And we've reached the first interlude at just under 100K worth of story words - I try to separate the author notes in the chapters from the actual story. Per usual, this is the point where I'm going to blab a bit about what I've written so far, on some writing/reading related discussions and showcasing some art.

Act 3, Outer City

Wow, I mean I did intend for the Outer City to feel like running a gauntlet, but I didn't anticipate that I would feel that way too (ᵕ — ᴗ —)

Nonetheless, I got challenged with a host of new things and I also realized that Act 3 was a lot more work than I expected. Since I didn't have as many shortcuts as before and needed to add plenty of extra descriptions, dialogue, new integrated quests, expand the romance subplot and bring the political intrigue things into play. Phew...

I am considering moving out the posting schedule to once every two weeks, because there were a couple of chapters that took me significantly longer to get to the place I wanted in comparison with those from Act 1/2 ...

*checks chapter count* ... 19 Chapters for the Outer City! It was supposed to be 7-10 chapters... What the hell happened? ...

Anyways, I like the weekly posting schedule, but since the Act 3 chapters are clearly more demanding, I'll rather give it the time they need than having to cut things out or feel overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I need to do. So, let's see...

I also did another iterative round of improvements to:

• Setting descriptions: I wanted them to be more atmospheric like listening to music instead of focusing purely on the physical surroundings. This remains difficult when it comes to buildings. Other environmental things are a lot more interactive with the characters, whereas buildings tend to be static objects prone to exposition.

• Dialogue: I have a whole stack of writing craft books that have been waiting around for years to be read and I've finally worked by way through the bulk of those, including one exclusively dedicated to dialogue. To follow up on my previous remarks in Act 2; I've noticed that it wasn't so much a dialogue tag problem that I had, but rather a variety problem in terms of mixing the tags with other ways of leading into dialogue - and this helps to prevent big blocks of tags occurring in the same place. For readability purposes; group dialogue tends to lean toward a more script-like style, but I'm alright with that.

• Character voice: I think Nyx and Astarion are pretty well defined by now, whereas Tav's is a bit more of a work in progress. I would like for her PoV style to be more lyrical, and I don't mean purple prose, just something more aligned with her being a bard - more rhythm, flow, a dash more poetic... but my default writing style and technical training tends to rile against it (  •̀ω  •́  ) - it also takes every ounce of my writing fibres to summon a Tav journal entry.

I was concerned about muddy middle syndrome, especially since we were going to meander a bit and also when my initial estimated number of chapters per neighbourhood doubled/tripled in almost all cases while writing - but I think I kept a decent balance between plot relevant scenes and those that were more 'indulgent'.

A lot of purists take issue with indulgent writing, but I've developed the opinion that some indulgence lends to a more wholistic story and is a great way to show character development by placing characters into scenes slightly adjacent to the main/sub plot.

For instance, the essential oil message scene with Nyx and Astarion I would consider one that was quite indulgent on my part - but if it weren't for that then the follow-on conversation (which was a pivotal conversation for both characters and their relationship) would either not have occurred or I would've been forced to find some other more contrived way of making it happen. And choosing between an indulgent or a contrived scene, I'll go with the former.

The Veil of Ereshka play would also be considered indulgent, and I don't care - because how much poorer would the Little Calamshan scene have been without it (including my understanding of creating more culturally based scenes)?

Let's discuss some larger writing trends that have become quite noticeable.

Contentification of Books & AI Tools

The trend of books as a type of 'fast fashion' is becoming increasingly prominent. There is this strange frenzy in the bookish spaces to publish books as quickly as possible - and AI writing only adds to this. It seems partly driven by market pressure and the fear of becoming irrelevant or people forgetting about you. As a result both indie and tradpub bookshelves are becoming more inundated with low quality books that chase after virality, popularity and profit to the near exclusion of stories with substance. It is happening in all genres, however romance, romantasy and crime/thrillers are being hit the hardest, where AI slop is outnumbering quality books at scale.

Amazon KDP is one of the platforms that allows AI written books, and the result is not only a deluge of AI slop to wade through as a reader, but writers who publish there and get decent sales find themselves competing with a mob of copy-cat books after a few days. I wonder how much longer it will be until people refuse to shop on platforms that are overrun with AI.

I read an article on Substack from an indie author who recently attended a writer's conference. He observed that authors themselves are starting to drift into two camps of thinking. One is running after the sales, only wanting to put out more books; touting AI will allow them to put out 100s of books a year, whereas the other group is going the route of becoming what he called the 'artisan writers'. Those who want to take their time; invest in their craft and their story. My personal preference is also the latter, and I very much equate this whole generative AI situation with the one of synthetic diamonds such as the cubic zirconia.

When they were first able to create synthetic diamonds, the inventors boasted about how no one would want to buy the 'flawed natural' equivalents anymore, since you can have a perfect synthetic one for a fraction of the price. And yet, what have we found? That natural diamonds are still coveted for the fact that they are naturally formed, flaws and all. I predict that any creative output; whether it is writing, music or art that is generated by AI would always be less sought after and less valued that the real deal. There is also widespread sentiment against AI slop, which is practically garbage output that no one wants let alone is willing to pay for.

As I've done before and will continue to do; is being transparent about my AI use while maintaining a moderate outlook on it: AI should be used as a tool to improve creative workflows not replace them. I am a big supporter of ethical AI that aligns the use of AI with standard regulatory and ethical practices. These practices are not new (especially in STEM). They include things like not plagiarizing or stealing from others and getting consent for the data one uses to train the models with. Fortunately, there are a few tools already available that fall into this category of ethical AI; CanvaAI and ProWritingAid. I've written an article on my thoughts regarding AI in writing and art, as well as separate articles on CanvaAI and ProwritingAid should you be interested in taking a gander at how I use them in my creative workflow as well as chatting about trends related to these.

When it comes to Lance, my ChatGPT instance, I use it to research Forgotten Realm lore and lately it references the websites it uses. I've asked it whether it uses data from these websites to train its model, and it confirmed that it only searches within them. Until I can find (or someone points out) definitive proof otherwise, I'll be using it on a good-faith basis that I'm not actively contributing to the unauthorized scraping of websites for AI models. I also have the commit-data-to-model switched off, not that this guarantees anything, but I don't want to inadvertently / accidentally hand over anything to ChatGPT without the source's consent.

Sometimes when I do research for a chapter within Forgotten Realms or other concepts (like real world history or cultures) it does offer to 'write a scene' from the research within a BG3/DnD setting and it can be very entertaining to see what it comes up with. More often than not it is the stereotypical version, but other times it can be highly amusing or interesting - usually leaning toward the melodramatic especially if a bard is involved. I had a telenovela on my hands the one time. Unfortunately, I deleted that conversation so I can't show it to you here, but I do remember the bard's dialogue being so over the top that I was in tears - like Raphael level smarmy with added sleaziness turned up to the nth degree.

Other than that I use Lance to help with questions that I can't easily answer by just reading the Wikis themselves or to create summary tables across a topic. For example, the monster encounter at the Bone Pit in Sow's Foot. I found the Bone Swarm and Lump of Swine on Pinterest but I also wanted a very specific monster: a scavenger that feeds on corpses and would be attracted to mass graves/battlefields. Lance was able to help me categorise the FR monsters into carnivores, herbivores and scavengers as well as teasing out an appropriate plant-based corpse scavenger among them.

Goodies

During my latest playthrough in preparation for Act 3 I was eyeing the Owlbear plushie that you can pick up throughout the game and I amused myself by creating a Wonderous Item featuring the plushie. Now, I consider my art skills serviceable, especially regarding things with big blobby bodies (like plushies) - but I'm still struggling with perspective of more complicated subjects and if you throw in foreshortening then my brain simply breaks.

I made two versions, initially I wanted a 'fun one' and a 'traditional one' - but after doing the plain brown background for the traditional one, it simply faded away and looked boring. So I kept the same 'fun' background for both. Herewith my first 'traditional-medium' fanart for BG3:

Owlbear Publish Trad High Res

Traditional medium: Derwent Inktense Watercolour Pencils &

Prismacolour Pencils. Layout and Background in Canva.

Owlbear Plushie Fun High Res

Traditional medium: Stabilo Pastel Highlighters &

Faber-Castell Albercht Durer Watercolour Pencils.

Layout and Background in Canva.

After wrestling with CanvaAI I managed to spackle together a character profile of Nyx. It is a bit annoying that AI can't replicate faces from a reference and the new, uh, Nyxes(?) have longer hair, but all-in-all it came out decent enough that I'm fine with it. I consider these pics as illustrative stop-gaps more than anything else so I'm not too hung up on them looking exactly right... Nyx would complain about the 'useless flaps' though.

Pinterest Pic

One of the graphic design trends for 2026 is Modern Medieval (or Future Medieval, Neo-Romantic Aesthetic) and I was inspired to try something similar. The illustrations were generated with Canva AI, and the rest of the design was done in Canva proper with creator assets. I wanted to do a newspaper spread, then the design template for a magazine caught my eye. Then I thought to myself, what if the Baldur's Mouth put out a Fashion Edition? By the time I was done with it, it looked nothing like the original template.

Pinterest Pic

I also tried promoting this fanfic on a few other places to get readers to AO3 and WA. I kinda see this as part of me 'learning' not only how to write, but to find some 'marketing strategy' that works for me and fits into my schedule.

Social media in general is not really my cup of tea and I don't want to go with something like Facebook/Instagram, Twitter or Tiktok. Thus, I tried Substack, Reddit and Tumblr. One thing that's very interesting is the socio-cultural differences between the platforms. I'm sure one could do an entire thesis on it.

• Anyway, I closed my account after one day on Reddit, their toxic police state is not worth my time and mind space.

• Substack has some great quality information for writers and fascinating articles on a whole range of topics, but they are quite anti-fanfiction. Something, I unfortunately only realized after posting on there. So fanfiction-wise I've reoptimized Substack to siphon off traffic to AO3 and WA instead of trying to build a readership there. No point in hitting my head against a wall over there anymore.

• Tumblr is much more my pace and vibe, not to mention the huge fandom culture on there and the very pro-fanfiction stance. After some ruthless feed curation; I feel most at home, feel free to join me there. I did try Tumblr about a year ago, got annoyed with the sea of spam and super-sus accounts waving all kinds of nonsense in my face that I left. However, it seems that Tumblr has gotten better at managing those and they're not as prolific like before (and they tend to pop up in the communities, not so much in your own feed after a good scrubbing). I'm not posting this fic on there, I learned my lesson with SubStack, but I am enjoying all the BG3 content. And this is where all the artists were hiding too! I was so happy to find the artist community again... after AI invaded so much of Pinterest it felt like a lot of artists got pushed out from there and many other 'artist sites' also experienced massive exodus, especially those who allowed AI art. It seems that Tumblr is a safe haven for the moment, since most of the communities are very anti-AI, so it makes sense. Considering what a free-for-all it is regarding AI in general out there in the wild west of the internet - I'd be hiding too where I in their shoes.

That lengthy segue was to say that after being on Tumblr a while, I found several artists whose styles I adore, who create BG3 fanart and their commission fees are very reasonable. Thus, I've commissioned a few pieces of Nyx and I've been waiting with bated breath for the interlude to share them with you:

Classic DnD Portrait by KumoArt

Character reference sheet by Germanich - This one is pending, but once ready I'll share it here and add a reminder on the newest chapter update for y'all to come have a look-see.

This brings my blabbing to an end. I do have some other goodies I'm working on in the background and I'll share those in the second interlude. Lastly, I'm going to take a break now, and I'll be back on the 1st Friday in June (5th) with the next part of Act 3 as we get down and dirty in the streets of the Lower City. See you then and thanks again for reading!

Seeing as this has given me an earworm, you're going to get it too: BG3 Intro Music

Also, here is what you can envision me singing behind my desk while cooking for this fan fiction: A Million Gruesome Ways To Die