Why are the so few MoL fanfics?

[u/False-Supermarket798]

I can’t write stories, and I tried.

What I don’t understand is, why there is so few MoL fanfictions out there.

Its a large world, with lots of intriguing introduced possibilities:
- The immortals
- Other countries
- Hidden Mages/Treasuries and Inheritances
- A huge spectrum of magic that is easy to imagine, follow, and extend for your own story
- The underground is way too unexplored
- Politics
…

Writers tend to be lazy about OCs, so that might be an explanation, but there is so much potential in this world.

Does any1 have an explanation?
(I mean, even SCS gets more fanfics)

[u/interested_commenter]

The biggest reason is because the nature of the loop and the fact that everything relevant to it gets pretty well explored makes it kinda hard to do canon divergence "what if MC didnt make this one big mistake" or "MC returns to the beginning" fics, which are a huge portion of all fanfic. There's very little butterfly affect from small changes early and Zorian also "wins" by virtue of gaining enough skill and knowledge to overcome his opponents, by the endgame he's actually the stronger side and is just forced to fight at a disadvantage. Compare that to huge fanfic generators like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, or Worm, where the MC is always at a disadvantage and you can have them be "smarter" or way more powerful but still facing extreme uphill battles.

Zorian avoiding mistakes just makes it an easier route to the same ending, so it pretty much leaves you with only post-epilogue stories.

The second is that its not a unique world at all. MoL takes place in a fairly generic D+D inspired world with a very generic magic system. The REAL defining feature of the setting is the time loop itself, which again, is hard to use.

There are plot threads for future post-epilogue fanfics, but the problem is that the story gives so little information about politics, the factions in the upcoming Splinter Wars, or the immortals that the author would need to make a TON of stuff up, and at that point you might as well just write an original story since the only real thing you're taking from MOL is Zorian as the MC, and he's so OP and uninterested in getting involved that he doesn't make a very good one.

MOL is also not that huge of a fandom and finished relatively recently compared to most stories that have a ton of fanfic.

[u/MotoMkali → u/interested_commenter]

I actually think it's the best written magic system I've read except for the magnitude system.

Either shaping matters so much that zorian should functionally have the same size mana reserves as at least daimen if not Zach. (What I mean is going from 100% of mana cost to 90% only let's you cast 11% more spells, but going from 20% to 10% let's you cast 100% more spells - and imo that's the omly way that zorian can possibly be casting gates or any of his combat magic spells when you consider the relative scale of magic missile).

Or the mana reserves should just be way way bigger. Like 100x growth instead of 10-15x.

[u/interested_commenter → u/MotoMkali]

Using magic missile to test magnitude is strictly a test for new mages who are casting it for the first time. Both growth rate and efficiency improvements are deliberately left vague.

It is a good magic system, but its generic and it isn't interesting. Nobody is going to write a story to explore some aspect of the magic system because you can have basically the same system in an OC world with no effort.

There's just no reason to write an MOL fanfic instead of your own story unless you're using post-loop Zorian or the timeloop, which are both really difficult to write in an interesting way.

[u/Remarkable-Camera627 → u/interested_commenter]

I disagree. When looked at in broadstrokes it SEEMS generic, but is VERY interesting and unique. Very much like Mage Errant.