Jan 09, 2026
To:lolitroy
Thank you for reading this all the way through to the end. Since you wrote a marathon of a review, I'll do my best to write a marathon response.
First up, I'm pleasantly surprised Limitless Vlogging is your favorite story from me. I also feel it had potential, but sadly I feel all the perspective changes without proper indicators hurt it. Though like you pointed out then, it might have had dystopian undertones, but I feel I managed to have it satisfy the prompt.
Getting into the analysis for this story, my rationale for making things go "too smoothly" was mostly intentional. Chika I wanted to be a love at first sight character while Zane would be more cautious about a relationship. The theme I was going for was that smooth relationships like that ca be possible.
As for the overbelievable stuff, yeah, pure anime logic right there. If I went the realistic route, Zane would likely be sent home after a few weeks, and then just sit around, waiting for stuff to happen.
As for Bun, her inclusion I feel was purely to satisfy the "public interest" element of the prompt, as who better to hound a celebrity to violate their private life than a tabloid. And since they're a tabloid, I decided to deliberately make them insufferable.
To further touch on the ending with Bun, I was originally going to go a much darker route, where their story actually invoked a response from a neo-nazi, whom they then colluded with to ambush Zane at the train station. There, they'd watch and film as Zane get attacked, not caring about the outcome since any result would give them news. What would ultimately happen is Zane would land a punch that causes his attacker to fly into the path of an oncoming train, but more importantly, one of the colluders with Ruma Mill was going to be Gonzo, who would reveal Zane's status as the author. This would then lead to Chika's cover-up crumbling, the project getting suspended/cancelled due to public outrage, and as a result, Chika would at the very least snap and kill Kasuga in rage. With this ending, the big problem I came across is why the hell people would suddenly believe the tabloid. Considering there would be official security cam footage of the incident, not to mention Gonzo leaking the details by himself would be farfetched as he failed his audition and is thus, not officially part of the project. Thus, I went with the ending I went with.
As for why there's no input from the MCs on Ruma Mill's demise aside from an off-hand mention from Zane, I ask the question, does a tabloid need a glorious sendoff? The MCs brushing it aside is kind of fitting in a sense that it deprives the tabloid of a grand reaction. I felt it was fitting for them to go out unceremoniously as that's arguably the worst thing that could happen to them. Bun's unhinged nature stems mainly from the fact that she's meant to act as a caricature for the unethical tabloid editor, and Kasuga, her blind follower.
Finally, I already mentioned this on discord, but with every new work I write, my fear grows that my character voices will become too indistinguishable. It's sort of something we all have though.
To close, this story in the beginning started out as just an idea I thought of where a gooner mc gets a girl swooning over him and does dumpster fire cringe level stuff, much to public outrage. Following negative reception to Misfits of the Magic World, I decided to pursue a more serious entry for Limelight, eventually refining it to the product you see before you. There definitely were hiccups, as some readers' dissatisfaction with the smoothness of the relationship, did make me feel I was just wasting my time writing this. Then I decided to do volume revised editions of EPGM, 3 in total, shifting some focus away from this, but I'm glad I did. I really enjoyed revising EPGM, and after finishing, was able to focus clearly on Limelight.
Though there are some flaws, I hope you enjoyed reading this. Thank you once more for your support.
