off limits ✧ zb1 applyfic

✧ parting words

Wow. Okay. Off Limits is officially over! This is also the first time I'm writing a personal note with proper caps lol. Lots of stuff happening over here.

I have a bunch of things to say, so I thought I'd make a separate part to write down my thoughts. You don’t have to read this, but I'd also love to hear some feedback if you're able! I've learned a lot writing this, but I'm always eager to know where I can make improvements. In any case, I hope you enjoyed reading this behemoth of a fic, because I enjoyed writing it! It wasn't always easy, and I've made mistakes with how I planned it and all that, but it's there, and it's huge!

Speaking of huge, can you guess how many words long it is? I added it all up and I was shocked to find that I've written...

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527 169 words! According to google docs, at least. That's like, 6–7 average length novels! This number is lowkey insane to me, because before I wrote Off Limits, I hadn’t written a single thing in years. In fact I don't even consider myself a writer, so this feels like a huge achievement. It took a lot of time, and even more effort, but I'm glad I decided to write this.

That moves us to thanks. First of all, I'd like to thank those who created the characters in this fic, especially those who are still reading and following. My favorite aspect of apply fics is definitely the collaborative part, and it was great working with your characters. I hope I took great care of them and you like how I wrote them as well as how their story went. Thank you for lending me your brain children 🙇‍♀️ There's not many of you still reading unfortunately, which was a little discouraging at first, but life's like that! It makes me all the more thankful for those who are still here, and I really, really hope you enjoyed this story. If there's anything you wish would've been done differently, feel free to tell me. Believe me there were a lot of things I would've changed in hindsight 😅 But in the end, I'm so glad I was able to give those characters I've grown attached to a happy ending.

Next, I obviously want to thank the readers! When you write an apply fic, you sort of expect only the characters' owners to care about it, but so many other people have shown interest for it, and I was honestly a little surprised by that. If you're one of these, thank you so so much for reading and following this story as fervently as you have! I know I don't respond to comments very often (I'm working on that lol), but rest assured I read and appreciate each and every one of them. It really makes me happy to see people connect with the characters, speculating on what might happen next, or just straight up spamming caps locked screams in the comments lmao. If it wasn't for you, I might just have given up on Off Limits!

Last thank you goes to ritalin for helping me power through these last chapters despite being sick all the time. Whoever invented that medication deserves a giant gold medal like seriously you saved my ass.

Let's talk a bit about the weaknesses now. I think the biggest problem I encountered with this was pacing. I imagine it's a little bit inevitable with the number of characters that come with apply fics, but wow, that was a challenge. I think it's a combination of a few things, like the fact I didn’t outline it entirely before writing, or the slice of life aspect that makes it hard to have big story beats that give some dynamicism. You want to have each couple move at their own pace because they're all in different situations, but they also need equal screen time, so it can cause some problems. For example, Hao and Haewon had already dated before the start of the story, while Hanbin and Yanmei were meant to be more of a slowburn. In the end, I think I might have gotten Hao and Haewon together a little too early, which put me in the difficult position of needing to find plot points for them after that, because I couldn't just leave them to the side! If I'd planned it all more thoroughly and figured out the length beforehand, I think I would have been able to avoid that issue... I've learned my lesson, and Born Lucky has been fully outlined!

The next problem is just something that I don't think I'll ever fix, because it's kind of just baked into my personality lol. I'm not very confident in my writing, or rather, I'd say I'm more confident in my storytelling abilities, than in my prose. To be fair, prose isn't exactly my thing, I'm a comics writer first and foremost, but it really shows through in some chapters. My writing's dry! Descriptions and beautiful turns of phrase are very much not natural to me... I do try to make my writing as concise and strong as possible, but it all feels very clinical, doesn’t it? And yeah there's a whole lot of introspection to bog down the prose. At least I'm self aware! I imagine it's something that comes with practice, but it's also just... Not something I'm good at, ever. Hopefully it wasn't too painful to sift through, lol.

Biggest lesson I learned is very simple... This is too goddamn long! Once again, if I'd outlined it entirely before starting, I would have been able to trim the fat, but oh well. Hindsight is 20/20. This is a lesson I very much took to heart with Born Lucky, which I managed to cut down to 90 chapters... Not that much shorter, but it's an improvement, I guess. I'd also like to know your opinion on something here: how's the length of the chapters? I usually try to aim for around 4,5k words, because I like to do three 1,5k words couple scenes per chapter, but I don't know if it's good or not. Is it too long? Too short? I'd estimate each chapter at a 20 minutes read which doesn’t feel all that bad, but I'm interested to know everyone's preferences. I get that it's a very subjective thing and chapters should be as long as they need, but I also understand that it can be quite the time investment in a casual app like this. Whatever the case, I've unexpectedly turned into a bit of an overwriter, so I'm not sure I could make chapters significantly shorter anyway 😬

Much less significant lesson, but one that will save me a bunch of time: illustrations are NOT worth it! I spent way too much time on them and even had to delay some chapters for them, and I don't think they added enough to make that investment make sense. I can't lie, it is really fun to draw these characters, especially when I get to dress them up in cute outfits, but it should be more of a bonus thing depending on my mood and whims, and not something I plan for specific chapters. To be fair I've been dealing with a pretty bad case of art block since my last illustration job absolutely drained me, so let's pray I get that sorted out one of these days 🤞

Alright, well, there's a lot more bad to point out, but let's talk about the positive for a bit. I think, despite all the meandering and aimless chapters, I did pretty okay with what I had to work with. A lot of the time, it felt like I had to pull ideas out of a hat, but I hope I managed to keep every couple interesting enough. Also, the one thing I feel like I can congratulate myself about is... Well, I wrote the damn thing. Seriously, when I first published this apply fic, I had no confidence I would actually write much of it, let alone finish it! 115 chapters, y'all. Over 500k words. It stressed me out many, many times, but in the end, I'm so glad I held tight and pulled through. I know some couples ended up more popular than others, and I'm not sure whether this is a good or bad thing 😅 Nonetheless, I can't exactly go back in time, so I'm satisfied enough with the result. If this were a real novel, there'd be a looot of trimming and editing to do, but this is just silly little fanfiction so I'm glad I had fun with it 💖

Also, big lesson for me and for everyone: having just one af at a time is much, muuuuuch better than juggling between thirty 🙏 I was really able to focus on just Off Limits, and that might be the only reason it got an ending. That's something I'll keep in a corner of my mind whenever I get a little too excited about new ideas, lol.

I think that's just about everything I have to say, so I'll give you the microphone now! What are your thoughts now that it's finished? Rank your favorite couples, or your favorite scenes! Is there anything you thought would happen but ended up not happening? (Yeah there are some loose threads LMAO) If you have any advice or feedback, I'd be more than happy to hear it. Just be gentle because I'm pretty sure I might have spent like 500 hours of my life writing this 😢 hehe

Once again, thank you very much for accompanying me on this very long journey, and I hope you enjoyed the ride 💖 If you are wanting to see more of my writing, feel free to tune into Born Lucky, which will start very soon! I'm very excited to share that story with you all, and maybe a few more after that, who knows. In any case, whether you join me there or not, thank you for having been here. I actually couldn’t have done it without you!

Feel free to start discussions or ask me questions in the comments, before Off Limits officially ends. I wish you all a great year!

— Lucia