#reintegration

[realcardiac]

what was the color of your mother's eyes?

[bubbydarkstar]

WHO ARE YOU?

[cannibalspicnic]

Ultimately, I think the ideas that innies and outies are the same person vs. innies and outies are two distinct individuals kinda misses the point. Yes they're the same person, AND a new consciousness with its own desires and wants and needs has been created that is separate and different from the original consciousness. I think part of the idea is that two conflicting things are true together, like the two consciousnesses existing in one body.

I think if the show goes on, it's very possible Dylan is going to be the first one to reintegrate, and it might happen naturally. Dylan George has had direct communication with Dylan G, and they've started to understand each other and accept each other. They've bonded over their shared love of Gretchen, and Dylan G wishes for Dylan George's life, while Dylan George wishes for Dylan G's confidence.

I think ultimately, self-acceptance is the only thing that can transcend severance, and both the innie and the outie have to individually want to be whole together for reintegration to work.

[one-billion-marbles]

a possibly massive clue in the new episode??

~spoilers for severance up to s2e3!~

Did anyone catch Asal's comment near the end of the episode as she was about to reintegrate Mark? I feel like it solves a big question the fandom has. listen:

"The five brainwave frequencies of the innie and outie".

This is actual science as well - apparently these five frequencies correspond to different mental states (relaxed, alert, etc).

Think about the sorting in MDR. We know each box has percentages of woe, dread, malice, and frolick. But why five boxes?

Hear me out. What if each box corresponds to a certain brain wave, and the reason each set of data evokes a certain emotion is because that emotion is what is associated with that brain wave?

(or something similar - there isn't really a 'scary brain wave' but it could be something where Lumon is manipulating the innies' reactions to the brain waves - for example they might make the delta waves feel scary, as they're associated with deep sleep)

So the percentages correlate to Lumon wanting every single brain wave 'refined'.

I immediately got so excited when the word 'five' was said, I had to get this out there.

edit: on my rewatch I also noticed that there are four coloured wires - a connection to the four tempers, maybe? Especially because they're blue, yellow, green, and red, the four colours associated with the tempers in the refinement process and thematically.

[dolphelecat]

One of the things that's so delicious about Mark Scout's love for Gemma (not necessarily healthy, but fun to watch as a viewer) is that he will do anything self-destructive because of it. It motivated his initial severing and his alcoholic, depressive lifestyle before he found out she was alive. After he knew she was alive, he was not only willing, but eager to undergo experimental brain surgery that has a 100% mortality rate, deal with the sickness, the disorientation, the hallucinations, the seizures, the nosebleeds. He lied to Devon. He faced the significant risk of Lumon coming after him. He ultimately goes along with Cobel even though he hates it for Gemma.

But this ultimately will not serve him because what he needs is the understanding, cooperation, and maybe even unification of Mark S., aka himself. Self-destruction is the polar opposite of what will help him going forward, and I can't wait to see how he handles that situation!

[eagans]

(x)

[egginawaffleiron]

I feel like the tough pill to swallow with Severance is that Reintegration is the only ethical solution to the conflict of the show.

It’s tempting to weigh the morality of each innie/outie and try to argue that their body ought to go to the more moral of the two, but that just isn’t the case. What we have is two human beings in one body, both of which have an equal right to bodily autonomy. Short of cloning Mark, which is impossible, the only ethical solution is to turn two people into one person. The alternative is 1. killing one of the two, Irving style, or 2. granting custody of the body between the two, which is how the show already is. Swapping back and forth all the time is in violation of bodily autonomy. You don’t have to use your body to keep someone else alive if you don’t want to — see “The Most Famous Violinist” for other pro choice arguments.

Of course, this situation is different from pregnancy/being in constant dialysis with a violinist. In those situations, you can pretty strongly argue that your body is YOURS. Another being, separate from you, requires YOUR body to exist. You don’t have to make that sacrifice if you don’t want to. The innie/outie knot is more complicated, however. Innie Mark does not “require” Outie Mark’s body to exist — or, at least, that’s a pretty overcomplicated way of putting it. It’s just his body. Five days a week, from 9 to 5, Mark S. lives in HIS body. When he gets in the elevator, Outie Mark returns to what is also, undeniably, HIS body. Both beings can be said to have equal autonomy over the same body.

Innie Mark does not want to reintegrate, because the ratio of Outie to Innie is so heavily skewed that Innie Mark might as well not exist. It’s a form of death. But the death isn’t only for Innie Mark — Outie Mark would die too. They would both die, and a new, third guy would come into existence.

This sounds horrible but really it’s the way you live your life all the time. Every night when you go to sleep, you die, and every waking morning you’re born anew. We are defined by our memories, they change us, make us who we are. Are you the same person you were ten years ago? How about five? Or two? Or last week? Those versions of yourself are dead. They had to die so that you could exist.

It’s why grief is so hard. When someone you love dies, the version of you that was with them also dies. You lose a piece of yourself. Over the grieving process, you have to transform into someone who can keep living without them, someone who can meet new people and allow them to change you in new ways. I think this journey is something like what Mark is going through.

[sevrence]

If someone who suffers regular nightmares wakes up without remembering them, are they cruelly subjecting an "innie" to a life of torture? If they learn to lucid dream, is that murder? Is that condemning someone to oblivion? No. Some of y'all are really getting on my nerves with your "media literacy" takes about viewers not seeing iMark as his "own" person, which is different from not seeing him as a person at all.

To me, the unethical thing about what Lumon does has nothing to do with innies' "creation". Severance is unethical because consent is ongoing, and the idea that workers can't revoke consent if they are in "innie" mode is horrific.

Even in-show debates about the severance procedure are polluted by the acceptance of a core Lumon lie as a given: one person can be separated into two via the severance procedure. The board members are so dedicated to this lie that they themselves believe it in season 1 to the point of refusing to entertain the idea of reintegration in the face of Cobel's evidence.

Burt and others like him are willing to be complicit in killing because they were told that if their body dies as an innie, an innocent version of their soul can go to heaven. It's the natural extreme of Burt's hollow mentality that he wasn't complicit because he has no memories to confirm what Lumon did with his passengers. Helly is desperate to fight for her "life" because she wants to believe that as an innie, she's innocent of Helena's crimes against the people she's befriended.

Slandering oMark as unempathetic and/or entitled compared to iMark is so ridiculous. iMark's fear about a reintegrated mind being "less him" is unfounded, and contradicts his own sense of self. If memories are what make a person, that means iMark is indeed less of a person than oMark, worthy of only one letter in a surname with five. But memories are not what make a person.

Consciousness is what makes a person, and there has only ever been one Mark Scout. If/when he reintegrates, nothing will be lost whether he's on the severed floor at the time or not. He will have the full context he has always deserved. He will have answers about Petey's fate and the nature of their friendship. He will remember seeing Gemma without loving her on the severed floor the same way he will remember seeing Gemma without loving her on that campus where they first met. He will remember loving Helly, hating Helena, and not being able to tell them apart. He will finally be able to empathize with himself.

[starbell0]

Severance as a concept is horrifying

It's the equivalent of you having your own body for 12 hours in a day and another random person, who you have NEVER MET having your same body for the other 12.

What will they do in your body? It's entrusting an entire stranger with the vessel that keeps you alive. The reputation that you live off of. I don't know one person who would do that. (phrase it as: you'll never have to work again! and suddenly everything I said above is no longer important)

Reintegration as a concept is equally, if not more horrifying.

You meet this stranger who shares your body. But now you're not just giving them your body for 12 hours, you are living in that body with them. You are two wholes in a body only made for one whole. You are genuinely and literally two minds forced back into one.

How do you assert your own opinion when this other stranger (who is also yourself, and views you as the stranger) holds a different opinion. How do you cope with that??

[brittlesoldier]

I was looking at Asuka's pictures again and thinking about Hellyna and this is is just Hellyna going through reintegration

[crabformers]

prequel writing before i finish the main fic??? more likely than you think!!! (If you see errors NO YOU DONT, this is a rough draft)

[nobodysdaydreams]

I have a theory about why Petey’s reintegration failed, what it will take for someone to properly reintegrate, and how this could complicate the endings they choose to give to Helly, Mark, and Gemma.

Haven't severance posted in a while, but I had to get this off my chest, because it fascinates me. Sorry in advance for a ridiculously long post/ramble.

I've been thinking a lot about Petey's reintegration and why it failed, and honestly I think the heart of it is the answer to the question: are the innies and outties two separate people, or the same person? Because I've seen arguments for both perspectives on Tumblr as well as third positions that say it's "kind of both/complicated", and all of them make compelling cases, but there's other aspects of the innie and outtie relationship that I don't think are talked about enough, and they could have very strong implications for how reintegration is going to affect our characters.

Let's start by using Petey as an example. Part of his reintegration problem was the timeline in his mind. Severance felt as far away as his fifth birthday, which makes sense if you take the perspective that the innies and outties are two people. This way of thinking certainly helps Lumon dehumanize innies as the “other” and pits the innies and outties against each other and appears to be what's happening from the viewers perspectives, as innies and outties disagree with each other and sometimes take steps to undermine each other.

But there's interesting implications when you reexamine the show's stated science behind it. While it seems like the innies are their "own separate people" that happen to share a body, it's notable that the innies aren’t created as a duplicate or other consciousness, not exactly. If that was the case, then the independent consciousnesses could theoretically be active in the same body at the same time, each with their own thoughts and unable to access each other's memories and experiences (though once aware at the same time, they would make memories and experiences together, much like a split brain patient). But thus far, as the science has been explained to us in the show, what severance does has nothing to do with duplicating or dividing consciousness in the brain, but memories, and that's an aspect of the procedure that could easily haunt many characters later and has interesting implications for what a successful reintegration could eventually look like if they decided to become "one person".

Let's take Mark, for example. Think of the moment he wakes up on the table. To Mark S, that's when "his life" begins, but "his life" is really just Mark Scout + amnesia at that point. His memories are there, but something is blocking his access to them, and when he goes up the elevator, his memories return, but now with something blocking access to other memories. So while an unsuccessfully reintegrated timeline might look the way Petey's did, with waking up on table = fifth birthday and he sees them as two separate lives he lived, a successfully reintegrated timeline for a character might look something like this:

"I was depressed so I took a job at Lumon, agreed to severance, and went down the elevator. Once down the elevator, I forgot everything, so I started working, and I hated my job. Then I went up the elevator. Once up the elevator, I forgot the whole work day, but remembered everything else, so I when home I made these decisions, which lead me back down the elevator. Once there, I forgot everything again, but remembered the day before. However, since I forgot, (for example) that I was married, I started falling in love with this person, or since I forgot that I have these values/fears/ideals, I did this action when I normally wouldn't. Then I went up the elevator and forgot the whole work day again, but remembered everything else...."

And it just continues like that. One perfectly integrated timeline for one person because the only thing separated was their memories. Sure, characters made different choices with access to different memories, but people make different decisions with different amounts of information, like stories where a character gets amnesia and acts different as a result because for better or worse, key memories are gone, but that doesn't make them "not them". The amnesia is part of their story arc, and the changes in the character are obvious, but I’m in multiple fandoms with that storyline, and we don't look at them and necessarily think "boom! It's a new person now, the old one died" and when/if the memories come back, it's not like there's suddenly two people now, even if the character might feel conflicted due to their new experiences when they couldn’t remember their previous life. It's just that unlike most amnesia stories where it happens in one big accident and characters forget one set of information they knew, the characters in severance are in a constant back and forth of "I forget this but I remember that, I forgot these memories, but I have these ones back now" and both innies/outties are selective amnesiacs.

This leads back to a debate that lies at the heart of severance the show: are these two different people or the same person? And while the "two people" answer is to Lumon's benefit (a house divided can't stand against them) and "one person" seems to be suggested if my theory about the science/process involved in a successful reintegration is correct, I think the answer is actually way more complicated and going to depend on the individuals themselves. Theoretically speaking, yes, all severance does is isolate and compartmentalize one person's memories (which we know because it's not like Helena and Helly R. can be awake and aware at the same time in the same body while simultaneously not accessing each other's memories or reintegrating into one person, at least that we know so far), thus implying that all the severed are really just one person with "spatially isolated memories" as the show says. But if a successful reintegration, as I'm theorizing, depends on accepting that reality, then some characters might not be able to do that and choose to continue living their lives as if they are two separate people who happen to take turns using the same body.

I think this will be hard for the outties and innies for a variety of reasons, and one general reason is that from the way Mark Scout and Helena speak to their innies, it's clear they don't really see them as people or a part of themselves at all. Their bodies aren't "Mark S. and Helly R.'s bodies" they are Mark Scout and Helena Eagan's bodies, and while Mark Scout and Helena Eagan's decisions lead to partial occupation of their bodies (and by extension, lives) by Mark S. and Helly R., from their perspective, they still have every right to evict them. From the outtie’s perspective, innies are just using/being loaned bodies and lives that don’t belong to them. Once the outties decide they don’t want their innie anymore, then it’s goodbye. Unpleasant for the innies of course, but what are they going to do? This isn’t their body or their life? Even if the outties do see the innies as people, they still don't see them as equal people with an equal right to the body they inhabit, and they certainly don't see the innies as part of themselves rather than separate people/parasites, and since I hypothesize accepting themselves as one might be what is needed for a successful reintegration, that’s gonna be a problem. And of course, the more hostile the outties are to their innies, the more the innies don't want to accept the outties are part of themselves either, because "hey, I get this is your body and your life and all, but uh...you did create me and put me in here, okay? So pardon me for wanting to live and be a person. You see me as an enemy, but I'm a enemy you made! Remember that? Remember you putting me in "your body"? Maybe you could be a little nicer?"

Of course as I said before, all this innie/outtie hostility only serves Lumon. The more they fight, the more divided they are, the most powerful Lumon becomes. Less memories per person at any time means less knowledge per person at any time. But even if an outtie and innie were to reach an understanding, that alone does not a successfully reintegration make. They wouldn't just need to get along as two separate people, if my theory is right, they need to accept (or decide if you'd prefer to think of it like that) that they're one person. For some characters, I think this will be easy, and a stitched together timeline where you accept yourselves as one person seems like the perfect solution. Take Dylan G. for example. He gets new friends, his wife, his kids and memories of being awesome and falling back in love. Who wouldn't want that? He better get reintegrated and live his best life.

But then of course, we have Helly R./Helena, Mark S./Mark Scout, and Gemma/Ms. Casey, which is a way more complicated situation. Personally, I do not care who "ends up" with who, though I do humbly think that the situation is far less simplistic than it often gets made out to be in terms of "oh but these two HAVE to end up together if reintegrated/severed", and will be talking about it, as this does factor into the decisions the characters might end up making.

For example, and this might be the world's most unpopular opinion, but I do not think reintegration = Mark automatically choosing either woman over the other, Gemma or Mark hating Helly, or even either woman insisting Mark should obviously be with them. Let's start with Mark. What would reintegration mean for him? What would his "stitched together timeline" look like? Well, it's the story about him getting severed because of the pain of losing his wife, and spending two years getting over her, then going to work, forgetting about that, falling in love with someone new, then going back up, forgetting that again, but mourning his wife some more and trying to maybe date someone else but it goes nowhere, then he goes back down, forgets all that, and continues the romance with his coworker, goes back up, finally learns his wife is alive after two years and feels that hope, then goes back down, forgets that, and continues the romance again, etc. Overall, when put together, it's the story of a guy who sometimes forgot he had a wife, so he fell in love with a coworker after she died, only to discover his wife is alive again. None of that necessarily means he will choose one woman over the other. He and Gemma have history and they clearly care about each other, but they were also separated for a long time and it’s gonna take a while to see if they can fall back in their rhythm or if that’s even possible. Mark and Helly have a more recent relationship, but her outtie also knew his wife was being tortured at Lumon and didn’t tell him. Didn’t even act sorry about an innocent woman being tortured and killed. She also slept with Mark’s innie under false pretenses. Even if she was raised that way it still might be (understandably) hard for Mark to see past that. But none of these points might even matter at all because we have no idea how Gemma and Helly being reintegrated or not reintegrated will impact Mark's decision even if he himself is successfully reintegrated.

Take Gemma for example. You might think "Well, she's Mark's wife. She believed he would come for her, she waited years for him, she never lost hope in him, and Helly is literally Helena Eagan, who knew she was down there and did nothing. Of course Gemma is not gonna understand or care about their relationship and insist that Mark is her husband and should be with her!" And maybe that's true for Gemma. But consider what a reintegrated timeline would look like for her. Ms. Casey said the best part of her existence was "watching Helly". Seeing Mark, who was kind to her and concerned for her, fall in love. It's like when you have two friends that you ship really hard and are so happy when they end up together but in this case, uh-oh! Now you suddenly remember that actually one of them is your husband, which you periodically kept forgetting ever time you went up that dang elevator, which introduces complicated feelings, but I don't think a reintegrated Gemma would look at Mark and Helly together and be like "ew. now where did this come from?" she knows where it came from, she was there,m. Her story is a back and forth between "My husband is going to save me. He loves me and would never give up on me.” and "the best part of my existence is seeing these two together".

Then we have Helly. And her story is more difficult to stich together because we don't have all of Helena's backstory. But we know that Helena, despite having feelings for Mark, did make some pretty big missteps. Look, maybe she has secretly been working against her father and family this whole time. We don't know. But what we do know is that even if that is the case, she still slept with Mark under false pretenses and made insensitive comments about his wife knowing that she was being tortured daily, and probably has done some other shady stuff. I'm sure she did it under pressure/the influence of her father and suffered too, and I don't want to discount that, but she still did it. And Helly is not going to be happy about that, and even less happy to remember "oh yeah, when I went up the elevator and temporarily forgot my life down here, but suddenly remembered my whole crazy upbringing, that was me that did those things to the man I love and got weirdly jealous of myself like a crazy person." I could see her stepping aside so Mark and Gemma can be together because she realizes/remembers her actions and is horrified by them, but I can also see her really wanting to make their relationship work since Mark is the one thing both her and Helena seem to agree on and this is the one thing they both seem to really want. Her story is a weird back and forth between "I'm going to destroy this company" to "forget all that, we're back to either running the company or destroying it from the inside depending on what the writers do here" and back to forgetting all that again and going back to destroying Lumon with Mark. So, yeah, until we know a little more about Helena, it's hard to say what a reintegration with her would look like, but I think that "she'd realize the error of her wicked ways and stand aside so Mark and Gemma could be together, what happened between Helly and Mark doesn’t matter at all" and "no, she deserves happiness, and her and Mark belong together just forget about the complications" are not guarantees.

So in summary, where does that leave our trio? The way I see it, we have two options main options here. Option 1, which I've discussed above is everybody reintegrates. Their timelines are stitched together, and Gemma/Casey, Helena/Helly, and Mark/uh...Mark, remember everything, and all the complicated feelings, pains, self-hatred, and betrayal that comes with it, and then...they work it out. They talk through their feelings like adults. They can't change what happened, but it is what it is, and now the three of them remember everything. Their whole story. Hopefully a very qualified therapist is involved, and yes, the most likely scenario is multiple people getting their feelings hurt if not all of them, but life is messy and complicated, and sometimes this is what happens. Is it fair to everyone? No. Is this a bittersweet ending? For sure. But on the bright side, now they can talk it out. Now they have their lives back, their full, complete lives. Now they're all working on the same side as their whole selves, no separated or compartmentalized memories. That at least is something, something that could be a good place of common ground.

Then there's option 2: one or both of the innies/outties can't or won’t accept or decide that they're the same people, so they can't reintegrate. As much as the severance show tells us "hey we just separated and isolated your memories, not your consciousness" and "It's hard to tell which "person" you are (or rather, which set of memories you have access to at a given time)", that's not what we see or what the characters see. And let's face it. If someone told you that you had another life where you fell in love with someone other than your current partner, or watched, heck, even rooted for them, to fall for someone else, or tortured and hurt your current partner and someone else who you consider a friend, would you want to remember that? And even if one character can reintegrate, a lot of their ability to move forward and make decisions about their future depends if the other two are also reintegrating or not because of how entangled their lives are now. Living as separate people might be what's easiest, whether that's what's "actually happening" during severance or not. It's giving up half a life, but if the characters decide the stitched together life isn't the one they want to remember, but also won’t kill each other to take over their life, then what else are they to do? Ironically, I see this ending just as bittersweet as the other one. I imagine at a certain time every year, Helena drives to that cabin in the woods. Mark and Gemma Scout arrive too, separate car. They just sort of look at each other, acknowledge each other. Helena knows outtie Mark is the person who chose Gemma over her, that her innie gets a version Mark and she doesn't, but at least she has control of the company now. At least she's free from her father. And of course, to Outtie Mark and Gemma, Helena is the person who knowingly let them be tortured and tried to make a move on Mark knowing what her father's company was doing to his supposedly dead wife. Sure, she turned it around and helped them, but that still happened. And all of them know what's going to happen when they walk into the cabin. Mark and Helly are going to be together, and Mark is disgusted by the fact that a version of him fell in love with the woman who tortured his wife even though he supposes "technically" it's not her, and Helena hates that it's Helly getting that romance, and not her, and Gemma is unhappy, because how would you feel if your partner was in this situation, and you were about to be turned into someone who thought that your husband and the lady who knew you were being tortured in her dad’s basement looked cute together?

But what can they do? Refuse to return to the cabin? Selectively delete their bundles of severed memories, removing them like a brain tumor? They could. But deep down, they know they can't. Even Gemma, whose innie was made through zero fault or consent of her own, can't bring herself to condemn an innocent and kind person to just "stop existing", even if she knows that "person" is just "memories she forgot + forgetting her current memories". So they go inside. And just like that, Helly R., Mark S., and Ms. Casey are back. They can't leave the cabin, though they might want to. Their world and existence are small. But it's there's, and they don't have to share it with their outties. They don't have to work for Lumon. They can be happy. And if they need to know about anyone else or anything else going on outside, they can gather on the balcony and have someone step out to activate their outtie to talk to the other two. But I feel like they might try to avoid that, if they can. Perhaps a conversation between Outtie Mark and Helly so he can see and understand how a version of himself could fall in love with her and verify that Ms. Casey is happy with her situation. But that might be it. And then, when the time is up, they leave. They don't know if they'll be back, but they hope so. Mark and Helly hug one last time, before exiting through separate doors as Mark leaves with Ms. Casey. Then they all go outside, get back in their cars, and drive away, as if the time just disappeared. They don't remember what happened in the cabin. They don't want to remember. Maybe that was them, maybe it was always them. But it's easier to act like they aren't the same person, for them and their innies. So that's how they act. Forever.

Anywayyyy... I'm not saying that this is necessarily where the show is going, but it's my theory about what makes for a successful reintegration, and you don't have to agree with it or like it, but I hope someone finds in narratively compelling. And if you're reading this and hate both these options because it ruins your beautiful ship, please know that I hope your ship works out, and you are happy. I have no control over that, and obviously that hope can't work for everyone since what everyone wants seems to contradict each other (an ironically perfect metaphor for our characters), but either way, at least we'll have fanfic.

[gothicseverance]

The reader’s repeated experience of the spectacle of suffering, and specifically the reader’s struggle with the blank spots or gaps that the scenes inevitably enact, is the most important part of the reading experience.

—Repetition and the Pleasure of the Gothic

Gif by @bladesrunner 🖤

[notaplaceofhonour]

Changing my Severance fan theory. We already knew Lumon was lying about the severance procedure being permanent because of reintegration. I think they’re lying about the other part too. Reintegration isn’t just possible, it’s inevitable���with the same results as Petey.

Lumon and Reghabi are both trying to solve the same problem, just in opposite directions: Reghabi by making reintegration survivable, Lumon by strengthening the barrier to prevent it.

[dolphelecat]

Hey, so, uh, is it just me, or has Mark seemed more volatile specifically since Regbahi flooded the chip? Like, I know he's going through A Lot, and he's always been an asshole and never has been good at handling his negative emotions but, you know, does anyone else wonder if difficulty regulating emotions might be a side effect of experimental brain procedures? Anyone else worried about whether there will be long-lasting effects from this? Anyone really anxious that this will blow up on Mark and his goals in the worst way and everyone will just blame him for it?

[eagans]

“it’s not a binary did love transcend question”

@helenaeaganenjoyer i've been thinking about your tags and i just wanted to say, there's so much to chew on here. it's not a binary did love transcend question!!!! i've been trying to put my finger on why we see that question manifested differently in mark/helly/helena vs mark/gemma—and the thing about making sweeping statements on whether love transcended in either case is that: it ignores the fact that love is not one single, static thing. in mark (both innie and outie form) and helena's case, chemistry and attraction transcended. in (i)mark and ms casey's case, affinity and trust transcended—as well as between (o)mark and gemma's final innie. (i personally don't think it's just a matter of him being the first real person she sees; hell, that man is covered extensively in blood. we know gemma can be strong-willed and combative too—she tried to break dr mauer's fingers!—so there must've been something about mark that made her 'blank slate' innie trust him.) and the thing i keep going back to is—i think mark and gemma have both just changed too much as people. once we've gotten to know the 'real' gemma in 2.07, it's so obvious just how different ms casey is from who gemma was. how much of that is because of her extremely short 107 hours lifespan? hard to say, but considering that helly at her 'blank slate' woke up absolutely feral... just what else did they do to gemma to turn her into ms casey, who had this somewhat eerie, unnatural quality to her?

the other thing you mentioned here is individuation as time goes on, which is definitely more interesting to think about in the case of mark, who has been severed for much, much longer than hellyna. the s2 finale that took two whole seasons to build to culminates in the conflict between innie and outie mark, a conflict that stems from the fact that they have different and incompatible desires (which the show uses helly and gemma as shorthands for, but it's about so, so much more than that; it was never about 'helly vs gemma'). and all of this is caused by just how long mark's separate selves spent accumulating experiences in completely different and segregated environments, thus forming different (divergent) identities; how then, do you recombine two halves with edges that no longer fit together because they have been reshaped in independent ways? is this incompatibility what caused petey's reintegration sickness?

one thing i do want to add though, is that even given all this, i still don't think it makes the innies and outies different people, but just the same person with different identities; each identity possesses a full agency as any other human being does, of course, but this also largely has to do with the fact that these different identities can't coexist at the same time—only one is in control of the body at any given moment. the closest analogy we have to 'co-sharing' is when helena was impersonating helly at the beginning of the season. and, like you said, helena has the unique advantage of having access to her innie's memories via external means (security tapes). all of this, i think, is the basis for why we saw this 'natural reintegration' (converging of personalities) happen between helly and helena towards the end of the season. most important of all though, i LOVE the point you made about strong feelings being the key to reintegration—because we did see reghabi attempt to use shame as a trigger for mark's reintegration. except the thing is, like you said, there's no stronger feeling than being in love. love, in whatever form, is what bleeds through the severance barrier over and over. being in love is the catalyst for both helly and helena's transformation. of course it's love. it's always love.