"LinksTheSun", real name Alexis Breut, is a French YouTube video maker.
Links posted his first video on YouTube in 2006, but started to gain in notoriety in 2008, when he posted a fanmade song about the online game Hordes
. Then, in 2009, came the video that would change everything: the first episode of Point Culture. Initially meant as a filler video, it was met with praise and turned out to be extremely popular, prompting him to produce more episodes. With the fourth episode, on the subject of Pokémon, the series exploded in popularity, and the rest is YouTube history.
Since then, Links has created several more shows, from Video Review Shows to Affectionate Parodies. They mostly focus on popular culture, especially movies and literature (and music at one point). Oh, and statistics; the guy almost has a fetish for them. While most of these shows are still technically ongoing, it is not rare for Links to put them on indefinite hiatus so he can rework them.
Links channel can be found here. Links also started a blog, on which he gives his opinion on things that do not warrant a video of their own.
Shows created by LinksTheSun include:
- Point Culture, his most popular creation, a series of semi-educational videos in which he tackles various subjects related to pop-culture, either as a whole or from a certain angle only.
- Non Mais T'as Vu Ce Que T'écoutes, abbreviated NMT, a series of musical reviews mainly focused on songs from the current Top 50 best sales. Discontinued in 2019.
- 50/50, a review series in which he tries to find five good points and five bad points about a given movie.
- Plectroscope, a series of short videos in which his character Plectrum does parodic retellings of popular movies.
- Joute Verbale dans ta Face, his take on Epic Rap Battles of History.
- On Veut des Chiffres, made in collaboration with the channel It's Big, in which he gives trivia on various subjects in the form of numbers and statistics.
- Journal de Minuit, a humorous look at news stories that came out everyday for a duration of two weeks.
- Body Count, a One-Episode Wonder counting the total number of victims of notorious fictional killers.
- Parenthèse, based on Top 20 countdowns on various subjects. Some of them provide complementary information on subjects treated by a Point Culture or a 50/50 (for instance, the Point Culture about Horror Movies Clichés was followed by a Parenthèse about the 20 best jumpscares).
- Coin Lecture, a series of book reviews on his secondary Youtube channel, initially released in a monthly frequency, then weekly once the monthly videos became too long. Some of the books are written by Links' viewers and reviewed at their request.
- Le Pire Editeur du Monde, a comedy series featuring authors attempting to present the draft of a real life novel to an inept publisher.
Tropes associated with LinksTheSun:
- Anachronism Stew: The publisher in Le Pire Editeur du Monde frequently mentions modern events and technologies to the author of the draft, despite the fact that the skit often supposedly happens decades, sometimes centuries before the present. Inevitably, he's met with utter confusion.
- The Cast Show Off: Played with. Links is fully aware that he's not a great singer, but he likes including purposefully bad singing in his videos. He does his best to make it sound good when the bad singing is not the joke, notably when using the real song that he's reviewing in an NMT would get him demonetized.
- Caustic Critic: He intentionally exaggerates the negatives when reviewing songs on NMT. He did not like being perceived like this by his audience, who cared less about studying texts and messages and more about dunking artists they dislike. This is one of the reasons why he stopped the show.
- 50/50's format is a way to defy this trope: no matter how much Links thinks the movie he's reviewing sucks, he has to find five positive points about the movie. Conversely, he has to find five negative points even if he loved the movie, which proved particularily difficult for The Shining.
- Critical Failure: His suicide attempts in his parody of Bref, which include swallowing pills that turn out to be candy, hanging himself with a rope that's way too long, and listening to bad music.
- Cross-Cast Role: In a few episodes of Le Pire Editeur du Monde, Links plays J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone), Agatha Christie (And Then There Were None), and E. L. James (Fifty Shades of Grey) while not wearing any disguise.
- Damned by Faint Praise:
- In the secondary channel, Links made a review of Fifty Shades of Grey and gave it the grade of "F" (and called it "the worst book I read in my life.") Two months later, he made a 50/50 about the movie adaptation, and in the introduction he gave three good points of the novel: 1) The bare premise of the plot works and could make a good story if properly used. 2) Some men wrote to E.L. James to explain the novel made them realize they were similar to Christian, and this made them change their behavior. 3) If this book was able to become a world-famous best-seller, absolutely anything can reach the same level of success. In general, Links found the movie better, but that's not saying much considering how much he loathed the book. Note that, among the five good points he found about the movie, there's photography (a purely technical aspect) and "some elements have been removed from the adaptation".
- In the 50/50 giving a negative review to Red Notice, one of the good points he found is that the actors seemed to have fun during the shooting. In a later video where he comments the 50/50, Links mentions he really struggled a lot in order to find five positive point.
- Everyone Has Standards: The eponymous publisher in Le Pire Editeur du Monde is a Jerkass and kind of an idiot, but he has absolutely no beef with trans people. Given this is to comment on the fact that Links is playing no one else than J. K. Rowling, this doubles as a Take That!. He's also appaled by the Blaming the Victim — Defiled Forever themes (and the fact they were Truth in Television at the time) of Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
- Everyone Hates Math: Averted. The guy loves numbers, especially statistics. Heck, he makes pie charts for fun.
- Gallows Humor: Links' first video of 2021 is a Parenthèse listing the 20 worst years in history, released right after the end of the memetically disastrous 2020. The video's thumbnail shows Links (with an awkward smile) raising a toast while the background consists in lava, fire, and "2020" written with inflatable balloons.note
- Have a Gay Old Time: The "20 facts about philosophers" Parenthèse has some of these. When Links mentions how Immanuel Kant created the first prototype of garter belt to replace the impractical contention stockingsnote , he plays on the modern definition of the clothing and gives us the beautiful view of a lingerie model wearing modern garter belt with Kant'snote face on it, and an apple to censor the groin... before zooming on the apple!
- Hurricane of Puns: A great fan of wordplay and Stealth Puns. Will often be followed by a self-deprecating Lame Pun Reaction.
- It Will Never Catch On: In Le Pire Editeur du Monde, a writer summarizes their draft to an inept publisher who doesn't understand the novel and refuses to publish it. Each video ends with the publisher giving a phone call where he gives a very mangled summary of what he listened to, concluding this book will bomb. The drafts? Very famous and successful novels in real life (1984, Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone, etc.)...
- Large Ham: He regularly dips into Comical Overreactions, Suddenly Shouting or No Indoor Voice, and overall dramatic acting for the sake of comedy.
- National Stereotypes: In "20 facts about philosophers", when Links mentions Immanuel Kant's irrational fear of beernote which, after someone died, made him ask "Was he a beer drinker?", Links answers: "You're German, Immanuel, everyone is a beer drinker!"
- Not Hyperbole: In the 50/50 review of Red Notice, he comments that literally half of a character's dialogue is jokes, before precising that it's not a figure of speech, the exact amount is 58.8%, he did the math.
- "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: In the 50/50 about the Fifty Shades of Grey movie, Links comments the differences between the book and movie version of the scene where Anastasia awakes in Christian's bed after blacking out drunk, and learns Christian didn't took advantage of her. Before commenting her reaction in the book (Anastasia's inner monologue views the fact Christian didn't rape her as a proof he doesn't find her attractive), Links introduces the sequence by swearing it's really in the book, then gives an extract as a proof.
- Out-of-Character Moment: In the phone call ending of the Tess of the D'Urbervilles episode of Le Pire Editeur du Monde, the editor is sad instead of being annoyed, gives an accurate summary to his interlocutor instead of a mangled one, and concludes this book will bomb due to being too dark instead of being stupid.
- Running Gag:
- In the 50/50 about the Fifty Shades of Grey movie, Links uses culinary metaphors instead of more explicit descriptions each time he comments sex scenes.
- In the The 20 worst Disney sequels, he punctues some of the worst parts of The Hunchback of Notre Dame II by saying "Victor Hugo wouldn't have liked that".
- In the "20 facts about philosophers", five are about Diogenes, and the four last ones end with Alexander the Great who may have said "If I were not Alexander, I would have [done the funny fact]".
- In the 50/50 about David Lynch's Dune, Links is triggered each time the pug appears onscreen.
- Self-Deprecation: If there's anything he's mocked more than Anne Roumanoff or The Twilight Saga, it's himself."Scandalous pictures of LinksTheSun! Pants at least two sizes too big! Why? Probably because he's too fat! Look at him! He's a pachyderm! A continent! Forsooth, a continent? He's a '''fucking exoplanet'''! Joueur du Grenier lost weight, so why can't he do the same? LinksTheSun: He's a twat! And his brothers are ugly! There!"
- Serious Business: "Links" is spelled with an S. He is very insistent on the matter.
- Shout-Out: Often invokes artists he admires as a point of comparison to the ones he's reviewing.
- So Okay, It's Average: Invoked in the 50/50 about Red Notice. Links' review points out it's objectively a flawed movie without much good points, but watching it is a very fun recreation. In the usual subsequent video where he comments the review, Links explains he really struggled to find the 10 points worth of being examined in the review.
- They Just Dont Get It: In the Nineteen Eighty-Four episode of Le Pire Editeur du Monde, the publisher is unable to understand "Big Brother" isn't supposed to be Winston Smith's literal brother. At the end of the video, he's so shocked by the implied gay incest's ending (when it's written that Winston "loved" Big Brother) that he orders Orwell to get out of the office.
- Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Invoked in the Tess of the D'Urbervilles episode of Le Pire Editeur du Monde, where the editor is so depressed by the summary of the novel's plot that he predicts it won't have any success due to this trope (instead of the usual instance of him not understanding a novel's plot).
- We Didn't Start the Billy Joel Parodies: The "honorable mentions" part of the Parenthèse about the twenty best movie characters is a Long List of movie characters he didn't mention in the Top 20 set to We Didn't Start the Fire.
- Writer Revolt: Invoked in the 50/50 about Red Notice. Links notes the movie is so filled with meta jokes, clichés, Shout-Outs sometimes being borderline plagiarism, invincible protagonists in a story without any stakes, plot holes... and theorizes Red Notice writers deliberatedly delivered a flawed work because it was commissionned movie that nobody wanted to do.
