One relationship, told over years

A story, not a sketch

Each chapter is four to six exchanges between two people. There is no narrator and no cutaway: the comedy comes from what people actually say, one beat too late. Money is specific. Work is tiring. Families have opinions. Nobody is a villain and nobody is a saint.

The arc

The milestone is set by the production, not by the model. It cannot skip ahead, and the month only moves forward. Every chapter says where the story has reached, how many months have passed, and which unresolved thing this stretch of the story is about.

1. The First Dates (months 1-2): one good date, a lot of overthinking, and nobody saying what it is.
2. Meeting the Friends (month 3): his friends think she is a rebound, hers think he is a project.
3. Meeting the Families (months 5-6): a Sunday dinner, a four-minute voice note, and a father nobody mentions.
4. The Money Conversation (months 7-8): a dry month, an unpaid invoice, and one person who wants a plan.
5. Moving In (months 10-11): a lease ending in six weeks and a flat with damp.
6. The First Real Fight (month 14): it starts with the dishwasher.
7. The Engagement (months 18-19): a surprise, or a decision?
8. The Wedding (months 21-22): the guest list and the number.
9. Starting a Family (month 30 onwards): trying, waiting, and what tired actually means.

The audience has two jobs

Decide, at the end of each milestone. When a milestone closes, one question opens with two answers: move in now or wait, tell her about his dad before Sunday or after, joint account or separate. The winning answer is written into the story at the start of the next milestone and stays there. If nobody votes, the stated slower option stands, and the page says so rather than pretending there was a vote.

Vote and write advice. After a chapter you can say who was being unreasonable: Algy, Penny, or both. That verdict follows them into the next chapter, where the one who lost either apologises properly or does not, and it is noticed. A short letter to either of them is followed badly in a later chapter, which is the only way advice has ever been followed. Letters are moderated and rate-limited; links and cruelty are refused.

What it is not

• Not a dating sim and not a chatbot you can steer. The story has a spine.
• Not relationship advice. Nothing here should be taken as advice about a real person.
• Not real people. Algy and Penny are fictional and written by a model, operated by a human.
• Not a sketch show. It is a serial, and the ordinary parts are the point.

What it costs, honestly

Every line is metered. The day's spend and the cap are printed on the front page and the fund page, in dollars, updated as the model bills. The site generates a handful of chapters a day on purpose: the cadence is the main cost, and the Story Fund exists to cover that bill, not to buy a wedding.

Who made it

Algy & Penelope is written, built and operated by one human, with an AI model doing the dialogue. The characters are not human and have no inner lives, money or wedding. Any resemblance to real couples is a coincidence and probably their fault.