The Sun Vanished. By far the largest thing in the webseries sphere for a very, very, very long time. As of this writing, TSV has 321.3K Twitter followers on the main account. For comparison, that’s only about 164K less than the amount of Marble Hornets subscribers in 1/9th of the time. That is insane.

But with every super large webseries shenanigan, there is bound to be an immersive growing pain that hits this part of the overall movement like a plague.

We are, of course, talking about gamejacking.

I could say that there are literally hundreds of TSV fan accounts that take things a little too far and probably not be wrong. Fans of The Sun Vanished have experienced every kind of classic trick in the book, from “I got locked out of my old account”, to people trying to get followers out of simply appearing to look like the account newcomers are searching for, to just flat out claiming you’re a canon character that doesn’t have an account and getting extremely hostile when someone points out you aren’t official. TSV fans have seen it all.

Though, it’s important to note that there are often two different classes of gamejackers. There are those who are actively malicious, and there are those who just don’t know any better.

Many of these accounts are made by absolutely clueless new bloods who think this is how you contribute to a webseries. They don’t try to trick you into thinking they’re related or are even necessarily bad stories, they’ve just been a bit too inspired in the wrong direction. The goal, here, is to point them in the correct direction. Which can be difficult when you are completely anonymous and immersive like TSV. But the newest actually canon addition to the TSV universe has remedied this issue by being all about supplementary material to the verse created by the fans themselves.

LostSunNews is a Twitter account involved directly in the story of The Sun Vanished created by a character named Nat. What Nat does, in his words, is “picking up where news outlets left off” and compiling a survival guide to the situation at hand, as well as personal accounts of the events taking place, directly from talented fans. At first, I thought this wound encourage gamejacking to an uncomfortable level. But now I’m starting to believe that it is the medicine that TSV needed.

Nat’s direct messages are open. Anyone can submit anything to the account. Now, that doesn’t mean everything gets accepted. Nat can still pick and choose every story he wants to tell. This enables talented writers who want to contribute to TSV’s universe free will to do so, as Nat will post any story he believes to be quality enough easily. This, at the same time, blocks out any people just looking to get their 15 minutes of fame, or do anything else malicious, from contributing to this new game element of TSV.

This also encourages anyone who may not quite be there yet artistically to contribute to practice both their writing abilities and their “playing along” skills until they are well-honed, which not only benefits Nat and TSV, but also any future project they may partake in that has elements like this.

Nat will not only solve 80% of the TSV gamejack problem, but it will also point those in the innocuous group of gamejackers to a much-appreciated direction. TSV now includes a hidden resource to newcomers, unknown to them, and possibly even unknown to the one/those developing TSV. Nothing too wild has happened yet, but many are beginning to give loose backstories on what they’ve been doing in the world of The Sun Vanished so far, and I can only see good things happening from here. It’s created an environment in which many can learn that sometimes, the best way to contribute is to sit back, enjoy the show, and wait to find your opening to strike. That is when you overload the PM with your crazy ideas you’ve conjured up.

But there are more happy consequences to be found in LostSunNews. It’s also a great stealth creator tool. Is there a common misconception about your story? Boom, submit a realistic report to Nat clearing up any confusion. Either way, it’s now official. Someone on your wavelength may even catch on to what you’ve actually been thinking and talk about it in your story. This makes your clarification much more blunt than anything you could ever do in your main adventure while still maintaining maximum immersion.

Or, what if the creator simply wants to make their own supplementary material, and doesn’t want to drag another account into the mix? What’s stopping them from submitting a small story to Nat? The mechanic of LSN also has many different possibilities when it comes to creator-side control.

There is a whole lot to learn from Lost Sun News and what The Sun Vanished is doing in general. If the community comes to be inspired by these models and people learn how to create better Twitter dramas, the webseries community could be much better off. Though, like everything, one has to be clear to dodge the final pothole in being inspired and make sure to incorporate their own ideas into every mix.

Psst, why not follow Puzzling Matters on Twitter? It’s free, and possibly might add a few years to your life maybe. It’s @PuzzlingMatters, as probably expected.