Goodbye to Halos is a queer fantasy adventure webcomic started in November 2015 by Valerie Halla.
The story's main character, Fenic, is a transgender girl with latent magical powers who was pushed by her father through a portal into another world and abandoned there when she was 15. Lost and hurt, she slowly cut ties with her past and remade her life in the city of Lionsbridge, more precisely in Market Square, where queer, rejected people have gathered and formed a community. However, five years later, when she seems to have finally gotten her life back on track, someone comes looking for her from another world, and she soon realizes she might be connected to a much bigger story than she imagined.
Oh, and most characters have animal ears and tails.
One major focus of the story is exploring human relationships that don't fall into neat categories (for instance, when two people fall somewhere between "friends" and "romantic partners".)
The comic can be found here
. The author has also written a side story, Animal Girlfriends, which focuses on secondary character Fran and her two partners and which, unlike the comic, contains explicitly sexual scenes. No connection with a certain video game franchise.
Goodbye to Halos contains examples of:
- Action Girl: Fenic uses her powers to fight thieves and bullies in Market Square.
- All-Loving Hero: Fenic openly asks "Is it weird if I want to love everyone?"
- Ambiguously Human: Fenic, to the surprise of the Wilder around her. Turns out she's part Shade and part Wilder.
- She later has a vision of a similar character.
- Art Evolution: Evolves quite a bit over the course of the prologue and Chapter 1, most notably seen with characters hair becoming more textured and wild.
- Eventually becomes more of Art Shift in that Valerie starts trying different styles to find a middle ground between something she likes the look of and can produce at a consistent rate.
- Badass Boast: Fenic.Fenic: There's no such thing as an unstoppable force... Because I'm an immovable object.
- Befriending the Enemy: Fenic's standard policy towards the people she fights.Elly: Are you gonna try and be their friend?
- Boss Subtitles: Fenic gets these a couple times. Enae also has them when she introduces herself.Fenic: The Hero...?Enae: The Hero...?Fenic: The SunEnae: The Turned StarTahmonai: The North Star
- Cast Full of Gay: It's easier to list the characters who aren't confirmed to be LGBT in some way.
- According to the author, every character in the comic is LGBT: "it's a story without a single non-queer character"
- According to the author, every character in the comic is LGBT: "it's a story without a single non-queer character"
- Cypher Language: The language of the Wilder is writen with one of these, which can be easily deciphered thanks to these text samples the author wrote.
- Defeat Means Friendship: A thief Fenic catches takes her up on the offer.
- Early Installment Character-Design Difference: The yellow and blue scarves seen through the story originally ended in a flat end, but this was changed during Chapter 1 to have three tassels at the end instead.
- Facial Markings: Fenic has one by her eye. As it turns out, all Shades have one, called a maave, apparently unique to them. Fenic's is identical to her mother's though, which should be impossible.
- Gayborhood: Market Square.
- The Idealist: Fenic, very much so.
- Little Bit Beastly: Wilder, the most common race among the many worlds.
- Magical Girl: Fenic
- Orphan's Plot Trinket: Fenic wears her mother's super long and flowy scarf.
- Orwellian Retcon: This page was retconned to include Enae's pronouns.
- Our Demons Are Different: Shades, apparently based on demons, are a race capable of doing magic that are native to only one world. They have horns, tails, and Cute Little Fangs. They can also lose themselves anger, fear, and grief and become beings called "goners".
- Parental Abandonment: Many of the kids in Market Square were abandoned because they were queer in some fashion. Fenic gets extra points for being abandoned on another world.
- Platonic Kissing: At one point, Fenic and Leo share a platonic kiss on the mouth.
- Portal Network: There are many worlds connected by portals, but the portals were closed down hundreds of years ago. The story deals with the portals being re-activated.
- Power Crystal: The portals are apparently activated by special crystal keys, each crystal tied to a specific portal.
- Thinking Up Portals: Travelling between the various worlds usually requires one of the existing portals, with a special crystal that needs to be keyed to a specific destination world. Clarissa can somehow able to open a portal to Enae's bedroom, and later a beach, without needing an existing portal, and with only a raw piece of crystal that she'd found.
- Trapped in Another World: Fenic is sent through a portal to another world by her father, with no idea how to reopen the portal to get back. Played with in that neither world is "our" world, both are populated by Wilder. Fenic's appearance also does not fit in in either.
- Tree Vessel: Sparrowden is a massive floating tree.
- Wholesome Crossdresser: The closest trope for Leo's gender expression, since he is fond of skirts and feminine clothing. The author has stated that Leo finds it important to show that guys can be as feminine as they want to be. Though since he wants feminine clothing to be able to be considered a normal thing for guys, and since he's stated to some extent identify as genderqueer, "crossdressing" doesn't really fit.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Leo is afraid of knives.
