What was Shelob, and more importantly, what was Ungoliant?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Groin Redbeard

But then wouldn't that mean that her children, including Shelob, would be Maia. I'm not sure how that would work.

Well, if we stayed with this assumption, what about Melian being Maia and her child being the most beautiful of the Elves? Similarly, Ungoliant as Maia could give birth to offspring of the nastiest of all spiders, which surely was true: not Maiar anymore, but also not "normal" spiders, but spiders of the size of a dog (in the degraded version of her grandchildren) or larger (Shelob).