[Kransha]

You know what? I do believe I've had an epiphany (hair-raising, I assure ye)!

This whole thread and its tree-reminiscent branches stems off the same, semi-essential question of 'variety,' dare I say it. The thread was originally a simple question of gender in literature, but it has been diverted towards queries concerning age and other variations of "normality." Now, I don't believe that the phrase "normality" exists, since no one is purely normal, but that doesn't mean than the concept of "abnormality" does not. Hear me out here...

We've been talking about the persona of female and male, young and old, and so forth and so on. The whole question is: how do you interpret something that is different, or perhaps similar, or a touchy subject, into literature. Let me pose another example here, based on an RPG I'll be playing in soon (Ha! I fit a shameless plug in this post!) What about, say, this?:

There was a brief discussion in this thread of dwarf and elf playing, female and male, young and old, as mentioned. What if you had to put more depth than just simple, stereotypical, static monster personality into...a dragon! Think on The Hobbit, if you will. It's a question of race, rather than gender, but that's where the discussion leads. It's not a tangent, but a more advanced form, slightly reversed, of the original question. How do you put yourself into the shoes (or scales) of a dragon? Tolkein did it expertly. But wait, there's more! What of other members of the non-humanoid sect. Dwarves, Elves, Gondorians, Numenoreans, Rohirrim, all have a different persona, which is often a bit stereotyped in itself, but what about a fox? A tree in Fangorn Forest? A giant spider at the pass of Cirith Ungol? A Wather in the Water? What about genders, eh? What about species? What about planes of being? It can get into, quite literally, playing god (read: Valar).

Now, stem off again! Does a female giant spider, Shelob or Ungoliant, think differently from a male (not that there are any male giant spiders, but what if?) Wait, I've got a better branch for that. How does an ancient, great grandmother of a spider: Ungoliant, differ in mind and thought pattern from an old, but comparitively much younger and weaker spider: Shelob. Are they both driven essentially by the same resolve, or was their something that was different in their grand designs. Surely they weren't exactly the same. Shelob was content to stay in the confines of Cirith Ungol and eat the food that came along. Ungoliant, on the other hand, refused to be satiated until Morgoth himself was being digested in her ample belly. I'd say there must be some difference, no matter how subtle. Ungoliant lusted for vengeance, obviously a more adapted sense of evil in her old age, but Shelob only sought food, unless that want was what drove them both. Maybe I'm trivializing the matter by using spiders as 'food for thought' (forgive me, I couldn't resist), but it has to count for something...

Do tell me if my tangent is utterly irrelevant, confusing, and senseless...

P.S. to Fordim: Great Caesar's Ghost! How could I have forgotten?