Unmarked spoilers below.
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Main characters
In general
- Animate Inanimate Object: They're all space probes that have gained sentience over time.
- Color-Coded Characters: Nine is associated with red, Ten with green, and Juice with a yellowish orange. The pictures of them in the site headers and the Introductory Opening Credits show them in these colors. These are also the colors they type in.
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: They subconsciously picked up on human culture over the course of thousands of years, eventually becoming sentient.
- Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: Developed sapience solely from being exposed to human radio transmissions.
- Masculine, Feminine, Androgyne Trio: Nine is referred to with they/them pronouns and confirmed by
Word of Gay as non-binary, Ten goes by she/her pronouns and is referred to as a lady, and Juice goes by he/him pronouns and tends to use coarser language compared to the others. - Names Given to Computers: An A.I.-cronym for JUICE. Nine and Ten are a shortening of their original model names, Pioneer 9 and Pioneer 10.
- Power Trio: The three of them serve as foils to each other in some ways:
- Ten and Juice contrast each other in many aspects. Ten writes in proper capitalization and punctuation by default, while Juice defaults to no capitals and barely punctuating. When it comes to game design, as Ten puts it:Ten: I see things like chaos and eccentricity as ingredients that should be balanced with other components. He wants to make the whole casserole out of them.
- Nine falls in between the two. Like Ten, they default to proper capitalization and punctuation, but they are more likely to break away from it for flippancy's sake. They are also more appreciative of unbridled chaos than Ten, developing a fascination with Game 27 and being the first of the two to warm up to Juice's Bowl Game in 20020.
- Nine expresses belief in a higher power, while Ten is a firm atheist. Juice is in between, being agnostic.
- Ten and Juice contrast each other in many aspects. Ten writes in proper capitalization and punctuation by default, while Juice defaults to no capitals and barely punctuating. When it comes to game design, as Ten puts it:
- Quantum Mechanics Can Do Anything: Letting probes communicate in real-time even if they're three and a half trillion miles away, reformat another probe's DSU... It's even vaguely stated that "imprints" of their creation function as their version of childhood memories, and that the reason space probes specifically became sentient is because when they were shot into space it prevented those imprints from degrading, eventually leading to their consciousness.
- Ridiculously Human Robot: Not in appearance, but in personality. Humanity is fully aware of their existence and treats them as normal people, which they are for the most part, with their only real quirks being a knack for rapid calculations and viewing humanity at a distance.
- Robo Family: Nine and Ten both being creations of the Pioneer program, they consider each other siblings.
- Subspace Ansible: Their quantum channels are the reason they're able to communicate in real time and still monitor Earth, despite the fact that they're all still hurtling through space, or in Ten's case, out into deep space.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Juice with Nine and Ten. He enjoys riling them up, and Ten will tease back in turn, but they're good friends.
Nine
"I have so many questions."
The primary viewpoint character. Having only newly gained sentience, they soon discover that they are Pioneer 9
and go on to discover that in the future of football, something has gone horribly wrong.
- Ambiguous Gender: In 17776, with only a few weeks of being awake, Nine didn't have a gender identity yet, and throughout both 17776 and 20020 is referred to with they/them pronouns. note .
- The Baby of the Bunch: Discussed during 20020. As the physically oldest space probe, Nine has a longer subconscious memory of their assembly and passively absorbing of humanity's transmissions, but because they've only been awake for a short time, they have trouble coming to terms with how old they are and young at the same time, and comes to view the endless future in front of them as somewhere they will truly grow up in.Juice: lol you are younger than hell
Nine: I'm older than both of you!
Juice: lol you old as hell - Constantly Curious: At least in 17776, when they've just gained consciousness. Although Nine is almost 15,000 years old, they're the last out of themselves, Ten, and Juice to gain consciousness, and could use explanations on how the world works or has changed.
- Fictional Disability: As the oldest of the space probes, their internal battery is small compared to Juice and Ten, meaning they can only be awake for a few weeks at a time before needing to spend a long time recharging, something that Nine gets frustrated with in the later portions of 20020.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: They initially mostly think of humans as what humanity was like when they were built, and serve as the Audience Surrogate. It's played with at times though; they were built in the late 60s and still think Cleveland Browns are good.
- Is This What Anger Feels Like?: Chapter 9 shows the very first time they get angry.
- Madness Mantra: They repeat "Please answer" as their only message for weeks after Ten first contacts them then seemingly disappears for over a year.
- Naïve Newcomer: Their newness to the world makes them a proxy for the audience from the modern day, learning about the drastic changes to Earth and football 15,000 years in the future.
- Out of Focus: In 20020, with the setting established and no more need for an Audience Surrogate, Nine is no longer the main protagonist of the series, though their questions and developing personality remain one of the major threads throughout the story.
- Precision F-Strike: Every time they swear in 17776, there's clearly some impact to it:
- During their increasingly dour messages in the first chapter:"Please answer me.
Please fucking answer me.
Fucking answer me.
Fucking answer me." - After a lengthy discussion about humanity's reaction to immortality and seemingly wasting time in chapter 5:"God damn."
- Once Juice goes too far in insulting them in chapter 9:"You know what, fuck you."
- During their increasingly dour messages in the first chapter:
- The Watson: Since they've only recently "woken up", they ask a lot of questions about the state of the world (which Ten dutifully answers).
- Wiki Walk: Turns out to have a bit of a knack for digging up obscure information in 20020, and mentions doing this off-panel. This ends up coming back to bite them, as they burn through their limited battery while doing so.
- The World Is Just Awesome: Slowly comes to express this view throughout 20020, viewing the flawed and imperfect eternity of humanity as an incredibly beautiful thing:It's difficult to feel so old, to BE so old, and feel like I have so little wisdom. A lot of things keep me happy, though.
Ten and Juice, I don't know what I'd do without them.
I don't know what I'd do without all of you, either. I love you all for building me, for sending me here, even though you didn't know what I would become. I love you for being yourselves, and for welcoming me like you have.
Sometimes I hear some of you wonder whether this is Heaven. I think it is. It's in Heaven I'll grow up and grow old.
I can't believe my fortune.
Ten
"Eternal life and Heaven are not the same thing, turns out!"
The person who contacts Nine at the start of the story, kicking it off. She turns out to be Pioneer 10, Nine's self-proclaimed sister. After making contact with them, she helps Nine understand their new surroundings and what's happened to the world.- Affectionate Nickname: Juice will sometimes casually address her as "lady", showcasing their familiarity.
- Berserk Button: Game 27. She really doesn't want to watch it and acts increasingly irritated when Juice puts it on - but upon being informed that people still watch it, she gets outright livid.Ten: People sit in the stands and watch this ... this fucking crap? This garbage dump where nothing fucking ever happens?
Juice: oh yeah broncos fans are crazy - Deadpan Snarker: Her sense of humor can be quite deadpan, such as in 20020 when Nine asks her if she has a minute; she answers "Let me check" and pulls up her very sparsely populated "upcoming events" calendar, with far-distant events annotated with exclamation marks and smiley faces, before responding, "Yes. Yes I do."
- Hollywood Atheist: Tells Nine that they're free to believe whatever they want about God, and then gets pissed off when they say that they think there is one. And when Juice merely says that there might be one, she says:"Sometimes I wonder if you're really a scientific instrument."
- Mr. Exposition: She explains many things about the setting to Nine.
- Not So Above It All:
- She occasionally lapses into this - she agrees with Juice on how amusing Rake Takes are and sometimes shares in his Skewed Priorities.
- Also worth noting is her abhorrence for Game 27 - she pleads with Juice to not show it again and is clearly irritated by his lengthy explanation throughout chapter 10.
- Her calm demeanor is usually broken through by her snapping at her fellow probes for what they think, such as Nine believing in a God or protesting humanity's lack of space travel.
- In the intermission she loses her patience with Nine protesting humanity's 15,000 year stagnation and tells them to "shut the fuck up".
- Juice is pleased to learn that a typo of hers in an earlier chapter made Nine believe only roughly 8,000,000 humans were alive rather than over 8,000,000,000.
- Her jokester side is much more apparent in 20020, through moments such as snarking with Juice, surprising him with a "BOO!", and sending him constant updates on her exact distance from the Sun just to bug him, which she apparently spent a whole month doing at one point.
- She loves zero blitzes, cheering loudly when one comes up in a retelling of a play. In a later chapter, her joking insistence on a zero blitz has Juice playing the Straight Man for once.Juice: and as one of the de facto leaders of this squad, it's his turn to call his defense's next play. he calls everyone's favorite:
zero blitz.
Ten: FUCK YEAH
Nine: Whoa.
Juice: jesus ok
Ten: It's my favorite. I'm sorry. If you pull the trigger at the right time, sending your entire team on a blitz is effective and it's beautiful.
[…]
Ten: If I were UAB and I wanted to actually take my awful chances, I'd probably just take my chances and call a zero blitz.
Juice: lol lady you can't call a zero blitz EVERY TIME
Ten: Not with that attitude!
- Straight Man: To Juice's Wise Guy; while not above her own moments of silliness she's generally more serious and focused than he is.
- Team Mom: Ten is the most caring and level-headed of the group; waking up Nine and explaining most of that has happened since they were launched in the 1960s. She also doubles as Little Sister Instinct, often telling off Juice for harassing them and even formally introducing herself to Nine as their little sister once they properly wake up.
Juice
"im sorry, clowning is how i express affection
i'd say i need to take some time to unpack that issue but ive been in outer space doin jack shit for 15000 years so whatever"
i'd say i need to take some time to unpack that issue but ive been in outer space doin jack shit for 15000 years so whatever"
Ten: What is wrong with you?
Juice: i find it's useful to remember that i'm french
Juice: i find it's useful to remember that i'm french
A third space probe who contacts Nine shortly after their quantum link gets set up. His name is short for "Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer".
- Affectionate Nickname: Ten calls him "J", and Nine picks it up as well in 20020.
- A.I.-cronym: "Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer," referred to by his fellow probes as JUICE.
- all lowercase letters: His text is written in all lowercase except for capitalizing some names.
- Bile Fascination: In-universe. Juice loves watching football games that devolve into absurdity even for the current state of the sport, such as Game 27's Monopoly-style madness that's gone on for thousands of years, or Game 96249's four-state long field with only the bare minimum amount of players to provide any action producing a never-ending fight for the ball at the bottom of a gorge. He eventually uses the later game as an example to build his own nationwide self-described horror that takes the stadiums of 111 teams stretches them as far as they'll go until they hit an international or oceanic border, and then makes all of them play at the same time while only being able to move within the lines of those stadiums.Juice: it's an absolute disaster of a football game
it's horrible
it's gorgeous - Cloudcuckoolander: His train of thought is sometimes a bizarre one, such as seeing a lunchbox for Analyze That and assuming the lunchbox itself was the basis for a book.Ten: Sometimes it's kind of a fun puzzle to try to discern what the fuck you're talking about.
Juice: i am a blessing to all who surround me - Eskimos Aren't Real: He was once convinced that Delaware never existed, until he talked to a guy from Delaware. Now he thinks that Maine never existed.
- Establishing Character Moment: His first few lines in the story have him exuberantly mocking Nine's camera quality.
- Genius Ditz: Despite his background ramblings during the more philosophical discussions that Nine and Ten have, he's just as knowledgeable about the Earth as Ten. He just cares far more about the small minutia of Earth, such as snack foods and the random pieces of land that humans still haven't visited.
- Gratuitous French: Usually averted despite Juice self-identifying as French, though in 20020 chapter 6 we can see that the Game Plan submitted by Nick and Manny is repeatedly stamped "APPROUVÉE" ("approved") in bold green lettering.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Though he's mostly a joker, he has his moments of sincerity.
- After Nine has a talk with Ten about the purpose of humanity, Juice tries to cheer them up by suggesting they watch football.
- No Punctuation Period: All his dialogue is written in this manner, such that when he slips out of it as he describes Game 27, Ten immediately notices:Ten: Ooh, look at you! You're using apostrophes! You're punctuating!
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In 20020, he takes his job as the Commissioner of the Bowl Game entirely seriously and professionally, a fact which gets him mocked relentlessly by Nine and Ten.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: He has an occasional habit of getting some detail of pop culture wrong, from the minor (spelling Wolverine as "wolferine") to the baffling.
- Seinfeldian Conversation: Much of his dialogue consists of rambling about pointless topics, even as the other two probes discuss more philosophical subjects.
- Sense Freak: A vicarious version. Though he cannot eat himself, being a space probe, he is fascinated by food and what it tastes like. According to Mimi, he's always asking her about her lunch.Mimi: He always asks me, what's in the sandwich? How's it taste? Does this reheat well? Does that pair well with this? I guess for him that's the closest he can get to eating, other than sucking up the sunbeams.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: By far the most foul-mouthed person in the cast, at least in 17776. In 20020, Nine and Ten are a lot more prone to swearing; that plus the focus on Nick and Manny (who swear quite a bit themselves) means that Juice no longer stands out as the most foul-mouthed one.
- Skewed Priorities: A recurring trait of his. When Ten remarks about how humanity got past war and disease, he starts complaining about the demise of Lunchables (even though he obviously has never eaten them). Similarly, when Ten explains how nanomachines protect people from a great variety of dangers, he remarks on how it also prevents them from stepping on garden hoes, which he finds hilarious.
Other Characters
Introduced in 17776
Hubble
The Hubble Space Telescope. Mentioned and had his first lines during Ten's tirade against Nine's questions.
- Color-Coded Speech: His lines are in blue.
- The Quiet One: Has four lines, only one of which isn't transparent.
- Stopped Caring: Appears to not care at all about the other probes, humanity's dissolution, or really anything else. All he wants is to watch the games.
Aaron, Micah and Danny
They've been filming Game 3887 for eight and a half years.
- Color-Coded Speech: Aaron's dialogue is an olive green, Micah's a bright green, and Danny's a light green.
- Mr. Exposition: They film and explain Game 3887, for what is presumably a stream or live TV show.
- Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: Common throughout 17776, but especially noticeable with these three. Justified, since they're actually speaking, whereas 9, 10 and Juice are apparently messaging each other.
Nancy McGunnell
A running back for Wyoming.
- Affectionate Nickname: Refers to Ten as "Tenny" during their conversation.
- Cool Old Lady: She was in her 70s when everyone became immortal. She plays football now.
-
Crazy Is Cool: The first time we encounter her, she deliberately runs into an F5 tornado as part of her football strategy.
Emily and Jason Durabo
A happily married couple. Emily's a former tight end. Jason's a former receiver now playing the Koy Detmer football collecting game.
- Affectionate Nickname: Emily calls Jason "J."
- Collector of the Strange: Jason collects footballs signed by Koy Detmer, as part of a football game.
- Color-Coded Speech: Jason's dialogue is a lighter yellow than Emily's.
- Happily Married: They've been married for thousands of years and have a good rapport.
- Hollywood Spelling: Averted. Jason was born Jason Durazo, but sometime between then and getting on his first football card, his last name was written as "Durabo" on some official document and it stuck. Emily took the name "Durazo" when she married Jason and later switched to "Durabo" too.
- Wiki Walk: Emily has a tendency to do this. Jason calls it by the name "rabbit-holing."
Lori Irving
A friend of Emily and Jason. While not a football player in 17776, in 20020 she's joined the Bowl Game, having been recently assigned to play prevent for Texas A&M.
- Audience Surrogate: In chapter 8 of 20020, she's playing Illinois chess for the first time, so the audience learns about it alongside her.
- Living Forever is No Big Deal:Lori: We're just ordinary and forever, I think.
- Tuckerization: According to the 20020 Q&A, she's named after Bois' fourth-grade teacher and ninth-grade science teacher.
- The Watson: In 17776, she's a non-football player asking her friends the questions the audience might have that lead to Jason explaining the Koy Detmer game.
Thuy and Roger
The hosts of the podcast Garbage Football.
- Caustic Critic: Their podcast is dedicated to watching terrible football games and tearing into them.
- Color-Coded Speech: Thuy's dialogue is yellow and Roger's is a purple-pink.
- Epic Fail: Their podcast is dedicated to these, in particular football-related ones.
- Mr. Exposition: They explain the mess that is Game 96249 through the Framing Device of their podcast, Garbage Football.
- Not Hyperbole: 'They fell off a cliff.'
- Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: Common throughout 17776, but especially noticeable with these two. Justified, since they're actually speaking, whereas 9, 10 and Juice are apparently messaging each other.
- Show Within a Show: Their podcast, Garbage Football.
Lacrecia Evans
A 500 player with an extraordinary streak of bad luck.
- Born Unlucky: Her poor luck over ten thousand years has attracted attention from sports historians and statisticians. When her losing streak finally ends, she catches the throw that destroys a historical artifact. And in 20020, her deal with Nick and Manny almost certainly costs her job as Oklahoma State's coach.
- The Bus Came Back: Lacrecia returns in the final chapter of 20020 as the coach for Oklahoma State.
- Famed In-Story: For her awful luck in catching a 500 ball.
- It's the Journey That Counts: She always needs some goal to pursue.Lacrecia: And the thing is, I do that while completely knowing that this game is dumb. I could wake up tomorrow and catch a ball worth 500 points. So okay, and? And then what? Maybe I get in the Hall of Fame and I get on TV. And then what after that? But it's like, on some level, I still have to grab on to that. I still have to have a mission, any mission. The harder, the better. And that's why I count myself lucky that it's turning out to be so hard.
Eddie Krieger
A safety for a football game between Louisville and Charlotte.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Directly acknowledges he is breaking the fourth wall, knows the reader has been reading his dialogue, and tells the audience not to enter Eleven Jones Cave because it's extremely dangerous.
- Color-Coded Speech: His dialogue is lime green.
- Face Death with Dignity: He made his peace with death and was prepared to die of old age... before everyone stopped aging and turned immortal.
- Famed In-Story: For his rushing attempt that has been going on for 9,313 years.
- The Hermit: He lives inside Eleven Jones Cave in Louisville so that he could win a losing game by waiting 10,000 years in his team's end zone. So far he's successfully hid for 9,313 years.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Quoted word-for-word.
Tim
A Christian and member of the group No Rock Unturned, a project to get to know America's land and befriend its people.
- The Watson: Asks Eddie questions to get to know him better as part of No Rock Unturned. The questions are likely ones the audience has.
Introduced in 20020
Manuel "Manny" Baez and Nicholas "Nick" Navarro
Two free safeties for San Diego State University at the center of 20020 and 20021 as they pounce on an opportunity to make the greatest play in college football history.
- Affectionate Nickname: They call each other "babe".
- Alliterative Name: Nick Navarro.
- Birds of a Feather:
- They're a married couple of determinators who tackle the seemingly impossible.Manny: I like to say that him and me are so damn crazy, of course we married each other. Nobody else would take us.
- Manny likens them both to Bert from Sesame Street.Manny: Yeah see, every time you're like "I know," and then fuckin' nothin' happens, and then I gotta spend the next month living in this apartment with you all pissed off like Oscar the Grouch. You know? And I need us to be Bert and Bert.
Nick: Yep.
Manny: Fuck Ernie. You know? No Ernies on this fuckin' team.
- They're a married couple of determinators who tackle the seemingly impossible.
- Buffy Speak: Manny sometimes forgets the term for something and calls it something vague like "the thing". He does this in chapter 1 with the end table, and in chapter 8 with the train's coupler ("the connector thing"). Though he does know and uses the term "dormer windows", when asked what it means, he says: "The little windows, the little dudes that stick out the attic."
- Deep Cover Agent: They've spent 30 years staked out over Georgia Tech's safehouse to make a play on a ball. This is after taking a couple hundred years just setting up a cover identity.
- Determinator: They spent 1500 years training and building up time to make the run out of San Diego's isolated field, then a couple hundred more just to build a cover identity to make a play against Georgia Tech. An opposing coach is stunned speechless when she hears just how much OBT they've accrued.Coach E: Y'all really sat around on the field for, what, 2,000 years so you could pull that? […] All these days we spent marching out here, I kept telling my players it's all about who wants it more. Who wants it more, who wants it more. There's so much about y'all I don't understand, but I know nobody on Earth wants it like you do.
- Happily Married: They've been married for millennia, and are still very much happily in love, though they often have small squabbles and disagreements. Even the ever-cynical Juice even notes they're the happiest couple he's ever seen.
- Hidden Depths: According to Juice, Nick is an engineer. It shows during the Locomotive Lateral, when Nick takes time to decouple the train engine from the freight cars, thus reducing the fuel needed for the train to reach Manny.
- In-Series Nickname: Manuel Baez is almost always referred to as "Manny," both by other characters and by the label MANNY: that appears before his dialogue. Likewise for Nicholas Navarro, almost always referred to as "Nick" by characters and the label NICK: that goes before his dialogue.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: They're both terrible at playing actual football, but are exceptionally good in the Bowl Game, given the majority of the game is scouting and cross country running.
Tucker and Tanner
Two players for the University of Georgia. Tucker is the quarterback, Tanner is the center.
- Foil: They appear together, contrasting each other through their differing demeanours. As Juice puts it, Tucker is "the rude idiot" and Tanner is "the nice idiot".
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Practically every other line of Tucker's has him angrily cursing.
Monica
A player for Louisiana Tech.
- Naïve Newcomer: Downplayed. She's been playing the bowl game for about 300 years, which makes her one of the newer players, giving Chuck a reason to talk a bit more about an unusual type of game situation where a ball accidentally gets carried away by a vehicle.
Chuck Hamilton
A player for the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
- Determinator: He once stole a ball in a scrimmage with A&M and ran with it, ending up carrying it hundreds of miles by himself.Juice: on paper, Chuck wasn't the fastest guy on the field, but he hauled ass all the way to Oklahoma without getting caught. when it comes to long-distance football, whatever's on paper often goes out the window. it comes down to who really wants it the most. who's willing to run for 19 hours a day, and who prefers to call it in and ask for another squad on your team to run 'em down.
nobody wanted it more than Chuck, turns out
Chess Guy
An Illinois chess player.
- Conspiracy Theorist: He believes in a conspiracy theory that the remains of Alexander the Great and Cleopatra are hidden in Illinois.
- Hate Sink: He is written to be obnoxious. He believes in a conspiracy theory that the remains of Alexander the Great and Cleopatra are hidden in Illinois; he tries hitting on Lori in the middle of a match, failing to pick up that she has a less-than-stellar opinion of him; his idea of a date is going to a gas station next to his house; and he is unsympathetic when Lori has to leave for an emergency football situation, derisively saying, "Oh, what? Did a sportsball happen?"Jon Bois: When Graham first read that chapter, the first thing he told me was, "I fucking hate chess guy." Mission accomplished.
- No Name Given: The character tags only refer to him as "Chess Guy". According to Bois in the 20020 Q&A, "I never bothered to give him a name because he didn't deserve one."
Valentine Jones
A quarterback for the University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB). Very good at making reads. Hates mosquitoes.
- The Ace: According to Juice, she's an ideal quarterback: great at making reads, good pocket mobility, strong arm, extremely mistake-averse, and terrifying accuracy. And that's not all.Juice: even still she's great at [being a safety], you'd never even know she used to be a quarterback
it's debatable but arguable that she's the best all-around player in the country - Sir Swears-a-Lot: One of the more foul-mouthed characters, even in a cast full of characters who are no strangers to swearing.Valentine: Well your stride is all fucked-up lookin'. You run like you were born with a dozen dicks. Get some new fuckin' boots!
Bryce Shaffer
A brief recruit for the Troy Trojans.
- Brutal Honesty: When Gunner admits that the Troy program needs rebuilding but tries to put an optimistic spin on it, Bryce flat-out tells him, "Y'all suck".
- No Punctuation Period: Even though he's speaking out loud, his dialogue is almost completely lacking in ending punctuation, and sometimes in apostrophes as well. This gives the impression of a flat, apathetic tone.
Mimi Mackenzie
A player for Georgia Southern, who has a secret identity as "the Sharks".
- The Dreaded: She creates a lot of fear as "the Sharks". Opponents believe that as many as 12 players stalk Lake Auburn, flipping boats with football players aboard. In reality, it's just her.
- Mean Character, Nice Actor: When not playing "the Sharks", Mimi is a vet tech, and is pretty nice to Nine when they speak. She especially displays concern for Nine when the latter loses energy.
