I know in my heart and soul that if Master Kohga drew himself he'd make himself a frickin' muscle man. and also draw women swooning over him. (okay just one woman kjdfg)
I saw some people do drawings with their non-dominant hands and I had the idea for the first panel, but when I tried, it was completely unrecognizable. So I just drew with my right hand but held my pen weird to achieve the same effect and now my hand just hurts kdjfg
since I seem to love making fake textboxes and screenshots for some reason, I thought it would be neat to make some more for Sepria. I wrote a bunch of journal entries that Link could find and read (in TotK), detailing Sepria's thoughts and experiences - from the time that Master Kohga was defeated in BotW all the way to before the final battle with him in TotK. If you've read my fic with Kohga and Sepria then some of these will make a little more sense~
These first three can be found and read near the pit in the Yiga Clan Hideout. (They're also supposed to be in one notebook, with the "next page" and "stop reading" options, but I couldn't be bothered to make those kfjhd)
Although the Abandoned Kara Kara Mine isn't part of the Master Kohga sidequest, Link could find a journal there too, since it's the closest mine to the bottom of the pit and likely where Kohga (and eventually Sepria) would head first.
Afterwards, she writes an entry at every abandoned mine in the Depths where Master Kohga shows up, in order - Central, Gerudo, Lanayru, and Hebra.
Well now, who's this? A member of the Survey Team seems to have made it quite far into the Depths - much further than any of the other members have been - and offers to guide Link to a handful of the large abandoned mines down there, for rest and resources. She seems friendly enough, but on their way, she always manages to take Link right through the bases that the Yiga Clan has set up. Surely she just has an abysmal sense of direction and these drive-by's are completely unintentional...right?
And what's with her always disappearing whenever Master Kohga's at their destination? Not to say that she's really Master Kohga's right-hand woman, Sepria, in disguise...but it is true that no one's ever seen Olive and Sepria in the same room... 👀
BASICALLY I had the idea that Sepria takes on a disguise and intentionally guides Link into danger - that is, the Yiga bases scattered about the Depths - and then eventually, to whichever abandoned mine Master Kohga is stationed at...all with the intention of getting rid of the Champion of Hyrule one way or another.
Whenever they reach their destination, she disappears and sheds her disguise to assist Master Kohga as herself. It's only when they get to the Abandoned Hebra Mine that Sepria reveals her true identity, frustrated that Link has survived this long and vowing to take him down with her own two hands - but she unfortunately gets bested, and that's when Master Kohga steps in to fight Link with his Construct. And then he gets his ass kicked too, and then...well, I'll figure that part out later kdfjg
The fact that her uniform is green instead of the usual blue is supposed to be a hint that she's not really who she says she is. Her disguise also falls apart just slightly when she starts getting frustrated at Link, hence the hair color change.
You'd think that her being hellbent on Link's demise is just because of her loyalty to Master Kohga, but in reality she has her own reasons. She nearly threw her life away long ago because of the way she had to live - desolate and barely scraping by despite doing all she could, while the royal family prospered and prioritized the wellbeing of those already better off than her. But Sepria found purpose after joining the Yiga, who were also bitter towards the royal family, and thrived in her new life. Link, who is so closely associated with the royal family, is a reminder to Sepria of what she tried to escape from. Not only that, but he's stopping Ganon's return - which, frankly, Sepria would welcome if it meant the destruction of the rulers who ignored the struggles of many others like her. It's a long-term goal that Master Kohga is working hard to achieve, the only roadblock she can work on destroying right now is Link.
While Sepria is in the Depths, I figured she'd write one of those journals you find at the Yiga Clan bases... And just like the other members sometimes add a personal gripe in there, Sepria has her own little two cents as well... a little wishful thinking about a certain banana man gkshfdg
Like Koci, I want to update Sepria's design a little to show that time has passed (here's her old one for comparison).
In particular, I imagine that after the event involving the Guardian at Hyrule Field, Sepria begins to open up more to Master Kohga, and it's partially represented by her changing her hairstyle. Her old one was designed to look closed off so she quite literally opens up her hairstyle.
I also wanted to change her outfit a bit to show her position in the Yiga Clan. Kohga ended up making her his own personal, dedicated scout, but while they were in the Depths she was taught to fight more. She was eventually able to take down the Blademasters that helped teach her, and I wanted her outfit to kind of reflect that she's become more than just a scout.
At some point I wanna draw a good proper reference, but the past few days have been exhausting so this is the best I can do right now gkshg
It is no secret that I love BOTW. If you asked me my top 3 favorite Zelda titles, BOTW would be number 1 no matter what. The designs, the concept of the story, the wide-open world - I can't think of many things I don't like about this game! So naturally I've replayed it a dozen times, and just about lost my shit when Age of Calamity first dropped (but my later salty feelings about that game have already been explained in a post on my other blog so shhh don't worry about it kdjfg).
Of course I had my fun playing as the main protagonists in AoC, but the other characters were a pleasant surprise too - like Master Kohga! Thing is, when playing BOTW proper, I didn't think much of him. I mean, he was a fun boss, and the idea of a group of vicious thieves and assassins being led by an absolutely rotund fool was a great one. But since you only meet him once and never see him again, I ended up brushing him off pretty quickly.
But in my opinion, BOTW Master Kohga walked so that AoC Master Kohga could run. Yeah, AoC is non-canon, but the Warriors game presented an opportunity to explore more of the characters that could benefit from it, and boy howdy did they leap on that opportunity with Kohga. The interactions, deeper characterization with the cutscenes, the fact that he was now fully-voiced in said cutscenes-- oh... oh no. it's happening again.
Like with Yuga and Ghirahim before him, the denial was harsh. I was reluctant to slap him onto even the "crush" section of my faves list because I was convinced of how not my type he was. Loud, brash, dumb in all the right places, and what TV Tropes lovingly describes as an Acrofatic. Small, quiet and soft-hearted little Marshy was, quite frankly, intimidated.
So what was her solution? Create a separate character to distance herself as far from this weird attraction as possible. Hmm... sounds kind of familiar... but regardless of the similarities, it wasn't long before Sepria was brought to life.
Unlike my other OCs and self inserts so far, I barely have any art of Sepria. The place you'll see her the most in different situations is in the short fic I wrote for her and Master Kohga, which you can find here - but this came later.
I knew I wanted her to be in the Yiga Clan at some point, but wanted to differentiate her from other members. I decided to pull inspiration from the designs of both the footsoldiers and the blademasters, and then fitted her with a half-mask inspired by the headpiece from the Sheikah armor set. The idea was for her to naturally look closed-off, even without covering her face and head like the other Yiga - thus I had her hair cover one eye, and made it long enough to be wrapped across her shoulders like a scarf.
I mulled over how to incorporate a new OC into the Yiga Clan, because I couldn't fathom Master Kohga investing his precious time and bonding with just any ol' person. Around this time IRL, I was in a decent slump about my job situation, and somewhere during the thought process I decided to combine coming to terms with my attraction to Kohga and healthily venting my financial frustrations through art. So the story that I crafted, which was amusingly done before I even gave her a proper name, was as follows:
(TW for depictions of suicidal ideation - if you don't want to see that, you can skip this and start reading again at the five asterisks *****)
Sepria is a young Hylian woman who has hit rock bottom. She lost her job - her only source of income that was mediocre at best - due to circumstances outside her control, and she's spent ages searching for others. Because of the absurdly high standards set by the area she resides in when it came to working, she's constantly rejected on the thinly-veiled basis that she isn't willing to sacrifice what little health she has to spare for a paltry sum of rupees that would barely keep her fed. She can't even afford to move to a cheaper place with what money she has, and slowly she becomes convinced that she just doesn't have the ability to live as a normal person does, in terms of finances, skills, or constitution. Her best efforts are simply not good enough for anyone - not even herself.
She isn't brave enough to harm herself directly, so she intends to get herself into enough danger that someone or something does the job for her. She decides, however, that if she's going to die, she might as well give one last effort towards something that could give her even the smallest sense of accomplishment - just so she can at least say that she tried.
Having heard whispers about the Yiga Clan from her old colleagues and passersby, she scrounges up the last of her funds and puts it towards traveling all the way to Karusa Valley, where the Yiga were rumored to have made their base. When she is in fact confronted by a pair of footsoldiers near her destination, she isn't sure whether to feel surprised or relieved, but she submits entirely, telling them that she was hoping they'd catch her.
The two footsoldiers find this odd, and so they bind her and drag her to Master Kohga for his opinion. Sepria tells him that she finds the Hyrulean royal family at fault for her troubles, feeling that they only raise those born into wealth on pedestals and disregard those who struggle to even survive. She says that the reason she came here is because she didn't want to be subject to their quiet cruelty anymore. She isn't lying when she says this, but Master Kogha misinterprets this as a desire to get back at the royal family, which would mean she and the Yiga share a common enemy. So, he makes the executive decision to recruit her into their clan. Nobody expects this - especially not Sepria, who was moreso expecting to be beheaded in the middle of the road not 30 minutes earlier. She's still set on her original goal, so she intends to use the free food, housing and traveling opportunities to find a place to end it all, but doesn't breathe a word of it to anyone.
*****
This is the point where the fic I wrote begins. By the end of it, Kohga and Sepria are much closer - in this little doodle, I even thought of a point where Sepria finally fixes her self-inflicted lack of depth perception, moving her hair away from her eye to physically show that she's "opened up" to him.
(and yes, I am sort of omitting the rest of her story so that, if you're so inclined, you can read it in the fic, I know I'm shameless kjdsfhg)
I mentioned it at one point, but I think it bears repeating - the ideas in Sepria's story are heavily exaggerated. Once I was finished writing it, Master Kohga had become a solid comfort character in my faves list, and creating this story was my way of safely venting my real life frustrations. Rest assured, no matter how much my job and working sucked, I did not actually go off the deep end in real life so no need to worry about that kjdfg
Other than this, and a handful of random dialogue I have written for the two of them, I don't have much else of Sepria, and I really need to get on that! As soon as I figure out how to draw Kohga without absolutely butchering him, I'll probably put out some more art of the two of them~
Oh! One more thing. Sepria and Kohga's dynamic here is "villain who usually doesn't care about anyone but himself shows actual warmth to another person, who comes to him out of desperation from their own struggles." I wrote this story before the DLC for Age of Calamity was even announced and showed that Sooga and Kohga did the exact same thing. I just think it's funny that whoever wrote for the game had the same idea that there is some goodness in Kohga's heart, no matter how roundabout it's presented as, and I love it XD
But for now, this marks the very last Zelda OC I've made in the span of about 14 years! It's so crazy to see how far I've come in terms of art, writing and concepts for my characters, and I'm really proud of all the progress I've made! Even if it's all just silly self indulgent stuff... but honestly that's my favorite!
If you read all of the posts thus far, thank you for sticking with me and taking such an interest in my characters! It makes me happy to know that people like the things I create. Maybe it will inspire someone else to take a look at the progress of their OCs too? Who knows!
Just occurred to me that despite having posted a whole short story and quietly fawning over Master Kohga, I never showed what my Yiga Clan self insert looks like, so here she is! I wanted to shade her but never got around to it, I just wanted to post her before I forgot again because this ref has been sitting in my folder for a while now kdfjg.
I wanted to have her stand out just slightly from other Yiga soldiers, so I made her outfit a little mix of the footsoldier and blademaster outfits, as well as the unique half-mask mentioned in the story~
