Can alters come from media images??

Trying to understand the 'shape' of the non-verbal alter who is not quite human, I googled images with that rough description and found something uncannily familiar.... it is not that I doubt my son's alter as being real...but wonder if he got the image from this movie/game whatever....and if so, how is that significant? I saw someone's 'mapping' in a book and one of their alters had the same name as a Disney character. I wondered if they viewed her the same way and if that alter was created because of how she felt towards the character. Does this seem accurate?

The term is generally a fictive. It happens fairly often. Someone's brain can take inspiration from all sorts of things. I always tease Gwen about the couple of members of the House who look like celebrities. It's just something that happens. So, no worries.

Agree with Caecandy - it's nothing to worry about. He's an alter just like any other alter - he just might have pieces of an outside influence in him too. Our system has someone like that, too. But that doesn't make them any less real or any less useful. We've heard the terms mediakin, introject and fictive (but we find the last one kind of offensive to our tastes so we don't use it) but we just think of it as just another alter and, if someone presses hard enough on what to call them, just call them an inspired alter. I think the important thing is any alter holds the same value: they are there to help your son (in different ways, obviously) and deserve the same respect, understanding and care no matter what your son had as an inspiration when he needed to make him.

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One of ours took the name and image of Smurfette. She is a trauma holder but for now she is pretending to be Smurfette because she was always happy, smart, and had a lot of friends. Those are the her reasons for it and that is who she wants to be. I hope to get her to trust enough to drop the mask, but for now hiding that way makes her feel safe. When she is ready, she will stop pretending and start being honest.

I can tell you, in my case, that this is the case, yes.

My invalidation part first represented kind of looking like Michael Meyers from Halloween (not exactly, but similar), but with a half-broken ceramic mask and some scars on his face. He actually goes by the name Michael, and I'm not sure if that's where he got it. He represents as big and scary, because part of his job is to undermine our acceptance of and connection to bad stuff that happened and our own feelings about it.

My Poet takes a name that I figured out, after a while, is tangentially related to the character of Darlene on Roseanne.

My tomboy goes as Sam, which I am pretty sure relates to the character of that name from Who's the Boss?

I guess I watched too much TV as a kid. All of these are inside-only names (except T will talk to them using their name), so the names themselves are almost like, "This is how I am seen or wish to be seen inside." While I have been shown these particular characters in connection with their names when they shared them, these last two mostly just look like me at the ages that they are inside. I have a toddler who thinks she has blond hair and blue eyes (I do not) and possibly some others that represent differently. Poet thinks she has very long, straight hair. I had wavy/curly-ish hair in high school, but now it is extremely curly. I always wore it up back then, but she always has it down, though sometimes she has a hood over her head and I can barely see her head/face.

Anyway, that's off topic. The point is, yes, they can get their images or names from other places. LY shared my name (since then, I've come to sense that it was her name and NOT mine, but because I've been fronting so long, it was important for me to use it), so when she wanted to start talking to T, we picked a nickname for our name that is from a book/movie. I find, for the most part, though, this stuff is not conscious like that. My big brother part may also have gotten his name from a TV show (he looks kind of like that character too). I hated the name with a passion, kept trying to think I was just making it up, kept asking whether he was sure, whether he was spelling it right (I preferred a different spelling). He just responded, "Yes, @$$hole, spelled like that. It's my f---ing name!" And so on. To be honest, all of us are heavily influenced by things around us, whether it is media or family members or friends or other significant people or even animals in our lives. So, I find it completely normal when they use characters that resonate to identify to me what they are like or what it is like for them inside.

Most of our system members come from TV shows, movies, games, books, etc. Which is why we did, and still do, identify with the term "soulbonder".

“…ever been so connected to an “imaginary” person, whether your favourite comic-book superhero, the tragic nemesis of a Shakespearean play, your fictionalised interpretation of a famous author or an entity of your own creation, that you literally couldn’t get them out of your head? That you felt as if in some way, whether silent and unmoving or active and participating, they were with you or by your side? That their worlds and experiences were a personal story that they shared with you – or that their journeys were more than merely stories, but that to the both of you, they were as real as any other?This is what we call a SoulBond.”
http://soulbonding.tripod.com/soulbonding_intro.htm

"Mediakin" is someone who identifies as a fictional character, or someone from a fictional world. Soulbonders are people who feel as though they are hosting fictional people or people from fictional worlds in their mental space. So... many of our system members identify as mediakin, and I identified as a soulbonder. I still do, because even if I get a DID Dx, "soulbonder" still describes our set up better because they were already here before the abuse started-- the abuse didn't create them. DID just describes what happened to us, and the journey we are making to become functional and organized again.

As I said elsewhere:

We have one who identifies himself as The Joker, from Batman. Is he "really" The Joker? I don't know. Regardless of whether he is or not, it's how he identifies, and that is the image he gives, the back story he gives and his attitude. For all intents and purposes, that is who he is, or who he chooses to be, so that's how I treat him. While I would rather he not be here, he is, so rather than trying to debate the hows and whys, I try to focus on accepting them as-is and figuring out how we can all work together. Are they "real"? Are they "fictional"? Are they really people from fictional places that, as it turns out, aren't so fictional after all? No idea! But it is what it is. All that matters is that we work together.

So. My answer would be that it's nothing to worry about, at all. They ARE real, even if they are only real because someone's mind has made them real, and they deserve to be treated as real people.