By: Emma Parry

Owlfeed Journalist

In 2018, it’s hard to be an active internet user without getting involved in online conspiracy theories, and it’s getting even harder to determine what is real and what is fake, as news sources are getting down and dirty to the current, and usually untrue trends, for the sake of views and clicks. With new forms of storytelling allowing itself to become present, more and more online stories are becoming popular, and many are being confused as real. One of such was Twitter user Aiden Elliot, with his massive ongoing horror thriller, The Sun Vanished.

The Sun Vanished has been ongoing since February of 2018, however, as Elliot states in an interview with Fantastic Daily of YouTube, “[The ideas] were originally going to be a short film… It’s actually funny, the whole “Sun Vanished” started as kind of an ad for the film, and… It just sort of grew into what it is.”

   The short film, however, had to be put on pause. “That’s kind of why I had [The Sun Vanished Twitter] go dark. I wanted to open up a patreon to actually start making this into a film, but I didn’t want people to think I was actually looking for help/money as the sun had disappeared. I made sure everyone was aware that it wasn’t real before I started promoting it, and think I was trying to steal.”

This did not prevent the outpouring of news after the Sun Vanished went dark, as major internet news sites like Reddit, and 4Chan missing the point and spreading news of The Sun Vanished’s death. It was quickly resolved as Elliot started doing interviews, and being more open with what was really going on in his fictional world.

The basic story? (Caution, Spoilers.) TSV, or The Sun Vanished, posted that the sun was missing. They posted a few minutes a news feed of CNN urging American citizens to stay indoors until the military stopped this matter. That military help never comes. There were interactive polls where the audience could choose whether TSV stayed inside or went out to investigate. He ended up going outside and discovering these bright flashing white lights what followed people. Later, we find that these lights are called Headlights, can turn red, and can turn humans into odd almost zombie-like slaved to do the bidding of the Headlights, whatever that may be.

The turned humans break into TSV’s house, and contaminate his water supply, causing him vivid hallucinations and makes him much slower. He eventually leaves his house and runs to his next-door neighbors’ house, where he realizes his water is much darker than the water from there. A friend comes many weeks later, after another turned human breaks into the house. They drive into the countryside and start camping out away from civilization. But the Headlights, or specifically one broken Headlight, find them. The twitter goes dark after that.

The Sun Vanished is a very interesting new style of media and storytelling, and because of it’s rampant success, many others are beginning similar types of interactive stories. Hopefully, with the success of the twitter, and the large support from patreon, soon enough there might be a Sun Vanished movie that goes deeper into the lore of a universe missing the Sun.