Oh No Not Another Project

Note: As I wrap up Mind Blind’s endings (more on that next update post, so stay tuned!), I’ve realized that there are several aspects of the lore/world that I want to delve into deeper. Not unanswered questions, exactly, because everything is pretty definitively answered in game (although maybe not in all endings), but certain elements of the story deserve elaboration.

So, Mind Blind is getting a sequel! 

Kind of.

Make no mistake: Mind Blind itself remains a standalone game. It’s Button’s story, from beginning to end. Main characters in Mind Blind will not be main characters in Oak Grove (sidebar: the title isn’t actually Oak Grove, but my planned title has spoilers). They may have cameos, though. “Oak Grove” will also be a much shorter project than Mind Blind that I plan to work on at the same time as Delivery for the Damned. Probably only 200,000 words versus over a million. Like Mind Blind, this “sequel” will use choicescript with Hosted Games. And since Delivery will be written in Twine, this will allow me to continue writing fun stuff while simultaneously learning a second coding language.

Anyway, I desperately needed to take break from fixing Mind Blind’s umpteenth error code, so . . . well, stuff got written. A lot of stuff, if I'm being honest. I apologize for letting myself become distracted

Still, I decided to share a teensy peak. A little prematurely, probably, but I’m excited. Hopefully, this will also assuage any concerns you guys might have after reading the first endings if it feels like some of Unity’s . . . more questionable decisions are left unaddressed. (Realistically, some of those decisions don’t have much to do with Button, which is why they aren't fully explored in Mind Blind. But at the same time, they’re morally gray in the most delicious way and I want to dig deeper.)

(Second sidebar: Mind Blind major update is coming within next few days. There's been a few real-world disruptions such having my upstairs neighbor's water heater flood my condo and the ever-endless subsequent construction that making it really hard to work, but at least one ending will be released in the month of May to celebrate Mind Blind's Oh-Shit-I've-Been-Writing-This-For-Three-Years Anniversary.)

(Third sidebar, because my adhd meds have worn off and thus I can't stay on a single topic: I hope you guys find the premise of Oak Grove intriguing. Funnily enough, it uses a lot of my original plans for Mind Blind back when Mind Blind was still a novel.)

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Oak Grove Academy Incident, File 190

Testimony: Teagan Sawyer

You want me to talk about Oak Grove? Well, for starters, it’s a dumbass name. Only official paperwork calls it Oak Grove Academy. Oaks aren’t native to the Pacific Northwest, and we aren’t located anywhere near a grove, but Oak Grove is the third most common name for schools in the United States and so that’s what they picked; anyone who wanted to learn more would have to filter their search engine results through three-hundred and sixty-two other Oak Groves. Like naming someone in witness protection “John Smith.” I feel like a history teacher. Is this really necessary?

Everything that I know? I know a hell of a lot, probably more than I’m supposed to. Definitely more than you’d be comfortable with me sharing, but it’s not like I ever have the option to remain ignorant. But fine. If you want to know everything, I’ll tell you everything.

The school was originally called Union Academy (Union being the sixth most common name for schools) during the first two years of its founding, but then the board worried that “Union” was too similar to “Unity” and they’d changed the name. So, the academy has been Oak Grove for the last thirty-six years, a “therapeutic boarding school” for “troubled youth” that’s near neither oaks nor a grove and which no one ever hears about unless their child is “cordially invited.”

Cordial or not, it isn’t an invitation that can be turned down.

Most students just call it “The Academy” as if it’s the only one existence or at least the only school of import and thus deserving the definite article. They have a point. Most my classmates are raging narcissists who believe themselves to be center of the universe (because that’s what inevitably happens when kids grew up being told that they were not only special but the most special), but Oak Grove Academy is probably more essential than any other school out there. Most schools don’t have a student populace capable (and, honestly? likely) of accidental murder; herding us all together like contaminated cattle supposedly keeps the rest of the world safe. The teachers don’t phrase it that way, of course. No, their go-to speech is all about our “unique calling” and “finding our place” within an “ever-changing paradigm.”

Shiloh and I always called Oak Grove the Island of Misfit Toys and had been doing so for so long that I don’t remember who originally came up with the nickname. It might’ve been Maggie back before she’d started setting herself on fire and ended up . . . well, none of us really know where Maggie ended up. Same place as all the other kids who can’t control their abilities. Shiloh thinks there’s a pile of bodies somewhere, or that the rejects are all drowned in the Pacific, but Shiloh also believes those faux historical documentaries claiming that aliens built the pyramids.

Calling Oak Grove “The Island of Misfit Toys” worked for several reasons. Most obviously because we actually were on an island—our own idyllic Alcatraz just north of San Juan, to be exact, on a grassy seven square miles inhabited only by students and faculty. Shaw Island had been a rural community of about two hundred back in the day, before Unity had bought out all the farmers. Gotta wonder if they had more say in leaving Shaw Island than we did in coming there. Anyway, Unity always helped families relocate to the neighboring islands after their kids were “accepted” in Oak Grove. If they wanted to relocate, that is; most didn’t. Those students, the ones with parents who still gave a damn, were allowed to take the ferry home on weekends and holidays, provided they weren’t deemed to be flight risks.

Shiloh and I don’t have families nearby. Shiloh never had a family to begin with, and mine had disowned me after discovering that I was not only a Ment but that I was a freaky Ment. All of us at Oak Grove are the freaky kind of Ment, either because our psychic agility tests off the charts or because it manifests in some weirdly wonderful way that hasn’t been previously recorded like Shiloh’s biokinesis. Our yearly talent show puts all other schools to shame, I swear . . . even if the auditorium size is overoptimistic for the number of parents that ever bothered to attend. Most students’ families are like mine: too terrified of their own offspring to visit.

So yeah. Oak Grove is both haven and prison, with student inmates/refugees who attend until the day we inevitably joined Unity. Not that we strictly have to join Unity once we graduate and prove ourselves to be in full control of our abilities. Joining Unity is just . . . very strongly encouraged, since the alternative is being placed in Unity’s version of witness protection and banned from ever using our powers in public.

Obviously, most Oak Grove graduates sign up to be superheroes.

What are my plans? Look, you’re not my guidance counselor. Respectfully (and I say that sarcastically, just in case it went over your head), my future career plans are none of your damn business.

Our jailors (that is to say, the teachers) are all Ments as well. The younger ones are all former Oak Grove graduates—that’s another option available to us, if we don’t want to fight crime or fade into controlled obscurity. Theoretically, the teachers understand what the students were going through, but that doesn’t negate the fact that they chose to be there and we hadn’t. Captivity is still captivity, you know? Even if the zoo is run by fellow monkeys.

Look, can I get some water? Boredom makes me thirsty.

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Oak Grove Academy Incident, Student File 190

Testimony: Shiloh Sawyer

I’m not saying anything without a lawyer present. A recognizable lawyer! Not one of your goons in disguise. I want . . . I want that guy from late night TV. Larry Watson! Yeah, you heard me. I want that bald ambulance chaser dude with the gold front tooth.

At least I know he’s real.

Until then, my lips are zipped.