A Completely Fictional Fairytale About a Troll
Once upon a time in a magical land far away, there was a village of cute little houses with thatched roofs, and a large windmill that slowly turned, picturesquely. Just a little bit out of the village, down a path of smooth flagstones, there lived a beekeeper named Knut in a quaint little cottage by his beehives. He had a pointy red beard, 1,074 friends, and a pet troll. The 1,074 friends lived in the village, the troll lived under some horrid rock, and the beard of course lived upon his face.
Knut's friends were fond of coming down to chat with him on his porch. They would talk of many things. Often they liked to criticize the incredibly incompetent king of that land, Donaeld the Unready, for in this kingdom that was permitted.
"Donaeld is ruining this country" they would say. But just when everyone was nodding their agreement, the little troll would burst from the hedge
"No he's not you libtard!" he would shriek, "you probably like soy lattes!"
Sometimes people would back away slowly. Sometimes they would argue with the troll, which only seemed to invigorate him.
"Hey look at this graph demonstrating climate change with great scientific rigor!" a friend of Knut's says one day, arriving with a graph, "mind if I put it on your wall?"
"Certainly go ahead!" Knut says, because he is a great fan of not dying in an avoidable climate catastrophe.
"Hmmm, yes, clearly we are all going to die in an avoidable climate catastrophe" his friends are saying as they examine the graph. Suddenly the troll leaps out from a nearby drainpipe:
"Climate change is a HOAX!" he squeals venomously, "you've all been brainwashed by the liberal media!!"
"But 99% of scientists agree--" Knut's friend Fitzroy begins to say
"All scientists are biased!" the troll insists with great earnestness
"What, how" Fitzroy asks
"You only become a climate scientist if you have a climate AGENDA!" he shrieks
"That makes no sense" Fitzroy says, "scientists only report what the data they find indicates and they're always trying to disprove eachother"
"I went to an IVY LEAGUE school, and I make a lot more MONEY than you" says the troll, "you're just a snowflake libtard who probably went to a liberal arts school how's that working out for you??"
"Actually..." begins Fitzroy, explaining his hard science degree, but the troll is thirlled and invigorated that Fitzroy is engaging with him.
"Why do you keep him around?" Throckmorton later asks Knut. But Knut, who gets stung by stinging insects for a living, values free speech and a diversity of opinions. The troll is obnoxious but it would be bad for his friends to forget that there's people like him around, and moreover it would be against Knut's principals to axe someone for a difference of opinion.
One day a plague was sweeping through the land and tensions were running high.
"King Donaeld is firing all 7,300 of our kingdom's international volunteers!" Knut announced in dismay to his friends, who were properly socially isolated one condor-width away from one another.
"They could not be more non essential!" shrieked the troll climbing out of the trash can, "we no longer need them to sing kumbaya, they need to find a pragmatic job!" the troll twitched a bit.
"Kumbaya huh?" asked Bolderic who had been one of these volunteers in his day.
"ZOOOOOOOOOOONK!!!!! said the boy" said the troll "whose hippie parents exposed countless children to sexual abuse because they screwed up real bad," and that's an exact quote.
People backed away, Knut quietly reached for his axe, the troll continued to paint repugnant insinuations involving sexual abuse.
"Hey this has veered pretty heavily into completely off the wall insults" Knut, who usually doesn't get involved, asked, hoping to give the troll an opportunity to at least confront directly the person whose front yard he was besmirching, but the troll declined to respond.
Knut is inclined to deal with things head on, but there's only one way to deal with trolls. You don't try to argue or talk to them. He had given the troll an opportunity and that was all he'd get. A little later, he came up behind the troll while it was admiring a picutre of Donaeld that it had, and without a word, he struck off its head with his axe. He then posted the head on a pike and left it on display in front of the house, so everyone would be reassured that the troll was no more.
When the people came back, Knut was touched by the compassion they showed even for the horrid troll.
"He was obviously very troubled" they all agreed.
"Was he abused growing up? His insults got very specific in a very disturbing way." Fitzroy pointed out. And they nodded sadly.
"Probably the plague was stressing him out, but he couldn't admit it, which is why he lost it more than usual today" Throckmorton surmised
"It seems he thought money was the meaning of life but now he has a soulless job and no love life or family and he's struggling to hold it together. Insulting people was probably the only way he could connect with people" said another. They all agreed it was better he was gone but they hoped he'd get help.
Later when someone put a graph on the wall showing their kingdom was doing much worse in the plague than the other hard-hit kingdom of Pizzerialand, some actually even wished the troll was there to offer some laughably preposterous defense of King Donaeld's handling of the situation.
But the troll wasn't done yet.
You see, trolls are famous for not quite being dead.
The next morning as Knut was just stepping outside to stretch, the troll's head upon the spike spoke to him. It said
"Get this off your fucking yard dude. Be the bigger man, this is tacky as hell. You know some of us talk about your scam artist refugee fiancee obviously taking you for a ride"
Knut narrowed his eyes, for just a moment, at his sweet Dulcinea being brought into this, but then he laughed, and laughed and laughed, for he realized, the troll had inadvertently given him one last gift. In what was left of the troll's decaying and rotten mind, perhaps he pictured Knut trying to justify himself to him, them getting into an argument in which he could enjoy slinging wild paint-peelingly caustic insults, but he didn't take into account that all Knut had to do was not dignify him with a response and he just came across as a sad pitiful wretch who couldn't bear even a light insult. A snowflake you might even say. Sometimes by saying nothing at all you can indeed get the last laugh.