Hey Lime, it's been a while since I actively looked up your fics for a reread, but I just want you to know I've been quietly hyperfixating on your aliens for actual years! When I watch new shows, I think about how I would communicate themes and meanings in the visuals to different alien species in your fics. Not a day goes by where I don't imagine different aspects of alien biology and technology and cultures, and even when it's not of one of the species you wrote about, those are always at the core of it all. And despite all that, you still surprise me with each and every fic you write. TEOBA, WIBAR, WIBAR: What If... thank you so much for sharing your amazing works with the world, it has quite literally shaped me as a person, I think!!
Anyways, one of the concepts I find endlessly fascinating is the Vidi, and I wanted to ask: if Virgil was very present in the current moment, could he give Logan (and maybe others) a live interpretation of the current situation? Let's say he'd sing an English song as they initiated the Vidi, could he give Logan al translation? And I think you once mentioned that the memories from the Vidi are only as sharp as you remember them. Could you technically stitch memories together then to show something? Like, let's say you remember the specific classroom where a biology teacher always gave lessons, but you don't remember their face or voice. Could you stitch the memory of sitting at your specific spot in that location together with the information you know about a biological process to explain that to an alien?
Anyways, hope you are doing well and thank you again for sharing your works with us!!❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
aww, nyn, i'm honored! it means so much to me that my silly guys could have such an impact... i love writing sci fi and i truly hope i get to keep doing it for a long time.
as for the vidi...
i think for the first question, "could a vidi provide something like real-time translation," the answer is probably not. the effect of a vidi isn't so much direct meaning as it is understanding, and this is accomplished through the same pathways we build memory on-- if virgil wanted to share the human lyrics of a song, he'd have an easier time focusing on a strongly formed memory of listening to that song, and even then, after the vidi ended, logan would still be left with more of an impression of the song than the exact lyrics. think about the way you process things while asleep: often the underlying feelings of a dream or nightmare are understood without clear details, and these impressions tend to fade upon waking. a vidi theoretically functions in a very similar way.
this sort of leads into the second question, which proposes exerting a certain level of control over one's recollections to present a scene. it might not be as clear cut as your example, but my answer is yes, you could accomplish this. i mean, our minds are already entirely capable of creating mismashed or unreal versions of events, either through extreme cases like confabulation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation) or the more common false memories (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory). imagining things is also a skill that comes in handy for compiling brain stuff like this.
However! i do think that trying to construct a rigid scene rather than sharing a more general and loose-flowing stream of information can come with its own hazards. for example, falsely believing afterwards that your biology teacher was the one to teach you that fact, or later remembering the face of your teacher as closer to a completely different person who told you those facts. these risks likely wouldn't be as prominent for ulgorii, who are structured for vidi sharing without as much memory degradation or incorrect processing of information, but for humans and other species without those adaptations, it's a real hazard! its why interspecies vidi sharing is a learned skill that only some ulgorii have mastered.
also dude while i was researching this-- did you know they figured out how to give mice false memories? is that fucked up or what? cough ulgoriian villain gaslighting arc cough cough
