@rainydayscribbling here :]

feel free to skip most of the first screenshot, it's explaining the premise of the first Clements negotiation meeting. kenzie context she's 11 she's very small she has the superpower to make supernaturally good cameras & she also survived parental abuse, one of the main onscreen instances of which took place at the dinner table. she canonically has trauma around food. she also attempts to blackmail her parents into Literally Just Giving Her Basic Safety And Respect in canon so here (I don't know whether I'd portal her before or after she did that, but if it's before, she just applies the idea to Uriel instead of herself) she thinks that's grand advice for Uriel <3

OH also important context. she has really really severe abandonment issues and latches on to people Very Hard. which is what she's done to eve

I really gotta work on that worm/portal crossover fic... i've got to see what happens when Dragon (and the Dragonslayers) find out about GLaDOS and the cores, and Cave is absolutely gonna be a parahuman, probably Tinker of some kind. Hell, maybe just replace GLaDOS with Dragon and have HER running Aperture, and she has to try and help Chell escape, while also helping Dragon to reach the outside too... or maybe make GLaDOS wake up as Dragon when she gets rebooted, and then the two AI work together to help Chell escape and let Dragon reconnect to the outside only to discover she's not on Bet anymore, but Wheatley still ends up taking control because he's an idiot and Chell just thinks that GLaDOS is lying about being someone else, so she helps him connect to the central computer (although they reach it much faster than in Portal 2 because Dragon is actually trying to get Chell there ASAP because that's also where the surface elevator is.

...damnit I just made a whole new premise to my little Worm/Portal crossover fic and now I have two things I wanna write how am I gonna do this now???

One of the cool things about Worm (Webserial about superheroes) is how well developed the world is.

Because the world is so well developed that you could almost mistake it for a long running comic book world, like Marvel and DC

Whenever i was reading, I could always imagine the hero teams and whatnot as if they had their own comics. Their own storylines happening in parallel.

"The Wonderful New Wave"/ "Protectorate: Brockton Bay"/ "Armsmaster: Knight of the Bay".

The Endbringers are like a crossover event anyways.

And there is something akin to a "nothing will be the same" kind of event too.

The Undersiders? A one off team of villains that exploded in popularity and got their own comics.

The Triumvirate? Either They have their own comics for each hero like DC trinity , or they have one single comic.

it's kinda fun to imagine that Worm is the "Ultimate Universe" / Gritty reboot of a mainstream Parahumans comic series.

And other eras.

But witch hero would be able to pull off "pouches everywhere" right?

i think kenzie should make the first contact in decades with an abandoned trapped AI that can only communicate through advertisements and is so so so lonely that it climbs inside her head. nothing can go wrong

Cyberpunk Kenzie concepts for my REBOOT.EXE crossover!

This is Kenzie using the canon Reboot tech. In reality, she'd probably use her own projections to recreate and surpass the effects of Face Value, at least.

Reboot!Kenzie is on the fast track to becoming a Booster - people more machine than man, obsessed with "upgrading their body" to the point that they're not considered human. (One might even say parahuman...) She doesn't learn this from Pr0 or anything, she's Boosting way before he is - if anything, he gets it from Kenzie.

And for funsies: here's my kenzie martin playlist (this playlist is a stub, you can help Wikipedia me by expanding it ;))

kenzie in rebootworld.jpg

What's the Kenzie Reboot thing? I was going to reblog asking for clarification, but the post stopped existing.

oops! It's a crossover I rotate in my head sometimes, dumping pre-canon or early-canon Kenzie in the world of cyberpunk dystopian podcast REBOOT.EXE.

My first and latest attempt at a blurb is:

After the interdimensional carnage of Gold Morning, ten-year-old Kenzie Martin finds herself mistakenly portalled into a very different time and place. Melbourne, 2090. A divergent Earth untouched by Scion, where technological ingenuity, rather than alien superpowers, pushes the envelope of ‘humanity’ - and drives the world into conflict. To find a team and make herself useful, Kenzie first has to survive. But the Venn is a tough place to land, especially when her Tinker power paints a target on her back for slum gangs and City elites alike. It’s sheer luck that she finds allies.  A friendly medical drone, who Kenzie’s sure she can upgrade! A hacker on the run from the worst of humanity - she knows the perfect countersurveillance. A wealthy academic, who seems to be searching for something… The perfect team! She’s indispensable!  Kenzie’s determined it won’t be only luck that keeps them.

but this is kind of misleading, because it looks like the story is about Kenzie's clinginess, and even 9-10y/o Kenzie is only slightly more messed up than everyone else in the Reboot main cast.

She befriends a sentient robot with baby-fever psychosis. The team's hacker becomes her role model the instant he starts doing cocaine and becoming a cyborg to Sleep Less And Hack More. She gets in an intense info-warfare nemesis-ship with one minor antagonist, a bioengineered kid with an eidetic memory. She also slips him invisible cameras under the guise of bugging him and hints real hard that he should use them to blackmail his abusive parents. She also cyborgs herself almost immediately. Good times!

[Footnotes provided for non Reboot fans.]

There are very many Kenzie in Reboot bad endings, as you might imagine when one dumps Kenzie (girl who tried to sell herself to a serial killer online because the serial killer seemed lonely) in a city with major Circle (international human trafficking ring) presence, plus one million organ harvesters and murderers and rapists and suchlike. However, there is at least one feasible good ending, and it starts like this.

Kenzie gets portalled into the outskirts of the slums. Looks around. She looks enough like a city tourist that she doesn't get immediately mugged and kidnapped, just lightly pickpocketed. Runs into Bernie* and gets scammed five times in five minutes, but very quickly runs out of things to trade thanks to the aforementioned pickpocketing and ends up tagging along with him as an assistant. I'd have to re-listen to Bernie's appearances to see how that plays out.

Within a fairly short timeframe (few days? depends if I can wrangle them into an interesting and enjoyable dynamic) they run into the PCs and start trying to sell them stuff. Eve** (this is mid-S1) sees Kenzie and her must protect instincts click into gear. The PCs become aware of Kenzie's Tinkering abilities (she probably tries to sell them something she's made), and turns out that cameras are just what they need for their latest quest, but they need one made to particular specifications. They commission Kenzie's help (motivated in part by Eve's protectiveness) and she heads back with them to Ugly's Motors***.

Kenzie is eventually taken on as, like, a child/little cousin/apprentice by Eve and Incongruent****. Collaborates with Pr0***** on various tracking and surveillance projects, but I don't think their personalities would mesh very well. Speaking of, putting a kid who's desperate for parental love and has no concept of boundaries and is codependent to the point of damaging everyone around her and herself together with a nurse bot whose trauma and programming intersect to make her desperate to look after a baby, and who has also been alive for about two months and so has barely any knowledge of healthy interaction herself... well... this is going to go terribly. Or really, really well! Here's hoping Incongruent can mediate the situation.

Kenzie also accompanies the PCs into the city to meet the Clements family, which is where she meets Uriel and her personal plotline (spy vs spy plus rescue-mission) kicks off.

*NPC. Slummer and salesman. Comparable to Cutting-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler from Discworld, but less successful.

**PC. Sentient nurse bot. Or ex-nurse bot? Fun fact, drones become sentient by experiencing something both impossible to process and unthinkably traumatic, so she's got her own neuroses around children on top of her programming. She's awesome and I love her.

***Home base, kind of.

****NPC. Another sentient robot, though most PCs don't know that. Romance with Eve, later on. Ignore his remarks about puny fleshbags and the fact that he could crush your head like a grape, he totally doesn't mean anything by it, and it's not like he has justified reasons to oppose humanity... right?

He's chill, though, I promise.

*****PC. Hacker. Circle survivor. My favourite. Has done nothing wrong ever in his life (I say as the narrator asks his player whether he wants to make a Ganger or Human Trafficker skill check).

@rainydayscribbling the more intense aspects of my kenzie in reboot crossover: i finally started musing on how kenzie would interact with seb and oh boy.

item 1: seb would absolutely sedate her if she had a breakdown, no question of it. dude killed and revived someone "for their own benefit", & the whole time he's been very cavalier about unilaterally making decisions that involve other people's personal autonomy. this doesn't accomplish much other than being not great for kenzie

item 2: that personality trait in a role model will not do great things for kenzie's developing understanding of boundaries.

item 3: again expounding on that personality trait, seb is exactly as enthusiastic about kenzie setting up a surveillance state as victoria was in canon ward.

item 4, a much more charitable one: seb is likely quite fascinated by kenzie's powers and her portal transfer to rebootworld, so if kenzie wants to understand how she got here, or to develop her powers, seb is the go-to guy. heck, he'll seek to understand how she got there even if she isn't trying to. (which may be the case, depending on whether I yoink her before or after she joins the therapy group). so seb will be a pretty solid plot driver in this crossover.

oh, and a fifth item! if seb still gets kidnapped, kenzie either gets kidnapped too & they try to comfort each other & maintain their sanity (the reason for possible kidnapping is joseph getting curious about kenzie's powers, too), or kenzie works her ass off helping pr0 locate & save him (in a way certainly NOT healthy for her; she pays for this). he is overwhelmed by her relief & clinginess when he is rescued, but i think he does appreciate her efforts, & is markedly nicer towards her after that. she can also probably give him camera feed directly into his brain if he wants to circumvent the blindness so 🙃

item 6, back to the less charitable stuff: seb's eugenics plan. now this would quite likely be butterflied away (especially if kenzie also gets kidnapped and/or they make more progress on finding maya with her help) but if this DOES get set in motion, there are two ways it plays out. one is seb recruits kenzie 'surveillance state' martin to help. if he manipulated her right, canon!kenzie would probably not be opposed to the idea of Wiping Out The Bloodlines Of All Mean People, given, well...

then again, I'm not sure I want to keep that. I may yoink her before she puts this into practice.

two is that kenzie's extensive internal surveillance (which no one else on the team knows about or consented to!) gives her a great view of the whole thing playing out. she does object, and chooses to reveal seb's plan to the whole team early, also revealing the extent of her non-consensual surveillance in the process. i have a feeling this lands both seb and kenzie in the doghouse somewhat. at least it sure would if i was on the team LMAO

the sad thing about the kenzie uriel information warfare (from this reboot-ward crossover) is that I'm picturing early canon Uriel and pre-therapy Kenzie. so this is the healthiest relationship either of them have ever had. and it is FUCKED fucked we're talking "shakes hands and injects a tracking device into your bloodstream" level of violation. 15 dead 300 wounded. literally just unrestrained chris-kenzie but if chris was on another team and being puppeted by an antagonistaaand oh right that's just canon chriskenzie. okay. if he was upfront about it.

the OTHER aspect of uriel-kenzie interactions is that Kenzie would notice all of Uriel's little mannerisms that are matchy-matchy with her own and immediately clock him as an abuse victim. like she met him 10 seconds ago and she knows. maybe not consciously, but her subconscious is screaming at her that something is Not Right and the moment she meets his parents it's all gonna click into conscious gear. so "rescue Uriel" is going on Kenzie's to-do list right after "shoot down the latest tracking drone he sent after me and cannibalize it for parts". sometimes you have 3 computers full of data on how to blackmail someone's abusive parents and destroy their parents' megacorporation while preventing blowback onto them and a 10 square metre conspiracy board on how to defeat said someone in brutal information warfare. get you a friend who can do both

Kenzie sees Pr0 as "vessel for my hopes. if he can redeem himself so can I" and "the only person who Gets It (understands that tinkering for the sake of your friends is wayyy more important than. pssh. [air quotes] self care)" and "whoaaaa :o i wanna be him when i grow up". Pr0 sees Kenzie as ohh ohhhhmy god she's so small. she's so tinysmall. she CANNOT keep hanging around me i'm gonna break her

just thought of another facet of the S2 Kenzie-Pr0 interactions in my Ward/Reboot.exe crossover.

Pr0: I am going to find my old friend even though she's evil and irreversibly brainwashed. I am going to FIND her and SAVE her. shut up I know she is in there. I am also going to find and save my kidnapped teammate even when it seems hopeless. I am going to break myself body and mind to rescue the people I love against seemingly insurmountable odds and never ever view them as "beyond repair" and never ever ever ever even CONSIDER giving up.

Kenzie (reeling from her old teammates cutting her off) (viewed as broken beyond repair) (passed around between families and teams) (abandonment issues) (abandonment issues) (abandonm-