We have a bit of a nuanced experience. We have both fictives and OCtives. I myself am a fictive (Kris from Deltarune), and honestly, I think we only have alters like that because sometimes the brain needs a new compartment or role filled or something (or we have someone show up who's been around a long time, but never needed an identity before now), and doesn't feel like going to all the effort of making a whole new guy from scratch. So it just kinda. Takes the basic vibes it wants, compares them to existing characters with vaguely similar vibes, and then moulds the appearance and the name around that. Like none of our fictives have exomemories or anything, and none of us identify overly strongly with our source. We all like our sources. Like I like playing Deltarune. But it's not... me. Yk?
Anyway, I really just kinda look like Kris Deltarune, and share the name and pronouns, and have a sword, and that's about it. Same goes for most of our other fictives (and I say most because some of them only look a little like their source, and don't share the name or any vibes. And others look almost nothing like their source, but share a name and a couple vague vibes).
Our OCtives are a mixed bag, and are also sometimes a little hard to determine how much they were sourced off an OC, and how much the OC was based on them. We do have one OCtive, Velkurpení, who we know for a fact is based fully on an OC we made. We wrote a whole story for the OC, put a lot of thought into how we drew her, drew her a SHITTON, etc. Velkurpení the alter actually does have exomemories that align with that story. Her memories are different in some ways. She remembers specifics of her 'powers' and such that were left pretty vague in the OC lore, and the circumstances surrounding the focus of the OC lore are slightly different for the real her. She also doesn't really have exotrauma, whereas the OC deals with a bunch of regret after the main event. I guess our Velkurpení like. Sortof deals with those feelings? But applied to other things. Like if she messes up or something important she tries to do fails. She feels a lot of regret and sorrow with that.
The way she speaks and acts is very much how we imagined the OC to be. Like. Exactly. She also looks almost exactly how we pictured said OC in her true form. She typically shapeshifts to something smaller and more humanoid to fit in our front room, which is pretty different, but like. Still. Idk. She isn't fronting right now, but I could ask her if she wants to talk about herself if you want me to.
Aside from her, we have a couple grey area OCtives, where the OC originally came like. Super naturally to us, but also we did put a lot of very specific thought into some aspects of their design. If nothing else, I think the creation of those OCs and the formation of the associated alter were in a very close time frame. Zane and Boris are very much that. Though neither of them have exomemories.
Then we have Fever, who is *partially* sourced off an OC we made way back in middle school. This OC was a tiefling-looking guy we made for a D&D campaign, so Fever like. Is sortof tiefling-esque? But doesn't look a whole lot like the OC, and absolutely doesn't act like him. He also doesn't have exomemories.
And then Scintillan is one who we thought was sortof an OC at first, but who ended up just being an alter who's existed for a very, very long time. He fully has vivid exomemories and really bad exotrauma. The OC design we made was just completely entirely him lmao.
We do have a fair few brainmades. It's a toss-up on whether any of our non-fictives have exomemories. Some do, and some don't. The only universal thing is that none of the fictives have them. The fictives generally form for very strong, very specific purposes, and that kinda ends up entirely encompassing that sense of personal history and identity.
Aaaanyway, sorry, this was a little long lmao. Hopefully it helped some? I think the long and short of it is that introjects don't really have strict rules. You can call them introjects if they feel connected in some way or are based in some way off an existing person/character. And OCtives can be way more complicated and grey, because like. Sometimes they're sortof like standard fictives, and sometimes the line between OC and alter is really blurry or just impossible to place. It's up to y'all how you define that, if you want to define it at all
