Wolverine Stew: Moon Over Michigan

I know it isn’t full yet

Missing that faint yellow glow

That let’s you see the craters and

Haunted wonder at its silent ascent

But this has been eight months

In the making, a note from the first

Evening spent walking out from a

New room where I could watch the stars

And you never know quite when the clouds,

When the cold, will return, so now

I stretch my arms out and let the

Waxing moon shine down on me

Trace the Big Dipper I can find in that

Space the lamps don’t quite reach

Think of those last few scenes of

Dragons, monochrome zombies, and laughter

60s celebrations and musical mockeries of Apollo

At two theatres I remember

Through stored ticket stubs

And see how the marquee and the moon

Mix together tonight

aSoSS 24 | Snooze

[referring to how late she woke up] I can only have one bad day so I have to be on top of it today.

Well, I’m young and stupid, so I’ve got more time to waste.

BMV, 6:30PM, 2/28/2024

two voices, mine and yours.

and why should i? you’re chasing your dreams while i’m chasing my tail, spinning in circles, dizzy from embarrassment. too proud to look you in the eye. it was always a game, wasn’t it? get off the playground. swing and miss, face-up, the sky salting the wound with its mosaic of stars–

my alarm rings. every morning i notice how there is only one voice, how it only speaks when spoken to. i don’t know who wins; i never do. if a thought had a mouth, would it scream?


I need melatonin to sleep. If I don’t take melatonin, I get nightmares.

Mosher-Jordan Dining Hall, 6:30PM, 3/29/2024

i am greeted by the clothes deforming like plastic in the sun, an uncanny valley of furniture molded around the faces, your face, no face at all. i unbutton my shirt and count eight scars splayed across my chest, as if a creature had climbed the ladder of my ribcage from the inside and latched on to my heart. i feel the irregular beats now, a warning that my pulse does not pump alone. i make my breakfast in silence and look at the window. i see a single spider sitting in its fractured web, watching. waiting.


I’ve made so many mistakes since having him… he’s five months old and doesn’t like to sleep, which means I don’t get to sleep either.

AADL Downtown, 12:00PM, 4/20/2024

it seems humans are born with the innate sense of death. sometimes i equate the resistance to sleep as the resistance to death and i wonder whether a child would make the connection as well. we cannot recast reality in our sleep; we cannot extract truth from our visions. our dreams lie with the size of a single breath. perhaps death pays a visit every night and pulls against the thread of the universe. pick a card, pick a side, pick your brain. the dice clatter against the floor, but when i open my eyes there is nothing there. we are all alone in the night, sleeping among the silence and the spiderwebs.

Witness the Small Life – Hydration Station

To burn out or not to burn out, that is the struggle! I feel like I’ve been straddling the line between hyper-extreme productivity and rotting-in-bed exhaustion for far too long and this battle has only continued its siege on my life! From forgetting the days of the week to leaving behind entire artworks in classrooms, my life has been a mess of unrelenting chaos.

In addition to the constant threat of my near-death, there’s been too many a small things piling up this week for me, both good and bad. Little chores and errands I have to run that I constantly forget about and decide to do all at once which, of course, forces me to dedicate an entire day to finish them all. Fleeting moments of catching people’s exciting conversations as I walk past them on State Street and feeling happy to have been able to share in their musings for just a second. Although these small things do in fact add to my increasing stress and awareness about everything around me, they also help to remind myself that it’s okay to just exist one second at a time. It’s a cheesy thing to say, as most everything is, but it truly is so important to live in the moment when you can. When we move so fast and the world needs you to do everything everywhere all at once, it can become so impossible to take care of yourself. By allowing yourself to just focus on the small necessities in your life, like needing mend a tear in your pants or needing to take out the trash, it helps so much in the long run of managing your stress. It’s a difficult thing to remind myself of this fact even though I preach it so much, but I do stand by its importance in living a good life.

To take into our next week:

Ins: A robust sticker collection, student film festivals, taking things one step at a time, mosh pits (always), outdoor music, the first 8 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, mixed metal jewelry, being able to let go.

Outs: Doomscrolling too early in the morning, cold feet (literally and idiomatically), playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes, not scheduling in time to eat, worrying too much about a future too far away, sleeping with wet hair.

I keep saying that we’re in the homestretch, but this time it’s really true! Many of us (including myself) will be finishing up finals and heading back home for the summer in these next few weeks so here’s to us and all of our hard work! May we all have a happy and healthy end of the semester (and don’t burn out too much!)

Chapter 9

Hello, and welcome back to Captured Moments! This week, I found a very interesting article that reflects on AI and Taylor Swift’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department. Before the release of her new album, there was a leak of a snippet of one of her songs. Fans, of course, wondering if it was AI generated or real, began spreading word about this. Even prior to this incident, there have been many instances of AI generated T-Swift songs circulating the internet. Fans generally can’t tell if it is AI. That is how scary and frightening AI is, as it presents how highly advanced the technology is.

Another artist that has also been affected by AI is Drake. A leak of a snippet of Drake’s diss track against Kendrick Lamar led fans to be confused of whether Drake himself had made it. Yet, the recording was grainy and not clear, in terms of audio, leading many fans to believe this was AI. However, Drake officially released the song in which fans now believe he wrote it. AI has caused a mess in the music industry, as more on more people become unsure of whether a song is genuinely from the artist.

I have attached the article for further reading. See you next week!

https://time.com/6968769/taylor-swift-drake-ai-vocal-deepfakes/

Io Redesign

Read more: Io Redesign

Wow, Io changed a lot. The image on the bottom is a character sheet I did of her two years ago, for June 2022. I can’t believe how chunky my lineart was.

Over the two years, Io changed from a snake lady to a siren, someone who can shapeshift into a bird form. I made her coat longer to convey how she has a position of authority over the other characters, and orange because Hima already has a long red coat, we can’t have two characters with that. I gave her coat these fringes inspired by bird wing cloaks to reference her bird form. Her bird form, which I am still working on, has a face inspired by ancient greek theatre masks, because the type of siren Io’s based on is from ancient Greece.

Going forwards, I would like to make Io’s human form more monstrous. Snake!Io has her scales and her snake mouth. Siren!Io has her…coat? I might give Io feathers in certain areas of her skin or face, or talons, or both.