How Many Hosts Do You Have, If Any?

[pheonix_system]

Our host count is kinda complicated.

Our total count is 9. However, only 4 can be considered main or primary hosts, while three of the others are hosts of subsystems or Solar’s sidesystem, and the other two are are the hosts of our sidesystems. The last four are all hosts in the main system, so we tend to front more than any of the others.

Also, bonus question because I’m curious: Do other systems have hosts who are also caretakers? Asking because three of us have both roles (me being one of them) and I’m just curious how common it is for these two roles to be found together.

Comments

[seraphikiss]

alva
we have one dominant host, and the rest are co-hosts.

luca (he/him) is a co-host and one of our caregivers. we also have a few other co-hosts, but many of them rarely front.

technically, all of my alters are, in some way or another, co-hosts. and to us, a co-host is more of an "emergency backup plan"/"plan B", in case the dominant host is incapable of handling certain scenarios.

[lightning_beast]

Either one or three depending on if you count the Deltas as one person or not. (we're median, it's complicated!) Personally I'd count it as three. We've all been here long before syscovery, with Sharpwhistle being the youngest of our little trio (we're fairly certain he appeared around our teenage years).

[lb_lee]

I mean, my immediate question is, what do you mean by "host"? I've seen it used to mean "main fronter" OR "original person," which are two very different things.

[abyssal_sylph]

It changes semi-constantly for us. Sometimes somebody gets frontstuck, but otherwise we don't have consistant hosts.

[pheonix_system]

We're using it to refer to "main fronter"/"handles the most day-to-day things". We consider it completely separate from "original person".

[foggerss]

Honestly none? Common fronter changes too consistently for us to label any one as a host. We used to consider a group of 7-8 or so fronters as hosts, but we have dropped the label as it has personal negative associations for us (our last hosts fault)

[beepbird]

We choose not to have hosts nowadays. We arguably did have hosts for a long while- at least in the sense of having a "default" person in control- but it consistently led to power imbalances, burnout, and conflict that hurt all of us. It's a little too easy for anyone labeled a "host" in our group to decide to take over our life regardless of what the others think, then suffer the consequences of trying to do too much.

Nowadays, we actively work to balance fronting time between us fairly- or, at minimum, to ensure there is no default. It seems to be working out well. There's less burnout, less conflict, and better distribution of power inside. The only challenge is working with our brain when it doesn't want to allow a switch to someone who needs more time. Sometimes we have to wait it out.

We also stopped using role labels entirely (with one exception: Ann uses "persecutor" in a reclaimatory way, which seems to help her process past mistreatment).