So this is immediately a weird sort of article. I am a big fan of reading and also a big fan of the Buccaneers, which should be obvious at this point. Me being the genius that I am, tried to figure out ways to combine the two. That leads us all here. In an effort to improve my sleep as I haven’t been sleeping super well as of late, I have been reading before bed. Which should mean I finish a lot more novels.
So what will this all be for? Well, the way I see it, I think some of the books that I’ve finished have themes that relate to the Buccaneers. Whether it be on a macro or micro level. A book review that is also a football review. It’s sort of like a paper that I would bullshit in my English classes, but still try on and just have fun.
Oh, and if you think I’m joking about connecting two topics that don’t seem to correlate in any way, I once wrote a paper talking about how Aladdin demonstrates a dystopian America in which no one is able to advance in society. Yes I did get my English degree at a liberal arts college, why do you ask?
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Now, I guess I should explain what Upgrade is. It’s a sci-fi novel from Blake Crouch, who I have likened to Michael Crichton, if Crichton was capable of writing entertaining novels with characters that have personalities. I’ve read Recursion, which I think I like more than this. I liked this novel quite a bit, right until the end. Which is not the similarity I wanted to draw between this and the Buccaneers, although it is a funny coincidence.
Much like the Buccaneers, this book had a very anti-climatic finish that let me down coupled with a big mistake. This will btw have spoilers as otherwise I can’t fully compare the two, so beware. Upgrade is essentially a dystopian novel in which all scientists that study genetics have to fall in line with the government or face the consequences. It’s essentially an Orwellian future where the government has massive data to track people and even data to determine who will commit a crime, sort of like the helicarriers in Winter Soldier. There are definitely Ingen type shady companies in this world, but this book makes it very clear that real scientists trying to do good are taken into custody because they oppose the government overreach and the Genetic Protection Agency who are in charge of that.
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This all happened because one woman attempted to improve the crop yield of rice paddies in China and ended up destroying the world’s food security. Her name is Miriam Ramsey (very subtle with the Ramsey name there) and her son Logan is the main character as an agent of the GPA. She kills herself and he ends up having to shoulder a lot of the blame. He also just feels guilty about his involvement with this whole thing, which makes sense as his mom murdered 200 million people and counting.
But in the course of his job, Logan is hit with a genetic agent that “upgrades” him, making him stronger physically and dramatically improving his mental capacity, but also giving him the ability to shut out his emotions. Not completely dulling them, but he has the ability to lock them away in such a way that they can ignore it and use complete rationality. And not in the tough guys don’t cry way, like he genuinely put his emotions in a box and lock it with no real side effects.
Logan is taken by the government because duh, and his sister Kara breaks him out as she also got “upgraded”. We then find out Miriam was alive to make this genetic package and she wants her children to do this to everyone. Why? She’s basically one of those environmental alarmists that thinks the end is nigh and humanity needs to get their heads out of their asses. Her argument is that fully rational people cannot ignore the facts at hand with how bad the environment is as opposed to emotional/selfish people.
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This is really the crux of this article. The book is essentially about two different sides here. Miriam and Kara are on the side of unleashing this thing, even though it could have unintended consequences (as well as seeming to have a 13% chance of causing some sort of terrible disease which I think is just in there to make Kara’s side look worse).
The opposite of this is of course the aforementioned head up asses. Both sides are very much extremes. One will lead to a lot of deaths in pursuit of a perceived advantage to being ruled purely by logic. A blow it all up as opposed to laissez-faire humanomics. Maybe you can see where I am going with this. During and after the Bucs season, these two extremes were and are still present.
On one side, we have those that want to fire Todd Bowles, cut Chris Braswell and Antoine Winfield, and slit Rachaad White’s throat. Obviously I’m exaggerating, but you understand my point. The other side here are the people defending the defense saying it wasn’t that bad and Jamel Dean is perfectly fine.
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Essentially, we don’t need to do that much. In reality, both are just different sides of the same shit coin. The defense was bad last season, but I don’t think that means drop little boy on the whole unit. And this is coming from the guy who wanted to fire Bowles at the end of the season. But at the same time, doing nothing and just defending the guys because of injury isn’t viable either. I think I like Upgrade here as it shows the dangers of leaning too far in one direction.
Obviously the book is about more, but I need to simplify it to make it fit here. In reality, the Bucs need change, but not so many heads need to be lopped off. No need to release a genetic plague on the Buccaneers defense.
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