 As nerds, there are debates that all of us like to partake in. If a certain fictional character could be another fictional character in a fight, if this franchiser medium that I enjoy is better than a franchise medium that you enjoy, but one debate that often gets overlooked by the wider nerd and fantasy fan community is, was that fight scene even that good? Now my friends and I are going to come together in a series to debate and discuss this very subject, whether or not certain fights are good or bad, and we're going to leave it up to you to decide in the comments if they are or not. Welcome my friends to this new series on my channel that is called Nerd Fights. What's up guys? Nerd Fights is Glassfoot. As you probably know from the rest of this channel, I am a massive nerd. If you couldn't tell by the bookshelves that have been my background for the past two to three months, I was really scared I was going to as well. And as all nerds do, I love discussing things that I find interesting. This is my friend Jago. Both of us, our swordfighters, have been swordfighting together especially for what? What was it? 2016 when I joined FMA? About? 2016? 2017-ish? Our buddy Zach used to run a swordfighting class out of his martial arts studio before he moved away. We were both part of that. We had a hell of a lot of fun doing that, but his face didn't get busted open. If you saw my The End of an Era vlog, he was the one with the massive black eye because we managed to put a staff through the helmet into his eye. Oh, it was just put that, that's a spear. It was a staff, it was a staff, it wasn't even a spear. Oh, that's right. No, that was Keith who got me with a spear. That was a long time ago. Yeah, but it was a staff. I've actually been stabbed. I got stabbed through the eye hole a few times as well. Like, just Zach came in an overhead shot when I looked up. I always wore my glasses underneath though, or I started to after a while so that would hit my glasses and only affect them. It was awesome. Wow, we've gotten way off time. But as you know, all nerds like to discuss things that we enjoy. You also tell each other that we're wrong, like Alec is wrong. Jacob's wrong. But one of the things that we like to discuss because we are swordsmen are fight scenes in especially fantasy and medieval type shows. All you see is that both of us kind of agree and disagree on is the fight scene between the Hound and Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones. I like it because I dislike the editing in the choreo. He dislikes it because he doesn't think Brienne could have logically won that fight. I don't think she should have. I think she could have won, but not the way she did. So today we're going to be discussing and arguing and then we'll probably end up leaving it up to the comments or people outside of this because there's no way we are going to come to a agreed conclusion in this because nerds. So do we agree that we will go, we will decide who is right based on the comments? Maybe. If we get enough comments, I'm going to sanitize my hands now. Oh, I see. Do you want some? Yes. I appreciate it, boss. And I hope to turn this into a running series with other friends of mine when it comes to fight scenes and other stuff like that in different nerd media because nerds. But without further ado, welcome to the first episode of Nerd Fights. So I'm going to let him start off with his points on why he dislikes the scene and why Brienne logically shouldn't have won that. Well, because logically Brienne shouldn't have been in that point, well, logically Brienne shouldn't. There's very little chance Brienne would have actually come in kind of with the hound based on how she should have been going based on the books, but that's the whole... We're basing it on the show, not the books, but I haven't read the books he has. He might bring up points from the books that I won't know. So it seems like he's winning more. That's why. Oh, okay. Sure. Thank God. I'm just saying. You're welcome. Okay. You're good, man. So also, I just don't buy that Brienne could beat the hound in a one-on-one duel. In the book at that point and in the show, he has been weakened by various injuries, and I feel like that is something of an okay-ish justification. It's not world breaking in my opinion. I just don't... It's hard for me to buy that Brienne of Tarth could beat the hound. Now for me, I disagree. Part of this is because I've actually lost fights to people smaller than me in the past, but so it's not a logical... It's not a super logical leap for me to make that a woman can beat a man based on situations of the tiredness in being. That on top of the fact that she had basically just woken up despite that she was sleeping on rocks without any sort of padding or anything else. In armor. In armor. A woman can actually sleep in armor. Yeah. Like, just... It could be done. It would be comfortable. Just no way that's comfortable. No way you're getting a good night's sleep. For me, it's the fact she has...cluely has more energy. On top of the way the fight goes where she just starts hitting him with rocks at one point, especially after the nut shot. I think that probably hurt him a bit. He hits her right back. Right afterwards. True. True. That is true. But once she started hitting him with a head in the head with a rock, that for me kind of sealed that she was going to win the fight. The fact that she came in fresh where he was tired, that to me makes more sense that she would win within the world. Though both of us can agree, the fight ends like shit. Actually the fight is more...it's a good way of tying in, of skipping over some of the book fluff. I think it was the most sleeping thing they did. As far as the fight, I think it was one of the most effective things as they did moving the story forward. I mean dropping the hand off the cliff. Well yes, because he gets grievously injured in a battle against some of the mountain's men in the book. And they'd already killed those men in the bar fight. The one where the hand wants the more chicken. Oh, okay. I relate to that, but... I don't. I will never kill over food. I'll see. And so pretty much... If I can avoid it, I'm not killing over food. Sorry. Okay, good stuff. Good stuff. And so pretty much... Yeah, I thought they did a... I think as far as ending the fight and prefacing the fight, I think they did a good job with it. I think the actual fight, the choreography is... The choreography where you can actually see it is decent. You can tell they put some thought into it, and I generally have a decent idea of where the characters are. However, the fact of the matter is you can bear...there's what, three, four wide shots where you actually see... Three or four where you can actually see what's going on. The one there on this side of the screen and this entire bit is completely open. That did a good job as far as telling us that they're moving in a certain direction. True, but it also looks very awkward on its own. Yes. I think they could chose a better setting for the fight, if they are going to make something new that wasn't in the book, I feel like they could... The setting wasn't that good. All right. That leads me to my next point. This fight is unnecessary. It didn't need to happen. There's better ways they could have gotten Aryan and Brienne together. And gotten the Hounding Capacitated for more of the turning point of his character arc. I think that that could have been done a number of different ways, but that's not this video. I think that a fight with Brienne was lazy of them to write in, but I think, and it shows in the fight the way it's cut. They had a minimal amount of footage, and that's what they used. But this was still when the show had some passion behind it. So even that is not bad, as opposed to something that's a later season. All right, Alec, your turn. For me, what makes me truly dislike the fight, the ending is a bit anti-climactic for me, with kind of the Hound just falling off the cliff. Probably even if it had been Brienne falling off the cliff instead of the Hound, I still would have found that very anti-climactic. A character just suddenly falling, and that's how the fight ends, I think is a very boring way to end it. My personal issue with the fight overall comes down to the fact that the actors playing Brienne and the Hound, they're not stuntmen. They're not swordsmen. Or at least Gondylla and Chrissy isn't. I don't know about Clegane's character. I know Roy McCann did efforts to be as convincing as he could be. Roy McCann's awesome. Yeah. Even then, there are times when you just have to get the professionals in there, in the costumes to make the fight look as good as possible. And I'm in the opinion, my biggest problem is that starting of that fight, there are about 20 quick edit cuts in about 20 seconds, and it's impossible to follow what's happening until they suddenly end up in a wider cliff face. I think, yeah, I think what they're kind of going for is trying to show us a longer fight than it was. Maybe, but my thing, though, is it just looks choppy, especially there's a point where he swings and she blocks, and the next shot is him swinging the same move. They showed the same move twice, and I just think that's bad editing. I'm totally fine. And actually, some of my favorite fight scenes show the intensity and insanity that is battle. A good one that does this in Game of Thrones, actually, is the Battle of the Bastards. Yeah. And then, the Mountain Merchant, the Viper. Those are both fine. Battle of the Bastards is a good example. And then, from episode one of The Witcher, the war scene, that scene, it does a really good job. It's extremely quick edits and just insanity, but that's what it feels like to be in a battlefield. But in a one-on-one conflict, that's not how a fight feels. And I can tell you this is an example of multiple one-on-one fights that I've been in. Heal a test, too. They, one-on-one fights, don't have that insane rush of just everything happening at once. They have a bit of that because that's how fights work, but overall, not really how it feels. Yeah, especially the way they were going at it, there wasn't any other third parties that would have shown up. I mean, as cool as it would be for Padres to go and try and murder one of them. The closest it would have been would be Aria trying to psh, psh, brie in with her needle. There's actually a scene earlier in this episode where the hound gives her shit about the whole sword thing. Stimmy, stimmy, stimmy, stimmy, stimmy, stimmy, stimmy, stimmy. It's like, stimmy, stimmy, stimmy, stimmy. Right here. Hard as you can. And she stabs, it sticks in the armor. It's armor. Oh, shit. It's not doing anything. Dexter. Uh, that wouldn't happen to, you know, season six or later Aria, because she's, she's over there. But she's not really overpowered. She's just much more competent than she is at that point in the show. She killed the Night King. That was supposed to, that should have been Jon. I actually liked her killing the Night King personally. This is gonna, this is a different nerd fight. Night King is a completely different nerd fight. This is Brienne versus the hound. Okay. We can actually do Night King right after this if you want. I might have to dip out and go hit my team billy, my team billy exercise and go. That's fine. I'm saying we can do Night, we can do Night King in another episode. Oh, back. Totally. Totally. Okay. So the other thing about the fight is that, so Glad to say that, you know, we'd probably, I'd probably be angry no matter who got thrown off the cliff. No, no. And Brienne, in the books, you have to read about Brienne. Just Brienne and Podge walking across these fucking planes, just doing nothing except for walking and talking. Now, I have an interesting talk. It's just dialogue for the sake of word count. And this is like a solid 15, 20 chapters of this. So they just fucking killed Brienne off. I probably would have liked the show more, but that's a whole different point. Gwendolyn Chrissy defined job playing Brienne, and I totally believe that she was Brienne of Tarth. You know, I believe all the characters in the show are the characters from the books. Like, the little I know about their book portrayals, the... Stanis got done dirty, Renly was perfect, Robert was really well done. This is another video where he just explains all the differences between the book and the show to me, because I don't know them. Yep. Okay. Yes, sir. We will... Yeah, oh yeah. Just hit me up. Um, so, but, so another thing, as far as why, as why I think the how'd out class Brienne, should out class Brienne, even at his wounded state. This was the guy that was chosen by the richest family in Westeros to watch their psychopathic little princeling, alright? Okay, fair. The reason he gets the name, the part of, yeah. He's Joffrey's bodyguard. He's Joffrey's hound. Yes. Joffrey, the person who for fun crossbows hookers. You know, there's... Oh yeah. There's nothing. Did you just watch the show? My absolute hatred of Joffrey, by the way, literally comes from season one. Dude, you're missing out. Like, seriously, watching him die is one of the best feelings I've ever... Oh, I've seen him die. And it made me so happy. You watched the death scene without watching everything in between? In my defense, it came up in a compilation of Epic Death video. Okay, that's fair. In my defense, I didn't exactly seek out his death scene. I did, but... So anyway, this was, you know, the heir to the royal throne, the iron throne, his personal bodyguard for the better part of Joffrey's conscious life. Getting beaten by a large woman who's received sword training and who was at one point a Kingsguard to Renly Baratheon, all right, and who is currently on the run for his supposed murder by... At the hands of Stannis. I'm not saying spoilers because it's... The show's over. If you wanted to see it, you would have... If you're watching this, you've probably seen the show. I don't buy that one of Renly's Kingsguards... I'm sorry, one of his Rainbow Guards. That's what he called them. Rainbow Guards? Yes. Yes. What class was it? Is this like Buddy About That? No, it's amazing. I love the name. Yeah. And while, yeah, I will give her credit that she earned that place by in a tournament of one-on-one duels against other knights, we see the Hound cut down so many people like that and, you know, we see the battle of the Blackwater. The Hound is just going through and cutting people in half. There's a scene where he takes his sword and whops a guy straight in fucking two, all right? And like, do I really believe that someone from Tarth, not Karth, Karth is a different place? Karth is a real-life city. No, it's actually one game at the moment. Wait, really? Yes. Wait, no, I'm thinking of Karthane. I'm thinking of Karthane. Karth, the greatest city there is or ever will be in the game of Thrones. Got it. Maybe even Karthane in the real-life city. Probably. But, uh, wait, is that one of my fantasy? Whatever. Yeah, so that's... I just don't buy that the guy who can go through and just fucking slaughter people. This guy took on, what, four or five of the mountains, of the mountains men? And then... Yeah. And he was, he walked away from it. They didn't. I mean, yeah, Arya was on his side, but... Arya, Arya, the Hound. Arya, Arya stole one kill from the Hound. That's it. That's the guy that was already dead. As far as the Hound being injured, later in the show, we also see... So there's a point... So, the Hound survives this fight. All right? He shows up later. Obviously. Clegane Bowl was a thing. Yeah. And so pretty much he ends up working in a small village, kind of a mysterious stranger, just kind of trying to atone for his sins, helping out. Yes. The six-foot-six guy with a massive scar on his face from being put in fire by the mountain. In the box, he's seven feet tall. He's totally... In the box, he's seven feet tall. My point still stands. He's insanely tall. In the box, he demands eight feet tall. My point still stands. These two are insane. Yes. He's totally not recognizable to the Kallen folk. Well, I mean, it depends on which Kallen folk you go to. There's exaggerated stories that say the entire side of his face was melted off, and they had... Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough. And most people know him by the Hound's head helm. Oh, yeah. Fair enough. Anyway, continue with your point of why the injury shouldn't matter as much. Yeah. So we see him. He has like a very prevalent limp from having his leg snapped by the fall, right? He takes a weapon he's not as proficient with, a wood cutting axe, and he kills five of the brotherhood without banners, man, after they go through and kill everyone in the village. Oh. Like... Okay. What? Oh, yeah, yeah. So are you starting to see where I'm coming from now? Okay, a little bit. A little bit. A little bit. We see Brienne struggle against a couple of whites in the Battle of Winterfell. They're whites. Let's be fair. She has a Valyrian steel sword. She has a Valyrian steel sword. It's dead. Dead. Dead. I'm pretty sure it's dead, not dead. No. No. No, no. John took a torch and hit it against the white they bring to King's Landing. Yes, I remember that. Torch. Dead. The one thing that didn't work out as well... I thought he stabbed it. I'll be technically dead if you use the torch on part of it and he stabbed the other part of it. Right. Remember it. But yeah. Okay. He's thunderstorming while we're doing this video. Oh, yeah. And so I just have a hard time believing that, especially having shown how they are both, what kind of physical ability they're both in after the fight, that there's any logical reason that the Brienne should have won that fight, other than the storyboard wanted her to win and that's what the plot needed. And for me, I personally think that she could have easily won that fight, considering the fatigue that was probably being felt by the Hound, the armor, the smashing his head with a rock, the smashing his face with her gauntlets. I think the ending is anti-climactic, but I don't see a reason why she wouldn't have won, especially considering the two characters are the same size. It's not like, yes, men typically are physically stronger than women, but once you get to six feet tall with muscles, once you get to like seven foot with muscles, there's not a ton of difference that you're gonna get, especially if you're both wearing armor and one of you is wearing better armor than the other. So they do a good job of showing the Hound as being stronger than Brienne just by relativity. Yeah, I mean there are multiple moments where like, especially when he straight up manages to like lift her up and slam her at one point. Yes, but as far as the whole thing where the Hound, that would disarray anyone, again I looked to the point, I looked to the fight he had with the mountains men in the bar, where they knock him down the ground and they're kicking him and then he gets back up and still kills them. Have you ever been hit in the head with a rock? Yes. She took a rock and smashed him right here in the head about five times in a row. No, the rock was like twice and then she then she started punching him, alright, it was... Okay, so which is a big difference because hitting someone five times with a rock and hitting them twice in the head with a rock is a large difference. Oh, such a massive difference for disorientation and it's my whole point in argument. If you go to the parking level, we'll see how big of a difference it makes. Let's go! Okay. The rocks are small though. It's not as accurate. Well, I used to have always been doing landscaping earlier and might have some in the back of my truck. Anyway, inclusion, I don't think either of us are gonna convince the other one of us to fight. No, we're not. I, I straight up said neither of us are convincing each other at the end of this video. Do you think I have anything to add to this? Cause I'm pretty much out of points. I'm pretty much out of points. Well, let's just summarize our points once again to get it out of the way really fast. You're on your first. All right. My points, they're pretty much the same size. She's in slightly better armor, which is probably a little bit heavier. Disorientation with the rock and the fact that he is tired, that the mountain is tired from fatigue. My bad. The hound is tired from fatigue at this point in the fight. Would make it that she more logically would be able to win in the fight. I understand where you're coming from and you're not entirely wrong. You have a logical basis for your theory, for your theory. You are wrong, however, because you're, because it's not right. You're wrong because that's the whole point of this video. Pretty much the hound is, is up there in one of the top five swordsmen in Westeros. Brienne of Tarth doesn't make the top 10. All right. The hound outclasses Brienne later in the show, even after staining injuries that would kill most people in that time period. You know, he, he has a prevalent limp and still is able to do things like kill five people. All right. And quite frankly, I don't, I just don't see Brienne on the same level of swordsmanship as the hound. Same physical strength, I could buy that, at least in the show. The books are different. Was it a, but was it a solid fight scene? Not really. Didn't hit the right beats for a fight scene, I guess, kind of. Kind of? And even then, that's only about partway through. Yeah. Because the fight starts off just, yeah. Yeah. There are like three good shots in that entire fight, in my opinion, and those are the wide shots where it's not the actors and it's fricking stuntmen. Especially seeing the, seeing the 1-1 duels they throw out early in the show and after in the show. There's the, what, duel between Drogo and the other Dothraki. And that's a really... Bronn versus... Oh, hold on. Sorry. And that's done really well. It's all wide shots. Yeah. And then they, they've proven that they can do shot, they can do duels where they move around an area. And do... With Bronn and Varys. Bronn and Varys... Or Varden, yeah, never mind. But Varys is the, is the eunuch. The Mountain versus... The Viper. Viper. That's... That's one of the best fight scenes in the show, in my opinion. It's... Yeah. You're not special there. A lot of people think it's the best fight scene. Well, yeah, I understand. I'm not special for thinking it's one of the best fights. Also, the Mountain is canonically on Game of Thrones cocaine, the entirety of the show. Do you know that? Canonically on Coke? On Game of Thrones cocaine. It's called Milk with a Poppy. Oh, okay. And so basically he... That's... He's drunk the entire time. No, he's even better. He basically doesn't feel pain. Oh, that's even better. Yeah. Like... Like, to his large size he gets migraines and stuff. So they just start pumping... So he just starts drinking? They just start pumping and stuff so he's still effective. Just enough that he still feels as though he's angry. That's... That's... That's amazing. I mean, that explains why he freaking cut the head of the horse in the first season. Oh, yeah. Because that was... That was a bit of an overreaction in my opinion. I mean, that's the Game of Thrones equivalent of throwing your controller on the ground. You're not... You're not wrong. I think that's a good joke to end the video on. All right. But with that, we turn the... We turn it over to you guys in the comments. Who would have won in that fight? Who do you think should have won in that fight? The Hound or Brienne of Tarth? Let us know in the comments down below. And with that, I hope that you all have a fantastic fucking day. And as always, peace out, guys. Adios.