choconougat quoted Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett
The wizards at Ankh-Morpork's Unseen University are renowned for many things_wisdom, magic, and their love …
Crab bucket, thought Glenda as they hurried towards the Night Kitchen. That’s how it works. People from the Sisters disapproving when a girl takes the trolley bus. That’s crab bucket. Practically everything my mum ever told me, that’s crab bucket. Practically everything I’ve ever told Juliet, that’s crab bucket, too. Maybe it’s just another word for the Shove. It’s so nice and warm on the inside that you forget that there’s an outside. The worst of it is, the crab that mostly keeps you down is you…The realization had her mind on fire.
A lot hinges on the fact that, in most circumstances, people are not allowed to hit you with a mallet. They put up all kinds of visible and invisible signs that say ‘Do not do this’ in the hope that it’ll work, but if it doesn’t, then they shrug, because there is, really, no real mallet at all. Look at Juliet talking to all those nobby ladies. She didn’t know that she shouldn’t talk to them like that. And it worked! Nobody hit her on the head with a hammer.
— Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett (Page 298)
And this. To leave behind the participation, the belonging, the communion that is not all you.
This is probably why I feel connection to the Nutt plotline, because what orcs were, he isn't. He isn't, because Margolotta made him, and sent him away from that environment. He grew to be different, he became a proof. He proved that not becoming the status quo was possible, one could choose. And he could even stand up to his very own maker in addition to the ...bio-engineered makeup. His own maker was the voice in his head, the thing that kept him down ... it was useful in the beginning (was it tho), but it was not helpful after a while. He learned to be critical about that. He escaped his crab bucket too.