#i don't think some of the newer fans realize what it means to drive for ferrari

[petit-papillion]

"Of course I look at the colour and the red, it's just... it's still the red. I have a couple of Ferraris at home, so I do get to drive a Ferrari, just not the one! For everyone that's a dream position to be in."

Lewis Hamilton | Monza | September 2021

Lewis's dream will come true after all, and he will get to drive THE car in 2025. 🥰

[my-mt-heart]

hi mt.

i’ve been reading your posts recently and you’ve been pretty critical towards zabel. as someone who’s watching the show i can’t disagree, there is much i don’t like, but you seem absolutely sure he isn’t acquainted with the original show (and even more so with caryl’s story), but whilst that’s true in terms of daryl’s character, i can’t really say about caryl.

what i mean is, he seems to have done his homework, or at least a part of it: the daryl we see in the spin-off reminds me of the way he was in the first seasons, when he didn’t really trust the group or anyone around him. sure it feels real far from the character he’s grown into during the last seasons, but maybe they thought it’d make sense for him to act the same way in this somehow similar context?

and this brings me to the next point, caryl. if you watch carefully, the hints are all there: episode 1, the flashback, episode 2 daryl blows up some tanks of gas in a way that any diehard twd fan will immediately associate with carol’s terminus scene. and we know there’s another more important flashback of carol and sophia coming up, and for that they even had to do specific casting and everything. Daryl now even carries a knife identical to carol’s signature weapon.

so maybe zabel did do his research? and if not, who do you think is responsible for these tiny details inserted here and there? is it all some sort of shipbaiting to keep caryl fans interested despite all the shit they’ve had thrown their way?

We can assume Zabel read scripts from the first few seasons because on the page, Daryl's scars are first described as cigarette burns and when asked about them in the spinoff, Daryl says his "daddy was a smoker." But that makes me wonder if Zabel only realized when the time came to look at reference photos that the burns never actually made it on screen in the main show, and that's why they're suddenly plain as day in the pilot. Why doesn’t Daryl have the bullet scar on his chest? We see it in 10x07, so did Zabel not watch that far? Does he not know Daryl got shot in S6/S7? Does he not realize Norman’s newer tattoos were visible in S11 and didn’t need covering up? (Side note: if you are going to make the choice to cover them up, make sure they’re consistently covered up 🤦‍♀️)

If the intention was for Daryl to revert back to the "fish out of water" he was in the early seasons, then yes, Zabel would probably have to watch at least parts of those seasons to get a sense of his voice. Fwiw, I think that’s an odd decision because that's not the version of Daryl most fans were drawn to. It was the nuances he started to show during and after the Cherokee rose scene with Carol. I suspect Zabel was following the mandate to “reset” the character, but at the same time, he still should’ve been 💯familiar with the source material. That’s doing the bare minimum, so I don’t excuse him for cutting corners if that’s what he did, and there seem to be too many inconsistencies to prove otherwise.

I also don't doubt he and/or the other writers watched pivotal Caryl scenes because, yes, the parallels are there like you said. Whether they were always intended to set up Caryl’s arc or initially just evoke the same emotions for another character/relationship, well 😒 Keep in mind that contrary to what will inevitably be spun, it was not known from the start that Melissa would come back. Yeah, there's the flashback in the pilot, and Daryl looking at the photo of the Irish man with his wife and daughter, and the Irish man's V.O., but those may not have ever been in the script, they could've just been decided on in post. I can’t be sure, but the point I’m driving at is, if Zabel didn't know he had to set up Carol's return for a good long while, honoring her character and Caryl’s relationship wouldn’t have been his first priority. His fist priority would’ve been the characters he could actually write for. I’m not suggesting he maliciously gave away Caryl’s arc. AMC on the other hand tends to assume women are interchangeable and if one character mirrors our favorite, we'll grow to like that character for the same reasons. Remember Maggie’s jacket that we all said looked like Carol’s? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Obviously we know that Carol is coming back now and at some point Zabel would’ve had to start writing to that which he could’ve done by retroactively adding small bread crumbs in the first half like the flashback, maybe some lines of dialogue, or anything else that wouldn’t have required massive rewrites (or more rewrites than there already were). So if something feels shoehorned in or contradictory (I know people were talking about the scene where Daryl tells Laurent he has “nothing like” a wife and kids), that could definitely be why. Not saying all of this to rain on anyone’s parade. If the small moments bring you comfort, please do take them. After all the “parallels” throughout the Leah arc went absolutely nowhere though, I would personally much rather wait until we get the real deal i.e. an explicit Caryl arc before I bother to watch.

I’ve definitely written too much for someone who’s not watching and I’m trying to wait a few more weeks before I elaborate on anything, but since you asked, I hope this gives you a better sense of where my head is at right now.

[17percentgrey-blog]

A bit about me and the bike(s)

Ok. So... here's the deal. About spring of 2007 (or so) while my classmates and I were anticipating our Senior year of college and dreaming about how we would spend all the money we were going to make (ahem), we got on the topic of what vehicle(s) we were going to purchase. A bunch of guys wanted old vintage muscle cars, some guys wanted big trucks, some wanted newer sports cars, a few of us wanted motorcycles.

Many hours over multiple days were spend finding pictures of our respectively "perfect" vehicles. Emails were sent with stats and links and more discussions were had about the merits of the varying styles, makes, models, performance, and coloring. During my searching I was asked about Harley-Davidson. Now I wasn't really much of a Harley guy. I am not a fan of the "big dresser" motorcycles out there and at the time I felt the Sportsters were just about as interesting with the way they were styled. But none-the-less I was goaded into at least checking out the HD website.

I wasn't really that impressed.

At first.

Until I noticed a link on the nav bar that said Buell...

I started poking around on that part of the site and was shocked to find (no sh*t) a selection of American made actual sports bikes.

(Ok, ok, ok... we can debate the finer points of "American Made" vs "American Assembled" and all the "What percentage of that thing is really 'American'?" and "Most things are made in China no matter what the tag say!" and on and on... But I'm not going to debate it here. Designed and Assembled, is American Made enough for this story.)

They actually had a look that seemed to be interesting (to me). And not a Super Sport, full tuck, 150 MPH everywhere you go, look, but a sporty but comfortable, nimble, look.

Well... As our Senior year started and we all got reeaaalllly busy with school work. Our pipe dreams faded and, by the time we graduated and entered the work force, no one was talking about getting one of those vehicles that we had drooled over.

It wouldn't be until two years later that I would be reminded by one of my cousins about that gradution gift I was going to buy for myself. I kind of laughed it off, however, the seed was re-sewn.

I would toss around the idea of getting a motorcycle with some of my friends and they would say something to the effect of, "Oh! You're getting a Harley". To which I replied, "Nope. I want something a little more sporty, but not a rocket."

Well, at some point, my memory caught up to me and I remembered those bikes that I saw on the Harley website (all those years ago). So in 2010, I searched for that Buell that sparked my interest. I thought, "Maybe the newer models are even cooler than what I remember".

Then one day I was talking with a friends husband (who was much more into motorcycles than I had been) and he mentioned that Harley was dropping the Buell line.

(queue record scratching to a stop)

I was kinda crushed.

For a few reasons.

Mainly though, I thought it was a shame that the American sport bike was going away. (Once again, and there is no accounting for taste here, but I still thought that those beefy Harleys being the only representation of American motorcycles seemed sad, and a little like "Really America, we don't want fun and sleek? Do we only want a car on two wheels?" Seriously some Harleys weigh more than my first car [a Geo Metro].)

I decided not to purchase a Buell for fear of having to maintain a mechanical device on my own. In hind site, I should have realized that seven years of guaranteed service/parts should be plenty for me to get my head wrapped around all that I would need to do to maintain a bike, but that's 20/20, and I didn't.

Looking around the Harley website at the Buells I noticed they really didn't look much different from a few years earlyser, but they still looked good!

(sigh)

Onward.

I did eventually decide on a motorcycle and it was (cough) a XL1200N Harley-Davidson Nightster. (>.<)

With all the smack I was talking earlier, how could I have purchased a Harley.

Weeeeeelllll... My first bike was a sexy bike. (As seen below.)

I was tagging along with my friend while he looked on one of those "car on two wheel models". I kind of fell in love with it on the showroom floor. But whatever. I loved it and it gave me many good miles.

I did end up selling it just after I purchased my next bike. I think I only regret getting rid of a perfectly working motorcycle. And that looking back at picture it was a dead sexy looking bike.

Fast forward to the spring of 2019. I was poking around looking at motorcycles (as you do) and I found this.

A 2004 XB12S Buell Lightning. Mmmmmm tasty! It was litterally the same style I was planning on purchasing so many years earlier. It came up for the right price on (a popular website whom I will not mention here) and I couldn't resist.

Now, you see, I felt comfortable working on things (in a limited capacity). Years had gone by with me owning a motorcycle and I had done some middling upgrades on the Nightster, so I felt confident I could tackle things as they came up with the Buell.

After taking it for a test drive and not finding anything standing out that would put me off. I made it mine!

Oof-Ba-Boof is this thing great. It isn't the fastest. It isn't the most powerful. I'm not going to quote a bunch of specs (that is what the internet is for :) but sufficed to say it is everything I wanted in a motorcycle the first time I saw one. Zippy, nimbly, and looks amazing.

"Ok but how did you end up with a XB12X Ulysses then?" you ask.

There had been plans to drive up to Alaska (starting just after I bought the Lightning), camping all the way, on motorcycles with a couple of friends. It was planned for the summer of 2021. Obviously there was a little bit of a damper put on that trip (for the future generations that may, for some reason, be viewing this just look up 2020 Covid, and you will see what I mean). I had been looking for a bike to make that trip. You know to start a small collection of motorcycles. One for each occasion. But since it didn't look like we were going to be able to make the trip I put the purchase of a "touring" bike on hold.

But... Finding that I had time to kill, getting a bike ready to be the best camping bike it can be, seemed like a fun project. So I changed my search to something a little less shiney and ready and more into a project.

Since I was looking why not get a Buell ;) I had found the XB12X, not far from where I live. It was a smoking good price (which means) it was in rough shape when I picked it up. The clutch was all but burned up. The headlighs didn't work. The previous owner (not besmirching the guy) had tried to do some custom wiring and kinda messed some things up. It needed new fork seals. A bunch of the bolts were stripped and or cross-threaded (you know... basically a Harley). But it had promise. The engine was working great and ... The frame wasn't bent.....

I did say project.

Anyhoo. That really brings us here. The plan is to get this thing not just going, but upgraded to be a rocking, camping ready, sexy looking, up for anything kind of motorcycle.