Anyhoo -- Sean -- I'm not sure -- are you saying the bruise would or wouldn't look like a scar?

Couldn't the flesh have been torn by the impact of the spear even with the Mithril? I think that visually that wound has to be the troll-spear - that's where he was nailed.

Well, real-life-like, I should think a deep bruise under chain mail would be a regular bruise, with the skin mashed in a chain mail pattern. So he could scar from the bruise, but it would be the kind of scarring you get from skinning your knees and then picking at the scabs, rather than a "your body nearly fell apart; please forgive it if it can't make its fixes 100% seamless".

Also, from the look of FOTR, that spear should have been in his side, or anyway his lower ribs, not front and center over his sternum.

Yeah, the spear was lower down.

And I'll take this opportunity to mourn that they didn't have Strider say the bit about how it's a good thing that people didn't know how pretty hobbit skin was (referring to the mithril vest, get your minds out of the slash) or they'd be hunted for their pelts. It was a good - perhaps the only legitimate place - for Strider to be humourous in the first book/movie.

Although Nutty says it's not textual that he suffers on the anniversary of the spear wound. I think she's probably right. Always trust Nutty's memory of a book thing before mine.

Bruises don't make scar tissue

Hmm... Not to dispute your bruise expertise, ita, which I know is immense and almost encyclical, but I suffered a deep tissue bruise as a teenager on one of my calves from being hit by a car while riding a bike.

There isn't scar tissue there now, but there was for over three years. It wasn't visible like we see in the film, but there was a divot of gristle in that calf that I thought was never going to go away.

After about four years, it finally went away. Or would that not count as a scar (serious question)?

What, no love for beaning Pippin on the head with an apple? I'm all for the strategic lobbing of fruits.

Also the part in the EE where he lands on his butt and is set upon by Hobbits.

Or would that not count as a scar

Not like the one we see, no. Which is what I'm wondering about.

no love for beaning Pippin on the head with an apple?

That was hysterical. I'd bean Pippin my damned self. Hey -- didn't Pippin encounter an unexpected apple outside Isengard and look up just like he did when beaned before Weathertop? It's possible my brain put that in for my amusement, however.

Book stuff doesn't need to be whitefonted, though, right? Just film stuff? Visuals, changes, and the like?

I can never remember what's whitefonted and what's not. I know I personally started whitefonting book stuff out of a desire to not spoil Aimee on the best parts. That issue will be over soon and I (who is probably the last book-whitefonty holdout) will stop. I promise. I know we mostly have no sympathy for non-booky people for obvious reasons.

Anyhoo -- Sean -- I'm not sure -- are you saying the bruise would or wouldn't look like a scar?

Well, it shouldn't look like a scar. Mine didn't. Could have just been inaccurate makeup job.

I should see the movie again to make a more informed thought on what that scar is supposed to be. Are we sure it's not just a wonky shadow?

That beaning of Pippin by the apple (and Pippin's look skyward) is nicely echoed at the end of the TTTEE, when he first discovers the apple floating in the water at Isengard, and looks skyward again.

ETA: hee! X-post with ita.

I have such hard time with the end of TTT EE and the start of RotK, as one can tell.

Hey -- didn't Pippin [whitefont]

Yes, he did. You weren't imagining it. (Although I thought that was in the TTT EE, for the Flotsam and Jetsam sequence, or am I now putting it in the wrong place?)