Gabby's Blog

I see stereotypes all the time, in the books, movies, comics, shows, in real life, and I have always felt they were super negative. I did think it was interesting that they can play an important role is how we perceive people or things, and we have this mental image of how something  looks because of these stereotypes. When reading about "Toxic Masculinity" by Luke Humphris, I really liked the meaning it had even though it was very short. I knew already that men do have this feeling of having to be masculine but I didn't know to what extent. I felt sad reading how the author felt all his life that he was never able to cry and had to hold everything in. Seeing that his own brother took his life due to this feeling of having to be masculine made me sad yet angry because it's dumb that they have to feel this way, but also I'm not sure where this stereotype came from.  I think stereotyping isn't ultimately necessary to character design and representation because

Reading "Maus", I thought it was interesting that the main characters were mice, and other characters were different animals. It seemed like the Jewish people were mice, while the Germans were cats, the Polish were pigs, and so on. I wasn't exactly sure why these specific animals were used except maybe as a stereotype, which is somewhat what it is and somewhat symbolism. Apparently the main characters are mice because it plays off the stereotype of Jews as being pests or vermin and the Germans are cats because they feed off the mice. I like stories that bring in symbolism like this because it adds a lot of underlying meanings and messages, which really brings more context to the story. I also like the simple style that was done for the story because it can get across a more complex subject in a easier way for many different people to understand. "Maus" is based on the story of Spiegelman's father, and this story really tells us how it was during the Holoca