This actually got really lengthy, so I’m splitting these notes into two parts. This part kind of meandered into general theorizing about PGSM and its characters. For the second part, which addresses a few specific points from the story, click here.

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I wanted to use this story to explore what kind of lives the Shitennou might have led before Beryl possessed them (this is following up on the premise I started with in “First Sight,” which is that all the Shitennou were like Shin—regular humans who were possessed by Beryl and lost their memories). I kind of build here on my own headcanon that the personalities of the Shitennou who served Beryl were a meshing of their past life and their modern personalities. The mileage on this, of course, varies from general to general.

The Nephrite of the Now, for example, is very stubborn, and is the only one who seems to never regain his past-life memories at all. Therefore, I think it’s safe to say that most of his personality traits as Beryl’s Nephrite, and then as Nefukichi, was based on his modern reincarnation’s personality. Thus, I saw Akai in this story as having all the violence and stubbornness of the Neph we saw in the series. He’s very much a creature of inertia; he put up the most resistance to Beryl’s possession, but once she managed to change him, he was the one who was most resistant to accepting anything else. His loyalty to Beryl in PGSM was very much based on stubbornness rather than genuine feelings of loyalty (or love, as was the case with Jadeite, and why he stuck with her to the end).

Conversely, while Nephrite’s personality was entirely based on his modern incarnation, with the door closed to his past-life memories, after his past-life memories reawakened, Zoisite, like Minako, surrendered to them entirely. He allowed his past-life self to have almost complete control over his modern body; his memories and mission from the past dictated his every action of the present. “Shiroi,” as I call him in this story, was completely lost, buried first under Beryl’s brain-washing spell and then under the Zoisite of the past. We know little about what kind of life he might have led had Beryl never possessed him; so I kind of played around with it here, inventing a background and a little bit of what he might have been like.

I also wanted to look at Minako’s perspective on all this, and see what she went through when she first learned about the past-life and her true mission. Something that has always intrigued me about PGSM is that, while she’s so “MISSION MISSION PAST LIFE DESTINY NOTHING ELSE,” we see a few glimpses that this is really just her defense mechanism, in a manner of speaking. Surely, before her memories awoke, Minako must have had hopes and dreams, a personality of her own; but then two things happened: she got diagnosed with her condition, and she found out about the mission. Throughout PGSM, she repeats, “I only live for the mission,” like a mantra, and seems to find comfort in it. I’ve always felt that the reason she didn’t seek treatment is because,  deep down, she resented that she was a reincarnated soldier. It made her think that her life had no worth apart from the mission, so why should she want to keep living? Why should she want to be happy? Why should she want to make friends? She would have to sacrifice all of that in the name of the mission, anyway. In this fic, these feelings are compounded by the knowledge that she can never be with the boy she loves. Having a fatal illness was, subconsciously, a way for her to escape destiny. It wasn’t until she befriended the other Guardians and met Rei, who firmly believed in controlling one’s own destiny rather than giving into it, that she realized that maybe she could have her cake and eat it, too; unfortunately, by then it was too late.

Until the Silver Crystal gave her a second chance.

I love thinking about that; I love imagining how everyone’s lives turn out when they are reborn without the Crystal, without the mission—a chance for a new life, where Minako can just be Minako, with no obligations to the past life. But that’s for another story.

Tags: melody to forget