWBM by Plow (2021)
*Up fan artWBM by beetlemoses (2022)
*https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/98145382 
*https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/73080223
*https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/73940632
*https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/46299146
*https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/78924063
*https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/82313529
* ❤️💟 bymomo_krys, 2017
* https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/13303158 
* https://twitter.com/fitsfito/status/984873641967063041WBM 
* https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/82440282 
* https://old.reddit.com/r/KingdomHearts/comments/k6jw5j/melody_of_memory_bonus_level/ 
==== Additional Fanart Gallery ====
File:2009-03-02 emily-bright Kingdom Hearts Stereotypes.jpg|Kingdom Hearts Stereotypes by emily-bright (2009)
=== Fan Films and Vids ===
* Kingdom Hearts Chronicles by RiverJordan (Aro) and Black-Rose (2005)
* Kingdom Hearts Crazy Files
* Kingdom Hearts Spoof (2006)
* lol, Kingdom Hearts
* Roxas Hates Waffles (2006) by McFlabbergasted
* The Sora Song
===Meta/essays===
* The Necklace Theory (January 2018)
** Master Post of the Necklace Theory's additional parts (latest update November 2020) 
* Sleeping Realm Theory (February 2019)
* Soriku Ultimania, an ongoing collaborative meta project (started October 2019).
===Zines===
: See: List of Kingdom Hearts Zines
Image:Kh promise zine recruit graphic.png|Promise!! (2016)
Image:Kh15fanzine cover.png|Dearly Beloved (2018)
Image:Kh blast away cover.png|Blast Away! (2018)
Image:Kh the ties that bind recruitment graphic.png|The Ties That Bind (2019)
Image:Queendom hearts v1 logo.png|Queendom Hearts (2019)
Image:Kingdoms and keyblades cover.png|Kingdoms & Keyblades (2020)
Image:Kh blank slate cover.png|Blank Slate: A Kingdom Hearts Coloring Book (2021)
Image:Kh final mix cookbook cover.png|Final Mix: A Kingdom Hearts Cookbook (2021)
Image:Kh1 fanzine cover.png|Kingdom Hearts I: A Fanzine (2022)
Image:Kh uncharted worlds cover.png|Uncharted Worlds (2023)
===Fan events, other collaborative projects, and challenges===
* March Caprice, an annual virtual showcase featuring all types of fanworks
*Tis’ The Season of Hallow Screams and Nightmarish Fiends! - the Realm Between's Halloween Challenge
*https://kingdomheartsfanon.fandom.com/wiki/Kingdom_Hearts_Fan_Projects
*https://another-rpg.livejournal.com/
==Communities==
===Livejournal===
*kingdom_hearts
*0kingdom_hearts
*KH Drabble Community
*KINGDOM HEARTS KINK MEME
*khfanfiction
*khfanficrants
*kingdom-spork
*Snakes on a Sora
*heartless_fics
*khyaoi
*20 heartbeats
*Key blade
===Dreamwidth===
*kingdomhearts
===Deviantart===
* KH Fans Forever
* KH wallpapers
* K H Pairings
* KH Princess Club
* soraxariel
=== Websites ===
* kh-vids.net
* kh2.co.uk (2004)
* Kingdom Hearts Insider (2003)
* KH World https://khworld.org/iceberg/
==Resources==
* Kingdom Hearts Wiki
* Wikipedia:Kingdom Hearts
* Kingdom Hearts on Know Your Meme
* Kingdom Hearts Wiki on Wikia
* Kingdom Hearts subreddit
* Kingdom Hearts stories on FanFiction.Net
* Kingdom Hearts tagged works on Archive of Our Own
* https://web.archive.org/web/20110915191505/http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Kingdom_Hearts
* https://web.archive.org/web/20080522131857/http://www.fanlib.com/fandom/Kingdom_Hearts/32r2m
==References==
Category:Kingdom Hearts
Category:Video Games