W2 Was Here

Hanmerhead shark 🩷

Re-creating my first webcomic from 12 years ago, "Hair Expectations vs Reality."

I can't help but feel all kinds of emotions after re-visiting the original comic: the one that started it all. A lot has changed since then, and I feel so fortunate to still create art and tell stories for a living. Thanks for your support, and sticking around for so long ❤️

Check out the other versions:

2014 (OG)

“You’re killing me,” I said. “I can’t take any more of that!”

Now serious, she said it was clear to her that none of that stuff about Mary’s clothes mattered, at least if her clothes weren’t the point. What mattered most about the image was that Mary was holding her diploma and smiling. “But,” she wondered, “do I say, Mary has a huge smile on her face as she shows her diploma or Mary has an exuberant smile or showing her teeth in a smile and her eyes are crinkled at the edges?”

It’s simple. Mary has a huge smile on her face is the best one. It’s the don’t-second-guess-yourself option. My thinking around this issue is enriched by the philosopher Brian Massumi’s concept of “esqueness.” He exemplifies it by discussing a kid who plays a tiger:

One look at a tiger, however fleeting and incomplete, whether it be in the zoo or in a book or in a film or video, and presto! the child is tigerized… The perception itself is a vital gesture. The child immediately sets about, not imitating the tiger’s substantial form as he saw it, but rather giving it life—giving it more life. The child plays the tiger in situations in which the child has never seen a tiger. More than that, it plays the tiger in situations no tiger has ever seen, in which no earthly tiger has ever set paw.

Just as the child and an actual tiger are not one bit alike, the words Mary has a huge smile on her face have nothing in common with the picture of Mary holding her diploma. Yet the tiger announces something to the world, its essence, and a kid can become tiger-ized and be tiger-esque, their every act shouting, I am a tiger. The picture of Mary at her graduation is shouting something, and the words Mary has a huge smile on her face are also shouting something. It is at the level beyond each actuality, in the swirl that each stirs up, that the two meet.

I'm late to post about the winter olympics but here's a fan animation I made of Kaori Sakamoto . I wanted to capture the dynamic energy of the performance.

"Two times the interlaced hands were surmounted by initials. Below 'Friendship Unites Hearts', hands holding a pansy, over and above were initials. Hands holding a dagger with the inscription 'To Life To Death.' Four times there were initials below a flaming heart or a pansy with the word 'Friendship.' Four times there was the name of the 'friend' written out entirely. In one case it was surmounted with a portrait."

And Unruly Desire's author found other sweet ones recorded in the US Navy's Enlistment Rendezvous records of tattoos of enlisting men from the 1800s:

"The only tattoo that appeared on the body of Richard Devine, a 25 year old former barber from Aberdeen, Maryland, was a flower on his right forearm above the unexpected name of 'Jose Peralta.' William Young, from Marine City, Michigan, was more straightforward; on his right forearm appeared the declaration: 'I love Wilkerson J. Perry.'"

also apparently queer people in this universe just said "no thanks" when it came to this ban which is kind of based actually:

Addendum 5/23/26: