ACAB | ♠️ | A teacher, student, writer, and opinionated reader. Responsible for cleverpun's Critique Corner. | Donate via Ko-fi
Story concept: it's a dystopian future where pollution has made rain flammable and fire is illegal. The story opens with the protagonist buying a lighter on the black market.
What do they do with that lighter?
Page generated in 0.033 seconds
Total duration
909 users online
1,204,227 hits today, 2,660,641 yesterday
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
My first thought is that they can use it as a threat to others when it's raining. Have the prot. claim that they have flame-retardant clothing/armor/what have you and will be totally safe, but if the character across from them does anything they don't like they can threaten to burn them.
All I can think of off the top of my head at the moment. *shrug*
Operate a small distilling machine to get some pure water.
Other than start blasting Adele?
Well I presume the restriction is for safety rather than oppression since, with the obligatory Noir drizzle, the entire city is soaked in gasoline. Which is a great metaphor for a dystopian society straining under it's own weight and ready to erupt in revolution.
I'd use the lighter to start up eternal flame setups at revolutionary headquarters. Aside from being wonderful symbolism, on a practical level using fire for illumination in abandoned spaces means they can't be tracked by the government monitoring electricity use. And the fuel is readily available.
Small One-Shot
The character is desperate and hungry so he goes off to rob a bank (or some place with valuables or necessities) with nothing to lose
things go pear shaped and with a dead look in his eyes he decides to embrace death and flicks the lighter on during a particularly nasty downpour only for all present to discover... the rain either stopped being flammable... or never was.
I dunno, concept seems interesting but that's such a specific scenario
I like 5111702. If you want to do something else, maybe they're a disaffected teenager, just looking to fuck around and break rules. Lots of flicking it, surprise when it lights, and then they LEARN THE TRUTH. :O
If the rain is gasoline, then it’ll remain inflammable long after the rain has stopped... so they wouldn’t need to be limited by when it’s raining necessarily.
It could be that some agency has been tracking lighters. Kinda like the ATF, only for incendiaries. Just after the lighter is purchased, the black market person is arrested and killed via self immolation. But there’s enough evidence that they can track the guy who bought it.
As for why they bought it, it might even be a case of mistaken identity; he thought he was buying something else, but now he has this lighter instead. That leads to a nice “alright, going to get to finally use those drugs I’m addicted to, only to pull out the lighter instead, and goes “oh no.” He doesn’t want to just get rid of the thing, because he’s not a reckless nut, and he can’t return it, because the dystopian ATF will crossbow kill him on sight.
I feel like a world where everything is flammable raises a lot of other questions. How do they heat their homes? What do they drink? Can they use electricity when a broken power line could level the city? I find the lighter to be the least interesting part of this concept.
5111704
Which creates a plot hook: if basic chemistry can purify the water, why aren't more people doing it? Because a government/criminal group wants a monopoly on fresh water, of course! So Protagonist's purchase leads her into meeting the Resistance and eventually fighting the corrupt status quo.
There, there's the outline for your dystopian YA novel. Make the polluted water a metaphor for something and you're golden.
Watch the world burn.
OK, seriously, I wasn't all joking. They could be a villain protagonist; you get some leeway there in a dystopian setting.
Flammable rainwater covers the whole city. It's a dystopian future, so just because the protagonist is a villain, doesn't mean the government is any better. The lighter becomes leverage against this government, threatening to set the entire city ablaze unless the truth behind the pollution scandal is revealed to a misinformed public.
Once the protagonist announces this ultimatum, it's a race against time as the government tries to catch the protagonist, the protagonist has to outwit them and show that this isn't a bluff, and the poor devil who sold the lighter in the first place realizes what kind of massive political mess he's gotten himself into. Especially since it turns out he was involved in the pollution scandal himself...
Tweak the details however. Main point: protag wants to watch stuff burn, for reasons. Buying a lighter in a setting full of burnables is like hanging Chekhov's Gun on the mantlepiece in a setting full of shootables. It's a narrative no-brainer, see?
5111702 5111704 5111711 5111724 5111844 5111850 5111894 5111953 5112114
Thank you everyone for the replies!
I actually shelved this idea four years ago, because I was unsure of what to do with it. Concepts and worlds come pretty easily to me, but my muse is not always so giving with plot and endings.
I'm going to continue to try to develop this idea, and thanks to everyone for your input.
5111953
A failed distilling plant would burn down the whole city. That’s why they don’t exist.
Also, *flick*
They walk for 5 minutes and run into the police out to arrest them. They theatrically light and drop the lighter. Everyone around, and the city, burn.
That was the hook. The actual story is the events leading up to this.
This is a perfect way to introduce person-vs-society conflict. But really, the entire rest of this would is so much more interesting than the lighter.