Hunter deserves an entry entry for himself, because, by now, you know who Hunter is. I know the entire switch may seem like it has come out of no where, but I hope to elucidate on that more later. For now, here are some pictures of what I imagine him to look like.

The best resemblance I can find so far is Randy Harrison from Queer as Folk. And you know, it’s not a bad match.

Then there is Tim McIrath, but I think I see a rembelmce because of the vegan and political leanings. Maybe after Hunter goes on testosterone and hasn’t shaved in awhile, he could sort of look like Tim. But with the way that the hormone works, that probably won’t happen for some time. Keep in mind that these are cis men I’m showing you, and not trans men so the body shape and development would be different. Hunter pretty much just has male clothing and a shaved head at this point, and nothing else. (And he’s pregnant, but that’s totally possible and is happening more and more with trans men. Look at this video, here!). Randy Harrison embodies the nice “baby-face” look that a lot of trans guys have for maybe the first 5 years of their transition, depending on how masculine they appeared beforehand.

I also considered Geoff Rickey as someone who could resemble Hunter, since Geoff is slender and tends to be more on the feminine and artistic side of appearance and demeanor. Also, he has fantastic taste in books.

That’s it for now! Honestly, this was a hard thing to consider because it was hard enough to find a resemblance post for Jasmine. Now I went and did this huge change and had to go searching all over again.

Now the elephant in the room: why on earth did this happen? This was one of the “twists” of the books that I hadn’t initially planned out (the three of them being in a relationship together was another one). It took me until I was about halfway through to realize that a lot of what I was having Jasmine say or do were incidentally coding her as transgender. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with that, and since there was so many other things happening in the book, I initially thought I would just leave it alone and there for implication.  Then I began to write the Archive section and this story about Bernard came to me. It worked so well, and so much of Jasmine’s resistance before to pregnancy, being viewed in a feminine context, and all of her subliminal anger seemed to dissipate once Bernard entered into the picture, and once he was able to communicate with her on this level. I knew the switch would work.

As much as I rebel against the ‘transgender narrative’ now, it works for Jasmine becoming Hunter. I know a lot of you are probably used to the idea of the ‘man stuck inside a woman’s body’ trope, but that’s a stereotype. Not everyone who is trans knows since they were born and it is mostly the medical establishment that constructs theses very basic storyline where a = b = c where the end result is surgery. That is just not how it goes for everyone. I’ve talked before about how some people feel as if they have a missing piece and there are various ways of easing the pain of that missing piece. Some people find it in searching for a soulmate, some people find it through art, and other people, like Hunter, will find it through transitioning.

I’ve mentioned before how Jasmine’s character is rigid. I’m specifically talking about Jasmine as Jasmine – before the character realized that she could transition and be Hunter instead. (I know that pronouns get complicated here, and though I’m speaking of Jasmine and Hunter and using he/she, I’m using them in a temporal relation to the story. Not everyone who is transgender likes this being done and I want to emphasize that point). Jasmine is rigid because she thinks she has to adhere to all of these rules that she does not like in order to live in the world, so she tries to exile herself in small ways. Being vegan and resisting old gender narratives, as much as there is good ethical standing in those positions  are also ways of constructing walls and moral dualisms where you can categorize the world and what makes you feel safe. Getting pregnant and being convinced by Bernard that this is an okay thing to do, is one of the ways she is able to participate in the world again. The more she ends up talking to him though, the more she begins to realize that the other system she has put up around her life (obscene work ethic, family relations, obsessive feminist rhetoric) were all ways in which she did not have to deal with what was really bothering her. She knew that something was not right with her body – pregnancy exacerbates that feeling of being “not right” but she realizes that the benefits at the end of that outweigh the minor pain she is in then. She is realizing, much like Thomas throughout this story, that we will never be whole. She has been trying to be whole through outside means, but it is through Bernard, his art and storytelling, that she begins to craft a new system of understanding. She begins to find ways in which she can integrate herself within the world and deal with its rules though she does not like them.

So she decides to do this as Hunter, and becomes a he.

I know that making the character trans, to a certain degree, is still putting up a system. But it is a much better one that works with him and allows him to express himself. When he talks about the distinction between fantasy and reality and how he didn’t think he could do this because it wasn’t “real” – that shows that now he’s no longer dividing and categorizing stuff as much as he was before. He is living in and dealing with the gray area that Thomas has been throughout this entire story.

Even with this, I still worry that everything before had been eradicated and that my work at having Jasmine be a strong female character is undermined by this fact. But no, it’s not. Hunter has moved onto another level of his own personal identity and strife, and although I allude to it and you get to hear Hunter’s voice when he’s telling his story to Thomas, it’s really hard to reiterate how much impact Bernard had on this, since this is from Thomas’ perspective. Bernard was the one person that could see Hunter as Hunter; he gave him that name and told him the first story that cast him in the right role. Stories are important, and Hunter knows this. Even though they are not ‘real’ they still have an impact. It is Bernard’s insistence and teaching that finally lets him have what he has always thought was impossible: to be the author of his own story, and to decide what happens next.

In this sense, Bernard does for Hunter what he did for Thomas in the first one. This is so crucial and so important. I know that not everyone liked how Jasmine/Hunter ended up being in a relationship with Bernard, and I was even surprised when I thought of it and realized it worked. But it does – Bernard has the capacity to change lives. That is what he is known for and that is why Thomas and Hunter are so drawn to him. The whole story is about these types of transformative moments where suddenly one thing has a completely new meaning. Nothing may have physically changed, but your perception about the entire world is now altered. This is what Bernard does. Nothing has changed, but everything has.