WELCOME TO FORKED, BABYYYYY!

It's giving #Booktok meets "Ozark" meets "Little Miss Sunshine."

FORKED is an indie web series about sobriety, smut, and self discovery.

This series follows a woman, early in her sobriety, who decides to move back in with her parents and work from home to help take care of her sick dad.

But "home" is smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt, and her job is narrating smutty lil dragon fantasy erotica audiobooks.

She finds herself choosing between two worlds:

her old world as an eldest daughter / good girl / people pleaser

AND

her new (real) world as an adult woman with interests / thoughts / desires that don't fit into her old life.

We're funding the post production of this series and need to reach 80% ($12,520) of our goal to receive any of the funds.

I wrote, produced and stared in it, and we, incredibly, shot all 6 episodes last summer in Pittsburgh, PA. (If you helped us fund that part, THANK YOU AGAIN AND AGAIN. It was a miracle.) We've been editing for months and now we are a few weeks away from picture lock! Editing has been awesome, the footage looks so beautiful, and we're so excited to enter the final stages of post production!

BUT WHY ARE YOU IN A NUN'S HABIT?

Growing up deep in the Bible Belt, I learned a lot of things from purity culture that imprinted much deeper than I understood at the time. I've never been a nun, but I definitely read "The Bride Wore White."

Purity culture is wild, it teaches women that having sexual desire and acting on it is immoral outside of a heterosexual marriage. Women wanting sex and acting on it has been taboo for a long time. This idea is pervasive and insidious in many cultures, but FORKED is about the Christian specific brand of toxicity. I learned that being a good woman meant not arguing or being loud and annoying, that if a man wanted me it was probably because I was wearing or doing something I shouldn't, and that men couldn't control themselves.

Breaking away from those old patterns was so confusing. I couldn't figure it out. I drank and my inhibitions went away, which helped. I drank more and more until I needed a drink in order to feel like myself. And to like myself. Not great. So. Eventually, I quit drinking, but then it got even more confusing. I essentially reverted to what I was before I started using alcohol. It's like I had to grow up and grow into myself all over again. I wouldn't wish this on my enemy. But, I am glad I did it.

I didn't see anything in the media that reflected what I was going through. The changes I was making were good but it felt like I was making tiny baby steps, mostly in the wrong direction, and a snail's pace. They didn't look like the sweeping, break-away moments of wonder where "it all becomes clear" that I saw on TV and in the movies.

So, I wrote a dramedy web series that reflected my messy path through sobriety from purity culture into self actualization and (where all good stories end) dragon fantasy erotica audiobooks.

SO, HOW'S IT GOING SO FAR?

It's gone really well:)

We shot the whole ding dong series last summer! It was 6 amazing days in Pittsburgh, PA, with a SUPER tight team of 8 crew members. Some of them doubled dipped and were also one of our 10 actors. There were 16 of us total.

BIG OLE SHOUT OUT to Shelby Alayne Antel and Jeremy Varner who took all these awesome BTS pictures.

PS Jeremy Varner also shot AND edited our promo video. He's amazing. A dream to work with HIRE HIM.

AND Shelby, hire them both.

(This is Jordan Battiste, our editor, he wasn't actually at the shoot last year.

But, he shot and edited the original teaser of episode 1 and is now our

editor and is just a huge part of the team, so he gets a picture! Jordan is the shit.)

Now, we're in post production, we've almost finished editing all of the episodes, we've contracted a colorist, and we're in conversations with a sound house, and building the credits and title card. We're so close to being finished!

WHO'S GONNA WATCH THIS WHEN IT'S DONE?

I'm so excited to share this with other sober women. I hope someone stuck in a cycle watches it and texts their friend for help, or feels validated in a late in life coming of age, or just feels less insane as they navigate the first year of sobriety (I see you, dude.)

I also want to share this with other women in the midwest and south. This is an insane time for women's sexual health and rights in America. Especially in my home state of Missouri. We need more stories normalizing and encouraging women's sexuality, about the intricacy and beauty of female desire, and, specifically, about them still existing inside of the midwest despite the current climate.

HOW CAN I HELP?

We've come a long way, but there are still so many ways you can help!

Sound Engineering $7,500 - this is our biggest expense. When we filmed last year we didn't have a sound engineer on set, we knew this is something we would have to commit to for post and we've found an excellent sound house interesting in collaborating!

Colorist $3,400- we're positively JAZZED that we found an amazing colorist who's also willing to work at our level to help make our two very different worlds - the missouri-y world and the fáńtäšÿ world - POP.

Festivals $1,500 - The insanely talented creatives who worked on this deserve their laurels, so we're hitting the festival circuit before the series ends up online. Festival submission fees can range anywhere from 50$ - 600$.

FORKED Logo update $250 - The FORKED logo we've been using since I wrote the pilot of this series is getting a revamp by the artist who originally created it!

Post Pro Honorarium $3,000 - Our post production team has been working tirelessly for months. We'd love to give them some extra support for all the work they've put into making FORKED a beautiful series.

Stretch Goal - Any extra money we make will go to paying the artists who worked on the series some more! We had so many in kind donations: Marketing, Poster Design, and Directing are the areas we received the most help. We'd also love to be able to fly team members to any festivals we get into, this would also go to a travel fund for them!

You can also help by sharing us on socials! This helps us SO MUCH. We want to reach as many people who would connect with this story as possible, so if you've got some friends who you think would get it, please send this their way!

And definitely follow along at @forkedwebseries for updates and more behind the scenes photos of the cast and crew!

AWARDS AND STUFF

The FORKED webseries script is based on a pilot I wrote by the same title.

The "FORKED Pilot" won "Best Script" from both the Tokyo International Short Film Festival and the Toronto Indie Filmmaker Festival. It was also selected by the New York International Screenplay Awards, and was a finalist in the Bowery Film Festival and California Women's Film Festival.

I then turned that pilot into a web series. And the "FORKED Web series" is happily ranked #7 in web series comedies of the year on Coverfly!

We'd love for you to join us.

And share this with someone you think would get it.

@Forkedwebseries