Inconsistency: Shelob's reaction to light vs. 🕷️Ungoliant's behavior?

Squint-eyed Southerner said:

Exactly the point of my "hints and warnings", but as I said, I hope to address the subject more fully on another thread.

Edit: when I spoke of an author identifying a source -- or an association -- I wasn't referring to the text itself, but to his commentary on the text. We have many of these, as, for example, his associations of lembas and miruvor mentioned in my linked post above, or that he had the Lord's Prayer in mind while writing the Sammath Naur scene.

Sorry I was unclear.

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Ahh, bummer I learn by comparisons like Ent's. I hope the mods can be lenient with this sort of thing. I'm a newbie, so I don't know perhaps you all have wisdom here from experience.

But my own experience is that politics and religion are living breathing words. They are sort of in everything. Before I was born apparently the word "imbecile" was used as a medical term but then eventually it became a derogatory term, so people replaced it with a word that was nicer: "retard". And then that word was fine until all of a sudden it wasn't. So now there are new words ("special" is one of them), which will be used until they fall out of favor. The point of course is that we get offended not by the word but the concept behind it.

So my point in saying all this is to suggest being cool with religious references unless something is obviously a violation of the forum rules. Without that sort of leniency, the same undesired pressure just builds up into new words and expressions, which is not really helpful or authentic.

I was thinking deeply about the posts last night and reading two towers, and a I thought it would be so cool if the forum poster Ent was really an Ent and we could sit in the forest and he had the time to explain to me all the things he needs a long time to say.

greg glaser said:

I hope the mods can be lenient with this sort of thing

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Oh, my "hints and warnings" crack wasn't in reference to forum rules; as long as the discussion is about Tolkien's views -- or sources -- you're fine. 🙂