Adding a little more here.

A lot of this for me is also that my primary social circle for well over a decade has been a specific subset of the autistic self-advocacy community. And there's so much that's unfortunately relevant here -- dehumanization, the effects of long-term compliance training, the periodic fear-mongering that we're likely to snap and kill people (at least in the US after every mass shooting), diagnosis-hiding, people who say "you can't be" if you don't fit utterly nonsensical definitions of autism, the way professionals often try to convince autistic people with no connections to other autistic people to assume a position as 'role models' for the rest of us.

That last one is the main reason I react so strongly to Margolotta's "no culture" thing. A lot of 'experts' insist that "autistic community" and "autistic culture" are a contradiction in terms, so impossible it's not even worth arguing. And it's not just one community, and I'm not going to pretend the dynamics aren't an utter mess at times, but it is there. As frustrating as it can be, they're not going to be able to fix the issues in something they can't admit exists.

I doubt all of this is intentional, but the book just hits on so much that's familiar to me.

I suspect that in addition to all of that, there are also lifespan issues going on here. The timescale Margolotta changes on is not exactly an ordinary mortal timescale.

If Nutt's autistic traits are unintentional, it's definitely not just you reading too much into things.
https://charlemane.tumblr.com/post/129564577740/s... https://kitbeard-blog.tumblr.com/post/8388473124/...

The reason I like UA so much is that while the autistic-coding seems pretty clear, it's all a bit messy and ambiguous. It's hard to tell what might be meant to reflect innate autistic traits vs. social inexperience vs. trauma. And that's a lot more relatable characterization to me than autism-onna-stick coding. (It's... complicated for me, because I also have a rare genetic disorder that makes people think I have a contagious illness all the time. I can't tell what's autism and what's having had weird social experiences because of that.) Unfortunately, characters with autistic communication patterns who actually care about people and are sincerely interested in how people work (and are sometimes even socially perceptive!) are... rare in fiction. (Abed from Community is the main exception I know of.) So I really like how Nutt's autistic-coding is done.

Probably predictably, given my comments so far, the conversation between Nutt and Lady Margolotta is what makes the book for me. But I also read their relationship differently from Mark and see more than a little colonialism in Margolotta’s remarks.

I see this scene as all about reclaiming power and agency. It means more to me with Margolotta taking offense than it would had she apologized. I think there are strong hints that Nutt’s desperation and lack of confidence weren’t entirely accidental side effects, but in part ways to maintain control so he would be more useful for her purposes. There are parallels with how emotional abusers try to keep their victims dependent.

It means so much that Nutt is now in a position to redefine the terms of their relationship. I think “Do I have worth?” and “Have I become?” have different significance here. I don’t read them as about validation, exactly — there’s a noticeable absence of emotion in the exchange. Narratively, these questions need closure. By asking them, Nutt cuts off Margolotta’s chance to pass judgment on her terms. (And of course she was going to say 'yes,' but her not saying "Mister Nutt" after his request is also significant here.) And then he continues countering her framing throughout the conversation and leaves on his terms, not having thanked her for what she gave him. (That omission doesn’t seem accidental.)

“Is it they who should be sorry?” feels very pointed to me. How complicit was Margolotta with the Empire? “Many bad things were done” in the passive voice? More generally, why is it the descendants of the group with the least choice that categorically need redemption? Is that real progress, or does it reinforce the stories that leave out the men with whips? There’s also a question of whether we’re meant to accept that people who truly have “no history,” “no culture,” and are surrounded by enemies could hide unnoticed for centuries, rather than very quickly forgetting the need to stay hidden and wandering into populated areas. I think it’s possible that when truly "left to themselves," the orcs do have the capacity to find themselves together.

The text definitely doesn’t explicitly contradict Margolotta. But I’m not sure we’re meant to take her entirely at her word. She only tells Vetinari that the orcs were made from humans, which makes her intended ‘history’ a little suspect. I’m not convinced that this is a special case where it’s somehow good for a cultural outsider to ‘civilize the savages’ and give them a ‘history’ written entirely by groups that perpetrated and condoned slavery and genocide. “Who would you send to teach the humans?” has some very serious implications beneath the humor.

I like that for Nutt, a crucial part of finding himself was leaving Ladyship’s castle and making friends with three working class people. There were lessons he needed to learn from seeing devalued, underprivileged people help each other and intentionally resist cultural expectations. I also like that, for all that other characters try to put him on a pedestal as the exceptional orc, he never seems to quite go along with it. It’s not just that he knows he matters by the end of the book. He knows they all matter.

I think this all makes a lot of sense. But I also wonder…books about philosophy and ethics contradict each other. Without experience in a society, is it possible to make a coherent worldview that way?

[Terra Ignota]
“Wrubinu jnf envfrq jvgu rirelguvat, nyy cuvybfbcuref, nyy bhe ynathntrf, rdhny npprff gb nyy gur pbagenqvpgbel guvaxvat bs bhe Uvirf naq bs gur cnfg, fb gur znal oryvrsf naavuvyngrq bar nabgure, yrnivat gur pnainf oynax naq ernql.” Gubhtu sbeghangryl Ahgg qvqa'g pbzr njnl jvgu gur pbapyhfvba gung ur'f nabgure havirefr'f Tbq. :-D

[This book]

"Znetb nyfb gnhtug Ahgg n ybg; jung yrffbaf jvyy UR xrrc be qvfpneq va yngre lrnef?"

Be rira ol gur raq bs gur arkg qnl...

Also, Pratchett definitely knew how to redirect reporters and had a reputation for it. (Having a bit of fridge horror here given when Unseen Academicals was written, because I'm sure Pratchett ended up having to do this re: Alzheimer's.)

"Terry Pratchett is deceptively easy to interview. He was a journalist for many years and knows the ropes. It will sneak over the interviewer, after a while, that they’re talking about what Terry wants to talk about and have departed from the carefully thought-out questions. He is also skilled at deflecting personal enquiries, keeping Terry Pratchett the ebullient author carefully separated from Terry Pratchett the rather private person."
- Stephen Briggs, “Terry Pratchett: The Definitive Interview”
(Found at https://noirandchocolate.tumblr.com/post/17568419...

Oh, I think the two very detailed answers are totally what he'd do otherwise too! And I did get the sense that he was having fun with those, though partly by screwing with her expectations. But I think he's figured out the effect that his lectures have on other people and knows how to use that by this point. I just also like this as an example of intentionally using really autistic-coded communication patterns to one's advantage, because so often this is treated as only a social weakness.

So, I loved the interview because Nutt basically subverted all of Roz’s expectations about how it would go and left her with nothing she could use. That felt pretty intentional to me. This isn’t just a disability thing, but her initial questions about being an orc feel so much like the self-narrating zoo exhibit questions disabled people get in interviews for human-interest stories. It’s best to learn to dodge them, because if you give any actual answers, they will be twisted to fit the publication’s preferred angle. It won’t be respectful — most often it’s some inspo-porny “overcoming” BS that erases social context and reinforces stereotypes while saying you’ve risen to prove them false (often while heavily implying they used to be true of you too). And in this case, the stereotypes are excuses for murder. Unless Bu-Bubble is actually the equivalent of post-2016 Teen Vogue, trusting them with actual answers probably would have been very unwise.

It did just say "suspiciously like an anagram," so I'm assuming it's inexact.