So, you know how people will say "Hatsune Miku wrote Harry Potter" because they still like it but don't want to support its shitty, hateful creator? Yeah...this is sort of along those lines.


I have the name of a spider and love spiders in general. I've always been a big fan of the giant spiders of fiction and folklore. Basically: I just think they're neat.



- I no longer have a mother figure
- I miss having familial connections sometimes
- I enjoy self-mythologizing
- I think it's funny tbh



Not like that. I'm a human being with human parents. It's not a kin thing or a furry thing -- no hate to those in those communities, it's just not how I feel/experience things. It's basically a long-running personal joke.



I grew up in the 90s in the southeast USA and shabby chic was A Thing in interior design at the time. When I tried to think of any cozy childhood memories, they looked and felt sort of like this.



This is where I'm going to start talking about heavier stuff, be warned before you scroll!! I'm about to get bizarrely vulnerable for a page about big spiders and if you think that's gonna make you uncomfortable I get that~

Take me to the Ungoliant & Shelob section!!

When I say I no longer have a mother figure, I arguably never did in the first place.

I have no biological family members I'm still in contact with. I didn't grow up knowing the Chinese side of my family, and I was raised in a family where no one else looked like me, by a narcissistic single mother who never did the work to process and heal from her own trauma and rage and tried to funnel it all into me instead. I got to be the golden child ("Pookie") outside the home and the punching bag ("stupid piece of shit," etc.) behind closed doors. It was...a bizarre and not-great experience overall. 0/10 do not recommend, got my tubes tied at 25 to make completely sure it doesn't happen again.

I went no-contact with my mother nearly a decade ago now. She'd previously done the same with her own mother for similar reasons, but still can't respect my decision and continues to try to contact me even now.

For a while, holidays were a little rough. Some days were sadder than others. On her birthday, refusing to send her a text, I felt like I was skulking around. Playing hooky from my role as her child. On Mother's Day, I felt alternatingly pathetic, the Little Matchbook Girl looking into the windows of others' happiness and shivering alone in the cold, and filled with punk rock fuck-you zeal to do all the things she would hate to see me do in a single day. Or more accurately -- things she would hate to have other people see her kid do. That was always the priority.

I've spent Christmases alone. It's kind of fun. Where I live becomes a ghost town as people flit away to their families. Taking a walk in the cold with almost no one else around is so peaceful.

There's a hibachi buffet near where I used to live. This has been years ago now, but I remember getting absolutely blitzed and taking a book there on Christmas Day. It was a great time. When I went to pay, the woman at the register told me a family had already covered my tab, with an overly sympathetic look. It made me think they'd seen me with my red eyes alone in a booth on Christmas and thought I'd been crying, and might have told her that. Mildly embarassing in the moment but it saved me $20 at a time I knew I was stupid to spend it, so I'll take it. I kind of feel like I scammed them a little, but I hope it made them feel good. Thank you, whoever you were!! I appreciate y'all.

But I digress. There were less-fun holiday times as well, as you might expect. Red eyes I earned the "right" way in the opinion of buffet-going good Samaritans. I eventually realized I wasn't missing my mother, I was missing the concept of having one at all.

So I needed a substitute. As I was coming from a background of being raised to feel inherently Bad and Wrong and Other and Unworthy, I needed a "mother" who was beautiful and terrible. This time, I wanted a mother who terrified other people, who could use her wrath to protect me, not try to destroy me.




These two are my favorite because they're iconic, and I am a biiiiig nerd. However, I'm not the genre of nerd that has the Silmarillion memorized, I am a filthy casual LOTR-enjoyer. 😔 Give me time, though. It's something that's lurked around the edges of my interests for a long while. I'm not going to throw a bunch of fantasy terms at you because I don't really know what all this shit means either. (LOTR superfans please don't come for me it's not shit I'm just lost)

Ungoliant was a demonic spirit/force of darkness who assumed the physical form of a gigantic spider to assist Melkor/Morgoth (ancient big bad/sort of Satan allegory) in destroying [two gigantic trees that produced all the natural light]. She was capable of creating webs of Unlight, a void of darkness that allowed her and her allies to move unseen. She was enormous and so was her appetite.

Shelob was the last-surviving daughter of Ungoliant, produced after Ungoliant mated with the other giant spiders of Middle Earth and devoured them. The spiders of Mirkwood are her offspring.

Ungoliant and Shelob are my go-to "moms"/"mom and grandma" because they're some of the best-known, named giant spiders, and they're intelligent. They covet, they plot and plan. While all giant spiders are cool, there's just something next-level about the ones who are trying to eat you because you pissed them off or because they're planning something rather than going off base animal instinct. It's badass. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯




There are plenty of other giant spiders from folklore and all sorts of media. Arachnophobia seems pretty deeply baked into the human psyche, so they've seemingly always existed as monsters. Rather than trying to catalogue them all (there's actually a pretty impressive list of giant spiders in media if you feel like perusing that), I'm going to highlight some of my favorites.




I think the spiders in this movie are the ones that really started my love of spiders back in the day, ironically enough.





The spiders in this movie are so goofy, I love them.






This episode is one of the first things that really freaked me out as a kid. I haven't seen it in about 25 years, but it made an impression. Honestly I'm glad it didn't make me into vore or something.



Ok, this is a newer one, and not technically a spider, as it's an alien, I guess?? It's still sick. If you haven't seen this movie, check it out.