And Your Voice Was All I Heard.

[rionaleonhart]

strangely adorable Linkin Park GIF from linkinparkftw on Tumblr. Some of you may already have seen this, as I put it in the comments of my last post, but too bad; it's cute and I want it in an entry.

Linkin Park is still happening to me. I'm very sorry.

A couple of my favourite short clips from my apparent quest to watch every Linkin Park video on YouTube: I very much enjoyed Chester talking about his most embarrassing experience on stage while Mike cracks up (from this interview, about forty seconds in), and this extremely silly acoustic version of Numb (I'm so sad that the full version is nowhere to be found, but Chester's stupid dancing is brightening my day).

I'm finding it a little difficult to pin Chester down as a 'character', which I suppose makes sense, as he's not a character; he's a person. A few things do stand out. He's very openly affectionate; he talks a lot about how much he loves the band and his bandmates and his family. For all the anger in his singing, I've only seen him express anger in an interview once, talking about fans who call the band 'sell-outs' for experimenting with new styles, and he reflected on his comments and apologised a couple of weeks later.

Chester Bennington is intense and ridiculous and apparently possessed of boundless energy, he's built his career on screaming, and yet one of the first words that came to mind when I tried to list out his characteristics was 'quiet'. Is he quiet? Is that right? It seems unlikely. One of the first non-music videos of him I watched was an interview where the interviewer focused much more on Mike, which started me off with the probable misconception that Chester was shy, when in fact he just wasn't having much directed at him to respond to. Maybe the 'quiet' in my head is a holdover from that?

I'm still not going to write fanfiction. I'm not going to do it. My RPF days are behind me. I'm just trying to pin down the band members' characteristics as an innocent mental exercise. Don't give me that look.

A couple of specific fics I'm not going to write:

- Pokémon AU. Chester has a Loudred and every Pokémon in his team knows Roar.
- Supernatural AU where Dean is secretly a huge Linkin Park fan, he uses a haunting as an excuse to go to a gig, and he is very confused when Linkin Park take care of the haunting themselves. Turns out they're actually a team of hunters, fighting ghosts using the power of song somehow. This is an atrocious concept.

Comments

[wolfy_writing]

I feel as if I should be a bad influence in some way. I don't actually know enough about Linkin Park to do it, but I think I've read all of your Pokémon fic.

[rionaleonhart]

I'll be honest: I saw the comment notification from you and thought 'oh, no, here comes an enabler.' I have been rescued by your unfamiliarity with Linkin Park!

(I'm probably also going to be rescued by my own unfamiliarity with Linkin Park as a whole. Chester (the guy getting his head kissed) and Mike (the head-kisser) are sort of the faces of the band, so most of the interviews etc. just involve them and I'm not really getting to know the other four members. So I can't write fanfiction! I'm safe!

...yes, all right, it would theoretically be possible for me to write fanfiction exclusively focusing on those two, but let's pretend it wouldn't be.)

[wolfy_writing]

I'm trying to think of stuff I would discourage you from writing, and...there isn't much.

Certainly, if you wanted to write about someone intense and ridiculous and openly affectionate and possessed of boundless energy and gets his head kissed by his male colleague because they like each other so much, I would not discourage that at all.

[kalloway]

My first Linkin Park album was 'A Thousand Suns', because I fell in love with a special edition Gundam kit which was a joint LP release. I really only wanted the kit but figured I'd give the album a shot and just adored it.

So, because they're Gundam nerds, I'd do a LP/Gundam AU...

[rionaleonhart]

I've never experienced any Gundam canon, but I've always been vaguely curious about it! It looks like Crunchyroll has Gundam Wing available. Hmmm.

[kalloway]

https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Suns-Gundam-Special-Collaboration/dp/B0042VJK9U - here's the kit/album, if you're curious.

[clawdine]

I WANT THAT SPN AU *SHOUTS MADLY*

[rionaleonhart]

NO, YOU DON'T. It's such a bad idea!