egginawaffleiron.

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.

iMark would have an equal weight in the system as oMark, even if he’s been around for less time. Time does not equal worthiness of getting to front. We’ve had headmates form and then immediately front 90% of the time.

also tbh integration isn’t death anyways and i think it’s stupid to look at it that way. it’s a fusion, a bringing of two forces/people together.would you say a steven universe fusion like garnet is the death of sapphire and ruby? it very explicitly is not.

it should be up to choice. Whether the two want to integrate or coexist they should be provided the option. I think for Mark as a system, integration makes sense with their grief plot line, but i think Helly/Helena would pursue coexistence of some variety.

The DID perspective is also interesting. I’m someone with dissociative tendencies (undiagnosed so grain of salt, etc.) so perhaps my strong feelings about reintegration stem from my own desires to “reintegrate.” Feeling like there’s no continuity within yourself is, at least for me, an unmatched kind of skin crawling. Of course, I’d default to your experience here — “custody” between alters is not something I’d ever considered, but it makes sense from a psychiatric perspective.

I think our only disagreement is on the nature of reintegration as “death.” I think it is a kind of death, but only insofar as all personal change is a kind of death. Innie Mark refuses reintegration out of self preservation— the fear that, once reintegrated, everything that makes him who he is would vanish.

As for the Garnet analogy, I think the key difference here is that Garnet can split back up at any time. Reintegration would be, at least theoretically, permanent (depending on how the writers feel about it, of course).

This kind of stuff isn’t unprecedented in the real world, either. Split brain patients can have their left and right hemispheres communicated with separately, and both sides can have differences in personality. Twins conjoined at the brain can share perceptual experiences, and have a kind of combined consciousness, while still retaining independence between the two. The show plays on these ideas in ways that I think are unique compared to other “possession” style stories.