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Ooooof. Jim. You need a hug.

I really liked this - it feels very real and true to Jim's post-Casino Night mindset, what it *really* would've been like in his head. It's not an organized place, he's in a panic and he's heartbroken and mortified and reeling, and it comes through strongly.

Some of the ideas you put in here are really striking - so true that at this moment Jim would be regarding the years he spent loving Pam as a waste, and some of the lines you put in are killer: "then he was walking away, throwing years of his life at her feet," "i mean, it's been his life for 5 years now. who keeps a shitty movie on repeat for 5 years?", "a living reminder of every mistake he's made."

And his sense of self-loathing comes through clearly and unflinchingly, and that's such a huge part of why Jim makes the choices he does during this period.

I also really liked the stylistic/structural choices you made here - I think it really paid off in making us feel like we were really in Jim's head.

Author's Response: Thank you! The more I write, the more I realize that everything I wrote is experimental. I seem to have a habit of playing around with POV and other stylistic elements, so I'm glad this one was a semi-successful experiment!

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Wow, love this one! The lowercase works great, giving it the stream-of-consciousness feel. I like the struggle you show here with Jim, he's both sure Pam feels something for him too and sure that he is better for her while also questioning what exactly he should expect from a woman who's engaged and why he's spent so long pining away. So many post casino night fic have Jim alone drinking somewhere but I can definitely see this, literally trying to outrun his problems. Great work!

Author's Response: Thank you so much!! I had a burst of inspiration one night, so I just wrote everything down with a minimal amount of editing because I really wanted the stream-of-conciousness feel, so I'm really happy to hear that I did a did a satisfactory job achieveing that!