erttheking said:
Silentpony said:
Oh is this about Jim's video, 'cause that was just a hot mess and very poorly executed.
Also as a daughter of Ungoliant, isn't Shelob magically gifted in the ways of seduction, misdirection and manipulation? And if I remember correctly, Ungoliant was known to 'transform' for lack of a better term, into any form that fit her needs, including attractive women.
Think of them less like a brainless 'natural' spider and more like the spider from It. But instead of an evil clown to terrorize kids, its a hot ass woman to put a magical monster killing hero at ease, so he doesn't do what he does best to her eight eyed face.
I mean if Mr. Growly McGrizzleFace was actually Lady Growly McSternFace Shelob would probably take the form of her dead son, or husband, or dead sister or whatever.
Because Shelob is a magical, manipulating demiGod who happens to look kinda like a giant spider, when she chooses to.
Shelob isn't Ungoliant. Where is there any precedent for Shelob doing these things? Why didn't she do this when she was trying to kill Frodo? From what we know of her, her doing all of this is massively out of character. That and, you know, generic lazy writing
There isn't even any precedent for Ungoliant doing half that shit, Melkor and Sauron were known to deceive and trick with their shapshifting before they supposedly lost the ability or just stopped doing it after Ungoliant ate the two trees of Valinor. Ungoliant was not a trickster or seductress or anything like that, she was a hungry void monster that ate light that took the form of a giant spider after the Valar kicked her ass, she was locked into the spider form after eating the trees and had lost her shapeshifting before ever giving birth to Shelob. She's a clever monster who can make deals with entities like Melkor, but she is not gifted in any sort of seduction or misdirection beyond her basic backstabbing of Melkor, not sure where the manipulation comes from either as even her betrayal of Melkor was mostly driven by her all consuming hunger and demanding to consume the silmarils. We are talking about a monster that ultimately died because it consumed itself, this was not some clever trickster or manipulator, that was Melkor, Ungoliant was a terrifying void beast with intellect pretty much solely directed towards hating and consuming the light in the most direct manner possible.
Shelob is directly similar though consumed living things rather than light, she was scarred and had missing eyes in the book, she didn't manipulate and seduce prey, she had those injuries because she liked taking them head on to maximize their despair and torture when she paralyzed them and webbed them up for later. She made direct raids to feed on the orcs in the nearby outpost, the only "clever" thing she ever does is buy into Gollum's trick that he can bring her better prey, before he just fucks off to do his own thing and only lures the hobbits in because he thinks he can trick her again and take the ring after she kills Frodo and Sam. That's the extent of Shelob's trickery, she lets a malformed hobbit leave on the promise of bringing her better food then almost buys into the same god damned trick again when Frodo and Sam get there, before getting owned by the phial of galadrial and the Elven sword Sting, the being left in the cave grievously wounded ultimate fate unknown.
I don't know where the hell the devs got, "sexy shape shifting, future-telling, clever manipulator" out of that, if she could see the future you think she would have realized letting Gollum go was a tremendously bad idea, even if the ring or whatever else blocked that you think she would have at least realized that Gollum was full of shit if she was such a clever manipulator, apparently she takes a few hits to the head in this game and what we see in The Two Towers is Shelob with a traumatic brain injury.
