Giant spiders

[Belin]

In truth, Ungoliant is almost a sort of evil counterpart to Tom Bombadil in that she is an enigma.

I think so too, and it's for that very reason that I like the idea of her not being a Maia. They're such a well-opposed pair: preservation/destruction, mastery/murder, humor/menace. And they both seem to fall outside the controlled, Valar-related order of things, functioning as forces of nature.

I almost want to link them up to the beautiful and the sublime, except that Ungoliant is not sublime but purely menacing and rather disgusting while she's at it. Maybe if there were a kind of negative sublime.

--Belin Ibaimendi