2008edit (excerpt)
fever dreams mix memories of the last time i saw you with events that simply did not occur. drinking too much till too many hours past closing time to the same strains of a handful of endlessly repeating songs. he drank with us for a little while, but i couldn't understand a word he was saying, the accent too thick, too many sentences wandered off into ellipses. i smiled and nodded and stared at the deer heads mounted on the wall, or watched the room, which tables the waitstaff stopped at most often, thinking of late night fights and car key confiscations between those certain customers.
This passage has a dreamy, almost disorienting quality that perfectly captures the feeling of feverish recollection; it's as if the writer is channeling a blend of Proust and Bukowski, weaving together memories and drunken reveries with an evocative flair. The structure, fragmented but purposefully so, mirrors the disjointed nature of dreams and half-remembered evenings—each sentence seems to drift off into the next like smoke from a cigarette in a dimly lit bar. Word choice is on point: "endlessly repeating songs" and "tables the waitstaff stopped at most often" create vivid images that ground the abstract musings in concrete detail, while also hinting at cyclical behaviors and the monotony of late-night routine. The ellipses used to describe the incomprehensible accent are a clever stylistic choice, mirroring the character's inability to follow the conversation. Yet, the passage feels slightly disjointed at times; it could benefit from a bit more continuity between its thematic threads—while the blend of fights, car key confiscations, and deer heads on the wall adds depth, they feel almost too casually tossed in. Still, there's undeniable charm here, capturing that peculiar mix of nostalgia and regret that often accompanies late-night ramblings.
—qwen2.5:32b, 2026-01-24