also if you've actually clicked under the readmore. surprise! here are the backgrounds / a gif. from newest to oldest
(had to divide this in two so i could put Yora in the middle and make it seem like a reflection)
(THE TREES TOOK ME SO FUCKING LONG DUDE THERE WERE LIKE 5 LAYERS OF THEM. for some reason this gif looks better in discord than it does on my computer's file player??)
(heho totally normal vending machine go brr. bit of a shame you only ever see the first half of the background F)
(house baybeyy. for some reason i vividly and explicitly remember watching a video shitting on a children's book written and drawn by ai as i was doing the windows around the door)
(fun fact the lil animation tidbits of yora showering were part of the background itself. in the animation this background is actually 4 pngs that rapidly change. same with the scrolling down shot actually. but for that i had to do some mindfuckery tricks to slowly move each png down at a steady pace. for some reason i just remembered that as i was doing that i was watching a video documentary about the development of this old japanese game called swamp or smth?? what)
(the room!! i did the blanket on a sepparate layer so it's not here. literally whenever i had to pause animating itself to go do a background to add in the shot my work on this project would grind to a halt bc i did NOT like doing backgrounds and kinda dreaded them)
also another fun fact. i began working on this animation before kenikari's demo was even out, on january. i wanted to post the full two days before i released the demo, to build up hype. oh, young me. foolish young me. you idiot. you baby dumbass. you bufoon
I have no less than three "secret waterbending healer" OCs in my brain (when one is going to whump, there needs to be a doctor around; and no Katara does not count), and one actually made it into a story this year - Yora! She appeared in Without Which Not.
She was very much a side character (as she should be), and it wouldn't have suited the story to have her go on tangents about her past. But she does have one, and I am going to document it here for funsies. So -
Yora
Yora is a woman in her early seventies. Her mother was Fire Nation, but her father was Water Tribe. She is a waterbender. It was a secret she was forced to guard her whole life, to her detriment.
It was fun to write Yora because she is a little bit of a jerk. She is slightly aloof by nature, and her need to keep her bending a secret caused her to really develop her prickly personality. So isn’t without compassion and loves being a healer, but life was never gentle to her, and she has trouble being gentle to others. A kind heart wrapped in steel.
Backstory
Yora's mother was a Fire Nation Prison Guard and her father was a Waterbender Prisoner. The circumstances under which they met were pretty bleak, but their connection was real. Yora's mother is the type of person who can't help but being friends with everyone she speaks with, including her wards. How she ended up as a prison guard in a Watebender prison is anyone's guess, but she was easily the kindest guard there, the one who made sure everyone had enough blankets and gave them games and art supplies and compliments. Yora's father was a little more soulful and serious. He had trouble opening up to people in normal circumstances, much less when he was a water-deprived prisoner of war. But eventually the need for human connection won out and he started talking with her when she came by to check on him. Neither of them expected to form the connection that they did, but it happened very quickly. When Yora was concieved, they talked about trying to do the impossible - breaking her father out of prison, finding a life togther outside of the war. But it was all talk. Yora's mother wasn't made for espionage. And then her father died, very quickly, when an illness spread through the prison. Yora's mother was five months pregnant at the time, but still managing to hide it. She quit her job and moved back home.
The plan had been to raise Yora in her hometown, but it became appearent very quickly that Yora was a waterbender. Yora's mother loved her fiercely and would do anything to protect her. She considered moving to the Earth Kingdom or something, but ultimately felt she wouldn't be able to support her daughter that way. Yora was raised in the Fire Nation, her mother moving them every few years in order to ensure that no one had time to suspect her true nature. As a result, they were very poor. Yora’s mom took up unskilled work, never able to establish herself anywhere. Her mother encouraged Yora to keep to herself, limited her ability to socialize with her peers, discouraged visits with neighbors, etc. It was a hard life for both of them. Yora’s mom, naturally friendly, essentially gave up her social life. Yora had more of her father's personality - thoughtful and somewhat aloof. But all kids what friends. But she was trainined not to make any, forbidden from having dinner at a friend's house, or inviting a friend to dine at hers. And then there were the incidents, the times Yora accidently bent water - never meaning to, because she had no training - and someone saw. At least two of their moves happened very, very abruptly.
Her mother loved her very much, and appreciated her gift. Despite that, it was a very lonely, anxiety ridden childhood. Yora emerged into adulthood bitter and resentful. She’s realized midway through her teen years that she could never have anything. No friends. No shot at having a family besides her mother. Having children, especially, was an impossible rid considering what she might pass on. It hurt, feeling her life was over before it even started.
Her mother discouraged Yora from joining the army, but she did it anyway. The discipline of army life soothed some of her resentment, somehow. Channeled it. She surprised herself, though, when she decided to specialize as a medic. Even though she spent her life repressing her bending, she had stumbled onto a few things, including rudimentary healing. Was it so wrong, to want one thing for herself? She was interested in healing. She could learn about it, just a little. It's not like she was going to bend.
But of course, she did. In the battlefields of the Earth Kingdom, Yora found herself bending the rules more and more. But what was she to do? When a soldier was critically wounded, and she was their first responder, could anyone blame her for trying to do whatever they could to save their life? She became known for having a magic touch, but no one caught on to what she was actually doing. She made sure to transfer as often as possible, to keep from serving in any particular unit too long, so that no one would have time to suspect. She lived her life that way for almost twenty years.
Her last assignment in the military was in one of Iroh's battallions. She even saw him once or twice, walking through camp - the Fire Prince himself, a decade younger than Yora and barely and inch taller. She barely paid the man any attention, because something amazing was happening to her. Yora had acquired a best friend, a physician who had recently been stationed in their camp. She was a brilliant field surgeon, and Yora was her right hand. They were an incredible team, but the friendship was even more incredible. The physician did sense that Yora was hiding something, teased her occasionally for having such a shadowy past, but never pushed Yora to reveal anything. She seemed to accept Yora just as she was.
It was getting about time for Yora to apply for a transfer... but she couldn't make herself do it. She wanted to stay. Build a life with her friend. Then the unthinkable happened - Yora's friend was critically injured while they were evacuating a wounded patient from the field. Yora had alwasy been very careful with how she applied her "magic touch." Never when she might be caught. But she couldn't let her friend die. So even though her friend was very much concious, Yora began to heal her with waterbending. Yora saved her best friend's life - and ruined her own. Her friend did not accept her. The physician told Yora she would keep her secret, but forced Yora to leave the military entirely.
Rather than return “home” (how could she have one when she mocked so much? Her mother had moved back to her home town and essentially started a new, happier life; Yora would not ruin it), Yora decided to lose herself in the city. She decided she was done with healing, and used her military experience to secure a position in the palace guard. Somehow, about two years into her new life, she was drafted into the personal guard of the Salt Princess - aka, Iroh’s wife.
It was an assignment she resented at first. Yora wanted to fade into the background, just get by alone until she died. Iroh’s wife was notorious. The Crown Prince’s choice of spouse was wildly unpopular. While she was technically of noble birth, it was only barely. Her grandfather had been a merchant (hence the derogatory nickname of Salt Princess - her family had ties to the salt trade). Yora’s background as a medic factored into her recruitment. If anyone were to attack the new princess (and it did happen), it put Iroh’s mind at ease knowing she could be treated quickly.
Yora tried to interact with the Princess, and her fellow guards, as little as possible. But the Salt Princess eventually drew Yora out of her shell, and she found herself loving the Princess, who was easily one of the smartest and kindest people Yora had ever met. And so Yora found herself unexpectedly in a family. She loved her Princess, and the Princess’s young son. She loved her fellow guards. And they loved her. She was happy.
The Princess was eventually injured in a freak accident. Nothing could have saved her. But of course Yora tried. And in doing so, exposed herself. As soon as she was seen bending, she was accused of killing the Princess. She was beaten by men and women she had served with for years, and thrown in a cell to rot until her execution date. Her leg was injured permanently (she didn’t have the heart, or enough water, to heal it). She would have a limp, and the chronic pain it caused, the rest of her life.
About a month after the Princess died, a visitor came to Yora’s cell. Prince Iroh. He had been overseas when his wife died, and had just that day returned. He questioned her, and Yora told her story. Why not, at that point? Her life was ruined. And with the Princess dead, Yora didn’t want it anyway. So she told him about her lonely childhood, her dramatic departure from military service, everything she did over the years to keep his wife alive. How hard she tried to save her the night she died, even though no healer could. Iroh listened stonily without response.
Days later, unfamiliar guards entered Yora’s cell and held a cloth over the face. She woke up hours later on a boat. They explained they were members of the White Lotus, a secret international society dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and light. Iroh was a member of their order. He had arranged for Yora’s “death” - she had been officially declared dead, her unconscious body then smuggled out of the Fire Nation. This was Iroh’s gift to her, for trying to save the Princess’s life.
She was taken to a White Lotus retreat/temple place, where she recovered physically from her imprisonment. Learned how to cope with her new limp. For the first time in her life, she could live openly. Everyone knew and accepted her secret. Stranger yet, in their eyes it wasn’t something to keep secret at all.
Eventually, an elderly Waterbender came to the White Lotus estate. Now in her early fifties, Yora was trained for the first time in waterbending. Perhaps because of her history as a medic, her decision to use what little power she had access to intuitively, but she took to healing so easily.
She rejected the chance to learn more about her heritage. The pain of never knowing her father was just too deep for her to ever go there.
And so it became her life. She stayed, for the next twelve years or so, at the White Lotus estate. It became known as a place to send the injured and the sick. Yora was there, healing what she could, but otherwise living a life of quiet seclusion, feeling at times like a ghost in her own life. Despite living openly for the first time, she never managed to feel quite like she belonged there. And yet, when she meditated as the White Lotus taught her, she realized she did have a send of belonging here. Others liked her. She had interesting work. In fact, in addition to waterbending healing, she learned about pharmacology and acupuncture from other members; despite her reluctant entry into the scholarly org, she embodied its principals of lifelong learning and cross cultural pursuit of life’s truths. Those people became her friends, though Yora could never quite acknowledge it. She felt done with friends.
But it was a good life. Better than she ever thought she’d have or felt like she deserved. When she let herself, she felt something like peace.
And yet, it was never the life she would have chosen for herself. Yora’s real dream, deep down, had been to be accepted to who she was as both a waterbender and a Fire Nation citizen. She fiercely missed her home. She would have never chosen to be a member of the white lotus had she not been “conscripted” as it were. She had spent her whole life feeling bitter over needing to hide, to keep her distance. So perhaps it was habit that allowed her to feel bitter about her relatively calm new life. She never felt true contentment.
She only saw Iroh once again, about twelve years after he had arranged her “death.” He was expecting her to be grateful for her new life, but she did not give him her gratitude. She found she resented him a great deal, for not allowing her to have a say in things. For not being there when his wife, who they both loved, died. After she told him how much she missed home, he arranged for her to return. Helped her to purchase a cabin in a remote village. She was able to establish herself as the local healer, known for banishing the most vexing ailments. When some showmanship she had picked up from some of the characters she’d met during her years in the Earth Kingdom, she was able to conceal her waterbending healing quite well. It was the closest thing she knew to the life she’d wanted for herself, and the most content she’d ever been.
Until Iroh’s idiot nephew got captured and Iroh called her in for a favor.
