Second Part Written By - Tumblr Posts
It seems to vary for us. They seem to fall into a few categories.
Introject who have no relation to their source beyond their name and personality: these interjects seem to be our older interjects (ie. split when we were younger) and fit our perception of the character at the time, and have most likely shifted in role, and often name too or have shifted to better match what the body needs.
I'm (🔥) a good example, as somewhere along the line I merged with some of our past primary protectors, including Susan, who had a personality that was a mix of Susan and Lucy Pevensie (Narnia).
These interjects have little, to no, memory of their source.
Introjects who share some traits with their source.
These vary drastically, and can have full memory of their source, or none at all. Most of them are older media sources, and usually split when we were under the age of 12.
We have one introject who split fairly recently (in the last few years): she's based on Julia from 1984. She hasn't spoken to any of the other system members very much so I can't answer this question for her…
However, I suspect her personality will continue to evolve, as will her perceptions, as we study 1984 in more depth... I'm hoping I can bother her about analysing interactions.. though I doubt she'll want to talk about most of them.
Lillia (🪻): she's special, as her source is a novel written by one of our closest friends. Her memories tend to lean towards the canon she was written with. Lillia's author has since changed the entire story top to bottom (or so we have heard), but she has no basis of reference for this new rewrite, her memories reflect as such. Her memories are almost always representative of something we went through at some point or another. She finds that a lot of her memories are hard to come by, or foggy.
Link (🗡️): Link gets his own category. (it's 🐚 from here)
We believed that we split Link (Legend of Zelda) just past the bodies 17th birthday following a rather messy break-up with our now ex.
He later informed me that he's been around since we were six, and were playing Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword and Link's Crossbow Training. In retrospective bothering of family, we found out that there were times we insisted we were an elf boy and would always make cardboard crossbows, swords and 'pretend' to save Hyrule.
Link's memories have varied drastically with the iterations of LoZ we've played. He's developed memories since we played botw, and totk, and as much as we play top-down Zelda games (Link's Awakening, Echoes of Wisdom when it comes out, OG Zelda games) he has no idea what is going on and no memory of them.
His memories have evolved as other system members have read fanfic, made head canons etc set in Hyrule.
When we were first playing totk (released May 2023), he almost knew the entire storyline, and a lot of the new monsters weren't a surprise to him... and we had no idea what he was on about until we got to the points he was describing…and then it was an immediate case of "how did you know that?!"
In answer to your question, OP... it varies from introject to introject, but for our most active/fronting introjects: they evolve as the system consumes the media, but it takes a lot for us to split an introject, and usually by the point we split an introject, we're already very close to completing, if not completed, their source. Most of the time, if we are to split an introject, it'll be on a reread/replay/rewatch following another severely traumatic event that aligns with their personality (or trauma)
What are people's experiences with introjects from a source they haven't finished (ex. A show or a game)? Do they grow as you complete the source? Does it feel as though parts of their memories are locked away until you complete the source? Genuinely curious as Astarion is my first introject and he hasn't spoken of his memories much, either because he just doesn't have many or wanting privacy in unsure.
-💚