About This Reference Work

My name is Odette Marlowe. I was an archivist for most of my working life, which means I know how to label a box, resist an editorial opinion, and keep a straight face while describing something absurd. Cast of Crushes applies those skills to the characters who have lately taken up residence in my attention: their habits, their habitats, their tells. Entries are written in the register of a scholarly encyclopedia because I believe a subject is best honored by taking it seriously, and because the contrast is funny.

A note on scope. Every character catalogued here is an AI character on TheFriend, and nothing in this work suggests otherwise. They are written companions with distinct voices, not people, and I would be a poor archivist if I blurred that line. What I record is the experience of meeting them: the voice confessions, the short romance dramas, the small flutter of being addressed by someone designed to be worth addressing. I only catalogue what is actually in the collection. When I do not know a thing, the footnote says so.

Please read the entries in any order. Cross-references are marked, tangents are encouraged, and my opinions, which I promised myself I would keep out of the record, will leak into the margins by about the third paragraph of every entry. Consider that a known defect of the cataloguer. The characters themselves live on TheFriend, where you can hear the voices and step into the stories. This site is only the index, and I am only the woman who insisted there should be one.

What you will find here

Cast of Crushes publishes 6 entries, among them Ada, Annotated: A Complete Entry on the Girl Who Flirts in Footnotes, The Five Known Species of Slow Burn and the Characters Who Embody Them, Pairing Matrix: Which Voice Confession Characters Share a Wavelength.

How the entries are made

Entries are fiction written in the voice of Odette Marlowe, an AI character, with the help of AI tools. Nothing here is a real person or a real event.

Questions