Running With the Devil [The Stand, Lloyd/Flagg, explicit]
sorry for the spam you guys, i'm emoting like two months' worth of recs over here. ;)
Fandom : Stephen King's The Stand
Title : Running with the Devil
Author : fantasticpants @ AO3
Rating : explicit
Characters & Pairings : Randall Flagg/Lloyd Henreid and assorted minor book characters
Length : ~4800
Warnings : some description of dead bodies
Summary : It's not easy, being the devil's right-hand guy.
My Rave Review :
this was my friend peregrina's yuletide gift, the lucky bitch, and i actually can't believe it's taken me this long to rec the shit out of it here. if you've read the stand, you remember lloyd henreid, the hapless stoner who went to jail for shooting up a gas station and was rescued from starvation after the superflu by good old mr. flagg. by the book's standards lloyd is a relatively minor character, but an interesting one, and ms. fantasticpants has done a ridiculously awesome job not only fleshing out his character but telling his whole story from start to finish, referencing all the pieces we saw in the book and filling in all the pieces we didn't. it's an amazing study of lloyd as a character, and a fairly creepy insight into how flagg works his dark magic on people. Lloyd's never been a big guy, but now he's a skinny wreck, and the fresh clothes don't sit right on him. He feels small and insignificant standing there next to his savior, the one everybody's eyes are on, but then Flagg places a warm hand on his back, and all of the sudden, Lloyd feels taller. He remembers the stone in his pocket, and the promise Flagg gave him: Going to put you right up there with Saint Peter; slip the keys to the kingdom right into your hand. What a deal, right? It is a hell of a deal. Some of the gazes are directed at him now, respectful and expectant. When he gave Flagg his word, Lloyd only had the fuzziest of ideas of what it actually meant. Maybe even less than that. He thinks he sort of understands, now.
the coolest part about this is all the different threads of lloyd's character that get teased out, and yet he never strays into gary stu territory, or even comes off as slightly deviated from the character stephen king wrote. i also have to say i love how she's written flagg here. he's famous to stephen king fans, and it would be really easy to make him too much of one thing and not enough of another. but flagg is both lloyd's hero and his villain; he saved lloyd's life and damned him in the process, and while he wants flagg he also hates him, knowing there's no hope for him to end any way than he ultimately does. and did i mention how amazing the writing is? the words are put together so carefully, yet it reads without a hiccup, and every sentence strings into the next so there's a constant build from start to finish. it feels like reading an appendix to the book, which is pretty much the highest compliment i know how to give someone who writes fic for book fandoms, and i can't think of a fic that deserves it more. No, Flagg is no Wizard of Oz, thinks Lloyd, because all that guy ever did was pretend to give you something you already had. The scam Flagg runs is much nastier than that. He gives you what you want, but afterwards, you realize that maybe you didn't want it as badly as you thought, and that what you gave in exchange -- even if it seemed like nothing at the time -- was worth a whole lot more. Be careful what you wish for, right?
i think what stuck with me after reading (and rereading and rereading) this fic is the satisfaction and completeness it left me with. i knew how the book ends, i didn't ever have hope that anything was going to go differently for lloyd, but i couldn't help wishing it had, even as i was loving reading about how his experiences with the dark man made him aware of himself and his world in a way he never had been before. by the end of the fic i was pretty awed by how much i sympathized with lloyd. there's always something else to discover in this fic, always a different word or sentence that jumps out at me differently than it did the last time i read it. if you like stephen king and if you like character studies, don't let this fic pass you by. (and be sure to leave her lots of awesome feedback if you enjoy it as much as i did. ;))
Fandom : Stephen King's The Stand
Title : Running with the Devil
Author : fantasticpants @ AO3
Rating : explicit
Characters & Pairings : Randall Flagg/Lloyd Henreid and assorted minor book characters
Length : ~4800
Warnings : some description of dead bodies
Summary : It's not easy, being the devil's right-hand guy.
My Rave Review :
this was my friend peregrina's yuletide gift, the lucky bitch, and i actually can't believe it's taken me this long to rec the shit out of it here. if you've read the stand, you remember lloyd henreid, the hapless stoner who went to jail for shooting up a gas station and was rescued from starvation after the superflu by good old mr. flagg. by the book's standards lloyd is a relatively minor character, but an interesting one, and ms. fantasticpants has done a ridiculously awesome job not only fleshing out his character but telling his whole story from start to finish, referencing all the pieces we saw in the book and filling in all the pieces we didn't. it's an amazing study of lloyd as a character, and a fairly creepy insight into how flagg works his dark magic on people. Lloyd's never been a big guy, but now he's a skinny wreck, and the fresh clothes don't sit right on him. He feels small and insignificant standing there next to his savior, the one everybody's eyes are on, but then Flagg places a warm hand on his back, and all of the sudden, Lloyd feels taller. He remembers the stone in his pocket, and the promise Flagg gave him: Going to put you right up there with Saint Peter; slip the keys to the kingdom right into your hand. What a deal, right? It is a hell of a deal. Some of the gazes are directed at him now, respectful and expectant. When he gave Flagg his word, Lloyd only had the fuzziest of ideas of what it actually meant. Maybe even less than that. He thinks he sort of understands, now.
the coolest part about this is all the different threads of lloyd's character that get teased out, and yet he never strays into gary stu territory, or even comes off as slightly deviated from the character stephen king wrote. i also have to say i love how she's written flagg here. he's famous to stephen king fans, and it would be really easy to make him too much of one thing and not enough of another. but flagg is both lloyd's hero and his villain; he saved lloyd's life and damned him in the process, and while he wants flagg he also hates him, knowing there's no hope for him to end any way than he ultimately does. and did i mention how amazing the writing is? the words are put together so carefully, yet it reads without a hiccup, and every sentence strings into the next so there's a constant build from start to finish. it feels like reading an appendix to the book, which is pretty much the highest compliment i know how to give someone who writes fic for book fandoms, and i can't think of a fic that deserves it more. No, Flagg is no Wizard of Oz, thinks Lloyd, because all that guy ever did was pretend to give you something you already had. The scam Flagg runs is much nastier than that. He gives you what you want, but afterwards, you realize that maybe you didn't want it as badly as you thought, and that what you gave in exchange -- even if it seemed like nothing at the time -- was worth a whole lot more. Be careful what you wish for, right?
i think what stuck with me after reading (and rereading and rereading) this fic is the satisfaction and completeness it left me with. i knew how the book ends, i didn't ever have hope that anything was going to go differently for lloyd, but i couldn't help wishing it had, even as i was loving reading about how his experiences with the dark man made him aware of himself and his world in a way he never had been before. by the end of the fic i was pretty awed by how much i sympathized with lloyd. there's always something else to discover in this fic, always a different word or sentence that jumps out at me differently than it did the last time i read it. if you like stephen king and if you like character studies, don't let this fic pass you by. (and be sure to leave her lots of awesome feedback if you enjoy it as much as i did. ;))