Exercises in Gratitude (The Barclay Street Flood)
is a Splatoon fanfic on Archive of Our Own, written by redeyedsheepskull. At over 900,000 words, Exercises in Gratitude is the longest piece of Splatoon fanfiction on AO3.
One morning, a 13-year-old Inkling girl Malley wakes up in her apartment, scared out of her mind. This is normal. She then notices that she appears to have been sleeping next to her own corpse. This isn't normal. After some additional panic over "Dead Malley", the mysterious stranger decides to take on the moniker (it's apparently better than her real name), as well as remain Malley's roommate for the foreseeable future (Malley does not have a choice in the matter). You see, Dead Malley is really an Octoling with plans for Inkopolis... plans which are similarly interrupted when a dam bursts and floods the poor Inkopolis neighborhood where Malley and her friends reside.
Now trapped in a crowded apartment building filled with displaced and disoriented tenants, a Ragtag Band of Misfits are forced to attempt to regain control over a rapidly deteriorating situation. But as these situations go, things naturally get worse before they get better.
Exercises In Gratitude(The Barclay Street Flood) contains examples of:
- Conspiracy Theorist: Janko the anemone is this, as he suspects that Grizzco is involved in shady activities. Naturally, the flood only exacerbates this.
- Dark and Troubled Past: No one living in Barclay has a happy life. While it's never delved into for Malley, most of what is mentioned of her life before Lawan, Donnie and Angie paints an unpleasant picture.
- Dark Fic: Not to the extent of others since there are some glimmers of hope, but compared to the source material, there's much more Gray-and-Gray Morality, with no guarantee of a happy ending.
- Door Stopper: Oh yeah. This fanfiction consists of well over 600k words, going on 700k. There's already more than 100 chapters, and weekly updates.
- One of the tags is even "if you just started reading this fic then you have my express condolences"
- Extremely Short Time Span: Currently well over 600,000 words, over 100 chapters, and yet in-univere, only six days have passed.
- From Bad to Worse: When the flood starts, it forces the tenants of the first floor to evacuate to the upper levels, while the main characters have to wade through the dirty water to salvage what they can and to activate the emergency power. By day 4, the flood waters engulf the second floor, the power is knocked out, and a squad of sanitized Octolings try to assault the building.
- Gray-and-Gray Morality: There are very few outright heroes, and equally few outright villains. Just about everyone is trying to protect themselves and their loved ones, and sometimes that just happens to be at odds with others.
- Interspecies Relationship: Lawan, a sea urchin, is engaged to Donnie, a crab.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: The Inkopolis government is depicted as this, constantly prioritizing better-off areas (Read: everywhere except Barclay Street) and doing the bare minimum to maintain public favor.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Dead Malley refuses to go by anything other than Dead Malley. Everyone more or less rolls with it.
- Poor Communication Kills: A good chunk of the conflict between the characters comes from an unwillingness or inability to communicate their issues with each other, with the street flood more or less forcing them to finally work out their issues.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Let's see here. We have a socially anxious teenager, an intruder who oddly resembles her as a corpse, a surly older teen, their disgruntled mother figure, their anxious mother figure, a Conspiracy Theorist and his talking fish friend, and two con artists. What do you mean, you wouldn't feel safe with them in the middle of a flood?
- Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: Pretty cleanly averted in this fic. Characters stutter and stumble in their words and have to repeat themselves in conversations, allowing the cast to feel a lot more like real people. Malley herself is the biggest case, suffering from a nervous stutter that has her struggle with completing sentences.
- Shout-Out: In chapter 53, Donnie picks up and carries Lawan while saying, "Aaaand, scoop!".
- One of Wabi's contacts is apparently a fan of an old human-era show called "Ramen Rider".
- At some point, a conversation is briefly derailed over the fact Donnie once had to study an episode of The Simpsons in a history class.
- Workaholic: Lawan and Kosh deconstruct this trope. Lawan is the main breadwinner for her family, taking up long hours of work that have only served to strain her relationships with them. Kosh overworks himself diving into the flooded first floor for others to the point of exhaustion because he finds himself responsible for the flood happening in the first place.
- Wham Line: Kosh at the end of chapter 118, the start of the "Rain, rain, go away" 4-parter: "I used to work at Inkopolis Second Dam. I knew this flood was going to happen. I’ve always known. I want to confess."
