Thank you for everything you took the time to say. This is some high value stuff. 

Dang, I like your read on the times more than I liked my head canon: 00:04:02 being the actual time underwater as seen on a clipped recording on Gabe's computer, and 3:47, 3:55 being what Gabe has worked himself up to so far. Same motive, different numbers. But I think it would be tighter if he'd reached the time already. Yeah, I like that more. 

The "you" was a late addition. My plan was just to have it narrated by a borderline creepy omniscient being, but he kept wanting to say "you" so I just went with it and made rules so that it wouldn't turn out too 2nd-ish. 

Thank you for all of your suggestions. Trying to navigate Drive on a phone is a pain but I will peruse them when I get home. Thanks again!

And the story you linked reminded me of a conversation my sister and I once had. We asked each other what our least favorite parts of our bodies were. I changed my answer three times. Ha.

Thank you so much for your thoughts. 

First, I like the spin on this as an exorcism of pain. Could Gabe write this? Maybe. I think it would make the last few lines work better, if that was the case. They would follow your suggested rules better than the ones I set up. 

The idea reminds me of a very creepy book I read recently, where the author attempts to separate herself from her trauma by giving herself a much more active and sinister role in what happened to her.

I'm happy you had thoughts of the sinister/paranormal while reading this because that was what I felt trickling from the narration while I wrote it. I have the feeling that you are much more literary than I am (most on this subreddit probably are), and I've never written something like this before, so my ability to further that tone in an effective way would likely leave much to be desired. But I've been getting into "new weird" recently, so hopefully this is an ability I can cultivate. I'll add Oates and Munro to my rea

Thank you for posting. This is not a deep dive (ba dum dum) critique into the piece as a lot has already been said and for the most part I readily agree, but there are a few things I wish to share about this piece that will hopefully be useful. 

**Grauze the Contrarian** KEEP SECOND PERSON. It is the mom. This whole thing read to me as the mom. Sure that might be for personal reasons whatever. BUT the whole damn thing read to me as the second person was the mom. Two different directions I couldn’t figure out as I read along. 

One, the mom is dead. She has died prior to the story a long time ago. Gabe has been struggling as a dad with the loss of his partner and just trudging along and because of this absenteeism of being wholly there, he has in a moment also lost their child. Something about the ‘you’ read stalker to spectral. How to bring this in? Is this a letter being written from. Does it end with a super cinching silly line of “If only you were here…” IDK. It’s how I read it.

T

Thank you so much for this critique. I'm so happy to know you were shocked. I'd been thinking about the end for so long that while I was writing it I was like, "This is dumb, you are so dumb, doxy, they're gonna see this coming from the start." It's so hard to know what's in your head and the reader's versus what's only in yours. 

So for the POV: my thinking was that I wanted to be as removed from Gabe as possible, so I was trying to put up a bunch of obstacles. 1) third person, 2) only getting what you get from observed actions, 3) omniscient narrator with an almost perverse curiosity in Gabe. I imagine the narrator as this kind of being who's so removed from humanity that those of us responding to trauma with neurotic/destructive thinking/behavior are viewed as oddities, capable of providing entertainment in a setting of subjects who otherwise, more or less, behave as expected and are therefore boring. So the omniscient narrator calls your attention to this one guy doing this breath

 GENERAL REMARKS  
  
I liked this piece. A lot. I’m not really going to focus much on grammar here (as I’ll admit, not my strongest suit lol), but more on POV, characterization and plot/pacing. This was piece was pretty good and kept my interested from the first line and then SHOCKED ME 2/3 of the way through when I pieced things together. Great work!    
  
MECHANICS  
  
You mentioned hook in your posting, and I will say, I do like the first sentence. It quickly introduces the character and, in a way, feels as if there is something at stake. I have more questions than answers here, and it makes me want to keep reading to figure out why Gabe can hold his breath for that long and how he knows that. First lines are tricky for most writers (myself included) so good work there! :)   
  
“that’s what you’ll find him doing more often than not”   
Remind me what he’s doing here. By the time I make it to this sentence as a reader, my attention span has snapped and I’ve forgotten abo

Lol. He might! Who knows! Next week I'll submit the story of Drew, who can squat 1100 lbs (I have no idea what an impressive squat amount is). I'll call it The Dissonant Dads series. Forlorn Fathers.

Ah, I see. In my mind I pictured the video starting not long before Gabe jumped in, because his son was already dead at the bottom, but now I understand it starts when his son fell.


The idea is still a little strange to me, like if his son died by getting crushed under a boulder would Gabe have become a bodybuilder? But grief makes you think irrationally, I accept.


Keep up the good work!

No, I really appreciate everything you take the time to say! Thank you! 

So my idea with him holding his breath until he dives in is because it's not the time spent underwater that matters, as much as the time spent underwater alone. Gabe's guilt has him obsessing over the act of holding his breath as long as his son had to, rationalizing/reducing his guilt by insisting that any length of time can't be that long if you can hold your breath through it. 

These were just my ideas. If they didn't come through I'm okay with just the surprise and a little sadness. 

And thank you for your comments in the doc! I love line edits. I'm blind to my own poor word choices.

I posted some comments in the doc under anonymous, hopefully they're not too pedantic (let me know), this is my first time critiquing.


The story is easy to read. It's very smooth, and the pacing is good. The ending had its desired effect on me despite some confusion.


The second time reading it felt much more emotionally potent than the first. I'm not sure if this is a problem or not. The first time around, all the foreshadowing(?) was lost on me. I think this was because there's a lot of extra bits (unobstructed window, pastel shirt, parking garage detour, ergo chair, strawberry jam receipt, Victorian house, etc) and it was hard to know which the important ones were. By the time I was at the end, the only thing that had stuck with me was Gabe and his breath-holding, but it was enough to make the end work.


The ending sequence confuses me. Why does he hold his breath until the video gets to the part when he dives under? Shouldn't he keep holding it until he surfaces? When did he st

It’s awesome to see how much thought you’ve put into this! I caught onto the hyperventilation part since I noticed that in some of the articles I read, that you can clear the CO2 out of your blood really quickly that way and prolong the point where your CO2 buildup forces you to breathe. I also read that if you hyperventilate pure oxygen, that gives you better longevity too and the world record holders were doing that (though apparently the world record without pure oxygen is something around 11 minutes vs 24?). But I didn’t know about the bit related to lying down. That’s an interesting piece of information. It’s cool how many tests you did and the rapid improvement you made with increasing your time. I don’t think I should try that though; I have some lung volume issues from COVID (my breaths are suuuuuper shallow), so it’s probably best not to play with fire :P Nor am I particularly masochistic, aside from staying up too goddamn late to read and comment on RDR posts. The bags under 

Not going to leave a critique, but just wanted to say I thought the story was a great read, and I found this comment to be a wonderfully idiosyncratic supplement to my reading. Thanks a lot for sharing.

First: I really hope you get paid to do this. If you don't, you should. 

Second: I feel so smug right now. I have this big grin on my face because I actually have answers to your questions this time. This is NOT a repeat of the 176 degree desert sand. Lol. I saw your BELIEVABILITY heading in big bold letters behind my eyelids while I was working on this story.

Okay, I have SOME answers:

**WELCOME TO SMUGTOWN, POPULATION ME**

YES. He CAN hold his breath for that long. I'll get into how I came up with the idea for this story, because it answers another question, but first I want to talk about breath-holding records:

So I knew I wanted this guy to hold his breath for a "ridiculous but not impossible" amount of time. But what amount of time is that? First I looked up breath-holding records. The world record using all the tips and tricks is like 24 minutes. But that's if you breathe straight oxygen for 30 minutes preceding the event and utilize the mammalian dive reflex by immersing th

**CAN HE REALLY HOLD HIS BREATH THAT LONG?**

This article from [Healthline](https://www.healthline.com/health/how-long-does-it-take-to-drown) says that the average person can hold their breath for thirty seconds, and a person in excellent health with, specifically, underwater emergency training can hold their breath up to two minutes. 

It looks like the mammalian dive reflex is what allows people to hold their breath up to two minutes in water (or maybe a bit longer). This reflex causes the heart to pump slower and extends the amount of time a mammal can go without oxygen when submerged in cold (specifically cold) water. Without that reflex being engaged, like if you’re in air, or if the water is 70 degrees F, it’s significantly harder to hold your breath that long.

Can I ask whether it’s actually realistic that he can hold his breath for over three minutes?

You mentioned he’s holding his breath as long as his son had to. Realistically, the kid probably only held his breath for abo

Hello,

Oooo. I like this. You do a very good job with the foreshadowing on this story—little bits of information is sprinkled in that makes sense once the reader reaches the payoff, and I enjoyed the build up toward the reveal, as I could feel the mystery mounting. That’s good stuff, and I’m pleased with your deployment of it. 

I have some logic questions to point out and some suggestions that you may find helpful… or that maybe you’d enjoy expanding the story with them?… though they might just be the musing of someone who has too many errant ideas whenever they read something that’s well written, since they can’t harp on the usual axes they grind : P Whatever the case, I hope you enjoy some of this. They may or may not be the incoherent 1:00 AM rambles of a fellow who enjoyed this story enough to obsess over it for the last few hours.

**POINT OF VIEW**

So, like other critiquers, I also got the feeling that the POV was second person and addressing me as a reader, and I wasn’t overl

Thank you for your thoughts! In a few days I'll go back to the doc and make the changes.

1. **general impression**: holy shit... did i read that right? i wasn't expecting that. that's so dark. i love it. to answer your first question, yes; the hook for me was the 2nd sentence. it's such an oddly specific description with the main character doing something very odd indeed. that got my attention all right; i wanted to understand.
2. **foreshadowing**: the title is perfect. i first thought, "ok, Gabe is gonna probably break his record by the end of the story (just a bit more, man!), but why the hell is he doing this in the first place?" i like how at the end, it doesn't even need to be said anymore. i slowly looked up at the document to read the title and thought, "oh... oh no." Gabe's son was just a bit over his own record... just *barely* there. these other details were excellent at painting a clear picture in my head, but little did i know that they were meant to move the story forward as well. the security cameras; the pool mentioned in the beginning--and it was *covered*


Explanation: I spend too much time in first-person and wanted to see what the opposite of that would look like. 

Feedback: Does a hook exist? Unnecessary bits? Do the rules seem to break down anywhere? Otherwise, any and all. 

Crits:

[[2288] Funny Hats Day](https://old.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/sbkdu9/2288_funny_hats_day/hu1ealj/)

[[991] 7 Vertical Clarence Odbody](https://old.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/sbolxr/991_7_vertical_clarence_odbody/)

[514] 00:04:02