Emily Ever After

Emily Cadigan is a successful video content creator, a wife and mother of four.  

She spends her days writing about cooking, photographing nature and her little flock of hens, gardening to her heart’s delight and teaching her children at home, much like her wide fan base. There’s word that her series of upcoming guest articles for a big publication has put her in the running for a new lifestyle magazine with her name on it.  Maybe even a product line at her favorite big box store if she plays her cards right. The pressure to produce something fresh and new, but still on-brand, in the coming months is building.

So when her best friend falls down the rabbit hole of doomsday prepping, Emily sees considerable overlap in her audience’s existing homesteading interests and her friend’s survivalism pursuits.  Every generation until a century ago needed these skills we treat as hobbies just to survive.  It was a natural fit to add a prepping tab to the Emily Ever After blog.  Or so she thought.

Emily is met with immediate backlash in the comment section and from hometown friends.  Growing a cute little vegetable garden is a cheerful pastime, but planting enough food to feed your family for a year in place of a manicured front lawn is extreme (and won’t please the H.O.A.).  It’s unanimous – positive vibes only, please, Em.  She is torn between doubling down on the topics she thinks are in her fan base’s best interest, and scrapping the prepping section altogether.  Which choice scores the magazine deal, and which will lose it?