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findmeinthefallair · 9 hours ago

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A Blank Slate for Hunter

I love this outfit of Hunter's the most.

Hope you enjoy this lil' essay as a Halloween gift from me!

Hunter's silly elegant stable boy outfit is an outfit that allows him to be agile, not weighed down by layers of armour he had no choice in selecting to wear, and he can move freely.

No more cloaks (the precursor to no more gloves!). Keep in mind that in Labyrinth Runners he still had a cloak on, even if it wasn't the Golden Guard cloak.

And we know how dear freedom is to this boi's heart. He most likely picked this outfit himself, and by then he was no longer living rough post-Hollow Mind.

I guess this outfit always makes me think of the calm before the storm, in all its innocence. I mean, look at his corresponding model sheet:

The smirk. It's childlike. He's so silly. There's his excitement about something new that's beginning and which would bloom during the summertime he spends in the human realm.

And interestingly, there's some of the cheeky Golden Guard vibe left, yet it feels so new: which shows that it wasn't 100% persona. It's part of the real Hunter too!

When he runs with his friends, he looks happy:

He looks like he's experiencing safety and connection, belonging to found family already.

Not like when he's running scared:

His world is brightening:

It would eventually be snatched away on the night that Flapjack dies. But it wouldn't be lost to him forever, as love always returns even if in a different form.

Without this first season of beginning and growth, we wouldn't eventually have the pre-timeskip season of beginning and growth to let light back in again, in a new way.

There's the relief he feels after making it past Labyrinth Runners, having support from the kids at Hexside, and having a heart-to-heart talk with Gus, receiving and then giving back.

There was relative safety, in fact the most safety he's experienced at that point in his life after the horrors of Hollow Mind and Labyrinth Runners

and he was in the process of building up groundwork that would strengthen his resolve: the peak of which was voicing his desires in his Thanks to Them speech.

Sure, he gets triggered, but my god does he have help and support:

And he's cushioned by safe, trustworthy company. People who won't harm him.

His poor nerves could enjoy some respite for once! Well,

most of the time I think.

If you have heard of the body's sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, you can spot both in action, well-animated during his various responses to distress.

"Sympathetic" forces him to move quickly, "parasympathetic" forces him to slow down and get rest. Sometimes, one of these might go into overdrive and bringing in the other would restore a better balance between both systems.

You can even "hack" these to slow down your heart rate and reduce distress, one example being splashing your face with ice-cold water (this triggers the body's "dive reflex" which can slow down one's pulse and generate more calmness), using deep breathing techniques or meditation to deliberately activate the parasympathetic system.

Hunter's fight-or-flight moments mean his sympathetic nervous system has come online, letting him be ready to spring into action to reach safety.

As he collapsed into his own grave which he dug at Eclipse Lake, that's the parasympathetic nervous system that's a big signal for him to rest, no matter how short. Any moment where he freezes is also the same nervous system activating.

There also would've been the offscreen pre-timeskip period of being depressed about Flapjack's absence and lack of purpose - it makes me so sad that this would've made him feel as though ALL progress he made was completely erased. But this grief response from his whole body and mind would've also the result of the parasympathetic nervous system forcing him to collapse into needed rest (any supposedly "extreme" response of his is honestly a normal response to unspeakable long-term abuse). These are the closest hints we got, when he thinks no one's watching, but of course we as audience members were privy to part of what may've been going on:

We have canon material that shows Gus helping him adaptively switch to his parasympathetic system, with something meditative (the square breathing technique) which he can continue to use and even develop variations of with his future therapist's help:

What about the times where he can healthily switch to the sympathetic system - moving his body a lot to reap physical and mental health benefits - as is needed? A good guess is that resuming flyer derby:

would be a big help during the worst of his post-regime depression, as part of an elaborate treatment plan in therapy. The tricky part for Willow, Gus, Camila and his other loved ones would be getting him out of bed and the house to Hexside. Luz and co. could also drag him out of the basement into the living room to dance to music videos or something.

He would eventually feel its benefits and have more happy brain chemicals! The more he does stuff with a group that he's close to, the more bonus chemicals he gets too.

What I'm getting at with the neurology stuff is the significance of this:

Perhaps most notable of all though, is him able to rise above and practice uttering a resounding "No" to Belos. The belonging he has found with the Hexsquad empowered him to do this.

When you build up protective factors (the opposite of risk factors) such as a support system and techniques to manage distressing symptoms, you could regain some control over your responses to triggers.

When Hunter helped to save Gus, he could push back against being overwhelmed by a flooded sympathetic nervous system here:

I love that there are moments where he experiences unpleasant sensations (affection from friends being very foreign to him), but he is mostly able to believe that he won't be harmed:

Neither nervous system is overwhelmed. Flapjack being on his shoulder must be a great help in grounding him here.

I just love this smirk on his face as he's in sync with Flapjack, the most confidence he's had since Belos shattered his beliefs at the end of Hollow Mind.

He and Flapjack have become even closer. They've built a relationship and have shared some precious memories, with many more to come during the summer.

We lose Flapjack, but one day in the future, Hunter can look back on these memories without being frozen in the horrors of his worst memories. He can't let the new in without first letting his best friend go in that scary sense. But he had the strength to do it, to engrave "Thank you for finding me. - H." on what would be Flapjack's headstone with his own timing, to make room for an existence without Flapjack, and for one that would eventually have his new palisman Waffles in it.

During this short period of resting up before the Day of Unity fight scenes, he gets to overall take a break.

There's an incredibly good analogy by therapist Georgia Dow on Youtube (link to her channel here) for when he starts to be in great danger.

When we see his expressions being drawn by the animators as more and more hypervigilant, when we see that adrenaline floods his system more and more to help him power through:

When you're hypervigilant like this, especially if you already have had a history of trauma dating back years, it's like when a smartphone's video recording mode switches on outside of your control.

The camera lens is wide, collecting all the trauma-related data and details that it can of the image frames in the recorded video: to ensure survival. And it's all subconsciously carried out beyond one's control.

And unfortunately, the phone might replay the distressing video(s) beyond your control, against your will, whenever a future trigger comes along. Imagine the video files simply just playing on their own, and you aren't able to hit the pause button on your phone screen or even choose to look away from your phone screen. That's how trauma replays in the mind during a trigger.

We see this in motion when Hunter is emotionally flooded with white hot fear here:

But when he saves Gus, he is able to regulate a similar if not worse wave of flashbacks later on here with the help of Willow's and Gus's breathing technique.

I think the scenes where he has childlike mischief written on his face are sandwiched between other episodes where he's going through an insanely tough time. It gives us in the audience a break as well...before the mayhem.

Under extremely high stress and in deep anguish, his prefrontal cortex is probably functioning at 1000% - one of the hallmarks of C-PTSD - to help him stay level-headed, and have good reaction time, and to strategize and survive.

He walks through the portal after Flapjack's death

with the widened wild look in his eyes, the overactivity in the part of the brain called the amygdala is screaming out how much danger he is in. His fight response is activated.

The opposite of all that hypervigilance mentioned above is the dissociative state that would become part of his day-to-day, once an extremely difficult period of depression hits him post-regime.

But in Clouds on the Horizon, King's Tide and the start of Thanks to Them, he is able to spend quite a few moments just "being". He's able to grin quite a bit.

I just love that he's learning about and experiencing safety in relationships in these episodes:

He can chill a fair bit, given the benchmark of craziness that was part of his daily life for too long. He's grounded yet relaxed during much of this phase.

As brief as this phase was, it's endearing, there's a pure and particularly vibrant quality about it despite the actual outfit colour being bland ol' beige, and it's a really special part of Hunter's overall screentime.

It was a simpler time, before the far worse and far messier confusion which would be waiting for him post-regime e.g. missing the 'love' that his 'Uncle' had shown him...feeling like he did not deserve to be revived by Flapjack once the survivor's guilt related to the grimwalker graveyard hits...and the rage of Belos's betrayal reaching full force.

#toh hunter #hunter noceda #hunter deamonne #the owl house #toh analysis #loz writes a meta #stable boy chic #hunter's cptsd #toh spoilers

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