OF OGRES AND HOBBITS
Once upon a time there was an ogre. He threatened to destroy the hobbits, because he realized that deep down in their hearts they were all covetous Gollums, and they wanted to turn all the Ogres into Hobbits and therefore Gollums. So he decided to try and turn the Hobbits into Gollum’s first. It was a huge stand off, the Hobbits and the Ogres trying everything in their power to do destabilize and discredit each other. Open conflict was not, however an option, because both sides had at their disposal the staff of Gandolph, the Tower of Saruman and the Eye of Sauron. If either side used any, let alone all, of these mighty weapons the whole world would be destroyed. But the Hobbits, having the fertile lands of the Shire, were always able to improve what magical weapons they had by investing practically everything they earned into them, which far exceeded the Ogres comparatively meager income. It was painful, very painful, but the Ogres eventually agreed to mend their Ogre ways and become more Hobbit-like in all their beliefs and behaviours. But the Gollum in every Hobbit spoke, and this voice they magnified with every wizard trumpet at their disposal. They said that the Ogres could never become Hobbits and the Hobbits would not let them share in their wealth and never sit at the same table as them. Once an Ogre always an Ogre they said. No Ogres shouldn’t try to become Hobbits — they should have to become tiny goblins instead. Yes, Precious, tiny goblins instead. And being tiny goblins, they wouldn’t need so much space to wander round in and hide where the Hobbits couldn’t see them, getting up to their old Ogre mischief. And smaller would be better because the Hobbits could set up Eagle patrols to fly around and high high over what remained of the land of the Ogres checking for naughtiness and threatening to stop anything that remotely looked like it. This the Hobbits called “exporting democracy”, which became a hated phrase in the land of the Ogres, especially when half way through dismantling their Tower of Saruman and cutting the staff of Gandolph to Harry Potter wand size they discovered to their horror that the Hobbits were lengthening their copy of Gandolph’s staff to the length of a Medieval lance, were erecting a second tower of Saroman, a complete duplicate right next to the first one, and were trying out all kinds of laser and particle beam technologies to increase the power of their Sauron’s eye.
This a certain young Ogre who had happened to become their leader and fixed it so he would remain their leader basically forevercould not take. He spoke out against the misery the Hobbits had inflicted upon his land, trying to keep it and its people small and of no consequence, he showed them the happy-future-together documents that they had signed. But they either laughed at him, insulted him or completely ignored him. And so, all the dismantling of the three globally deadly weapons ceased and a new project was started: to build them up so that they could at least compete with those of the Hobbits, if not exceed them. And he turned to reviving an old strength — legions of new, fresh Ura-kai. The old legions had shrunk and they heavy armour they wore was tattered and rusted. No way that armour could stop an elf arrow or a dwarf’s throwing axe. New tech was needed to create armour that stopped such projectiles in the air, before they even hit the target itself. The Ogres called this special armour “reactive armour” and thousand of Ura-kai warriors were created equipped in this and with state of the art weaponry. It was like the good old days when the Ogres had thousands of Ura-kai deployed threateningly on the edges of the Hobbit territory, ready to roll at a moment’s notice, to blaze into the Shire through an area known as the Fulda Gap. For years the Hobbits had replayed this terrible scenario in their heads: Ura-kai streaming in their thousands across the border as an invasion force, proving to be totally unstoppable, having to use their doomsday weapons to stop them and the Ogres retaliating by following suit. Maybe we should doomsday their doomsday weapons first, the Gollum-Hobbits thought, wondering if the Ogres might not be thinking the same thing too. Ogre technology was not limited to Ura-kai either. In genetic labs a new more powerful kind of Nasgul was bred, one that had an aerial agility way beyond anything possessed by a Hobbit Eagle. It could also see as well as an Eagle, and be its match, especially in head-to-head close combat, because of its tail which could vector thrust in every possible direction giving the creature insane maneuverability. The Ogres rechristened this new Nasgul with the Ogre word for “sucks to you”, which in Hobbit characters is spelled “Sukhoi”.
Though the Hobbits pointed to the actions of the Ogre leader and the way he eliminated his rivals and secured power totally for himself, the Ogres were too sick at how shamefully the Hobbits had treated them and wanting to show that they saw their future very differently. But the Hobbits could not envisage a world where the Ogres could be allowed to be Ogres and not threaten them ultimately with subjugation and even extinction. The thought of a world where Hobbits were Hobbits and Ogres were Ogres and it was shared equitably between them in good faith was an anathema to them. It was painful for the Ogres to have this confirmed to them and they thus decided — or their leader decided for them (difficult to tell exactly which it was) they had had enough and were going to make sure that this strategy of making them small, making them of no consequence and have to fit in, was immediately reversed.
Now there was a part of the area that the Ogres had always believed to be an integral part of their homeland that had grown very disaffected since the day of the new dispensation and the acceptance of the idea of peace and cooperation with the land of the Hobbits (perhaps more accurately referred to as the Hobbit-led world). The creatures in this part of the old Ogre homeland had varied in enthusiasm enormously over how much to try to become like the Hobbits themselves, to conform to Gollum-Hobbit values and even to get themselves accepted as part of the Hobbit homeland. For in truth, in this area the land was very rich and productive — had always been the closest thing in the land of the Ogres, to the Shire. Also, there was the possibility of magical golden rings being buried there lost during the old terrible wars that had plagued this part of Middle Earth. And there is nothing Gollum-Hobbits love more than magical golden rings. This process of Hobbitization horrified the Ogres and the Ogre leader in particular. He sent loyal Ogres in to sow division and foment discord, resulting in a division between true Ogre and Hobbit-Ogre territories. This horrified the Hobbits, and their democratically elected King shook his Lance-length Gandolph staff threateningly, creating massive peals of magical thunder whose shockwaves were felt around the world. “Two can play at that game”, the Ogres were shouting in the streets of their capital city, as their leader order almost his entire force of Uru-kai to the border with the newly established Gollum-Hobbit-Ogre land, which began to ask for help in establishing its independence and freedom — words which, coincidentally, happy to be sacred to all Hobbits, who hundreds of years ago had rallied under those very slogans to kick out their colonial masters (now their closest allies), and thus instantly eliciting a supportive response. From the Hobbits and their allies, the elves and the dwarves assistance poured in — particularly new special arrows from the elves and throwing axes from the dwarves both explicitly designed to make short work of Uru-kai armour.
But here sadly, children, I must not end my story, but put it on hold. For in faith I know of no ending that can emege from this that will be anything like the happy ending of those tales of fantasy with which we are so familiar. Which have shaped our lives. The expected result, the result every reader has been taught to expect is that the good Hobbits win and the bad Ogres lose, and are destroyed. Punished for their evil.
Yet, to tell you the truth, I have looked at the Hobbits, the Gollum-Hobbits and see that under the skin, the are Ogres too, and are behaving like Ogres. And the Ogres, likewise, are such Hobbits utterly and completely, why they cannot see this is so hard to tell.
This sameness is good you would think, but I’m not so sure. The more carefully I think about it, the more sure I am it is a recipe for final disaster.