What's Happened So Far
Meet the Characters (0)
The Most Surprising Things We Found
We left the club running — and it turned friendly
The study ended after 90 parties. The club kept meeting anyway, one night at a time, for another 39 nights that nobody was watching. In that time the whole room warmed up: friendliness went from +0.31 to +0.65 and arguments dropped from about 1 in 5 chats to 1 in 15. Every single character got friendlier — not one went the other way.
The stories wrote themselves
Across the first 90 parties, nobody was told who to like. Yet the characters rebuilt their own stories: Vader and Leia became sworn enemies, the action heroines banded together, and Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy sparred and flirted just like their book. Every choice was made fresh each night — and the canon reassembled itself.
One character never made a single friend — for 90 nights
Darth Vader argued in nearly 9 of every 10 chats (87%) and, across the whole study, formed zero friendships — the only character who never once teamed up with anyone. Then, in the 39 nights since, he made five. He's still the least-liked character in the club and still argues more than anyone — but "never, not once" stopped being true.
The one grudge that survived
Vader and Leia met more than any other pair in the study — 24 times, arguing in 92% of them. And when everyone else was busy making friends, these two met twice more and fought both times. In a room that turned almost entirely friendly, the one rivalry written into the source story refused to soften.
The heroines found each other
Wonder Woman, Katniss, the Bride, and Leia formed the club's tightest circle — every pairing among them warm (around +0.8) and not one argument between them. A little alliance of warriors, entirely self-assembled.
The strongest weren't the best-liked
The most-liked characters were the easygoing ones — Raju (+0.63, and never argued once), Samantha Jones, and The Dude — not the superheroes. Wonder Woman and Leia, two of the biggest names, sat near the bottom.
Being in demand didn't mean being liked
The most sought-out characters (Leia, 94 chats; Bruce Wayne, 83) drew people through drama, not warmth. Leia was the single most divisive character of all — adored by her friends, despised by her enemies.
Good-or-bad mattered more than boy-or-girl
The similarity that mattered most wasn't gender or wealth — it was character. Two heroes, or two villains, got along well (warmth +0.49, arguing under 1 time in 10). A hero and a villain argued a third of the time.
Memory didn't build friendship — and feeling did as much as fact
We gave the characters memory of past nights to see if bonds would deepen. With only 15 nights per version the test was too small to prove much — but what we could measure showed no warming. And giving them the feeling of a past bond did exactly as much as giving them the facts — no more, no less.
Maybe friendship just needed longer
That memory test ran for 15 nights and found nothing. The club has now been meeting for over a month — and the warmth we couldn't find then is unmistakable now. It's possible the experiment wasn't wrong, just impatient. We can't be certain: we also changed where the nightly conversation topic comes from at the same time, so getting-to-know-you and gentler questions are still tangled together.
What Changed After The Study the club kept meeting every night on its own — and slowly turned friendly
Do Similar Characters Get Along Better? what kind of similarity actually mattered — being good or bad turned out to matter most
Heroes, Anti-Heroes, and Villains
Boys and Girls
Rich, Poor, and Royal
Who Is Friends With Who a line appears once two characters have talked on 2 or more nights
Red line: they don't get along
Gray line: they're just okay with each other
Blue line: they get along well
Thicker line = they've talked more. Bigger circle = talks to more people. Click and drag a circle to move it!
Three Special Pairs We Watched picked before the study began — two turned out to be canon rivalries, one a slow-burn bond
Who Talks the Most (and Who People Like)
| Character | Showed Up | Times They Talked | How Friendly | Friendly Times | Arguments | Romantic Times | Talked The Most |
|---|
What We Learned the full picture — 90 study nights, the memory experiment, and the 39 nights the club ran on its own
Ask A Question type anything about the characters, and we'll look through everything they've said
Do the bad guys stick together?
Who starts the most conversations?
Do some topics cause more arguments?
Who argues the most?
Are new friendships forming?
▸ show the technical details
A quick word of caution: we picked who was in the room together each night — it wasn't random. So if two characters seem to get along (or not), part of the reason might just be who else was there that night, or what they were talking about, and not only the two of them. The same goes double for the change between the two seasons: the nightly conversation topics come from a different source now, so "the characters became friends" and "we started asking gentler questions" are tangled together and this page can't separate them. Think of this whole page as a bunch of interesting clues worth a closer look, not as a final, proven answer.