When The Sun Goes Out

I've seen so many posts online related to this. Some fanders refused to talk about it, some fanders asked too many questions, some fanders even bury it into the realm of urban legends by trolling the fandom as much as they can. Although I, like others, am usually quick to bring my mind to a different topic whenever this comes up, I'm only revealing what happened in the hopes that it would at least decrease the amount of people asking about it.

Now, everyone might have seen it at different moments, here's what happened when I saw it; I was getting out of class and noticed that the latest notification on my phone was of a video posted by our Florida-born angel, Thomas Sanders, and on his main channel. I can't remember if it was a "Sanders Sides" post or a "Sanders Asides" post, but I do remember it had Remus and Deceit in the thumbnail as well as black surrounding the entirety of Virgil's eyes, so that answered my initial question of whether or not we should be scared of the episode. Also, to answer one of the many questions I have seen about it, it went by the name "When The Sun Goes Out". I didn't really notice the length of the video, but I knew that I was told by my mom that I would be picked up late, so I figured I would have more than enough time to check it out and maybe discuss it with other fanders.

When I clicked on the video, the intro showed a clock revealing that it was the night, probably 8:30, before showing Thomas and a portion of his friends in the living room chatting and watching some movies as if it was one of Thomas's Instagram Stories. I found it a bit odd, but I didn't think too much of it since oddness blanketed intelligence in those videos. After some more chatter, it immediately showed the "Sanders Sides" theme intro, but I was too busy being clueless about that particular difference to really notice if it said "Sanders Sides" or "Sanders Asides".

Anyway, Thomas did his "What is up, everybody?" and rambled a bit of nonsense as Character Thomas tends to do every now and then. Within the nonsense, there wasn't a mention of time or the movie night with his friends. When Patton rose up, I expected him to at least bring up the movie night, but I was greeted with a few puns headed Thomas's way, and a flash of various Sanders Sides scenes with some growling or screaming in ths background followed by Patton's nose bleeding. It took longer for Patton to notice it than Thomas, but as they both did, another flash and growl/scream session happened and there was a deep scratch on Patton's arm. The other main Sides took notice. From what I could tell, Logan was actually disturbed, Roman vowed to destroy the foe that dare harmed the father figure, and Virgil shouted "Who did this to you?!" in that demonic voice he makes when he's anxious enough. Patton tried to explain he didn't know before another flash and growl/scream session happened and not only was Patton struggling to stay standing, but Virgil's arms and legs were shaking to the point of him falling over and he couldn't stop the shaking. Everyone else was reacting with concern for both Sides and, from what I could remember, Logan mentioned something about anxiety being a symptom of seizures or something like that.

Another flash and growl and the whole room slowly turned gray. Roman tried to lift his sword from...wherever he kept it, but he was straining more as the colors kept vanishing. Not only that, but it almost seemed like their surroundings were melting. Cracks appeared on Roman's face, Patton fell over and was trying to stay awake, and Virgil stopped shaking due to being unconscious. I'm not sure how everyone else felt seeing that, but I found myself hoping that things would get better.

After another flash and a scream, Thomas covered his ears and tried to plead Logan for help. Logan looked like he was trying to summon something...anything that could help him make sense of what was going on. Pretty soon, a snake slithered up Logan's body and wrapped itself around his neck strangling him before a rat crawled out of the snake's mouth going in Logan's ear, making noises that reminded me of short circuiting, and coming out the other ear. Logan froze and fell over as Thomas was backing up. The snake and rat were whom one would expect, so they turned into their humanoid forms as Thomas continued to back up. Remus bit into his deodorant and left plaque on the bite mark while Deceit pushed his hat on Thomas's head. It wasn't long before Remus placed his own sash on Thomas's torso and they both chanted "Prince of Darkness; nowhere to run" over and over again.

There was a close-up of Thomas's eyes as he shut them while screaming before...it zoomed out to Thomas in the living room with his friends staring at him with concern. They talked for a while about him having a nightmare and then Joan agreed to switch a movie with a lighter tone. It took some squinting, but I think I saw the clock say 11:30. Thomas touched his head and gave a sigh before it showed everyone spending time together and everything faded to black.

I was dumbfounded and bothered by the mixture of emotions from the video. On one hand, everyone who worked on that video was talented, but on the other hand, I wasn't confident in my ability to sleep that night. I was about to make that comment on the video, but it gave me an error message. I tried to go to the homepage and then get back to the video to make it easier to comment, but when I went back to the channel, the video was gone. After several minutes of thinking, I saw that there was a notification that Thomas made a tweet. I clicked on the notification and it showed that he made an update video. He looked pretty shameful and explained that the video was initially a joke project that was in progress ever since Youtube and COPPA had their rules up. He praised his friends who all helped him work on it, but apologized to everyone who saw it since, according to him, he was on the fence about posting it, but Joan thought it would be fun to post it "just because". He concluded by saying that he loves his friends and the fanders and had no intention of any harm or discomfort and promises that it wouldn't happen again.

Of course there were those of us, Sandra, Victoria, Emma, and Aryn included, that discussed our reactions without spoilers, but others like Lavender who didn't know what the heck we were all talking about.

Anyway, I know you might not all believe me. Like I said, I'm just hoping that the questions would either stop or decrease. I know one thing for sure, though: as someone who doesn't always show feelings irl, my mom found it puzzling when I got into the car with a disturbed look on my face when she came to get me.