Shadow Slave: Reimagining the Aftermath of The Third Nightmare

Author's thoughts:

Fanfiction writers rarely sit down to explain in advance which plot points they will diverge from the canonical source. They usually "show, don't tell" (see previous chapter). However, I think it is worth giving an early warning on this, as I feel the need to clarify my position given it will impact the overall storyline I envision.

I will be writing about Cassie in the next chapter, done differently.

I've thought long and hard about this, and have done multiple re-reads of Cassie's conversation with Sunny aboard Ananke's ketch (Chapters 1553-1561) and their interaction in his shop (Chapters 1635-1638).

This brings me to my biggest gripe with Volume 8 and Volume 9: How did Cassie know she should wish him happy birthday?

Without [Fated] and Sunny being a man-shaped hole in the world — which I assume to work like Weaver's Mask — divining him should be impossible. It simply doesn't make sense.

As Cassie herself told Sunny:

"Do you know what I sense when I look at you, though? Nothing. You are like a black void, completely empty."

If she can't divine him in the present, how could she have known about his past — a past that was erased?

Furthermore, her motives are unclear. Was she planning to use Sunny as a weapon against fate since the start? If she wanted him to be that weapon, why did she hope he would choose otherwise to preserve his bonds with the cohort? That seems like a massive risk if the future she foresaw was so cruel. Did she have a contingency plan if Sunny kept his [Fated] status and everyone died?

And did she know that everyone would forget him? If she did know, why didn't she warn him? If she didn't know, why did she send a reminder to herself?

etc. etc.

In a nutshell, there were too many conflicting motives and inconsistent actions in the canonical source that marred her character.

Ultimately, writing time-related abilities is hard. It's also true that we don't know how the underlying mechanism between Sunny being fateless and Cassie's divination works, and G3 never bothered to clarify it in both volumes. The same goes for how much 'the world' is willing to tolerate its characters using a loophole, such as Cassie's use of her transcendent ability to remember.

Going forward, the focus of this story will be very different from canon. Thus, I will take this opportunity to have Cassie play detective over the coming chapters, slowly realising that Sunny was her "something so precious that it can't be described with words was taken from me".

I also wish to concentrate more on character interactions and the logical consequences of their choices. (e.g. the Song sisters, especially the less popular ones, even though I may need to start reading Volume 10 to fully incorporate them).