#Parhelion comic

[starflungwaddledee]

[stage 3 loaded. now playing: yawning yonder.] a little overbright, a little fuzzy on the edges; you're full of pins and needles.

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/// you can vote for starstruck in round 5 here!

[twistofstory]

And now let's talk about the current leader of the squad~

Breeze's leadership had a rocky start - his new squad may have consisted of only three dragons, none of them saw power in him or trusted him at all. In particular, most of his problems were created by Stargazer, who openly (and quite loudly) expressed her dislike for the new leader. Parhelion preferred to keep his thoughts to himself, and Irbis, apparently, didn’t care; only Newt, a messenger from the Center and temporary member of the Morticians, was genuinely kind and helpful to Breeze. “Give them time,” he usually said on quiet evenings, sorting out papers by the light of the campfire. “They will see what you’re capable of when they're ready. Until then, keep it up, you're doing a good job. ”

[aseuki]

oooooa aaaa i actually don't know your ocs very well but i'd love to learn about them!!

for Stell;

🔮 (Crystal Ball) - Out of all the treasures in the Great Cave Offensive, Kirby is letting your OC pick one from his stash to keep! Which one do they pick, and why?

⚖️ (Scales) - On the subject of a certain someone’s lengthy rant; is your OC moreso on the side of magic or science? Somewhere in-between? Do they incorporate the two together in some way?

and for Phemus;

🍅 (Tomato) - If Kirby absorbed them or their attacks, what Copy Ability [or Abilities] would he get? Alternatively, if they themselves are capable of using the Copy Ability, do they have a favourite?

🧋 (Boba Tea) - Come up with a Kirby Café item themed around your OC! It can be a savoury dish, a drink, a dessert, or something else entirely.

[ask meme]

Aaah hello Starflung! Of course!!

Stell:

🔮 (Crystal Ball)

Gracing this one with a bit more…elaborate answer because I May have gotten carried away asdkfjn

But Yes, Stell would pick the Horns of Hydra! I imagine the puzzle of amassing and assembling a legendary machine would tickle Stell’s fancy, though I Will include the disclaimer that this comic is largely non-canon, as should the two ever meet I imagine it’d go down more like:

⚖️ (Scales)

If his aesthetic doesn’t say as such, Stell is wholly on the Tech side of beliefs! As a non-magic user, they can’t help but be a bit bitter about their supposed lack of innate magic abilities, and instead of stewing in such horrid horrid feelings, has chosen to shove it all aside and pretend magic doesn’t exist to cope asdfkjn. (It’s more complex than that) Listen, he’s so unbothered by it!!

That being said, it’s honestly pretty Impressive he’s gone this far with that mindset while living on a magic clockwork wishing star asdfkjgn

Phemus:

🍅 (Tomato)

As stated in a previous ask, Phemus would primarily give ESP, and on a much rarer occasion, Sleep!

🧋 (Boba Tea)

I actually drew this at the same time as Stell’s haha, but Phemus’s designated Kirby Cafe Treat is a parfait with chocolate cake layered with orange and mango mousse, topped with a generous layer of ganache! Very tasty :>

[toolusingmammalgirl]

sorry to annoy but do you have a link to parhelion? I can't open the site anymore and I don't know if something happened or if it's just my phone

Huh, looks like the site's auto-renewal didn't go through this year or something, but don't worry, pretty much all of it is right here on my itch.io page along with a bunch of other stuff! (There are only, like, two pages past the "Act 1" compiled there)

Parhelion has a place in my heart as the biggest and longest-running creative project I've ever done, and although a lot of it is a damn mess of pacing and underclarified plot points, it's a neat fossil record of my artistic growth from my college years, and a lot of its themes and unused material live on in my other projects, like the Trilateral Trilogy of webnovels (Book 1 is complete, about 3/4ths of book 2 is posted, and I'm assembling notes and concepts for book 3's century-ish timeskip)

Making any kind of big narrative webcomic is a huge undertaking, even once you've learned when to judiciously streamline your workflow, and I fully agree with Valerie Halla here:

i love webcomics. i did webcomics for years and years and i put absolutely everything i had into it. so if you come to me and say "i want to get into webcomics, what advice do you have?" i will obviously say "just skip to the part where you start making visual novels instead"

(Or largely-standalone gag comics with only as much continuity as the humor demands, as the case may be)

And on top of all that artistic growth, Parhelion is also a neat artistic chronicle of the time I spent sliding from "I'm a Gay Man :)" to "E G G" to "?¿?¿?"

So! Read it until you get bored or confused, then check out Hector and Onom (quite nsfw) for something in the same setting that's transparently about me sorting through Gender And Sexuality Shit, then check out the Solar Symposium and Mission Critical (and Isidore) for the later evolutions of my work

[utilitymonstergirl]

Huh, Isidore on Comicfury routinely gets 100-ish pageviews on a slow day, with 600-1200 on an update day, and this is all orders of magnitude better than Parhelion’s stats (where, IIRC, 100 pageviews in a day was a very rare and spectacular thing)

The visitor counts are far less swingy but consistently around 30-100, which also would have been bonkers compared to Parhelion’s numbers

I suspect a lot of this comes down to it being a much more accessible comic, either gag-a-day or doing short self-contained storylines, plus a “random page” button (and tits)

For this analysis, I’m curious about my readers: do you often browse random pages, or pass comic links along in places where I wouldn’t see them?

[pocketbelt]

Yohane The Parhelion: Blaze In The Deepblue (PS5)

I'm still happy as fuck to see more Love Live games that aren't just touch-screen based gacha rhythm games or a basic rhythm game damned to the depths of the Japanese PSN by Square Enix, and hope this and the other one do just well enough to keep some more coming.

It's a fine, mostly pleasant Metroidvania with occasional rough edges, which seems to be a fair bit of Inti Creates' output lately. The rough edges are easily worked around - namely, some of the early bosses feel a bit horseshit for the movement and abilities you have at the start, especially the giant lava snake that's just blatantly a direct lift of a similar boss from Inti's Curse Of The Moon 2 - but you can just push through anything by spamming potions and later on you're so well equipped (and Mari's special ability is so comically horseshit) that you'll smash everything to pieces.

It's comfy and breezy all the same, the VAs are all here to do their funny bits and Genjitsu Yohane is as much a delight as ever (as are the others, especially Dia). Wouldn't need much more than this to be content with Love Live games, even if I can fantasise about, say, a proper RPG or beat 'em up or something.

[parhelioncomic]

The Future of Parhelion

After considering the time and energy I can budget to ongoing art projects, and the ebb and flow of my own motivation, I have come to a conclusion.

The current plan is to indefinitely suspend comic pages after the current queue runs its course. (The current chapter, Whale Watching, will finish and a few pages of the next interlude will go up.)

When I dove into making Parhelion at the start of 2016, I had a general sense that webcomics were an enormous undertaking, but now I’m not sure I have the time and drive to see it through as a fully-rendered comic. I have the general plot structure mapped out to the end, and I really want to release scripts, sketches, and story notes to convey my vision for it as much as possible. There are plenty of arcs and set pieces that I would love to show, but I can’t promise that I’d have the means to fully render them as comic pages. (Especially the backstory of Kiefer-161’s rebellion, where Peter’s incendiary anarchist ancestor has to team up with an exiled prince.)

It doesn’t help that Parhelion is made in Flash CS4, a depreciated decade-old program that dates back to my short-lived middle school dreams of animation. I’ve been dragging my feet on learning digital painting and Photoshop-style interfaces for years, and while I still love the style I’ve developed within Flash, I would like to branch out more.

In the coming weeks, I’ll transition my Patreon page to being a general hub for my art projects, and hopefully hash out some kind of post schedule.

Every day, I am blown away by the reader response to Parhelion, and so happy that this weird indulgent project I made resonated with this many people. Even in the first pages, with awkward mouse-drawn art and a digressive story, readers saw potential in it, and I am eternally grateful. In addition to laying out the structure of the final chapters, I plan on making more art within the setting- continuing Hector and Onom, drawing more zlotl variants, and so on.

Parhelion taught me so much about making art on a consistent schedule, the visual language of comics, ongoing storytelling, reader feedback, pacing, shading, speech-bubble placement, composition, strategic use of color, bookkeeing and backend, and ultimately when to know my limits. It’s bittersweet, I know, but it’s the best for everyone.

I also have every intention of working more with Parhelion’s themes in new contexts– alien sociology and government structure, moral imperatives that are impossible but no less necessary, weird queer narratives, and more.

Thank you all so, so much for bearing with me, and now I’ll salve my soul by drawing some weird alien politicians, untethered to any story.

-Cryptovexillologist

[miniti8]

Artfight Revenge for @cryptovexillologist of their Onom!  Read her story here!

Also oh yeah I’m on artfight so expect more and better REVENGE in the coming weeks!

[lunarhanaa]

WE’RE GETTING ANOTHER AQOURS ANIME???

Yohane of the Parhelion -SUNSHINE in the MIRROR- is the name of the anime and its supposed to come out in 2023!

Edit: Full character artworks provided by the official website which is yohane.net funnily enough

[chiralspires]

DOSSIER: SAWTOOTH

[...]

PROFILE: ~40 local years old, has been amassing followers and influence for at least thirty. (Found no credible accounts of her rise to power.) Main recruitment tactics are extortion, charisma, peer pressure, most often wielded against wayward youths. Various sub-gangs/splinter factions(?), including the Obligate Carnivores, Ochlocrats, Bruisers, and doubtless more.

Keep Reading...

[orb-warded-kor-warlord]

Some Boltzmann Designs

Over in my webcomic, @parhelioncomic, I’ve had a lot of fun expanding the pop-science idea of Boltzmann Brains. In Parhelion’s setting, they’re beings of thought and energy that hyperfocus on their interests, can merge with computers, and are often enslaved to do jobs too complex for AI.

I’ve been thinking that in a Magic setting, they’d probably have colorless-only costs (they come from random particle motion in deep space), with abilities that lean toward red/blue.

Like these:

Boltzmann Pupil C Creature - Boltzmann

As ~ enters the battlefield, choose a card type. T: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool. Spend this mana only to cast spells of the chosen type.

0/1

Inquisitive Boltzmann 2C Creature - Boltzmann

As ~ enters the battlefield, choose a card type. Whenever you cast a spell of the chosen type, you may draw a card. If you do, discard a card.

2/3

Basilisk, Boltzmann Tyrant 3CC Legendary Creature - Boltzmann

Deathtouch Whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to a player, you may pay 1C. If you do, draw a card. Whenever you draw a card, put a +1/+1 counter on ~.

2/2

Zipporah, the Liberator 2CC Legendary Creature - Boltzmann Soldier

Other Boltzmann creatures you control get +1/+1. Boltzmann spells you cast can’t be countered. 1C: Target Boltzmann gains indestructible until end of turn.

4/3

[twistofstory]

A couple of days ago I was naming stuff in Abyssborn universe and somehow eventually fallen into a rabbit hole of coming up with local clurs and such (it's not a kind world...). And now the word "hybrid" has an extremely tough history there and it is very plot relevant :> One problem, being in WoF fandom for 6 years got me a bunch of habits......... (Fine alternative is "half-blood", and I love how cool it sounds hehe)

[prawnlegs]

EeeeeeEEY. The first round of Patron sketches is in! There are three more slots left on this tier if you want to get in on May sketches. Strangely the only one of these that is even © someone else is Nikolai on the top, who belongs to @orbispelagium. I always imagine Nikolai’s head as a shiny translucent crystal ball.

[toolusingmammalgirl]

Some cuts from the Parhelion archives that I think are pretty neat- Melodramatic, gimmicky warlords have an unproductive meeting: https://parhelioncomic.com/comic/interlude-5-page-1-peace-talks-have-broken-down/ A warrior absolutely committed to her cause frees a prisoner: https://parhelioncomic.com/comic/interlude-6-page-1-exodus/ A former aristocrat is yanked out of self-imposed exile: https://parhelioncomic.com/comic/interlude-7-page-1-family-business/ The Hangover, but in space: https://parhelioncomic.com/comic/interlude-9-page-1-payday/

[tidalarch]

A comic idea I had, I’m just going to see how far I can take it for now … [ tag ] Parhelion

[leftovies]

Shearling Noonday Channel 4 a Medianoche