2.5.19
on August 11, 2025
at 3:00 am
I once went swimming in a “natural waterpark” in Mexico that had a big partially-closed cave entrance at the bottom of a swimming hole. Jumping into the water was unnerving enough. It was the awareness of additional depth that really made it uncomfortable to stay in the water for long. anyway this is probably fine
For mobile readers.
Alt-text: blue let me test some of these pages on him to see if they hit the thalassophobia buttons. this one didn’t so it’s probably fine
Image source: deep
Weirdly I think knowing about the big sea monster makes it less unnerving, because by narrative convention we have a pretty good idea what she’s going to find down there absent a potential curveball
For me and I suspect a lot of people the thing that gets me about deep water is uncertainty. A clear and known danger that I have perceived is way less frightening than the unknown and unseen dangers my mind can conjure up.
My thalassophobia is completely irrational. There is no uncertainty. If I can’t clearly see, something IS there, and it’s going to try to eat me.
If the phobia was rational, it wouldn’t hit while playing video games or watching certain movies.
As someone who has naviphobia (I don’t know if that’s spelled right), phobias are not rational in general, they hit whenever the f*ck they please. I don’t know what Blue’s phobia is (can’t remember what the name is), but naviphobia is a fear of boats. For me that only strikes with metal ships, usually big ones (think about Titanic or sunken battleships), wooden ones are fine, plastic is okay too. It also hits me when I look at pictures, watch movies, see it on ads, tv shows, or play video games (etc.). It is not rational, but it just is. Just wanted to put that out there to clear up some misconceptions.
In summary: yes, phobias are not rational, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t hit people hard even moments when they shouldn’t. It’s not controllable and it doesn’t matter what the situations are.
Me, but on land when it’s dark and I’m alone.
Doesn’t matter if it’s a Cryptid, a Boogie Man type dude, or even just a regular wild animal, the lizard part of my brain takes one look into the dark, decides there’s something in the dark that’s gonna try and eat/kill me, and I go NOPE!
Gotta take out some trash but it’s after dark? Just open the door, throw the bag on the porch, slam the door shut, lock it, and book it.
A lot of true horror movies go hard on that, the unknown, keeping the threat hidden for most of the movie, so you’re left guessing what it could be that is killing off the cast slowly in nasty ways.
tumblr text: we need to go deeper
Bluesky text: it’s monday!
“Hey Alinua, do you have a similiar fear of the ocean as Dainix? No? Would you like to?”
i wish there was a like button
It’s like being scared of heights except worse and cold and there are things that want to eat you
This page made me realize something weird: I don’t care how deep it gets, I’m still the exact same level of nervous. I’m pretty sure it’s because I’m specifically afraid of drowning, and one can do that at any depth. That’s very different from thalassophobia: as long as I feel safely out of the water, the ocean just seems sublime to me.
I would be a very, very different person if I was thalassophobic, and that thought is sobering to me.
Ah, thalassophobia, we meet at last.
I guess it’s only a matter of time before a big chimera fight.
Even in lakes where I know with certainty how deep it is and what’s in there I get easily spooked by water where I can’t see the bottom
It’s a deep rooted animal instinct and in my experience really common
When I was… maybe 10 or 12, I got to go to Hawaii, and we took a boat tour around the big island that (among other things) stopped near a fresh lava falls. Since the lava wasn’t flowing at the moment, they let everyone take a swim before starting back toward port, and even through we were just a few hundred meters offshore, I strongly remember looking down into the infinite blue of deep, clear water and feeling that sense of vertigo. Like I’m floating above it all and I’m fine, but anything I drop is just *gone*. I think that may still be the deepest water I’ve ever taken a swim in — not that I’m a big swimmer in the first place, but most of it has involved at least a reef or continental shelf.
Beyond fissures lies ocean vast, and the abyss
Alinua holds tight and wishes the view to miss
The water pressure grows as they descend;
Alinua, scared, clings to her new friend.
Selach: Come on, it’s just a little decent. This is the fastest way down, plus you’re a healer, so no biggie.
Alinua: The last person who said that grabbed me before jumping off a mountain, in air mind you, hitting the ground hard, all under the assumption we’d both survive and I’d heal all the broken bones afterwards. There were a lot of broken bones.
Selach: … O … kay … we’ll descend VERY slowly.
I had to stare at the screen for a bit before it hit me we are looking down at a trench; my mind was still in 2-D plane mode and trying to figure out how the top part was “floating” like that. When it did hit me though, I felt a bit of a shiver, kinda like what Red talks about in the description.
I’ve never swum (swam?) in very deep water before, but I can see why a sudden increase in depth would be disconcerting.
Selach’s confusion at Alinua’s fear is understandable; I doubt a culture where everyone can move in three dimensions would produce many people scared of heights. Or maybe that fear is more common among the Sekrai, who previously lived on land, and merfolk like her barely register it.
There could be some level of thalassophobia among mer-people, in a practical “we’re exposed and nowhere to hide if attacked” kind of way.
Now that you said it, yeah. It took me three proper looks at the first panel. Not only are we looking at a giant crevasse, the Northern Wyrm’s shrine is on a rocky outcrop on the other side of that crevasse. Notably, the Wyrm’s emblem (a coiled serpent-type icon seen on the emissary’s necklace in the flashback) appears to have been broken.
Mind you, not only is that really deep, if that trench is in any way connected to the Singing Caves, then Collie has a very convenient entry point into the ocean and given her condition, she can easily survive in any environment. Moreover, if there are passages to the Caves, that means Void corruption is on the table for whatever critters live down there.
Well… I was partially right…
Yeah, growing up ground-bound makes the third dimension a bit more scary when it’s wide open.
Alinua’s fear is heart-tugging, but I wonder if she’ll actually end up flung into the higher pressure water at some point. I mean, Life already changed her enough to withstand the pressure to come this far down. Maybe Life could do it again so that she could go down farther, especially if its to communicate with/try to fix a Chimera???
I mean…. at least Alinua hasn’t gone full backpack/koala yet. I’m sure she’ll be alright.
Where are all my fellower diver friends. Can we talk abouthow the endless abysis also enticing?
I’m not a diver but I agree about the abyss there’s just something about deep water
Maybe I missremember, but I think she was literally thrown off her sky island.
That might cause some slight fear of heights. Or depths in this case.
I don’t think so. She wasn’t old enough to develop a fear of heights from it, she’s lived and climbed in trees most of her life, and she was fine following Falst up Zuurith’s mountain prison.
Then again, the fall from said mountain prison, and her general sense of disorientation from being underwater, might have something to do with it.
This is exactly how I felt playing Subnautica. I hate the underwater islands biome so much, especially when traversing it at night. I was just jumping from one floating chunk of rock to another in my Seamoth with the empty abyss opening up beneath me. It’s worse when there’s a rock you can’t see until you edge out into the darkness a little bit. I can deal with the ecological dead zone by just not going there, but there’s a wreck in the underwater islands with some useful stuff so you kinda gotta go there.
I am a competitive swimmer at a mid- to- high level, and I would absolutely be doing what Alinua is doing.
One word, I got one word: AWWW
Until my cataract surgery at 60, I couldn’t see shit in air, 20/180 or something like that. But I could see for *MILES* in the ocean. Nobody believed me. I could see sharks way out there… ship bottoms, and The Edge.
The Florida Escarpment is where the Florida continental shelf drops from 300ft deep to 10,600ft deep over a couple hundred feet in a vertical cliff. Can you imagine standing on the edge of that in a diving suit?
man i should go swimming again
Once again yearning for a mer-twink to wrap my arms around like that
What’ll we say if the Wyrm was in fact mutated by the Collector?
…… Ali-Knew-It
Also, terrifying
This mood
https://xkcd.com/2155/
I really dislike waiting for just about anything book related, so I decided that whenever I got to the bit where I had to wait, be it for the next book in a series or the next page in this webcomic, I’d just reread all the stuff so far. Surprisingly effective, if a little bit repetitive after a time.
Oh I feel Alinua so much – hate the Unfathomable Depths sooo much. I think the ocean might scare me more than space, if only for how much more reachable it is.
I wonder if Alinua can fell the pressure building up below her or has she just looked into the Abyss and saw it looking back at her?
Can Feel, not fell. Durn fingers and eyes!
As a kid I had a fear of space but never the ocean, I think I always viewed it as just another part of the world like the desert or the sky sorta vast and unknowable but still just a thing, space being mostly nothing and following the rules of physics in a way nothing else seemed to made it more alien and empty and that’s what scared me. As an adult I know more about the ocean and could see why someone would be scared,
Nowadays I kinda think of it as the inverse of a mountain range, one far above me and scary in a acrophobic kinda way but pretty to look at, the other far below me and scary in a abyssal kinda way but intriguing to think about . I think deep down I knew both were scary but I viewed them as scary in a normal way as something faraway that would be dangerous to go to but I could just avoid so it never became any sort of haunting fear that I would think about at all.I think in the end I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful I felt the ocean was despite how scary it could be and I’ve never really seen the ocean first-hand so I never developed any specific fear to it.
Anyways all these comments made me start thinking about what I did and didn’t fear while growing up and why, so I’m not trying invalidate anyone’s fears or anything just wanted to share some thoughts on my mind.
It’s interesting how thought and intrigue can be found from a hole in the bottom of the sea.
Red, it is hilariously cruel of you that you had Blue ‘test out’ these pages [affectionate]
Yes. Yes to all of this.
We need a like button.
So is this thalassophobia or acrophobia? Cos it looks like thalassophobia but Alinua’s reaction screams acrophobia at least to me.
I swam out to the swimming zone bouy at the beach yesterday. No idea how deep it was, only thatbit had been a long while since I could touch the bottom. It be pushing my confidence to swim over a cave that i could see the entrance but not the bottom of.
Okay, so has anyone ELSE noticed that Alinua’s eyes have been completely green since panel like… 5? ever since see because amphibious basically, it’s such a nice touch.
Oh my gosh, I just got my copy of the book and as soon as I finished it I ran here to keep reading. AUUUUGGGGHHHH this is so good!! I need MOr but alas I must be patient
Every time I open one of these underwater pages, the Vash’jir music starts running through my head…
(it’s a controversial underwater zone from World of Warcraft) https://youtu.be/7SC9bX3BeGI?si=EZPftu-Irj0J40oC
I’m fine until I hit the possibility of water I can’t stand in. Going over the ocean crevices in Minecraft also gets me, for some bizarre reason. This doesn’t bother me, but otherwise, I feel you, Ali.
This does not get me in any way, but then again, I was the sort of kid that collected big rocks along the beach to go into the water so I could sink more/stay underwater longer because I am so naturally buoyant.
i never considered that mermaids wont be super familiar with the whole fear of heights thing and might be surprised that we’re scared of being really high up
also can confirm: not seeing the bottom is terrifying
did… did you go to the “Ojo de Jimenez”?!? in a northern Border State there’s sort of a “lake” in there that is pretty frequented and people swim in there but in the middle of it there’s a Hole that just goes DEEPER and it’s terrifying
could be any other hole honestly but that’s the first on i thought about