the amount of people talking about 17776 today is making me so emotional. probably just nostalgia speaking but idk.
this is one of those things that’s pretty obvious all along, but still only really hits you when it’s apparent the way it is now…so so many different people over the years found their way to this story some way or another, and that number of people who love it seems to have only grown and grown and now, on this one singular special day the story declared for itself, there are so many people all celebrating it and what it has meant to them all that time. it’s our one and only 17776 day together
This piece was made awhile back for the @17776-fanzine which hopefully we get to see soon, I’m rlly excited but otherwise I decided to share it now bc I didn’t have anything else to share but I want to show how special this day means to me.. :,)
Mimi is a wonderful character despite showing for so little
17776和訳版の第一章を先ほど公開しました！
I've just released Chapter 1 of my Japanese translation of 17776.
何かがおかしい。何かがおかしい。何かがおかしい。何かがおかしい。何かがおかしい。何かがおかしい。
和訳プロジェクト専用サイトも開設したので、もし興味があればそちらも覗いてみてください。RSSで更新通知を受け取ったり、ブログ記事を読むことができます。
If you're interested, you can also take a look at the project website, where you can read blogposts and get update notifications via RSS.
Well happy immortality everyone, hope you're enjoying the adjustment. I started seeing a bunch of strange posts recently and just had to figure out what was going on. It's surprising to me I didn't know about 17776 when it came out because I'm actually at that intersection of liking experimental sci-fi and weird moments in sports. Like, the last World Series had a big moment hinge on what happens when the ball gets wedged under the padding on the outfield wall. Brain go feral, never knew why. So it's weird I didn't know about this given I'm pretty familiar with Jon Bois and the whole NFL Scoragami thing.
It really was perfect for a story like this. In the year 17776, humanity is immortal but infertile. Nano machines prevent any injury, we've explored space a little and hit our limits finding nothing, and well...everything kinda stagnated. Because change is in part generational. We're looking in through some applied phlebotinum on three space probes who have gained sentience. 1 in 80000 Americans have been President. Some people do jobs if they feel like it. All the big thing have been done and eh, people kinda regressed back to a pretty stagnant world. Mostly we just fuck around, shoot the shit, and watch football...
There's two parts, 17776 and 20020 with a bigger novel announced. And it's a cool lens to view the world. Football's still football...just expanded to the point it's massive teams using whole states as endzones. Think about that timeline. You today will go on to live for about twice as long as recorded history. So you have games trapped for centuries in the Grand Canyon. People can't be hurt because nanomachines, so one lady about to be tackled takes her chances with a tornado flinging her. Some of these games are massively blown-up versions of classic schoolyard games or a hunt for every ball signed by an obscure backup QB in the 90s. And everything's like this. Chess has gotten nuts up in Illinois too. And sure it sounds silly but like, among me and my two best friends growing up one of our favorite memories was a semester-long contest to see who could steal the most Dell logos off school computers. (Wrecked em with the masterstroke of sneaking out of a pep rally and hitting both computer labs.)
The best one is the sequel's focus. The College Bowl Game depicted here. This was developed by the Jupiter Ice Moon satellite, or JUICE, by the way. The commissioner. What you're seeing is a map of 111 college football stadiums if they had no end zone until an ocean or national border. A dogged adherence to the letter of the original NCAA rulebook as much as possible. The goal? Get all 111 balls on your field and you only know the rankings not how many each team has. I'm a little ashamed my Arkansas Razorbacks haven't used their unique position well. Good intersections right by the proper stadium.
Or maybe they have pulled something like the sneaky juggernaut Alabama-Birmingham. If it were me, and theoretically I am canon in this world...I'd use the University of Arkansas steam tunnels. Though I think that might be canonical powerhouse Michigan State's long angular line cutting so close where people wouldn't expect it. So there might be room to play a gambit like the "Locomotive Lateral" boys, and that right there was the greatest play in college football history.
But it isn't just silly nonsense. Because that's awesome. Like Lunchables. I like JUICE's attitude. This is some good sci fi and really funny. Has a lot to say about the world it was written in and we still live in. It's almost like...what would we actually do in heaven or utopia? There's a lot of reflections on the human condition in there. How we're really good at making up things to kill time. Humanity's long since done all the big ideas people today would have. Some of em that were beneficial are around and faded into the background, some it ended up we didn't really like it. Or maybe it's just a story where there's no point and cool things happen.
I definitely think there's a very "Millennial" vibe to this. Especially coming out initially in 2017 so right as we're sorta at our peak as the youth generation before we'd need to start moving on. The Internet let us do and see everything we'd imagined in childhood and now it's funny right? The kids who built the Internet as a cultural force are off to the side taking up "old people" hobbies and ignoring this weird spiral into LLMs and algorithms trashing the place. I definitely would have taken a go at being president. Travel the world...then yeah I could see me getting involved in an elaborate game to claim anime obscura. Especially with the time to watch all the anime ever made. If this happens, who's down for a nationwide Duelist Kingdom-style Yugioh tournament?
Anyways, I really enjoyed this one. Can't wait for the novel.
