#despite every mios is a terrible influence

[brbgensokyo]

ive got alot of characters under my belt but only my cyberfairies could sniff out a rave so good your brain would turn to mush and youll be living for the next party in some nothing regional town in cornwall

[theharellan]

Headcanon Elaboration Meme. Accepting.

@ofrevas​ asked: tell everyone everything about his ongoing fight with Ancient Aliens

I imagine his introduction started innocently enough. Solas has never been an avid watcher of the history channel. Even back before it became a place for conspiracy theories and network decay rotted out a lot of its educational value, it was never a place catered for people who like an in-depth look at a subject. They’re surface level, mostly grade school-level, and often guilty of whitewashing or downplaying the actions of historical figures, so Solas typically avoided it.

What most likely happened was a student made a wisecrack about the show when they’re discussing ancient elvhen inventions-- or perhaps alluded to the conspiracy theories having been something someone they knew believed in. He watched as a curiosity, and more than likely had the bad luck of landing on one about Elvhenan. Ancient Aliens is like the perfect storm, almost tailor-made for Solas to hate it, but he wasn’t prepared for it.

 If you’ve never seen an episode, they take a premise– say, how the Egyptian pyramids were made, or Leonardo da Vinci’s renowned intelligence, then they say “aliens did it.” They’ll often recruit people with doctorates in History and they’ll say something normal like “the pyramids were marvels of engineering” and then a clip of a guy with a bachelor’s degree in Communications will play after and go “there’s no way they had the technology or knowledge to make them on their own, so it had to be aliens.” They will obscure the truth or deliberately lie about the facts to draw the viewer to their conclusion, and will never present information or alternate theories which contradict their claims, unless those claims also involve extraterrestrial activity. Seriously, I think they have like a dozen different theories about the moai and they’re all terrible. It’s a deeply misanthropic show, and as rightly pointed out by many critics, is even quicker to jump to the assumption that non-white cultures throughout the world couldn’t accomplish anything without the intervention of super advanced alien societies, despite ample evidence that they had the tools and innovation to do so themselves. Although with the show lasting like 9 seasons it has gotten around to pointing at things like the Emancipation Proclamation being the result of aliens beaming the speech into Abraham Lincoln’s-- ok I can’t talk about their theories anymore or I’ll be here forever. Moving on.

Solas is not only someone who believes strongly in people and their ability to do good and evil-- or in this case, their ability to build structures without divine intervention-- but he was also there to see elves create eluvian, floating islands, all the wonders dreamers could dream. For centuries after the fall of Elvhenan humans liked to say that the empire never existed, that the elves weren’t capable of creating these great works so they simply Could Not Be. Now it seems they’re willing to concede they existed, but that it had to be an outside force. Ancient Aliens is also a show that likes to attribute the divine to alien influence, so on top of all this there is a 100% chance there’s an episode about Fen’Harel (along with the rest of the evanuris) being aliens.

Finally, the show also has a terrible understanding of art. There is no such thing as stylisation or symbolism in the world of ancient aliens, artists are only capable of depicting what they see. For a good example of this, medieval depictions of the sun, moon, and angels often are described as clearly being alien spacecrafts. This may or may not actually wind me personally up, even worse than the rest of this, but from what we’ve seen of ancient Elvhen art in Solas’ murals and elsewhere in-game, stylisation and symbolism are everywhere. So like. They’ve definitely attributed random objects in the sky in Elvhen art to being UFOs, even though there definitely is research identifying/explaining them.

In short, Ancient Aliens is not only bad history but advocates for a worldview that Solas absolutely hates.

After watching a few episodes, I imagine he tried to move on with his week, but anyone who knew him at the time would likely hear him complain about it at least once. I imagine this culminates in him investing a lot of time and research into debunking many of the show’s theories, as someone with a doctorate and an extensive background in studying the ancient Elvhen world and also someone who was there much of the video would go towards debunking their claims regarding elven history, from Elvhenan forward, but honestly he’d also have an interest in debunking a lot of their poor understanding of art and any episodes about the Avvar. Over the years it’s racked up a fair amount of views, and convinced some people that the theories are wrong, which is enough for him. It’s a war Solas tries to forget about because it’s a war he’ll never win, although he does take some comfort in the idea that surely he will outlive the show. I mean, he’s essentially immortal, so he has to, right?

Right??

Every so often Vher likely puts it on because they’re a gremlin who likes to wind Solas up, and according to Joly Mio has contributed to the show, again because they’re a gremlin. I imagine Solas has also uses the show as a demonstration in bad history. Alien theorists, and conspiracy theorists in general, start at the conclusion and work their way back, twisting evidence to fit their conclusion, when any good historian will let the evidence inform the conclusion.

As a final note, I think the worst/best thing about Ancient Aliens in modern Thedas would be that Thedas is a place where conspiracy theories might have some merit to them. Like, I can only imagine Solas watching an episode about the evanuris not truly being gods and he’s like “.... okay......” and then it follows up with “but could these otherworldly beings actually be extraterrestrials? ancient astronaut theorists... say yes.” And then throws his hands up in the air and has to go nap off his frustration.