Alex Rochon (aka "peanut3423" and "The Autarch (of Flame)" is a Canadian YouTube producer and voice actor. Much like his friend Josh Scorcher, Alex's channel largely comprises of Top Ten lists, although his newest work includes Hades Riffs, where the titular god (marvelously voiced by Alex himself) MST's bad videos.
He was also set to voice the character of Ghoulloyd and The Boogieman in the indie game Fiona Frightening and the Wicked Wardrobe, but that game was ultimately cancelled.
After seven years of making countdowns lists on YouTube, Alex finally announced his retirement of The Autarch in September 2015. His final countdown Top Ten Personal Experiences with Video Games was uploaded a few days after the announcement and marked his final work as The Autarch. Despite retiring his countdown videos, he still helps JoshScorcher with making his countdown videos, remains active with his fanbase, and currently does voice work, notably for fandubs of Undertale and as a lead in the upcoming The Amazing Digital Circus. He has also announced plans to work on a web-series in the future, though no other details have been revealed.
Tropes appearing in the Autarch's videos:
- Artifact Title: The channel's original name, "peanut3423" was this; it came from when the channel was owned by a group of people (including Alex) who created claymation videos, and the channel name alludes to the first video, which involved two peanut characters (Alex himself had nothing to do with this video.) Eventually, the claymation project ended, and Alex was left as the sole uploader for the channel, which he soon took in his own direction.
- Animalistic Abomination: The Demon Burmy/Mothim, and its patron the Goat of Chaos.
- Axe-Crazy: Murders a Burmy for no reason, and in his collab review with Josh Scorcher kills Josh with his Aerial Blades. He comes back to life.
- Berserk Button: Jasper Batt Jr.
- Also, anything related to math, especially Sho Minamimoto.
- Do not bring up his older works, especially his Double Top Five.
- Canada, Eh?: Subverted. He does not speak like a stereotypical Canadian, and his accent is almost unnoticeable.
- The Cast Showoff: Just listen to his "Sloprano" parody in Top Ten Funniest Video Game Characters.
- Caustic Critic: Obviously, of the things he dislikes. Not so much for the things that he does like.
- Corpsing: Happens very frequently in bloopers.
- Deadpan Snarker: Hades, of course.
- Alex himself has a snarky comment ready for just about anything.
- End of an Age / Grand Finale: Top Ten Personal Experiences with video games was his last countdown.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Hades riffing sometimes falls into this, especially in the Double Top Five.
- Ho Yay: In-universe, during a crossover with Josh Scorcher, Josh asks the Autarch why he hasn't released any actual content for months. Hades replies that it's his fault, and Alex proceeds to... comfort the god of the Underworld. Josh's face afterward really sells this scene.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Said word for word at the end of Top Ten Saddest Moments.
- Resurfaces in Top Ten Scariest Twin Peaks Moments, where it becomes a Madness Mantra.
- Large Ham
- Laser Blade: He gained this in-show power in the fight against the Demon Burmy.
- Man of a Thousand Voices: Oh my, yes. Performing the voice of Hades is only the tip of the iceberg.
- His comments during the reaction videos to E3 2015 show off his talents quite well.
- Oh, Crap!: The obnoxious Nintendo fanboy says this exact line before The Autarch murders him towards the end of Top Ten Nostalgic Animated Shows.
- Old Shame: Sees a lot of his older works like this, especially the infamous double top five he later riffed mercilessly on, and the Top Ten Saddest Moments.
- Promoted Fanboy: He loves old Rare-style 3D platformers like Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64. He now has a role in a game made in honor of them.
- Screaming at Squick: Enjoys making people do this as he likes to come up with dirty Double Entendres in his free time and is hinted at to be
romantically involved with Hades. - Self-Deprecation: The first Hades Riffs was on one of his own videos, Top Five Games I Hate that Everyone Likes/Top Five Games I Like that Everyone Hates.
- Seems to be a recurring thing, as he uses clips of this very video when explaining how stupid it is to sell your own opinion as fact.
- Shout-Out: He loves Twin Peaks, and it shows. See also, any story-related video after Top 15 Worst Pokémon.
- Slasher Smile: Gives one when he sees something he's enthusiastic about or when he's about to kill something/someone.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: He curses more frequently than his friends do, and in later videos he stops censoring them.
- Story Arc: Season 2 of The Autarch's countdowns note mostly contains a storyline about The Autarch and Chewie being haunted by demonic pokémon, with some Twin Peaks style moments thrown in for good measure.
- Talking To Himself: ...The following comes from the credits of his Top 10 Funniest Video Game Characters list.Hades: *interrupting the credits music* Yoo-hoo, Autarch!Alex: Goddammit, Hades, what is it with you and your fascination for interrupting credits?Hades: Oh, but credits sequences are my favorite places to hang out in. They're like bars, you see. If you stick around long enough in them you get to learn new things about all the people who contributed to the fine dirty mess of the evening.Hades: Oooh, someone's prickly tonight. Though, this can't possibly get on my nerves. All I have to do is think about how we're voiced by the same person, and how you wrote this dialogue, and how you're basically making fun of yourself, and then laugh.Alex: Eh - wh - shut up! You're not supposed to break the fourth wall like that! I am not insulting myself!Hades: Face it, you're me, and I am you. I might as well be your persona. *chuckles evilly* How I look forward to the Fan Art.
- Top Ten List: His most notable videos.
Discussed Tropes in the Autarch's videos are..
- Anti-Climax Boss: Has expressed his dislike for the final boss fight against Jasper Batt Jr. on numerous occasions. In particular he hates how the fight tried way too hard to be an anti-revenge message while sacrificing good gameplay and having many programming issues.
- Awesome Music: His old videos were lists of video game music that he likes but in particular he is a huge fan of Philistine from No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle.
- Downer Ending: How he feels about the endings for Shadow of the Colossus and Mother 3.
- Fake Difficulty: Discussed in his Top 15 Worst Video Game Cliches list with JoshScorcher and Chewie. Particularly mentions how the hard difficulties of Metroid Prime and Devil May Cry do this by giving enemies more hit points on harder difficulties but with no differences in attack pattern.
- Game-Breaking Bug:
- In the Jasper Batt Jr. fight in No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, there are windows that he can punch Travis out of for an instant-KO. However he notes that the distance between Travis and the window that registers a KO wasn't programmed properly making the fight needlessly frustrating.
- Pretty much everything about the Silver the Hedgehog boss fight in Sonic the Hedgehog falls into this trope for him.
- Junk Rare: In Top 15 Worst Pokemon he addresses this while talking about Chimeco and Delibird.
- Moment of Awesome: Finding out that in Journey the people on his adventure were actual players all along.
- Seasonal Rot: Felt that Twin Peaks went through this in its final seasons.
- That One Boss: Has an entire list of video game bosses he dislikes but Silver the Hedgehog from Sonic The Hedgehog is the prime example of this trope to him.
- Villain Sue: Not discussed in his videos (other than a brief joke) but he feels this way about Hazama from BlazBlue due to how the story goes to extreme lengths to make him overpowered and how he finds his only characteristic is being evil.
- What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Part of the reason he loves Teen Titans and Digimon Tamers so much is how for children's shows they were able to tackle darker themes.
