YMMV / Project Tatterdemalion

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Colonel Hughes, who either ordered the deaths of innocent victims who had a certain reaction to the vaccine, or pre-emptively struck out against Manchurian Agents/Wolves in Sheep's Clothing to protect the real survivors. The reader knows what the man himself believed, but some of the characters can't be sure if he really had completely cracked or just "had an attack of common sense".
• Funny Moments: Also likely to get its own page, but for a start:
  • Shunsui in a pink camouflage bathrobe, providing Juushiro with a black fruit bat bathrobe. Also, tangled hugs.
  • Kisuke's unbridled geekery, and the scientists' general... well.
    • "This is not the vaccine we were looking for."
    • If Kisuke calls anything else a Liaden-Clutch interstellar drive, Isshin suspects that the old general might have an aneurism.
    • In the pre-Hollow Project, there was an ongoing Shiba-Urahara-Shihoin-Tsukabishi prank war that got so bad, the resident doctor instantly blames them upon waking up naked and sticky (a biology lab may have also been destroyed). Urahara also switched sides when it looked like someone was winning.
    • They hacked the secure, unhackable air supply system. Nobody seems all that surprised.
    • Upon discovering her furry purple tentacles, Yoruichi's first instinct is to blame Kisuke. Turns out, it was actually Isshin, and the colors are only getting crazier.
    • Yoruichi telling Kisuke to be polite and come out from where everyone knows he's hacking the classified parts of the internet, because the nice doctor brought them flammables.
    Kisuke: Now how could I resist an offer like that?
    • "I do study mice, you delinquent designer of things that go boom!"
    • How can Ryuuken tell when he's spent too much time with the scientists? When Isshin starts making sense.
    • Nobody remembers it? That's because Isshin sent a memo.
    • Tessai: "Don't worry, [General]. We didn't build anything while we were drunk. This time." Another time: caramel popcorn + superglue + remote-controlled robots. Isane considers it a good thing that nobody's teeth got glued together.
      Ryuuken: No one could possibly be that—
      Isane and Hanatarou: Yes, they can.
    • Grim Squeakers.
  • "A naked. Fucking. Biologist." (Dodged any and all guards to take over the general's shuttle and negotiate the cocooned survivors' safety, while officially a civilian.)
  • In order to settle into the whole "Shinigami" thing, the pack has movie night. And twister. And tag, the latter of which Toshiro seems to excel at.
  Kisuke: (after being crashed into by Yoruichi, tries to catch Toshiro again, and actually ends up tangled in shrubbery) You pixie out of H. R. Giger! :Catch cub, dangle upside-down, Hollow-bait!:
  • General Yamamoto knew that they were already hacking the classified web, so why bother with the paperwork to give them official clearance?
  • Acceptable motives for murder: bacon on the breakfast menu, and waking up with magenta tentacles.
• Fridge Brilliance: Even though this series was begun 4 years before the "Everything but the Rain" flashback filled in Isshin, Masaki, and Ryuuken's respective backstories, it anticipated several major reveals about them.
  • In the fic, Isshin Shiba is Kaien's cousin. In canon, he was Kaien's uncle and took his wife's family name as camoflage.
  • In the fic, Ryuuken and Masaki have extremely similar vaccine reactions (and psychokinetic powers) because of their (hereditary) MHC profiles. In canon, they're not only both "pure-blood" Quincies but also first cousins.
  • In the fic, mid-twenties Ryuuken is jaded and standoffish but still clearly good-aligned, although his trust in his superiors takes a big hit when they allow him to be ghosted. In canon, teenaged Ryuuken is naive and his idealism is becoming increasingly tarnished, and middle-aged Ryuuken is deeply cynical about his own powers. His fic characterization therefore fits his established character arc.
• Fridge Logic: It's mentioned in Ryuuken's character introduction that his glasses are a very odd fashion choice in a world where laser eye surgery is ubiquitous. In fact, this becomes a Brick Joke in Project Thoughts when Kisuke realizes that because Ryuuken is a covert agent the glasses were only there to conceal a spy camera. Then Nanao turns up in Project Asclepius and she's described as wearing glasses...but no one comments on it until Project Thoughts. The other shinigami aren't sure if Nanao actually needs her glasses to see, or if it's a psychological defense mechanism. If it's the latter, nobody wants to deprive her of that extra scrap of security during a period of exceptional stress.
• Ho Yay: There's a lot of hugging, here. Often involving all-but-declared Heterosexual Life-Partners, but certain shippers might not have too much to complain about.
• Moment of Awesome: So many. But to start what will probably be a new page:
  • Juushiro gets a big one before the story even properly starts: he's tethered to an oxygen tank because of his incurable lung condition so he tells his subordinates to leave him behind and save themselves, then manages to barricade himself into his office securely enough that he survives the metamorphosis.
  • Shunsui survived the initial attack despite being thrown out of the shelter by his CO as soon as he started getting ill. He's one of the first shinigami to emerge from the chrysalis and kills the Hollows attacking him with a chair as he does so.
  • Just when it looks like the planet is doomed, Ryuuken pulls out his Cover-Blowing Superpower and demonstrates that he's as serious a threat as any of the shinigami.
    • There's also the offscreen moment mentioned in Project Thoughts: at some point during his career with PSWAT, Ryuuken killed a terrorist plotting an imminent bioweapon attack.
  • Yoruichi commanders Yamamoto's shuttle only moments after awakening, still stark bloody naked.
• Moral Event Horizon: Massacring civilians and unleashing a transformative bio-weapon on a helpless little town both certainly count.
• Nightmare Fuel: Yes. All the nightmares. All of them.
• Paranoia Fuel: This is an intelligent virus that escapes from an uber-secure facility designed by Kisuke Urahara, messily kills 80% of the victims and mutates the rest into super-powered monsters (which want to propagate, beginning with their family), and spreads again because someone didn't dispose of their boots and rats ate some tissue out of the footprint. The not-vaccine also mutates you, but it leaves you mostly (somewhat) in control of yourself if you live long enough to enter the chrysalis stage before Hollows find you. Also, there is no way in space this thing is a product of nature.
  • It becomes a thousand times worse when Yamamoto points out how illogical it is to expect the attack to be a one time thing, or even to think that the planet is the only target. The shinigami, who are mostly scientists, are frozen in horror as the idea of a widespread attack on other human planets or even polities hits them.
• The Woobie: Everyone who survives, and several who don't.