#why are we acting as if new mated pairs can’t be introduced or new revelations???

[amalforelias-blog]

The War (SKAM fanfic)

Pairing : Mikael Overlie Boukhal and Adam Malik

Characters : Mikael Boukhal, Adam Malik, Even Bech Næsheim, Yousef Acar, Elias Bakkoush, Muttasim Billah.

Plot : 

- In which Mikael freaked out and lashed at Even for kissing him, because he was secretly in a relationship with Adam Malik.

- Mikael Overlie Boukhal and Adam Malik are together romantically, but Adam, unlike his lover, isn’t fully coming to terms with doing what he thinks his religion views to be a sin. 

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Chapter One : Mates From Among Eachother

The minutes passed slowly, as if holding between their seconds grande ages that time couldn’t sweep forwards in a blink of an eye. Mikael felt the vast moments absorbed by every second, forbidding the world from moving forwards. For it was his own tale stuck between the seconds and minutes of the clock. It was immensly heavy, he almost felt time push his shoulders, crying for him to lighten his heart and let the world go on freely by its laws. 

It wasn’t possible for Mikael though. He couldn’t let his past crumble behind and be swept by time forwards. He couldn’t do but hold still, chained by the memories. His consciousness of time was almost non-existent, and that of the world poured from between his fingers, as his eyes stared into nowhere. He could swear his eyes watched inside his mind. He could swear the world fell off its grounds and emmerged only him. Either the world sucked him in, or he sucked the world into him, for he could only think and feel himself; that mess of a mind. 

It wasn’t a pretty sight. Thoughts flying around and questions colliding. Nothing sitting still, nothing making sense. Not that he couldn’t make sense of it all, not that he couldn’t rid himself off this misery, but he wasn’t free to act. He was emprisoned by morals that, somehow, being a human had obliged him to adopt. The unwritten rule of hiding the mess of loved ones under the rubble and protecting them from what could come of harm from them or from others. He couldn’t know how but he found himself following the rule and, thus, losing his well-being in the process. 

A dear friend of his, one named Even, had done- one among many- an act of oddness. In fact, it was nothing to be frowned up. A mere kiss on the lips, a usual emboddiement of attraction and translation of love. It wasn’t odd from Even’s side, it was odd from Mikael’s side. He couldn’t handle the heavy messages sent through the kiss, beyond the attraction. 

He saw his friend drawing new patterns he had never swam in between. It was as if each human lives inside a framing; one we paint through living but it’s firmly stable to keep us in order, and suddenly the framing breaks, then nothing makes sense. Our eyes can’t read the new visions, our minds can’t comprehend the new uncoded language spoken. Even broke his framing, he was skating out, away. And Mikael couldn’t understand the hazardness, everything was read off as odd. 

And so, he couldn’t figure out why Even kissed him. But he wasn’t sliding back to his past to confront him, nor was he marching forwards to tell the ones who deserved to know. He just rolled at a halt now, stuck in time. He couldn’t push himself forwards and tell the man with whom he shared his heart that another had kissed him. Not just any other, it was Even Bech Næsheim; their bestfriend from little age. 

He knew Adam Malik too well to vomit out the confusion to him. Adam, although a friend of Even himself, wouldn’t be as confused to know of the incident. Indeed, confusion wouldn’t be what will fill his mind upon hearing Even kissed his boyfriend, it would be anger and furiosity. 

Mikael’s body was as glued to the wall as Iblis is to sin. He had been sitting there for three hours. His limbs refusing to budge, his eyelids refusing to move and even his tears refusing to fall. His chest was barely moving up and down in sync with his breathing. Barely. For the heaviness of the secrets sitting on his chest almost put his heart to a deafening silence. It is a human’s most destructive weapon; a secret. That and hatred. Mikael’s heart fortunately was as white as milk, not a drop of hatred towards no one. However, secret upon a secret, the rocks fell into the bowl and the milk poured out, falling here and there, escaping his heart as if Iblis had been chanting evil words to him continuously the night before. 

“Why am I even hiding...” , the words left his mouth like saliva from someone’s lips on a fasting Ramadan day, “...love ?”, he could swear he heard SYML’s The War playing in his head. Appearing out of the crazy chaos in his head to portray his emotions, much to his ignorance, and somehow managing to decipher his puzzle of a question. They say the mind works in boxes, that, from time to time, a box steals in a wordly item from our surroundings to stick into it moments from our lives, as we live. Sometimes, it’s smells, and other times, it’s songs. Like SYML’s The War. That song had its box in Mikael’s mind, and had its memories stuck to it that would rise to surface when Mikael hears the song, or the other way around. 

So his question about why he was hiding his relationship with Adam and why they decided to keep their love a secret, was the suitable thought to provoke the box to open up and let out that song. For, now, his mind jumped back to a memory, one that gives him the answer. 

                                                    *       *       *

“And among His signs is this, that He created for you mates from among yourselves that you may dwell in tranquility with, and He has put love and mercy between your hearts...” , Mikael read off the Qu’ran in Arabic to Adam, not finishing off the twenty-one verse of Surah Al-Rum, only absorbing from it which he wanted his lover to hear. A big smile appeared on his lips as he let the word “hearts” trail in the air, as if he just discovered the preciousness of the world in the words he had just read, to an Adam who seemed a little less happy about the seemingly big revelation that fell upon Mikael from the clouds.  

“Allah has made me of you, and you of me !” , he ecxlaimed, closing off the Qu’ran on his lap and moving closer in bed to the blue-to-green eyes man. Adam wasn’t receptive to the excitement that ran through Mikael though. In fact, his eyes roamed, searching in the eyes of the smiling boy for a hint of anything that would tell him Mikael wasn’t serious. But he was. 

“Ah. If I were a girl, yeah.” , Adam let out a sigh despite of himself, as he watched Mikael’s eyes and lips drop, a cloud of darkness fell over his head.It wasn’t the first time Mika had Adam refuse his thoughts, he thought his boyfriend to be deep into the negative reading of Islam, it would take more than one time of introducing the words of Allah to him under a sweet light, it would take continuous collisions of their relationship with religion. He knew he had to move loads of rocks down the river but he refused to see him drenched by guilt and even dislike towards his own being, thinking he wasn’t accepted by his own creator. 

Here stands a man at the bottom of a hole he’s made, Still sweating from the rush, His body tense, his hands, they shake,

It was then, on the sole radio sitting on the salon’s table next to Adam’s room, SYML’s The War started playing. Barely heard, but with the silence swimming between them and the little words jumping from one to another, the song was a clear tune playing in their heads at that moment. 

Adam took a hold of the Qu’ran and shoved it inside the drawer. “Stop trying to merge between Islam and...”, he sounded more hurt than upset, almost sweating of shame, as if he was caught naked, “...us.”, he felt nude. Under the eyes of Allah. Not that He wasn’t always watching, but the thought was always at the back of his head, burried, but with Mikael reading the Qu’ran, it couldn’t be escaped. He couldn’t help but feel sin crawling into him as if worms were eating his skin. 

Don’t you ever leave me alone, Be my shelter from the storm, My war is over, I am a sad boy,

As the song came to an end, the last words ringing in their heads, it was almost a promise to keep both lives seperate, to Allah was the five prayers and to Mikael was what fell between them. And it was also abvious that what Adam wasn’t comfortable in with his own self, he wasn’t comfortable in with his friends, so it needn’t words from any of them to know that what pulled them together was a secret to be burried. 

                                                  *      *      * 

Mikael thought if their love was flying around them, revealed for everyone that even the trees and flowers of Oslo knew of an Adam and a Mikael in love, then maybe Even wouldn’t have kissed him. And maybe then, he wouldn’t have reacted in the certain manner he did towards Even. 

The phone buzzed in his pocket, not for the first time but it was only now that he made sense of it, his grasp of life around him finally breaking into his soul. It was a call from Akhoy, which was what Mikael had Adam registred under as his contact. Akhoy is Egyptian Arabic for Brother, in a Sa’idi dialect for a humorous touch, Mikael thought it to be witty. It was the equivalent of Khoya in Moroccan Darija, the word that Adam used to call Mika more than his own name. Apparently, in Morocco, it was a thing to refer to eachother as Khoya for men and Khti for women as a direct tradition falling from the precious words of Allah : “Humanity is but a big brotherhood, so make peace with your brethren.”. Not that it wasn’t common in Egypt either, but Adam didn’t seem to know any conversational tricks but to call every soul Khoya.

He picked up, but he didn’t utter a word, his fragility working its way to the surface. “Where are you, man? Been calling and sending messages, why you not answering ?”, Adam’s worry was apparent, bursting from his voice into Mikael’s heart, warming him at the realization that Adam was there. At least he had him to worry about him, to hear from him. But it also worried him himself, that the man he loved was rendered into a ball of worry after his disappearance for only a few hours, and that the only man he confined in wasn’t to be his cushion of comfort from the guilt of what he perceived to be a horrible deed he had done upon a friend. 

“At your place. By the door.” , because Mikael couldn’t let his bruised self fall into the arms of his lover, he thought he’d let the shadows of his being embrace his pain instead, so he headed to Adam’s home and just sat by the door, leaning on the wall, crunched down onto the floor, his clothes almost swallowing him away from life. 

“What?”, his question reeked off confusion and a little bit of dread even, but it wasn’t met with an answer, “Alright, coming!” , his words trailed, Mikael hummed a “Hmm” in response, hanging up, and just drowned even more into his own clothes. 

It wasn’t a grave sin that nastily dragged Mikael into this cave of suffocating gloominess, it was the obligation, sitting on his throat like a sharp knife, to keep his insides inside only. If there was anything that blew Mikael off his feet, then it was filling himself up to no end. He couldn’t, to save his life, keep a word sewed to his tongue. If only he could tell Adam, and if only Adam could understand that Even was in disorder. 

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#skam #skam fanfic #mikael overlie boukhal #adammalik #mikael x adam #adam x mikael #even bech næsheim

[gta-5-cheats]

Solo: A Star Wars Story Has Lots to Show, Nothing to Say

New Post has been published on http://secondcovers.com/solo-a-star-wars-story-has-lots-to-show-nothing-to-say/

Solo: A Star Wars Story Has Lots to Show, Nothing to Say

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Last year, George R.R. Martin – the author of A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels that have been adapted at HBO – said that of the several Game of Thrones spin-off ideas in development, not even one touched upon the period immediately prior to the current saga. “There would be no surprises or revelations left in such a show, just the acting out of conflicts whose resolutions you already know,” he added. Instead, Martin wants them to show parts of his universe that haven’t already been talked about.

On the other hand, the powers that-be at Lucasfilm – under Disney’s ownership – are more than happy to take the safer route and expand on events and characters we already know about, as it guarantees a financial windfall by drawing most if not all existing fans of the franchise. Partly thanks to Harrison Ford, Han Solo is one of the most famous characters in pop culture, let alone Star Wars. Telling his origin story, as the new standalone Star Wars film – Solo, out May 25 worldwide – does, is the definition of low-hanging fruit.

What makes that problem worse is that even before it starts, the big pieces of the puzzle are already in place. Owing to the original trilogy – now retroactively titled Episode IV, V and VI – that ran from 1977-1983, we know Han will meet Chewbacca, the two will then encounter Lando Calrissian, from whom Han will win the Millennium Falcon in a bet, with which he’ll make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs. That’s not a lot of room to create a meaningful story – written by Star Wars veteran Lawrence Kasdan and his son Jonathan – in addition to the fact there’s no stakes for our heroes.

  On top of that, Solo: A Star Wars Story is also dealing with a limited arc for a young Han, since he has to end up as the cocky and overpromising guy Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi meet in the Mos Eisley cantina. And that means the film can’t attribute qualities to him that you wouldn’t normally associate with him, even though he’s about a decade younger in this than in the original trilogy. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t try; Solo has moments where it pokes fun at his ill-advised bravado, but it’s still filling in the portrait of a guy who thinks he can do everything himself.

Solo: A Star Wars Story begins by introducing the pair of Han (Alden Ehrenreich, from Hail, Caesar!) and Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke, from Game of Thrones) on their homeworld of Corellia, who are in love and languishing in slum-like conditions. Years later, Han enlists in the Imperial forces, meets a criminal of dubious morals named Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson, from War for the Planet of the Apes), and then takes on a job for crime lord Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany, from Avengers: Infinity War). That sets Solo in motion and brings other characters into the picture.

What unfolds from there is a part heist and part Western film, as Han and Co. go about achieving their mission – it involves stealing something ultra-valuable and getting it somewhere else as quickly as possible – while making new friends and new enemies along the way. The former involves Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover), the captain and original owner of the Millennium Falcon, and his first mate, a hilarious and outspoken droid called L3-37 (voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, from Fleabag). There are bit part roles for Westworld’s Thandie Newton and director Jon Favreau (Iron Man) as well.

Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian in Solo: A Star Wars Story Photo Credit: Jonathan Olley/Lucasfilm

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Like the previous standalone chapter Rogue One, there’s nothing about the Jedi and lightsabers here, and even less about the Empire or the Force. Similarly, all the new characters Solo: A Star Wars Story introduces are ultimately dispensable too, since none of them can show up in later entries. But unlike Rogue One, the film, seemingly with an eye on potential sequels – Ehrenreich has a three-picture deal in his contract – creates subplots that aren’t tied up properly by the end. It’s here that Solo even connects to the prequel trilogy from 1999-2005.

Unfortunately, there’s little justification for a second visit, when the first is rather unimaginative. Save for a few scattered moments, the film doesn’t grab you until an hour in. And though it’s got the makings of some unique action set-pieces, they aren’t handled in a way that would make them memorable. Even when the Millennium Falcon is being attacked by TIE fighters late-game, there’s no sense of the excitement that was apparent in J.J. Abrams’ 2015 soft reboot The Force Awakens, and Rian Johnson’s 2017 follow-up The Last Jedi.

Part of this stems from the botched handling of the production. The original directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie), were fired over four months into filming, after clashing with Lucasfilm execs including Kasdan over their directorial approach. They thought they were hired to bring their comedic flavour to Star Wars, but their heavy improvisational technique – the duo sometimes shot a dozen takes that weren’t always in line with what the script said – didn’t sit well with Kasdan, and they were replaced by Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind), who’s seen as a safe choice.

It’s a testament to Howard’s experience that he not only managed to keep the film on track for its scheduled release, but that Solo: A Star Wars Story feels cohesive despite being the product of two entirely different visions: according to a behind-the-scenes report, 70 percent of the finished film is Howard’s, with the rest being the work of Lord and Miller. But because Howard was hired last minute to simply bring the script to life, the film lacks an authoritative touch and ends up feeling like a by-the-numbers bland heist film.

Emilia Clarke as Qi’ra in Solo: A Star Wars Story Photo Credit: Lucasfilm

  Moreover, less than six months after Star Wars took some of its boldest steps courtesy Johnson – including a welcome dressing down of why trigger-happy hotshots can cause more harm than good – Solo is happy to play it easy. A few unexpected twists towards the end, and the work of its top-notch cast – Waller-Bridge is excellent and powers some of the film’s best moments, Glover is instantly charismatic and a scene-stealer as the trailers promised, and Clarke lands the note she’s asked to play, that of an intriguing yet enigmatic female lead – simply aren’t enough.

Despite how damning the preceding paragraphs may sound, Solo isn’t a bad movie per se. It’s just fine. The film will help buff up the encyclopaedia pages in a certain period, give Disney another chance to sell more Star Wars merchandise, and lays the groundwork for sequels leading up to Episode IV – A New Hope (“Star Wars” for the purists). But it never takes off in a fashion that would please its titular hero – John Williams’ iconic soundtrack is also on a leash for the longest time, unfortunately – mainly because it’s too predictable to make any wild manoeuvres.

We’ll never know what Lord and Miller would’ve done with Solo: A Star Wars Story, even as the underlying story would’ve been the same. It’s also possible their version would have been horrible, and that Lucasfilm was right in removing them before it was too late. But if Star Wars is going to keep swinging the pendulum back even as its world expands – reports abound of more standalone chapters with Obi-Wan and others, alongside all-new stories from Johnson, Favreau, and Game of Thrones creators – the least it can do is not be borderline cynical about it.

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