The Mind Games

Disclaimer

This is a disclaimer regarding the similarities of The Mind Games and Alexandra Bracken's,'The Darkest Minds'.

When I set out writing this book, I had no intention of "ripping off" The Darkest Minds. I, a frequent fan-fiction writer at the time, read The Darkest Minds, and for the most part enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the core concept of the idea of powers, wished there were many things different about many parts of the story, including characters, nuances of the powers given to those characters, and overall arc of where I saw the series going.

First, I would like to bring to attention the fact that I have never intended to claim any ownership over the idea or concept. Even when I was describing the idea to my friends and family I would describe it as "too original to be classified as fan-fiction but too fan-fiction to be an original". In addition to that, I have actively gone out of my way to make sure my book is never formally published or used to create revenue of any kind. I firmly believe that The Mind Games is too similar in concept to The Darkest Minds to be even remotely considered original, and want to give respect (legally and creatively) to the original author to the idea.

Second, I would like to clarify some additional details that cause it look like I use much more of Alexandra Bracken's published lore in my 'not original fanfiction that's not really fan-fiction' story:

The origins of the powers: I have only ever read the very first book in The Darkest Minds series, and had no idea where the powers came from. I did not think it was ever revealed later in the series either. So I decided, because I like to have answers for every question, that I had to come up with a reasonable scientific explanation of how children suddenly developed powers. Around the time I was writing this, my family and I found out that the source of my mother's stage 4 breast cancer had been from chemicals in the water that they had been drinking. With my newfound knowledge that chemicals have historically been found in drinking water, and cause significantly delayed reaction on the body over the course of years, I decided to make that the source of the powers.

In The Darkest Minds series, it is revealed (I believe in the second book, which I never read) the mother's of the children who have powers drank contaminated waters during their pregnancy. In hindsight this would make more sense than what I thought up, which was drinking contaminated water during critical stages in child-brain development, particularly around the ages of 2-3. I allowed ages to vary in the story due to outliers, and the idea that once officials discovered there were chemicals in the water, it would take a varied amount of times (some taking longer than others) to get the chemicals out of the water. In unpublished personal lore, the chemicals that cause each mutation of the powers are region specific. This means due to the certain type of chemical contamination that causes "Red" powers to develop was only in the water in the upper east coast area. This was something I decided at the very beginning but was extra information that I wanted to work in later as a interesting note, but never found an opportunity that didn't feel forced when I was writing. I was quite proud of this explanation and you could imagine my disappointment when I found out I was not the first one to the idea.

The abilities and types of powers: As you can imagine, some of the powers are very similar to those in The Darkest Minds, however I wanted the powers in my book to be strictly psychic, instead of some of the powers being elemental. The biggest example of this is instead of Yellows having electrokinesis (electricity manipulation), in The Mind Games Yellows have the ability to manipulate someone's thoughts.

The classification of the powers: I chose to do colors, similarly to Alexandra Bracken because color quite literally rules my life. I am a grapheme-color synesthete. Every letter and word and feeling and sound I hear has a color. Naturally, I would assign the colors in my head to the powers given to my characters. However, I was hesitant about this because of that exact similarity. Later on I decided I actually wanted to switch to the greek alphabet, but was so far into the writing process when I thought of this I couldn't bring myself to go back and fix every. single. one.

Overall, I understand that The Darkest Minds has a lot of influence over the creation of The Mind Games, but there was never any intention to rip off or take credit for anyone's original work or ideas.

TL;DR: if you liked The Darkest Minds, you'll probably enjoy this. That said it's "too original to be a fan-fiction, but too fan-fiction to be an original".