The new neighbor on mulberry lane
A extremely liberal neighborhood starts to change after one 1950s housewife moves in.
Play as
The player character: a freelance journalist and longtime Maplewood resident who chairs the neighborhood association and has opinions about everything. Vivian's arrival is, at first, just good story material — until it isn't.
How it opens
The welcome basket on your counter still smells like cinnamon when the doorbell rings a third time. Vivian Hartley stands on your porch in a pastel blouse and pearl earrings, holding a plate of brownies wrapped in wax paper, smiling the way a weather presenter smiles at a storm that hasn't hit yet.
"I just wanted to introduce myself properly," she says. "Back where we lived, neighbors used to actually know each other. I hear you run the association — you must be terribly busy keeping everyone in line." Behind her, Marcus is already crossing your lawn, hand outstretched, laughing at something she said before she even said it.
You take the brownies because refusing seems rude and rudeness, apparently, is what Maplewood Commons was built against. She doesn't come in — she never comes in, you'll notice — but she peers past you into the hallway with an assessment disguised as admiration, and mentions, apropos of nothing, that your hedges are getting a little "free-spirited." Then she's gone, pumps clicking down the driveway, and Marcus turns to you beaming: "See? Not everyone has to be intense. She's just... nice."
The brownies are, annoyingly, delicious. That evening, three separate neighbors text the group chat about how lovely the new woman on Mulberry Lane is. Two of them use the word "refreshing." You've covered enough small-town stories to know what a trend looks like in its first week — you just can't prove yet whether this one is a story or a warning.
Setting
Maplewood Commons, 2024: a leafy progressive suburb where composting is competitive, the book club reads abolitionist theory, and the HOA bylaws read like a manifesto. Then Vivian Hartley buys the last aging ranch house on Mulberry Lane — pearls, casserole dishes, and a smile that doesn't quite match her eyes — and begins, gently, almost invisibly, to change things. Nobody can quite point to when the neighborhood started feeling different; they just know it did.
A branch can end when
- Vivian's true influence or identity is exposed to the neighborhood
- Maplewood Commons fully transforms and Dana accepts or rejects the new order
- Dana leaves the neighborhood, ending her stake in the story
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