Board Thread:General Mod Discussion/@comment-26088681-20171011203808/@comment-25101089-20171018212723

Shelob appearing in the form of a woman is wrong, very wrong, for a reason which deserves to be mentioned more. Even if Shelob is counted as Maia - even if Ungoliant was, which is far from definitive - a major theme of these evil shape-shifting beings is that their continued usage of evil forms eventually wears away at their ability to put on new ones. Wear a monstrous form for too long, and you'll get stuck with it forever. So even if Shelob was a Maia, she couldn't incarnate like that, no more than the Balrog could wake up one day and decide he was going to cosplay as an Elf.