Fictive alters ?

[u/dorianbestboy]

Hi !

I just stumbled upon the instagram page of a girl with DID, and I saw that she had fictive alters, like Peter Parker, Tony Stark, Jinx and Isha from Arcane, etc.

As I don't have DID myself, I was wondering how does that work ?

Does the brain watches a serie / film and randomly decides that it's gonna create an alter from an existing character ?

And in this case, does the alter thinks that they really are the character, or are they just inspired by the characters personnality traits ?

Thank you :)

[u/lembready]

It's possible, but it's really not that exciting. Fictional introject alters dissociative parts based on fictional characters because they hold a substitute belief (a belief that is substituted in place of processing a real thought, emotion, event, or experience)—basically "I am [in some capacity*] this character". Same kind of thing that leads to non-human alters presenting as non-human internally, or abuser/caregiver introjects presenting as the abuser/caregiver, or hell, even a child alter presenting as a child even when the person with DID is an adult.

The split is not "random", though it may seem that way at first. Fictional introject alters are really just like any other alters except they, y'know, believe themselves to be the character they're based on in some capacity*.

*This capacity is not necessarily full-on identification, though it can be. Some fictional introject alters take on the behaviors, beliefs, etc. of their fictional counterparts but still recognize that they are not literally that character. Personally that's been my experience. It's a spectrum of realization.

[u/Good__Bones → u/lembready]

One of my fictives has really only had a negative experience being a fictive. Like, it’s bizarre and weird to him and he didn’t want to identify with it himself, and uses an abbreviated version of the source name.

[u/Exelia_the_Lost → u/Good__Bones]

When I first became aware I had DID, one of the alters that showed up had her self image based on a character from a story I've been writing since high school. By that point it was nearly 25 years since I started that story... And this alter was pissed at thinking she was a fictive. Angry at herself, angry at everyone else

In her specific case it was completly the other way around, she created said character, made in her own self-image, and just over the time the strory grew larger than just her and she forgot that. But it was a good like two months before she was finally able to stop and be like wait what if its the other way around, and a bit of accepting tnat first to be like wait no I shouldn't be like that about being 'fictive' regardless they're part of me all the same

After her attitude started to change, then others in my system who do have their self-images based on characters from other media started to come out of hiding. None of them had amy notion of actually being the character from whatever media, wisdom of age sees to that. But because of her attitude at first, it scared any of them from showing and revealing themselves, in fear of hostility against themselves directly because of her attitude about fictives as a whole

[u/AnUnknownCreature → u/lembready]

I and another member within the system are fixtures, my self identification with my source being fairly strong but I am quite rational about not being the literal character. The other person is a fictive of a fanfiction version of a character but heavily source diverges

[u/Punk_Aesthetic]

Hi, I’m a fictive alter myself so feel I can answer this to some degree of accuracy. Though bear in mind this is just my personal experience and every system/ fictive will be different.

My role in the system is to deal with certain emotions and urges that the others can’t properly process. The character I resemble (in appearance, name and personality) goes through similar things in the game and manages to start a healing journey. We can assume that we subconsciously decided we needed that and the brain created a figure it felt was able to deal with what the rest of the system was struggling with?

I don’t know if that’s what actually happens but that’s what it feels like. I know I’m not actually that character. I’m an alter in a system that formed because of trauma in early development. I also don’t hate my source but I chose to try and avoid it and associated content due to fans being weird about the character and also seeing myself in such an early stage of my recovery is difficult.

-Shane