#gentrification cw

[fictionkinfessions]

Absolutely hate the “everyone in RENT is horrible” meme. Like, congrats! You missed the point of the musical and characterization!

Yes, I’m/Mark is more self-serving than he wants to admit in that he is pretending his documentary isn’t just a selfish way to try to make himself known! But he also does try to use it to help people! I’m/he’s not perfect!

Roger is too wrapped up in trying to leave his own mark on the world that he allows it to eat at him and he has the “poor me, my struggles aren’t understood” attitude. He’s ALSO dealing with his own grief at being HIV+ and risking it worsening to AIDS, not to mention the stigma/serophobia the world still has!

Maureen wants to save her performance space more than she wants to actually help people, and she quite possibly cheated on Mark. She also was coming out as a lesbian (or bi? Ambiguous, but in my canon she was bi) and she was trying to raise attention for the gentrification of the East Village.

Joanne was more possessive than necessary, but she was at a point where she was looking for something serious and frustrated at Maureen’s lackadaisical take with relationships.

Benny was honestly just trying to help his friends see their dreams come true, he’d just lost sight of the true goals. Also he didn’t really get a conclusion to his story line.

Angel and Collins are perfect and I will hear nothing less about my friends.

Stop mischaracterizing me and my friends! Yes we were terrible but my god, are you all perfect? The joke was funny once and now it’s annoying!

Mark (RENT) #💡💔

x

[horsequarter]

lots of my white friends don't have the ability to describe why gentrification is bad. outside of minorities being pushed out of their neighborhoods ofc. and i think a simple thing clicked for me the other day:

let's say a latine family in the neighborhood hosts a weekly party and everyone's invited. including you, i guess. but you don't go. you don't bake a cake--you don't give the host money for their troubles.

instead, you pool together all your resources and start throwing another party at the same time: with bouncy castles, with catered food, with tim allen.

do you see? there was already something beautiful growing there. instead of financially supporting the family already doing the work, white people, thinking themselves more equipped for the task, wanted to be in control of neighborhood growth. and why is that?