Growing The Beard / Fan Works

Examples of fan works getting better over time.

Story Examples

• A Brane of Extraordinary Women started out with a response to a multi-Crossover writing prompt, followed by a straight-up Fix Fic based on that crossover; both were passable. Then book 3 was Doorstopper The Secret Return of Alex Mack, which broke new ground, creating an epic new storyline and laying the foundation of a large Shared Universe in a fandom that was almost entirely empty before, inspiring dozens of other authors to contribute their own stories to the "Teraverse". It's worth noting that when DianeCastle returned to the multi-crossover format later in the series, alternate versions of Alex were the focus of it, in The Secret Collocation of Alex Mack. A decade later, Fanfiction Dot Net and Archive of Our Own combined had less Alex Mack fanfiction than the Teraverse — and several of the stories on AO3 were in fact part of the Teraverse.
• Avengers: Infinite Wars: Phase One of the story (chapters 1-21), while it has its moment and a fairly strong start, plays it a bit too safe due to the Avengers' presence not changing much overall from canon. Phase Two (chapters 22-50) mixes it up by introducing more changes to canon, more internal conflicts between the heroes and villains, and introducing new factions to the war like Ultron and the various Mandalorians. And Phase Three (chapter 51 onwards) seems to be taking it even further, with even the Earth-centric chapters getting some crazy crossover action.
• Calvin & Hobbes: The Series starts out as being the victim of poor spelling and could be easily be labeled as "Plagiarism: The Fan Fic" before finding an identity of its own by Season 2 and really starts getting better in Season 3 and beyond.
• Debatable in Clash of the Elements like most tropes on this page, but while Part 1 has some glaring grammar problems and lack of focus at the beginning, the story steadily improves throughout and becomes rather consistent around Chapter 13... although there are still some grammar issues here and there. However, the beard grows even further in Movie 1, where there are far fewer grammar mistakes, the battles feel more streamlined, and more detailed words are used in the narrative to avoid repetition. And finally there is Part 2, which removes nearly all grammar problems, has a fluid narrative with great battles, and a better focus on the characters and villains. It is pretty impressive to read through at that point considering that this is a Mario fanfic and all.
• The first nine chapters of Code Geass: Colorless Memories move slowly and are more about establishing the characters and setting for those who didn’t watch the anime or play Code Geass: Lost Colors where Rai is from. Once Rai joins the Black Knights and the existence of E.E and the Sumeragi's Legacy comes into play, the fic comes into its own identity among Code Geass fics.
  • Happens again with Chapter Eighteen where Rai's past is revealed, who took his memories, the fic bringing it's Myth Arc and characters to the forefront, casting off The Stations of the Canon, it's Prolonged Prologue status and forging its own original Code Geass story.
• A literal case in the prequel to the Alternate History Let's Play/Fan Fic A Scotsman in Egypt, An Egyptian in Scotland. Heruben, the leader of the Egyptian refugees, grows a beard over the first inhospitable British winter. After this, he takes a noticeable level in badass.
• Escape From The Hokage's Hat starts off slow with the first two arcs basically being Recycled Script bar certain details and mostly dealing with the power plays and politicking between Jiraiya and the council. Come chapter 22, the story picks up from the previous rather Filler and isolated feel the first two arcs as more of the world gets involved in the story.
• Following Trial By Fire, the Facing the Future Series slowly began to grow its beard, but it fully grew after A Family Thing where afterwards it introduces many exciting Myth Arcs, the introduction of Danielle as a permanent member of the Fenton family, new ghost powers, a Mysterious Watcher, and a member of the Rogues Gallery performing a Heel–Face Turn, and the series is only getting better from there.
• While fairly well-received, fans of the First Try Series widely agree that the story really hit its stride with First Try: Team Tetsuo, particularly since it completely ignores The Stations of the Canon.
• The Girl Who Loved is a particularly impressive case, as the first few chapters are incredibly rough, with all the problems that it entails, including the usual Flanderization of characters. By about the fourth chapter, the plot begins to develop, most characters become increasingly fleshed out (some don't and a few fanon characterizations are deconstructed), and really hits its stride in chapter 7 and keeps going into its darker sequel, Violence Inherent in the System without losing any of the humor or idealistic aspects.
• Intercom: The first two chapters of this Inside Out inspired story were written before the film even came out, setting up a quirky little story about Riley suddenly being able to hear her emotions. Once the author saw the film, the fanfic took off and became more complex, dramatic and even psychological with every new chapter. Sadly, as of Chapter 25, it has become a Dead Fic.
• A Minor Miscalculation was received well from the start, but had problems like clunky chapter-to-chapter pacing, some stiff writing, and mostly retreading the first few arcs of Kill la Kill with only a few major changes while the main cast spends a lot of time talking about the war instead of fighting it. After Nui's arrival as an active threat, the story started taking far greater divergences from canon (leading to many shocking chapters) while doing a better job of developing the characters and exploring conflicts that were passed over in the anime, and drew far more praise from then on.
• Miraculous Ladybug vs. the Forces of Evil: The story was a solid, though mostly unremarkable read for the first few chapters. Then the first Wham Episode hit, and things started to escalate from there into something more interesting.
• Chapter 15 of One and Only Son, where the already excellent fic gets its beard grown in a full-blown Wham Episode.
• Initially, The Pokémon Squad relied heavily on Whole Plot References, along with the plotlines in other episodes being either much more generic or harder to follow, more random humor, and in general a typical Self Insert Massive Multiplayer Crossover. Things began to pick up around Season 6, when backstories were established and the humor began to improve. Reading Season 1, then some late-run episodes (particularly Episode 228) immediately afterward, it's like reading a totally different series entirely.
• The PreDespair Kids started off like a typical Danganronpa Character Blog. However, the Hope Games arc, one of the first of many major arcs on the blog, brought forth many events that helped it find its current identity. This included Mukuro's Heel–Face Turn, the opening of all of 77th class kids for questions, Mondo and Taka becoming an Official Couple, the introduction of the first Named Anons, the appearance of Chiaki, and much more. From then on, the blog became much more focused on its own story and narrative, veering away from its prequel status and establishing a very elaborate Alternate Universe.
• Prehistoric Earth started out as a fairly enjoyable but unremarkable episodic documentary style story centered around a Prehistoric Park style zoo featuring a cast of original characters and various animals from both the aforementioned series and the larger Walking With franchise that didn't quite fully live up to its potential due to both issues within the story itself as well as behind the scenes warring between its two writers Drew Luczynski and Nathanoraptor. But at around the 'second season' of the story, the story finally spread its wings and took off to its full greatness once Luczynski (who'd initially been the main writer due to being the original creator of the zoo the story centered around) and Nathanoraptor (who'd initially been the co-writer who merely did the editing) swapped places, at which point the story finally settled on a consistent direction, several previously foreshadowed developments finally came into play, and every character at last got their chance to shine, with even one character that had previously been viewed by the readers as an unwelcome waste of space that only her creator remotely gave a damn about ending up Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
• The Return really hit its stride when the author abandoned the last of Ranma Canon, hit the First Law of Gender Bending and started treating it like original fiction.
• The first few chapters of Sunset Eclipsed may appear to be of low quality (with some rather robotic/wooden dialogue here and there), but the story really does improve starting half-way through the Fillydelphia arc. Said chapters were eventually revised by the author to make the dialogue flow more naturally.
• Sweetie's Mansion begins as a cut-and-paste retelling of Luigi's Mansion with Sweetie Belle in the starring role, with all manner of plot contrivances to orchestrate the story (Twilight Sparkle stands in for E. Gadd and even goes through Rapid Aging, the other Mane Six are turned into ghosts to function as the mansion's bosses, and so on). Early chapters also incorporate a Choose Your Own Adventure theme where you either continue the story or get a Bad Ending. However, after the second Mane Six ghost is defeated, several things happen: First, the CYOA theme is discarded. Second, Twilight Sparkle is captured and made a ghost, meaning Sweetie Belle no longer has any reliable allies. Third, the story diverges from Luigi's Mansion's plot, starting with the other Crusaders and Spike being possessed and Sweetie Belle having to fight a cage match against an assailant trying to kill her with a rusty knife. With subsequent arcs emphasizing her isolation in a hostile, terrifying environment and her increasingly fractured composure from working to save friends and family who are trying to kill her, Sweetie Belle's goal of finding her fellow Crusaders and rescuing Rarity before she marries the estate's owner suddenly becomes a much more imposing and scarring task.
• Although the Tamers Forever Series is an undoubtedly fun and surprisingly well-written series, it's still fairly average, until "Forget the Y2K, This is Madness!!", whereupon the series adopts a quality of writing that is on par with, if not better than, that of professional authors.
  • Then along comes Silent Sorrow, which takes Emotional Torque Serial Escalation throws in a fantastically deep and complicated plot and wonderfully insightful Character Development and tops it all off by having a ridiculously large "Holy Shit!" Quotient, essentially growing a beard so massive, it could be used as a rope ladder to heaven.
• Tokimeki PokéLive! and TwinBee started out as a lighthearted adaptation of Love Live! School idol festival and it's ALL STARS sequel whose Main Stories are guaranteed to entertain those who are fans of Love Live!, but once the "Ideal Hero" Side Story arc started, which adapts "The King Returns" from Pokémon Generations, the PokéLive! series also has something that fans of Pokémon who have outgrown Pokémon: The Series can also sink their teeth into that can go toe to toe with the likes of action manga in Shonen Jump and action anime on Toonami as well!
  • With certain revelations such as an alternate Knothole Village being destroyed by Ultra Beasts as well as Aleena hailing from a climate changed bad future caused by Yoko's and Ellie's defeat at the hands of Dr. Eggman, the PokéLive! series is also willing to go into Darker and Edgier territory as well as dish out Shocking Moment after Shocking Moment, something that Love Live! proper has mostly avoided in it's official entries (so far, with the sole exception of the Sunshine anime).
• The first Ultimate Video Rumble is so light on characterization, and so simple in its plot and sense of humor, that only completionists need bother reading. (The rest can get by knowing that it used an acid moat for tournament elimination — which Shao Kahn tried to rig — instead of the dimensional field of the later Rumbles, and that Haohmaru of Samurai Shodown beat Bishamon of Darkstalkers in the final section to win the prize.) The second and third Rumbles, however, are more ambitiously written, with extensive plots, character development arcs, and actual stakes beyond "who gets the trophy at the end."
• At first, You Got HaruhiRolled! was just a compilation of short sketches that didn't really parody anything in particular. Chapter 20 gives us its first full-blown Story Arc, and from there the stories got much longer and more effective parodies. Ironically, the end of the first arc was originally where the author intended to end it. It's a good thing he didn't.
• The first season of A Student Out of Time, while it had its good arcs, is generally seen as floundering in trying to find its own identity, shifting from a straight-up Peggy Sue Fix Fic to more of an expanded Alternate Universe tale. The creator has also admitted and even apologized for the poor quality of many of the earlier works, which were a mix of bad ideas, mixed messages and poor plotting, with one arc that was so bad and so hated that he nearly quit writing it altogether. However, the blog has managed to improve considerably with additional help, a greater overarching storyline involving other time travelers and explorations of the consequences of season 1. While it's had its ups and downs, the story is much better overall.

Creator Examples

• Iron117Prime started out with smaller, yet somewhat epic stories such as the first half of Frozen Turtles, Tangled With Ninja, and the first few Avengers of the Multi-verse entries. All three of these fics had a more simplistic vibe to them, with one of these indicators being the Authors' Notes that pop up in those fanfics and resemble Omakes with other fictional characters. Once the omakes are dropped, it's when one can really see his writing start to take shape: the characters written start becoming far more developed, the plots become more complex, and the scale grows more grandiose. Code Prime and A Red Rose in the Blue Wind are good examples of this.
• Nimbus Llewelyn has done this a couple of times.
  • The Wizard in the Shadows by Nimbus Llewelyn starts out as a straight up Tenth Walker, albeit one that was better than average with a few minor variations, but really begins to hit its stride with the Breaking of the Fellowship, and a following ability to develop its own identity and the author developed and refined his style. This is signified by an increase in the length of the chapters to consistently 3000 words plus - though he still considers it to be Old Shame, and, at best, good for a 14 to 17 year old writing his first long form fic.
  • Child of the Storm, meanwhile, started out pretty slow as a simple crossover between the Marvel Universe and Harry Potter, stated by Word of God as being intended to be a conventional Lighter and Softer Fix Fic. Then the story took on a life of its own around chapter 9, the moment that The Winter Soldier was introduced and has never lost steam since, by introducing some incredible world building and an epic scale Myth Arc, establishing itself as its own distinctive universe rather than a simple crossover fic. The downside of this, as the author occasionally complains, is that there's only so much he can do to improve the first 20 chapters or so of the first book (which are good, but not up to the same standard) without damaging the rest of the story.

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