#not saying that he is not an abuse enabler

[droppedpears]

Back then space seemed endless. Now it's empty.

a sort of companion piece to my anya one; i just think they share more parallels than people realize

[vendettapandav]

“Curly deserved better” “curly deserved so much more” “curly didn’t deserve what happened to him”

No no no no that’s the POINT. Curly is just as bad as Jimmy. He let so many of the giant red flags that tumbled out of Jimmy’s mouth slide. He was told multiple times about the abuse Jimmy was inflicting on Anya. He ignored Anya even when she pushed so far as to hide the gun on the ship bc she genuinely feared what Jimmy would do to her. Curly heard it all- saw it all- and he chose to do nothing. He had every opportunity to intervene before the crash but he didn’t. He chose not to. He blathered on and on about responsibility, about his willingness to do anything for his crew, but when they needed him most he did nothing. He just stood there and watched and let it happen.

And now he can’t do anything. He has lost the ability to make that choice. He physically can’t intervene now. His chance to change things and take responsibility has passed him by. Now, he has to just sit there and watch how the mask formed from all those red flags he so willfully ignored peels away and reveals the monster that was always there beside him. Now, he has to just sit there and watch as one by one, Jimmy manipulates and drives each and every one of the people that he swore up and down he would protect to the very edge, and kills them. Now, he just has to sit there and watch as Jimmy justifies each of his actions by blaming everyone else for the situation he put them in- the situation that Curly allowed him to put them in. He has to sit there and watch as Jimmy does everything in his power to create a palatable, sanitized narrative of what happened all so he can cover up what he was doing.

And Curly chose to stand there passively and allowed all of it until he physically didn’t have a choice anymore.

And in the end, Curly is the only one left to tell the story. The story of how it was all his responsibility, how he was supposed to do anything for his crew. And now, it’s all his fault because he couldn’t do just one thing. He has to live with that fact for the rest of his life. He has to live with the fact that his willful ignorance, his choice not to act, cost four people their lives. He will live with those physical and mental scars forever. But even worse, he has to live knowing that that’s the truth. And that in some cruel, twisted way, Jimmy was right.

The truth doesn’t really get rid of that awful taste in your mouth though, does it?

[thewingedwolf]

luther: the golden child

diego: the mastermind

allison: the peace keeper

klaus: the clown / mascot

five: the rebel / truth teller

ben: the lost child

viktor: the scapegoat

is this something i think this is something

[finalgirlsamwinchester]

part of the many many bits of heartbreak over the jack arc is just sam and dean replicating their childhood dynamics from different places. jack is now sam. sam is now dean, jack's ally but at the end of the day, that means nothing when john's word is the final rule. and john is now dean, determined to keep his family under control, bc to lose control is to invite further death and despair into your home.

[mischiefprincess]

I've been thinking a lot about Loki and Frigga these days, I don't think she's an evil, manipulative monster like some people but I do think she's a very flawed mother, from what we see in the movies she's very quick to justify and sugarcoat Odin's actions, Yes there's a deleted scene where she confronts him about Thor's banishment but it was deleted for a reason, in the movie itself we see her telling Loki that "there's always a purpose to everything your father does", she's always defending him, never her sons and that tells us a lot about the kind of mother she is, idk if it's bc she puts her position as queen above her position as a mother but she always stand by Odin's side no matter what.

Ofc we know she asks Odin not to kill Loki in tdw but that's just the bare minimum she could do, she always does everything thinking about pleasing Odin above all, she goes visiting Loki as a illusion, in secret to not anger her husband, when Loki is going through the trauma of finding out the truth about his adoption she never acknowledges any responsability for what she and Odin did, she justifies his lies agian by saying he lied to protect Loki

She doesn't acknowledge Loki's pain or his right to be angry at them, she tells him he's their son as if that's enough to heal his wounds, she doesn't ask for forgiveness and doesn't offer Loki any comfort bc her husband was taking a nap and she had to stay by his side at all seconds, it doesn't matter that her son had his whole sense of identity stripped away from him, holding Odin's hand was way more important than giving Loki a hug or anything else

I think at some moment Loki realized that she cared more about being Odin's queen than being their mother bc she'd never stand up for her sons and defend them from the abuses Odin put them through, she just kept justifying it bc she wouldn't dare going against her king, it must've hurt for Loki, realizing that he was truly all by himself in Asgard, he couldn't count on his own mother to publicly defend him from the humiliations he undoubtedly suffered, she would just sneak into his chambers and whisper some words of encouragement privately but when in public he was entirely on his own and he knew it

That's why I care more about Loki reuniting with his friends/found family than him going to New Asgard or to Asgard in the past, I have no doubts that he loves his family with his whole heart and he wants to see them again but I love the new family he built for himself in the show, he has Mobius who will defend him with everything he has and will be his emotional support, validating his feelings and genuinely listening to him, he NEVER felt like he belonged in Asgard but in the show he finally found his place, he found the people he belonged to (as stated by the crew) and he fought to save them for hundreds of years so there's no way I'd want him to leave his new home for him to go back to the place where he was mistreated, belittled and mocked just for being who he was, I want him to stay in the place where feels free to be his true self thank you very much

(Ofc that doesn't mean I don't want him and Thor to reunite again, I just think it's best for him to stay with the people he chose to be his family)

[ponyrepress]

the MW fandom so bad on Twitter that fuckin. jimcurly shippers say their ship is ok cause “they deserve each other” but then think youre a terrible person for suggesting that anya and curly like. cared about each other deeply and fucked up. i hope this fandom dies soon dear lord.

Jesus Christtttt I hope the yaoiheads die forever. Like. What the hell is it with people wanting to ignore everything there is to be said about Curly and Anya's complicated ass relationship in favor of painting Curly as a cartoonishly bad person and Anya as someone who didn't volunteer to take care of him in fucking terrible condition Despite Everything. There's so fucking much to say about Anya and Curly as people who were hurt by the same person and watched the other be hurt by the same person and ended up stuck together at rock fucking bottom in that nurse's room but nobody wants to talk about that because there's "good" abuse victims and "bad" abuse victims and they can't have any attachment to each other even if they do in text despite ultimately failing the other because uhhhh no they didn't. I fucking guess.

[hazbinbabbling4ever]

I've just seen someone say that all the people who were fans of good omens (before the allegations came out) were enablers of NG's abuse. Ok.

[weed-cat]

.

[fawnsflowerbed]

UHHHH KINDA NSFW WARNING SUGGESTIVE BUT HGUGSGJSZGKJSKDHKH

Idgaf what anyone says Sylus the type of guy to just saunter up behind you and grab your tits because you said he can.

Have you established in the past that you're comfortable with it? Absolutely. You know if you'd declined he wouldn't be acting like this, he’s a gentleman. Well, to some degree. And that is the reason this man abuses the power you've given him. You fool, you absolute buffoon. You've given him consent, you've enabled him to squish your boobs and that man has found his new favourite stress toy.

One hand holding the phone he's on call with, other hand smooshing your tit with the slyest, most shit-eating smirk in the world plastered across his smug face. Taking a shower together? squeezing those soapy tits. Convinced him to cuddle with you to stay nice and warm and cozy. Boobs. Nowhere is safe.

You might be a kitten to him, but sweetie that man is kneading your chest like a cat makes biscuits, humming low in his throat out of content when you huff and pout and whine. He especially loves to do it when you're all sleepy when he hops up to get ready for his night life, the way you scrunch your little nose like an angry cat but don't make any sort of move to stop him. In fact, you never do.

Part of him thinks you're seriously starting to secretly love it.

[acid-ixx]

a loving family, an unpalatable desire

reblogs and interactions are encouraged and appreciated.

a/n: would anyone hear me out if i ever wrote romantic yan! bruce (ft. platonic yan! batfam AND romantic yan clark kent alongside the superfam ofc) with a neglected spouse reader... because uhm, i've been thinking about it lately just yk... so anyways PLSPLSPLS send in asks about this, ive been thinking about it so much lately.

imagine wanting to raise a family so badly with a man who adopts problem children as a side hustle. you're not some invasive spouse, you've always been good, always been loving, so... so accepting, never questioned where or how he picked them up from the side of the streets, never once complaining about the hickeys on his neck or the once neat tussles of his hair now tangled accompanying lipstick stains on his white suit.

you love your children, you tell yourself all the time. you love them, you love bruce— even if he doesn't love you. you said it in your vows, despite it being scripted, despite your family finally sighing in relief in the sidelines at finally being able to sell you off to one of the wealthiest man in the world, rather than being wasting off under their care— your vows are real.

you wanted someone to love you, unconditionally, so viscerally eternal that it eats you up.

really, all you wanted was to play that fantasy life of trophy house spouses. all you wished for was a loving, healthy relationship. the american dream: the picture perfect family frames, your husband kissing you on the cheek as he leaves for work, your children bickering at the dining room, with the scent of homemade meals wafting about the vicinity. all you wanted was the warmth in your chest to flicker like candlelights. all you dreamed about was that domestic life, an escape from the abusive household you were raised in.

yet the manor is too cold, too unforgiving for a soul such as yours.

the longer you stay inside claustrophobic, yet oh-so large hallways, the quicker you drown in a neverending pool of self-hatred.

but you're not allowed to show them your sufferings. they've been through much worse, you tell yourself. they've suffered more, and as what good spouses do, as what you're taught, you stay silent, enabling them to turn you into their own emotional punching bag.

you only allow yourself to cry at the dead of the night, under the sheets of your too-cold blanket and your too-hot pillows. when the manor is filled with deathly silence and a looming sense of dread and ill fitting thoughts of ifs and when they'll come back in one piece, will you grant yourself temporary respite; worry for a family who never even called you their parent.

yet you've always been so considerate. despite the pang in your chest every time bruce flirts with anymore potential love interest at a gala, you chose to instead monitor your chaotic children, who have always never bat an eye on you despite you always gazing lovingly at them.

you know of their interests, they don't know yours, yet you still give them extravagant gifts on their birthdays, with tired, yet glinting eyes, and a silent excuse to return to your room; one separate from bruce.

you know of bruce's hardships, but you don't push too hard, don't force him to talk, only provide him your silence and an offer to serve him dinner; all the time he refuses without looking at you. you give him comfort only if he ever allows you, only if he allows his walls to crumble— but not even his spouse can amount to a warm, crackling fireplace. to him, you're probably only a matchstick under the deadbeat glaze of the snow in a winter night.

maybe that's why you're such a ghost in the manor, stalking through the hallways, looking out for any of your children in case they come across you with any injuries. maybe that's why eventually your resolve weakened.

and maybe the absence of familial love led you to find comfort in another man's arm.

''til death do us part,' is such a tragic saying in your case, because you know it in your fragile heart that bruce's love for you was never alive in the first place. and yet you allow him to play you like a fiddle, allow him to slowly allow you to slip away from his nonexistent grasp.

and now, you're a stand-in parent for clark's son, jon, after the tragic loss of his wife. now, your world seems a lot less bleaker, as you play the fantasy of a loving house spouse, fully abandoning the life you left behind, a life you've never been gifted with until now. you want to feel guilty, you want to feel absolutely terrible but the heartache of neglect has become too much and all you do was allow clark to warm you up each night, kissing away your tears and spooning your deep-seated anxieties away.

you don't let the past eat you up, not when the present is too perfect, too freeing, too delusionally beautiful.

your son, jon provides you every joy a parent could have. parent's day gifts, heartfelt letters at every nook and cranny of your shared bedroom with clark— even reading him bedtime stories, allowing him to sleep in your lap after he slowly nods off, with clark knocking softly on polished wooden doors, greeting you with a loving kiss on the lips and a bouquet of your favorite flowers in hand—

it's everything a parent wants, needs even.

and you're everything clark, and especially jon wants, needs in their life.

so it's such a stupid mistake, really. a slip of the tongue, a too-enthusiastic smile, incredibly bright, shining eyes. it's not jon's fault, you still love him either way. but it's an error still— one a complicated matter at hand, so dreadful for you, that jon accidentally, all-too-suddenly, mentions you as his parent to damian.

a loving, wonderful parent, he says, with a picture of you in his wallet shoved right in front of his friend's face.

[luveline]

hiya jadey! A hotchner!reader x spencer request for you <3 Maybe Spencer comes home a little tense/snappy from a case and reader misinterprets it as anger towards her so she starts clesning and catering to what she thinks Spencer needs so he isn’t angry at her anymore? (even thought he never was.)

She sort of regresses into what she did when her adoptive parents weren’t pleased with her :(

love you love you love you superstar!

i love u <3 | fem, 1k

cw past emotional abuse

The door to Spencer’s apartment closes with a distinct clunk. Certainly shut too hard. 

It sends a horrible feeling deep into the very pit of your stomach. Like you could cry, then and there. You frown at the odd feeling and stand to shake it off. 

Spencer’s home. 

“Hey,” you say, calling without seeing him, making your way into the living room from his kitchen to find him at the door. 

His bag looks heavier than usual on a slouched shoulder, his hair puffy. He must’ve showered before they flew back into Virginia and air-dried his short curls. He drops his bag on the floor, scrubbing his face, nose and eyes screwed up tightly as his glasses push up to his forehead.

“You okay?” you ask.

His face flickers. “Fine.” 

It’s not the greeting you’d wanted. Maybe you’re egotistical or something but you’d at least expected a hug. He’s the one who invited you over, surely he wants to see you?

The queasy feeling worsens. 

You give him a little kiss on the cheek to test the waters. “Missed you.” 

“Yeah, I missed you too.” 

You aren’t convinced. Spencer rubs his face again, trudging to the couch to lay down. 

You send yourself into a tailspin. Looking around the apartment, you can see why he’s unhappy. You left your cup on the coffee table, your handbag on the armrest, there’s so much to clean up and put away. 

His silence means you did something wrong. 

He asked you to be there. He left you the key. But maybe he didn’t really want you there after all. 

When you were younger, you’d get home from school, and a half hour later your father’s car would park in the driveway. You’d get this feeling, then, a tenseness, not necessarily fear but anticipation. Some days it wouldn’t matter, and most days he’d come through the door like a animal to be coaxed into softness. You’d convince him to be angry at something else. Enable his fury, agree with every word he said. 

Smiling, calmed, he’d walk into a spotless kitchen and find a pan soaking in the sink. I just wish you’d have some fucking consideration, he’d say. Or, Really? Or he’d sigh like he couldn’t believe it and slam a cabinet door. 

Nothing was right. You weren’t worth any patience.

“Dove?” 

You peek around the doorway again, your tidying having taken you to the kitchen to wash your cup. “Yeah?” you say. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Just– just cleaning up.” 

“It’s fine. It’s clean, don’t worry about it.” He frowns at you. “Are you okay?” 

“‘Course.” 

His frown deepens. Spencer only ever frowns when he’s confused. When he’s upset he tends to press his lips together in an accidental pout, and when he’s angry, he’s stony. Spencer’s good at profiling because it’s his job. You learned it at home. Seeing anger in things most of all. 

“I’m fine. Are you okay?” you ask, wiping your hands on your shirt. “Sorry, I should’ve asked how the case was. It was tough, right? It– I mean, they’re all tough.” You smile as you sit on the couch beside him, one leg tucked underneath you. 

He shakes his head. “I’ve missed something. I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong.” 

“Nothing’s wrong.” 

“You’re not acting like yourself.” 

“Sorry.” You wince. “I thought you were having a bad day?” 

“I am. Or, I was.”

Spencer holds out his hand. When you take it, he pulls you toward him with the care of someone who knows what it’s like to be startled, shuffling toward one another to be knee to knee. He holds your arm like it’s all of you, pressing you to his chest. 

For a while, you just sit there. Quiet, almost silent, the apartment rests around you. Spencer frowns at your hand as he draws lines up and down your arm, but slowly his frown softens, and you realise your stress has faded with it. Spencer isn’t angry. And if he were, it’s not with you. 

“Sorry I shut the door hard when I came in,” he says. 

You feel caught. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. Today was really bad, I got into it with Emily and the case… I don’t know. But coming home to you…” 

Spencer curls your fingers over his hand and presses them to the underside of his chin. 

“Thank you for coming over,” he says. “Did you eat?” 

You can’t help smiling, turning your hand slowly to cup his cheek, to hold him still. “I was waiting for you.” 

“Well, you decide and I’ll go pick it up.” 

“I can’t come with you?” 

“Do you want to?” He turns into your touch, glasses pushed against his eye, his lashes on the lense. 

You take back your hand. “Sure.” 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, we’ll walk. It’ll be nice, the weather’s not too bad.” 

“You feel okay?” he asks. 

“Worried about me?” 

“What your brother might do to me,” he says, nodding into the joke. Then he cracks just as quickly and tugs you in to hug you sideways. “Worried about how I made you feel.” 

It wasn’t Spencer’s fault, but you don’t want to talk about it anymore. You push up taller than him to encircle his head and neck, pressing your nose into the soft crop of his hair. He squeezes the small of your back with similar gusto. “Got my wires crossed,” you mumble. 

��Want me to uncross them?” 

You say, Please, and Spencer pushes you away from him to put your arms firmly on the right sides of you, uncrossing you, and kissing you on the nose. 

[radbelinda]

One of the things that strikes me about the whole Neil Gaiman thing is that people really want to portray Amanda Palmer as being a remorselessly complicit figure, when a lot of things that are very obviously fucked up and menacing when you put it next to the actual assaults going on - are perfectly normalised and accepted within poly/ENM world. All of these things are fucked up and menacing, but the bubble of pseudo-feminist poly world is incredibly effective at making you totally oblivious to the fact that you're opening the door to abuse and emotional damage.

The thing of 'oh we just slept together and I took a consensual nude of you, now can I have your consent to send it to my husband' is a feature of poly culture, not a bug. Suggestive and inappropriate comments to a woman about how hot your husband will find her are completely normalised. A statement from your husband like 'I don't get to play with my Dom side with you, so I need to be with other women who are natural subs' (which I suspect is the reason he gave when he kept having affairs when she was eight months pregnant, after agreeing to be monogamous) is something that culture will expect you to be completely Cool Girl about. Being blasé when a woman comes to you and says 'your husband made a pass at me' is also the expected Cool Girl reaction. Bringing women into your circle that you think your husband will find hot is completely par for the course in those mindsets and part of being a good and fun and sexy partner - no one doing that in poly culture thinks of themselves as 'feeding him women to rape' or grooming. Lots of people seem to find Amanda telling Neil that he couldn't hit on Scarlett, but still leaving him alone with her, to be jawdropping - but, as someone who has had people in ENM relationships exhibit poor boundaries around me and try to insinuate me into their sex lives in inappropriate ways, I know that that kind of thing is seen as due diligence and an appropriate way to navigate a situation. My experience of people immersed in that kind of culture is just this general assumption that words and agreements are magic - that all you need to do is communicate and agree terms and everything is fine, and if an agreement is violated you just need to communicate more and agree terms and everything is fine, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

What a lot of people want (and have wanted all along when they were making jokes about how understandable it was for Neil to 'fly across the world to escape having lockdown with her') is for Amanda Palmer to have been a truly abhorrent person, when the truth is that the whole culture around poly/ENM/open relationships - not necessarily the stated rules everyone claims to be abiding by, but the actual culture itself - encourages this stuff, especially from women.

I'm not suggesting Amanda is a victim in anywhere close to the same way as any of the women profiled in the reportage, and I do think her learned obliviousness enabled her complicity in creating a situation like Scarlett being left alone with Neil, but she has clearly been manipulated as well. Think of how insanely manipulative it was for him to wait until she was in late-stage pregnancy to start violating the terms of their marriage, how he surprised her with a lot of 'dark' elements of his personality after they were already married with a child, how we don't even necessarily know how much control she had over the marital pursestrings, how (as covered in the Tortoise podcasts) he would pressure the woman who lived on his estate into sexual activity by saying that Amanda, not him, wanted to sell the house and kick her out - and that if she kept him sweet he'd be her advocate against his evil wife. He is so clearly a profoundly manipulative person and it's just lunacy to suggest that none of that manipulation will have been targeted at Amanda.

[allpiesforourown]

every time you drop a jiuyuan post i get so excited because you get it.

i need shen jiu to be strange and obsessive about shen yuan at all times. bro can’t have a normal bone in his body when it comes to the only man in the world who is gonna coddle him but also hold him responsible in the most respectful loving way. and there’s just so many good flavors for jiuyuan… shizun! sj + disciple! sy or vice versa, both disciples, both shizuns, etc. all very scrumptious.

all this to say i really liked how you wrote them in the binghe self insert fic even if it wasn’t fully jiuyuan. your horny posting and aus and writing fill me with joy.

god bless.... thats exactly why i love jiuyuan because tbh shen yuan is one of the only people who doesnt have an extreme love or hate relationship with shen jiu and actually treats him like he'd treat any other person

Some people let sj do whatever he wanted with no consequences, which enabled him to be worse. whereas on the other end of the spectrum, those who didn't hesitate to curse him out/hurt him also pushed him into being more spiteful and angry. either way he only ended up more miserable. shen yuan is basically one of the only characters who goes "I understand shen jiu's actions, but they are still unforgivable" and i think it would drive sj insane. can you imagine

shen yuan: that was wrong of you to do

shen jiu: either kill me or shut up!!

shen yuan: ??? Why would I hurt you?? look, I understand why you did it, but that doesn't make it okay. I expect you to apologize, but i still care about you

shen jiu being treated like an actual person for the first time ever: h..huh..? I don't get it. how can you feel any way about me other than grovelling for my approval or wanting to abuse me

He would get hit with the "i'm disappointed, but I still believe in you and when you make it right, I will be here to tell you I'm proud of you." Shen Jiu would have no idea how to act. the mommy wife beam would ruin him.

also I like to believe shen jiu would act like he hates shen yuan but still be extremely defensive about him like

shen jiu: how dare he tell me what to do. apologize? me? who does he think he is, my mother?

someone: yeah he sucks-

shen jiu grabbing xiu ya: YOU TAKE THAT BACK RIGHT NOW.

[giglio-nero-e-bianco]

I'm not that much into the mouthwashing fandom, but I find it kinda funny that the only JimCurly shippers I've seen at this point always fall in one of these two categories

And honestly, my take on the ship falls exactly in-between

Like, yeah, Jimmy IS an abuser towards Curly now that he can't defend himself, he takes his frustration out on him, he mutilates him, he feeds him his own goddam leg, Curly is a victim of Jimmy

But saying that Curly is 100% innocent here is not quite right, Curly always seemed to forgive what Jimmy did and was a total enabler to his actions, not wanting to take sides when problems came up but subconsciously taking Jimmy's side, as seen when Anya asked for help

Anya told Curly of what he did to her but we never see Curly actually confront Jimmy on what he did, he only tells her "we'll go to him together", ok? You can still talk to him about it by yourself?? and when he does talk to him directly it's more like "sorry that happened, how does that make you feel?"

So JimCurly is kinda like "yeah, you kinda half brought this upon yourself by not stopping the monster before it finished opening it's mouth and now everyone is paying for it, including you"

Don't kill me, this is my own interpretation of the ship 👐

I still prefer Jimmy pretty much dead and the rest of the crew happy and alive, even Curly for that matter

[risetherivermoon]

i dont really like it when people dumb down Curly's characterization to just the guy enabling Jimmy. I get that that makes it easier to not like him, so that's why a lot of people do that, because they feel guilty about sympathizing with someone who's done smth fucked up like that, but i really don't think it's giving Curly the justice he deserves.

regardless of if you like him as a person or not, Curly is still a victim and he suffered greatly at Jimmy's hand. Just because he did something fucked up doesn't make him a 'monster' (sorry because i saw someone say that he looks like a monster post-crash and thats sticking with me because why TF are we saying disabled burn victims look like LITERAL MONSTERS- yall use some common sense I BEG)

Dumbing down characters is what fandom does best, but i think it particularly irks me in Mouthwashing because of the nature of the story. Jimmy already thinks of the rest of the crew poorly and doesn't see them for how they really are, we don't need to be doing that too.

I also feel like people don't really recognize the fact Jimmy manipulates and abuses Curly too, even before the crash. What Curly did was fucked up but for the love, don't dumb him down to just this one thing he did.

[canisalbus]

Sobbing over Machete, who can only be seen smiling in one part of the growing up compilation, as a wee little lad.

Sobbing over the face that he was a toddler in that part, a child who had yet to be separated from his family or know the abuse of his "teacher," who only knew the joys of cute snails and holding his favorite pet chicken.

It seems like all of his issues were compounded after his family left him :(

It is what it is. Considering the cards he was dealt, he managed to play his hand pretty well, I think. I've been mulling over this a bit lately, and I'd go as far as to say that in the eyes of his contemporaries, his childhood probably wouldn't even have been unusually unhappy or unfortunate. By most metrics he was a wildly successful individual.

Historically speaking, child abandonment has been more widespread than a modern day person might initially think.

(source)

I'd also like to believe that his parents meant well and the decision to give him up wasn't an easy one. They were going through an impossibly tight squeeze of financial and emotional hardship, and Machete, the youngest child, was constantly sick with mystery illnesses they didn't know how to deal with (anemia + weakened immunity system being the main cause for most of them). Rather than having the entire family suffer and starve, they arranged to have him be left at a monastery, hoping to give him a fighting chance to survive.

If there's a silver lining to it, it was a immense stroke of luck he ended up somewhere where he was looked after (monks were known to have better understanding and access to medicine than commoners). Moreover, he was also taught to read, a rare and priced skill at the time, which ultimately enabled him to claw his way into the upper echelons of the society. Not only did he survive, he prevailed against all odds.

Machete himself probably has mixed feelings about his childhood. He doesn't like to think about it, and (like most people) doesn't realize or admit the extent it affected him. His parents only exist on some conceptual, untouchable level to him, and I don't think he has any desire to try to find out who they were and if they're still alive. He might harbor some repressed, aimless and faceless resentment for them for deciding to wash their hands of him for a reason for another. Maybe it's the root of his inferiority complex and persistent sense of inadequacy, knowing there must've been something wrong with him for that to happen. But then again, it's hard to truly miss something or someone you don't have a personal connection to, or any memories about. In the end, he wasn't worth their time then and they're not worth his time now.

He can recall some of his time in the monastery and it was mostly a pleasantly uneventful existence, filled with strict but soothing routines and a sense of community. His mentor (father-figure, whether he likes it or not) was a cold and brutish man who disciplined him harshly. His relationship with him is tense and inflamed, but he realizes he wouldn't have gotten as far as he did without his tutelage, connections and patronage. If he hadn't sponsored his studies in Venice, he would've never crossed paths with Vasco either.