If you have read J.R.R. Tolkien’s book The Lord of the Rings you may be one of millions of readers who wondered whether the fantastic creature known as the Balrog of Moria really had wings. It’s a made-up creature in a fantasy book and most people do no more than wonder. But in tight-knit fan circles the argument has been raging for decades over whether the Balrog really had wings or not, this despite the fact that the matter was logically laid to rest.

Tolkien scholar Michael Martinez published a well-researched essay revealing the truth about Balrogs and their wings at the height of a raging debate in which people trying to prove there were no wings in the book resorted to malicious personal attacks against anyone trying to show what the book said. Citing original sources and laying out the debate in an unbiased fashion, Martinez proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the Balrog’s so-called wings were “shadow stuff” and not a metaphor.

Despite being confronted by the best argument in cyberspace on the matter, anti-wings fans continued their war of personal attacks, misrepresentations, and deliberately bad scholarship to win converts by distorting the fact. Numerous polls nonetheless show that a majority of readers accept that the Balrog had wings — wings of darkness. After several more years, Martinez was once again pressured into responding to the arguments by writing another essay detailing the facts and the truth about Balrogs. This time around, the arguments were laid to rest for a while.

In the latest round of attacks on the credibility of people who accept what Tolkien had to say about Balrogs, some people now hiding behind pseudonyms like Halfir and Elenhir have launched a new jihad of lies and distortions in order to shore up their flagging arguments. Martinez, who is active in the Tolkien forum at SF-Fandom, has asked not to be included in any more of these irrational, premeditated fan fights.

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