In defense of Mimi Marquez
as the ceo of loving Mimi Marquez i am quite disturbed by the various ways people will publicly voice how much they hate her. I understand that everyone is entitled to their opinions, however, I'm still going to explain why I disagree very strongly with these points.
she is an addict
well... yes she is? what am i supposed to say about that? congratulations on noticing?
on a serious note, if you think that means she deserves to suffer, i think your priorities are very skewed. she's 19. she's made mistakes. this doesn't make her irredeemable or really a bad person in general.
I'd also like to point out that several times during the show, she tries to quit. it's not an easy thing to do. she doesn't deserve to be hated for failing to do something extremely hard, while already dealing with unimaginable circumstances perhaps.
she's bad for Roger/tried to get him back on drugs/tried to manipulate him
no she's not? no she didn't? what are you talking about?
I've seen people say Roger would've just been better off without her and I'm genuinely baffled by this take, considering he didn't even leave the building for a long time. He wouldn't have been happier, he was in fact very deeply depressed. After meeting Mimi, he became a little bit less depressed, that's progress and it's good.
as for the other two points, she never tried to give him drugs. She in fact took her stash back from him. there is no point in the musical where she tries to get Roger to do drugs, I genuinely don't know what you mean.
i think interpreting what she does as manipulation is not neccecarily wrong but it's a very bad faith interpretation. she's a 19 year old with a terminal illness, not a criminal mastermind. and i think she genuinely wanted to help him, but i do know this is a little more subjective.
she shouldn't have broken into his apartment
i mean what choice did she have, the guy's completely shut in. besides, it's not like she tried to sneak in in secret with some ulterior motives, she pretty much openly walked in there. Roger could stop her any time. which he eventually did and which she reluctantly accepted.
she didn't know Roger had AIDS and still tried to sleep with him
this one's a little more complicated to me, because yeah, that's not great, i agree.
however, this is largely a hypothetical on many levels. first, the obvious, Roger is already infected, she isn't going to make that any worse or better.
and also... she never actually even tried to sleep with him in act 1? sure she's flirtatious and she makes a few innuendos, but it's never that serious. we really don't know. Roger wasn't very receptive to her flirting and we, again, don't know what would've happened otherwise. For all we know she could've planned to tell him if they ever got that far.
also, she doesn't even sound that surprised when she finds out in la vie boheme. "guy who's clearly going through something, with a dead girlfriend, in the middle of the AIDS crisis" is actually not hard to piece together. for the record. she could've easily just.... known.
she got back with benny
people for some reason love to blame Mimi for benny's bad decisions, so let me clear things up. no, it's not Mimi's fault that benny cheated on his wife. he's a grown man who can make his own decisions. we don't know how old benny is exactly, other than he's old enough to be married, but either way, there's definitely a power imbalance between him and Mimi. that's not great. he acts very possessive and weird about her. that's really not great. i don't see how any of that is Mimi's fault though, if anything she's a victim of this situation.
also, we have no reason to believe she cheated on Roger with benny. that's something benny tried to make up in happy new year to get in Roger's head. whatever they have going on during goodbye, love is at a time when Mimi and Roger aren't together. why would you believe benny on anything?
she shouldn't have dropped out of rehab
i mean really, imagine yourself in her situation. at that point she had nothing. Angel died, Roger left, benny is benny and she herself was dying. Quite simply, there's not much of a point to quitting drugs when she had no one to live for AND not long to live either way. feels like common sense.
also, if you're a Roger fan, reminder that he was also an addict prior to the events of the show and the only difference between him and Mimi is that he got a lot of support from Mark, something he could've provided to Mimi, if he didn't decide to move halfway across the country.
she died in front of everyone, traumatizing them further
I included this, because this is an actual opinion I saw, but I genuinely don't know what to say to this. in what way is dying selfish. what are you even talking about. this is so funny to me, actually. genuinely what are you talking about?
by this logic, wouldn't you have to hate Angel more? she also died and she didn't even bother to come back, which is quite rude.
finally, general reminder that Mimi is the youngest in the group, yet she has dealt with some of the worst circumstances and still handled it better than most people would. yeah, sure, she made mistakes, as people usually do in difficult circumstances.
Mimi is just a fictional character, sure, but the way I see people treat her makes me concerned about how these people would treat someone like her in real life. Also, i think some of you just hate women.