20 February 2024

Kind of fed up with the options we have in the recent presidential elections. So I wrote a thing. I’m not sure how I feel about doing political commentary; seems a lot more prone to causing conflict and aggression than I’d like to be. But I wanted to put my thoughts down somewhere.

There was once a pair of demons who yearned to walk the earth and revel in its depravities. One was a fat, bipedal mammoth with a gold crown a top his head, who loved nothing more than to trample on the masses beneath him. The other was scrawny, little more than a skeleton, with a donkey’s head. He had a propensity to manipulate those around him, whether through words or wires, turning the world around him into a grand puppet stage.

They’d hidden themselves well; disguised as human, they mingled with humanity, and slowly gained power. Sometimes they fought–for as any demon would, they hated each other with a passion–but often times, they exaggerated their enmity while they worked behind the scenes to enslave the population.

By the time they revealed themselves for what they were, it was already too late. They’d grown so powerful, most people believed they couldn’t do anything; the demons were unkillable.

Except… there were those. Some few, small brave souls, who risked their very lives to speak out against this injustice. “There must be a better way.” “We have to have other options.”

Like a whisper in the wind, the words traveled to and fro, and with every new gust, more voices joined in the chorus. The demons and their henchmen tried to stop it, of course; it would not do for the people to have a voice, to remember freedom for themselves. But who can stop the wind?

Spurred on by the voices in the breeze, brave men and women rose up to oppose the demons. It was true that one soul, alone, had little hope of vanquishing them. But together, with the voice of the people behind them? There is nothing a champion could not accomplish.

So the question remains. Who among us is willing to stand?

12 April 2023

I’d just watched Tolkien again, about his life, and it struck me that for as iconic a creature as the balrog was in Lord of the Rings, it never really shows up anywhere else. Probably because it has too much in common with the aesthetic of the traditional demons in Christian lore? regardless of the reason, I kind of wanted to do something with it.

That said, I’m pretty dissatisfied with this attempt. It doesn’t feel true to what they were, and is all sorts of weird. It was worth exploring, but I won’t be doing anything with these ideas directly, at least.

It is said that the first balrog formed the moment man first tamed fire. For before that the flames held no malevolence; they were but a force of nature, destructive as they were. But no, under man’s control, it was only a matter of time before someone used them with ill intent.

In our world, they remained largely unseen, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there. There beside the first man who committed arson; every “witch” burned at the stake. The many, often literal, flames of war, up to and including the nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But here, in the world of [Lordran], they were not content to keep to the shadows, to whisper into the ears of men. No, here, they stalked the realm in physical form., giant horned beings of ash and flame. Few knew they’d ever had a master, and none but them knew if they served another after his death, or if they worked towards their own inscrutable ends.

There was no killing one, either; at least, not permanently. The great heroes had struck even the mightiest of them down at various points throughout history, earning a century or two’s reprieve from the beasts’ tyranny, but they lacked the divine power required to slay them for good.