[fiction] What’s a story that started from the most generic premise/tragic backstory ever written but somehow evolved to one of your favorite stories ever through the development or twists

This sort of question tends to involve spoilers but like, whatever, rot13 or not

does "dumb coming of age comic with bad comedy" count here

Absolutely

It Hurts!! and its follow-up are some of the most sincere works of art I've ever read once IH gets over its dumb channer "slurs are humor" phase.

It Hurts!! follows a depressed and mildly shitty middle-school boy named Pasqualo and his friends of various degrees of shittiness as he falls in love with a girl named Aurora he meets on the soccer field.

The first big turning point in the comic is when Pasqualo and his best friend, Ally, have a conversation about "hey we should... stop using slurs, probably, this is getting pretty uncomfortable" even though it's couched in humor.

(Fun fact about this one: according to Gob, the creator of IH, the reason this happened is that a gay friend of his liked the comic but felt uncomfortable showing it to her friends because of some of the slurs that were used in it, which is when Gob realized he fucked up and decided to fix it.)

The second big turning point is when

Rot13

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Over The Garden Wall is a good example of this I think

"Kids lost in another world" is as old as modern fiction but the execution is flawless

sorry for the rambling if i hadn't played umineko ih and its sequel would probably be, like, my favorite thing ever

despite how downright painful the first, like, 50-60 pages of ih can be

It’s always an interesting change!

Seeing a story evolve into something good

Yeah, it's slow and painful but like. How earnest Gob openly is about trying to do better is what sells me on IH.

IH and PFM are so good, the odd thing is that if you took out either the low brow crude humor or the really heavy introspection it wouldn't be nearly as complete a package

I think it's because it feels so sincere no matter what is going on in any given situation

Undead Unluck is my personal pick for this one

there's a guy and a girl and he's got intense physical abilities that he doesn't much like and she's got no apparent combat ability but can help him achieve his goals/enhance his abilities so they team up, I can name a few other series of varying quality with that kind of premise

The backstories are so hamhandedly tragic

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It also surprises me by being a solid story and getting lighter and lighter on the titty stuff instead of going full horndog and letting Fuuko get in there and contribute to battles rather than be a sexy lamp that goes "oh Andy" as needed

owl time : yeah if ally and pasq weren't constant lowbrow assholes even after they started improving their friendship wouldn't be the same

like, you know, how it isn't the same in p4m

It's so different but it's got the same oddly compelling roots of a real clowny ass motherfucker and a girl who eats garbage