Hi everyone! My name is Mak, known on social media as @makingemi. I started my social pages about 8 years ago to give myself a creative outlet while I was navigating a stressful coming out process in the midwest. Looking back, it was a lot more than that. Social media became the one place I felt comfortable being myself and expressing my queerness. 

Social media wasn’t just helpful for me as a creator, but as a consumer. Media has historically lacked in the sapphic representation department, but on social media, queer people were taking over. Getting to watch other queer creators was comforting and inspiring. For one of the first times in my life, I felt the power of representation. When we see people like us, we feel like we can be ourselves. We create community over shared experiences, both good and bad. My time as a content creator made me realize something. Social media is just the tip of the iceberg of what representation can be for our community. I started looking to the future of my career as a content creator and immediately knew what my next step was.

I'm teaming up with Pool Girl Studios to create a new show, for sapphics, by sapphics. more than ever, we need this representation on screen. Growing up I couldn’t tell you the amount of times I watched a movie or show with only straight characters, but I could instantly tell you the first time I ever saw a lesbian couple on screen. In places like the one where I grew up, where queerness is encouraged to be hidden and whispered, it means everything to have representation to remind yourself that you are allowed to exist. Queer creators gave young closeted people the gift of representation, I know because I received that gift from my own favorite creators. Now it’s time to pass on a new type of storytelling.

Chosen Family is a show that I have been slowly working on for a couple years now. Last year I took it from the back of my mind onto paper. In a world where so much of queer storytelling is tragic or trivial, Chosen Family is a breath of lighthearted fun. When I had a hard time struggling with my sexuality, I didn’t want to go home and watch sad stories about queer people. I wanted to watch something funny, something that made me feel like everything was going to be okay. I wanted to watch sitcoms. 

  INTRODUCTION

Chosen Family is what happens if Friends, New Girl, and The L Word had a chaotic gay little lovechild. 

Let's be honest, lesbians being hot has carried representation for long enough. And yes, it is true. But it is also not the whole story. Media has spent years flattening queer women into aesthetics, tragedy, or background characters without ever really capturing what our lives actually look like.

When I watch lesbian media, I do not see my life reflected back at me. I see missed opportunities. I see stories where we are reduced to longing glances, where intimacy feels distant, where characters disappear, or where we somehow end up with men. It often feels like these stories were written without ever really knowing us.

Because the reality is, lesbians are funny. Genuinely funny. Our lives are chaotic, specific, and deeply entertaining in ways that have barely been explored on screen. We carry around fake dicks in backpacks. Our exes and current partners somehow overlap. We fall in love fast, move in faster, and build entire ecosystems out of friendship, resilience, and shared experience.

Chosen Family taps into that world.

The series follows a naive pastor’s daughter whose life has just blown up as she is thrown into a Los Angeles loft with three wildly different queer women. What unfolds is a story about identity, friendship, and finding your footing, told through humor, warmth, and the kind of lived in dynamics that make sitcoms timeless.

This is The L Word with self awareness.

This is New Girl with queer women.

This is Friends in Los Angeles, but the group chat is gay.

TONE, STRUCTURE, AND STYLE

Chosen Family is a character driven sitcom rooted in humor, comfort, and relatability. While many queer stories lean heavy or tragic, this series intentionally creates space for joy, absurdity, and everyday life.

The tone is lighthearted and fast paced, grounded in comedic dynamics and sharp, personality driven writing. It is a show you can come home to, where being queer is not the conflict, it is just the world.

THEMES

At its core, Chosen Family explores:

• Self acceptance
• Identity and growth
• The importance of community
• The idea that family is not always where you start but what you build

The central message is simple: the people you choose can become the people who save you.

STORY WORLD

The series is set in present day Los Angeles, centered around a warm, slightly chaotic, lived in apartment that reflects the personalities of the women who live there. It is colorful, imperfect, and full of life, just like them.

While Los Angeles is the main setting, the story occasionally returns to the Midwest through Quinn’s past, highlighting the contrast between where she comes from and the world she is stepping into. That contrast grounds the show in something real while still keeping it funny, elevated, and full of possibility.

WHY THIS STORY MATTERS

For a lot of queer women, especially those coming from places where queerness is still hidden or discouraged, representation has historically meant tragedy, invisibility, or distortion. Stories either center suffering or reduce queer characters to side plots in someone else’s narrative.

Chosen Family exists to change that experience.

This show is for the version of me who grew up in the Midwest and could not find herself anywhere on screen. It is for the people who do not want another story about surviving being queer, but instead want a story about living while being queer.

It is a reminder that joy is not something we earn after hardship. It is something we are allowed to have now.

WHY THIS PROJECT, WHY NOW

This project comes from lived experience, not trend.

Mak built a decade long audience by sharing her own coming out journey online, creating a space where queer people could feel seen in real time, not just in hindsight. That connection is the foundation of this series.

Pool Girl Studios was built specifically to tell stories like this. Stories led by women, driven by queer voices, and grounded in authenticity rather than industry formulas.

Together with a team that includes established producers, creators with viral cultural reach, and a network of experienced collaborators, Chosen Family is not just an idea. It is a production ready project with both creative vision and execution behind it.

This is not about waiting for permission from traditional networks. It is about building the stories we know audiences are already asking for.

WHAT’S NEXT?

At $20,000, we fully fund development and pre-production including casting, crewing, legal, and production planning. At $50,000, we produce and deliver the pilot episode as a fully realized proof of concept for the series. At $100,000, we expand into the first three episodes and start bringing a larger part of the story to life. And at $360,000, we unlock the full first season: 8 episodes with expanded scope, bigger production value, and a faster path to getting this story out into the world. Every contribution pushes this series further and helps us bring bold queer stories to the screen.