People have been sending me your posts and I have been lowkey obsessed, scribbling notes about them at work, re-reading some other Hunter posting, etcetera, etcetera, and I thought I should actually log in and reply to one of your posts. I hope I'm not overstepping by doing so, but I haven't been able to get some of your points out of my head, and wanted to reblog with my own commentary. Plus, I feel fated to find this particular post first because personhood is Hunter's WHOLE THING as a character in the show, and in the book -- as you've said above.
Qualifications: nearly 500k words of published TBB fan fiction, mainly gen w/ Hunter, another 500k words of TBB roleplay as Hunter, this Hunter thread on X, probably more. My point is I absolutely love this man as far as fictional character loving goes.
I know you're re-reading Sanctuary, and your post is specifically about his internal dialogue in said book, but here I'm just gesturing at Hunter as a whole. The book is a valuable part; actually being able to get in his head.
My whole character hypothesis with Hunter is about his relationship with 'strays'. He is an adopter of people who have gone astray: Cut and Suu, Echo, Caleb/Kanan (attempted), Omega. And of non-uniform ideas, given the whole deviancy narrative of CF99. Hunter has no problems disobeying orders, no adherence to Republic protocol, no moral crisis about deserting. If it feels right, and better, if he can help someone, he will do it.
Which is hilarious, to your point above, because once he renders his assistance, he has no idea what to do beyond that. What did he hope to gain from this exercise? He has no idea, as there was no end goal in mind; no want which he was satisfying for himself. You can make the perfectly valid argument that he does these things because he's a good guy, which he is. He cares deeply for others, especially those he considers family. But that's where he stops, as you say, because his function is for others:
As the eldest clone of his (bad) batch, his function is to look out for the others.
As a sergeant of his squad, his function is to protect the team.
As the older brother to his younger sister, his function is to protect her -- literally, the whole show happens because of this fact, from her rescue from Kamino to her rescue from Tantiss.
It's also why Crosshair's dissent hits him so hard as well, because Hunter goes straight to 'is it me?' before he hits any other wall. It's a failure of his function, as the squad splits up, and because did Crosshair split off because of him? Add to that complicated dynamic by having Crosshair assist in Omega's flight from Tantiss in S3; Hunter was not a participant in restoring either of those people back to his squad. So what is he doing, if not his self-imposed job? Crosshair even calls him out on it in the later S3 episode, E05 the Return. Everybody around him knows that Hunter is a herder and is lost without something to herd.
I also like to write about the Collapse of the Republic (proper noun) because it's a character in Hunter's narrative. Slaves as they were, being a commando squad in the Republic's arsenal bought stability and order to Hunter, and all of their lives. He may not have followed orders to a T, but Hunter relied on Republic supply lines, on leads from Command, and on the war needing his brothers' specific sets of skills. And he has absolutely no problem with seeing his brothers as capable in all of this. (Which, sidepoint: it's funny that Hunter has the soul-defining urge to protect, but simultaneously recognises how cool Tech, Wrecker, Crosshair, and Echo are.) It's the lack of structure after the Republic collapses. You see him struggle with this in the background of the show many times. Less-so in the novel, as Phee is the lead-giver and Pabu is the entity he is helping. But after the collapse, there is no backup. From Cut and Suu's homestead, into bounty hunters vying for Omega, into working for Cid... He sees himself as his squad's only line of defense. This freaks him the fuck out, but also empowers him to do everything he can to protect them -- including being overbearing to the point he has to be called out by a third party. Because Hunter's brothers, his sister, they all love him, they appreciate his role in their safety, but also need room to conceptualise their own desires. Something that Hunter has no idea how to do, thus, no idea how make room for others to do so.
TL;DR this long paragraph: the war ending, and the Empire rising, makes Hunter's personhood gauge go from like -10 to -1000.
And I must apologise, for this post feels so disjointed as I've grabbed like, five notepads I've been scribbling in across several days, and it's also a word vomit after 5 years of having this guy living in my brain.
The last thing I wanted to mention was the whump trope and Hunter (in relation to one another). As I saw another post where you said about his enhanced senses as a storytelling device (+1 from me there), and about others' privacy vs. Hunter's pride. The pride stuff stuck out to me in particular. As afterwards, my comment to a friend was:
Which I feel is more eloquently succinct than me writing another paragraph after your post.
All in all, I hope I'm not imposing on you. Feel free to respond, or don't, I just can't put into words how much this niche Star Wars dude means to me and my psyche, so reading other's words about him always makes me feel particularly seen.
Hope you enjoyed the book!
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