Expository Hairstyle Changes in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- A Bridge Once Broken: After spending time in the World of Twelve, Loki trades his unkempt hairstyle for a much nicer and neater one.
- Pokémon Crossing: After coming out as a girl, Holly starts wearing her hair in two low pigtails.
- This And That: Once she officially begins taking up her Patron Librarian duties, Powder makes the choice to switch from her typical long, loose, and wild twintails to a tighter, more professional-looking single French braid.
- Arrow: Rebirth: After being kidnapped, Laurel decides to stop dying her hair brunette, letting it return to its natural blonde hue in order to defy the Dumb Blonde stereotype, along with spiting her enemies.
- In The Stalking Zuko Series, Mai wears her trademark buns for most of the fic, earning her the nickname "Gloomy Hairbuns" from Katara. After Mai and Zuko break up, Mai switches to a ponytail.
- When In Doubt Go To The Library: Since his father banished him, Zuko decides to stop tying his hair up in its usual phoenix plume, instead opting for a low ponytail that helps hide his scar.
- Winter War:
- Hinamori burnt part of her hair off at some point between the start of the fic proper and its divergence from canon during the Fake Karakura Town arc. This, combined with a nickname, obscures her identity somewhat for the first chapter she appears in- which serves to underscore the sheer amount of Character Development she's undergone, once you realize who "Peaches" really is. (The hair is also a plot point, as she claims to have gotten it in a kidou accident and Iba for one suspects she did it in a premature bankai attempt.)
- A less dramatic example is Kon, who's let his (Ichigo's) hair grow a bit, which makes him look a little different than the original inhabitant of his body.
- Cross Ange The Knight Of Hilda: In chapter 23 when the group leaves the True Earth, Hilda changes her usual twin tails into a single ponytail to signify her beginning to let go of her past and take the first real steps towards her future.
- Date A Re:Live: Origami Tobiichi, like in canon, originally had short hair 5 years ago, but after her parents' death, she grew her hair out due to her mother suggesting it before her death, and wanting to keep her memory alive through that suggestion. After Maria's "death", she restyles her hair to look like Maria's so she can honor her for the same reasons as the above example. She changes it back after Maria and Marina are revealed to be alive.
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi
- In A Game for the Fool, Wei Wuxian encounters a young Wen Qing; while she wears her hair half-up and half-down when she's older, as a child, she has it tied into little buns. This signifies her youthful innocence, girlishness... and ultimately her helplessness, as her adult servant pressures her to order Wei whipped despite her own desires.
- Avengers: Endgame (Dragonis Prime):
- Before the Reality Heist, Steve shaves his beard, noting that his past self didn't have one. It's folded into his speech about how he hasn't truly moved on.
- Wanda returns to her natural hair color during the Timeskip, cutting it shorter to reflect her growing power and self-confidence.
- Arctique: Chloé switches from a ponytail to a braid.
- Marinette Dupain-Cheng's Spite Playlist: After transferring to a new school, Marinette decides to start wearing her hair in a new style, switching over to a pair of buns. (Notably, it returns to its original style whenever she transforms into Ladybug.)
- Recommencer: Chloé starts braiding her hair up into a crown-like hairstyle.
- OrangeLemon's Sannin Swap: Before the Fourth Shinobi War begins, Ino decides to cut her hair so that it won't pose a potential safety hazard. She also uses one of her old childhood barrettes to pin her bangs back.
- In Unchained (Umei no Mai), Tobirama first has very spiky hair that he cuts rather short because he doesn't have access to proper hair products, and being a shinobi means he needs to be practical about it. After being captured and forcefully married, his hair grows out into soft curls and his wife shows him how to comb and tie them back into a topknot, symbolizing his assimilation into the aristocratic Uchiha clan.
- What You Knead: After the bell test, where Kakashi uses Sakura's hair as a handle in order to take her hostage, she takes his advice and starts wearing it up in a bun. Later on, following the Wave Mission, she adds a lacy semi-cover to it and starts using senbon as hairpins.
- your move, instigator (draw your weapon and hold your tongue): Inoichi is forced to cut his long hair before the Kumo Crush mission. While Kushina teases him about it, as he laments sending the necessary paperwork in triplicate in an effort to avoid it, this underscores how he feels powerless to defy his superiors even when they give orders he personally disagrees with, like cutting his hair or forcing children the same age as his daughter onto the front lines. Much later on, while he discusses his desire to atone for his actions, Sakura lightly tugs on the ponytail he's pulled his hair into while encouraging him.
- Doing It Right This Time: For her first day back in school after travelling back in time, Asuka decides to ditch her Girlish Pigtails:She'd worn the nerve clips as barrettes almost every day since they'd been issued to her, intending them to symbolise her devotion to her career as an Evangelion pilot, but now they seemed to symbolize the flipside of that as well: How little else she'd had in her life except piloting. No hobbies, no other ambitions to speak of, no truly close friends until she'd arrived in Tokyo-3...
- No less than three of them happen in Going Another Way:
- Rei slowly developing into a person of her own is symbolized by her deciding to let her hair grow out, thus distancing herself from the image Yui Gendo wants her to represent.
- Gendo in turn after his Heel–Face Turn decides to be clean-shaven again, thus showing an outside sign of the change within himself.
- Ritsuko decides to no longer bleach her hair once she realizes that she no longer had any reason to try and distance herself from what her mother looked like. While it at first needs to be dyed, over time her hair returns to its natural brown color.
- Once More With Feeling (Crazy-88): Asuka stopped wearing her neural hair clips, opting for tying her hair off into a ponytail because Shinji said that she looked stunning, and she realized that she didn't need to wear her neural connectors to be Asuka Langley Sohryu.
- In The Second Try, Asuka cut her hair to shoulder length at some point during the After the End chapters because a baby Aki kept pulling on it. Asuka muttered that her new hairstyle made her look older, but Shinji disagreed and said that she looked like a mother.
- Marigolds: Over time, Jose changes his hairstyle from its usual bowl cut to one that resembles Akechi's, reflecting how they've grown closer and how he's learned a bit more about what it means to be human from him.
- Celadon's New Blossom: Erika takes Ash to the hairdresser to have his black, spiky hair dyed blond and restyled into a hime-cut, symbolizing how she wishes to turn a rowdy and ill-mannered boy into a cute, polite young lady.
- Team Rocket Roots:
- Jessie switches from her signature Anime Hair to a ponytail after being promoted. This also correlates with her distancing herself from James and Meowth.
- After the trauma of the final chapters, Jessie forgoes her usual hairstyle and switches to loosely tied hair.
- In the epilogue, Butch, Cassidy, Jessie, and James have all changed haircuts after cutting ties with Team Rocket. James' long hair signifies his troubled demeanor, while Jessie's shortly cropped hair signifies a huge change in character for a woman who prided herself in her long hair (as well as paying homage to her mother).
- Pokémon Reset Bloodlines: Starting from Chapter 31, Misty begins wearing her hair down while Iris adopts her hairdo from the Pokémon Black and White 2 videogames to complement their changes in outfits. Misty later switches back to her side ponytail by the Indigo League arc, although by then she's grown her hair longer.
- In The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World, when the Guardians take Ringo in, they give him a buzzcut to indicate that he's one of them. After the debacle that follows, Ringo happily allows the Circle to grow his ponytail back for him.
- In The Return-Remixed
, Kelly Kelly stops bleaching her hair blond after she returns to the Diva Army following her 10-Minute Retirement, showing she's become more serious and Took a Level in Badass. - In With Strings Attached, Ringo grows a small ponytail (actually, he has his hair grown magically) to indicate to the Baravadans that he should be considered a tirin (noncombatant) rather than a skahs (warrior).
- In What You Already Know - Resolutions, an explanation is provided for Teal’c suddenly growing hair in the eighth season of Stargate SG-1; while the rest of SG-1 were at the Ancient outpost in Antarctica, Teal’c left to attend the Ra'kon Akel, traditionally a rite where a Jaffa pledges his loyalty to the Goa’uld he serves but used on this occasion to reflect Teal’c’s vow to destroy them. At his last Ra'kon Akel (which only takes place every twenty years), Teal’c vowed to shave his head for the rest of his life as a symbol of his service but chose to reverse it at this pledge to reflect his opposition to the Goa’uld (which he couldn’t do earlier as he swore to keep the pledge upon his honour and the lives of his family, and so breaking the pledge would have been the equivalent of dishonouring all Jaffa).
- Random Drama Series:
- During "I Triple Dog Dare You!", one of the dares that Sammy gets is that she has to get a gothic makeover. When the challenge is over, she removes most of it, but finds that the dye, which left her with black hair with a red streak in it, won't come out. Sammy ultimately decides that she likes it as it allows people to tell her and Amy apart and she keeps it that way for the rest of the series.
- Scarlett's hair starts in a Prim and Proper Bun and remains that way until she snaps in "Scarlett Fever", at which point it becomes wild and flows freely down her back. Once she regains control of herself, she switches to a long braid, much like Sierra, showing that while she has regained control over herself, Nothing Is the Same Anymore as the rest of the contestants are now aware of her anger problems and almost all of them are both afraid of and no longer trust her.
- Scarlett's hair changes style in the Total Shuffled Island Series. It starts out in a bun throughout Island and starts to come undone in Action when her plans go awry, signaling she is starting to lose it. When she loses it completely and is out for revenge, her hair comes out of its bun and cascades freely down her back. After she is forced to control her temper, her hair changed into a ponytail, showing that while she is in control of herself, she retains some of her vengeful behavior.
- A Treatise On Evolution And Extinction:
- Jakob's hair turns completely white when his powers manifest.
- Throughout Part Two, Jean wears her hair in elaborate braids. In Part Three, it's frequently loose and messy, reflecting how she's struggling with the Phoenix overwhelming and overtaking her. Come Part Four, she balances the styles, wearing it mostly down, but with some sections still braided.
Unsorted
- In We Are the Night, Helena's three personas each have a distinctive hairstyle: A cute odango at school, loose and tousled with family and friends, and a french braid for kicking ass as Robin.
