#baby’s first foray into procreate

[chicshinm]

wrasslin’

[anonymous-pandabear]

Might as well share the full-sized versions since I worked so hard on them!

Week 10: “The video has a runtime of two minutes and twenty seconds, is set to Be My Baby by The Ronettes, starts on a picture of a less than pleased Bucky at ten weeks with virtually no bump . . . They probably shouldn’t have something like this, if Sam is honest, because, even with as private and multiple-password-protected the video file is, the results of him being hacked and having it stolen would be disastrous. But, Sam would rather die than let go of it.” - Bringing Her Up by @writerkenna, “Day Thirty”

This was the first drawing I did for this series and my very first foray into digital art (beyond the odd doodle) - hence why it’s the simplest of the five. I think right around the end of this one I discovered that there were other Procreate brushes available to me than just the defaults. 🤪 Then I went back and did some texturing. Honestly Bucky’s jeans are my favorite part of this.

- H

[thehandmaidstalehulu]

As The Handmaid’s Tale nears the end of its first season, a poignant moment from the drama’s first episode comes to mind: Offred (Elisabeth Moss) is trying to comfort Janine (Madeline Brewer) at the red center, where all of the women who will become handmaids go for training. Janine is having a nervous breakdown, hallucinating and babbling nonsense. Offred gently tries to talk her down, to no avail, until Moira (Samira Wiley) slaps Janine. Moira turns to Offred with harsh instructions: “She does this again and I’m not around, you slap her. Hard. I’m serious. Hey—that shit is contagious. You want to see your baby girl again, you need to keep your fucking shit together.”

That sentiment has permeated each episode that follows, as Offred endures abuse after abuse, all in the hopes of reuniting with her child—and as Janine crumbles further and further under her own suffering. Throughout the series, with Moira mostly off on her own journey, Janine has emerged as one of the Hulu drama’s most important players—a tragic foil to Offred that reminds viewers just how extraordinary Offred’s constitution is. Not everyone is that strong; not everyone can keep themselves together under these conditions. And indeed, as Brewer notes in an interview about this week’s episode, Janine “represents to the other handmaids what could happen if you lose your shit.”

“The opportunity that we’ve had with this 10 hours of television is, we’ve been able to suss out Janine’s character a lot more [than in the book],” Brewer said. “Along with many other characters—Moira, the Commander, Serena, and just everybody. But in the book, Janine is more a source of … frustration and kind of annoyance for the other handmaids—because she’s the first one to get pregnant, but she’s also kind of batshit crazy.”

Indeed, over the past few weeks, Brewer’s character has displayed a slow but undeniable mental breakdown—one that culminates in Episode 9, “The Bridge,” when Janine’s story becomes even more difficult to watch. (To prepare for her character’s tragic trajectory, Brewer said she researched sexual-assault survivors and the various ways they react to and cope with trauma.) By the time viewers see Janine in the season’s penultimate installment, she’s been captured and raped, like the rest of the handmaids—and on top of that, she’s also been lied to by her first Commander, Warren, who convinced her to perform sexual acts outside of the prescribed procreation ceremony by saying he was in love with her.

As it turns out, he never actually intended to run away with his handmaid. And as Janine moves on to her new posting—this time with a Commander named Daniel—she begins to show obvious signs of cracking. This week, viewers saw her finally break during her first ceremony with Daniel—throwing herself on the floor, then collapsing into the fetal position in the corner of the room. At the end of the episode, things get even worse: Offred, Commander Waterford, and Serena Joy rush to the bridge where Janine is standing on the edge—holding her and Warren’s baby. Offred talks her down in a tender moment, as the two fantasize about going for a wild night out once the horrors of Gilead come to an end. Janine hands over the baby, but ultimately jumps off the bridge into the frigid water below. It’s the second suicide attempt this series has seen—following Ofglen’s more amusing foray into car theft, which almost certainly ended in that character’s death.

“I think a distinction that can be made between those two suicides is Ofglen is letting the world know that they won’t break her,” Brewer said. “And Janine is kind of succumbing to the fact that this world has broken her. I think that the big difference between the two of them is that [Ofglen], all the shit that happens to her, she only gets more and more fire. And Janine, all the shit that happens … she’s just tired of it. This world hasn’t completely broken her. She just doesn’t know what else to do.”

The Handmaid’s Tale is chock-full of characters whose strength is both undeniable and inspirational. Offred’s refusal to give up is nothing short of heroic; Moira, too, proves her boundless bravery when she makes a second escape attempt—this time from the brothel Jezebel’s. It’s this abundance of courage and fortitude that makes Janine—a more fragile person—so important to this world. Viewers need a reminder that while survival and sanity can be found in Gilead, some people will permanently collapse under its weight. The collateral damage this dystopia has wrought amounts to not just psychological trauma—as bad as that alone would be—but also the loss of so much innocent life. Janine represents that loss—and because of that, her decision to jump from the bridge is one of the drama’s most powerful moments yet.

“Janine, to me, kind of represents—I think she represents how someone can be broken inside this world,” Brewer said. “I don’t think her jumping off the bridge was necessarily [her saying], ‘I just want to die.’ It was, ‘I need to do something, because something needs to change.’”