otterandterrier writes

Carefully, Leia picked her way off the dirt path, bordering the little watercourse so she could peer down below. The sight that greeted her felt like a physical blow, sudden, unexpected, violent. She felt hot and then cold and then nauseous, paralyzed and shaky, hyperventilating through the sharp pain in the middle of her chest. Dimly, Leia realized she was crying out. They weren’t on Lothal anymore. They were on Alderaan.

Mother, make me a song so sweet (2026)

Summary: While exploring an ancient Jedi temple, Han and Leia follow Luke through a portal that throws them into the World Between Worlds, an extra-dimensional plane within the Force where anything can happen. For Leia, it could be her one chance to fix the past... or make her peace with it.

I'm replying to this one because it's the first one I got, but thanks also to @lajulie24 @walkawaytall and @onwardintolight for sending it! 💜

Usual disclaimers that picking just five fics out of 100+ is a nearly impossible task, feelings vary, I'd have to reread all of them, etc—I feel like these are closer to my top five, in no particular order (all Han/Leia centered):

honey don't feed me (I will come back) - vampire Leia my beloved! This is an AU but set in-universe, and it's a very serious and very smutty fic that adds extra angst and stakes to the Han/Leia relationship circa ESB. And of course I overthought about vampirism. I really liked my writing here, and coming up with the blood-drinking smut.

Mother, make me a song so sweet - Leia (with Han and Luke) accidentally travels back in time to Alderaan. I loved this as a way for Breha to meet Han and Luke, to work through my feelings about time-travel AUs and to give Leia some healing.

keep with me forward (all through the night) - remember Chandler and Monica's "how could we let this happen?" "seven times!"? This fic is sort of like that. But it's also a mission fic with fake dating right after a kiss both Han and Leia are trying to forget about. Clearly failing.

Courting Princess Leia - this was written shortly after finally reading The Courtship of Princess Leia, that horrible no-good EU novel, and it addresses the main flaws without which there would be no book and we would all be better off for it. The first chapter is smutty, but if you don't like smut and would still be interested in an awkward group dinner with Prince Isolder, I think chapter 2 can be read on its own.

10. answered here!

13. describe your writing style

I aim for descriptive and evocative without being too cheesy, and very introspective. Is that anything? I don't know how else to describe my writing style 😂

Thank you!

1. give short descriptions of all your current WIPs.

Oh, that'll take a while 😅 Let's see, this is mostly it, only the ones I actually have something written that isn't just notes (doesn't mean I'm currently working on all of these):

5 times they didn't do it and one time they did

han and leia and music

AU inspired by The proposal (in-universe)

AU where they meet through space tinder (in-universe)

leia deals with menstrual cramps (smut)

han and leia try to be each other's wingmate

bail and breha live and get to see han and leia being idiots about each other

han and leia meet after han left cloud city to pay jabba (canon divergent)

alderaan lives and leia is engaged to someone else, but in love with han

han and leia adopt rey and finn as children

10. which patterns keep popping up in your projects/characters?

I really like the original narrative/dynamic of two people who've grown close and have feelings for each other, but have their own personal stakes and issues that stop them from getting involved, and it creates friction, and they have to sort that out. So that's something that I think most of my fics deal with, even in AUs.

Thank you!

I've written over 100 fics over several years, so I don't really have a definite answer to that. To narrow it down, from the fics I wrote in 2025 and so far this year, the hardest was some part of me stayed alive (each time that you called). It's a smutty missing moment from the book Razor's Edge that I started writing the last time I read the book and... I thought it would be a fairly straightforward smut fic, but of course, my smut fics are rarely straightforward, so it took me a long time to hit on the right beats of their dynamic for it to make sense.

And the easiest was maybe Culinary misadventures, a fun short fic about Leia and Luke cooking Life Day dinner!

what do you do when you get stuck writing?

Lots of helpful things, like play games on my phone, abandon the fic for months, start a new fic, curse the very concept of writing...

Occasionally I go back and reread the fic and maybe I'll find that I took a turn that doesn't convince me, so I try something else. Sometimes if it's a multichapter, I realize that the issue is I haven't properly outlined it, so I do that. Sometimes I also realize I just haven't sat quietly and thought about it before trying to write.

The scenes I most wanted to write were Breha and Han talking in ch. 3, and Breha's reaction at seeing grown-up Leia. The first one was a lot of fun—there's a little bit of a battle of wits between Breha trying to figure out what's going on with these random men who showed up, and Han knowing he cannot say anything about the future, but also, this is his mother-in-law whom he never met! There's a mutual curiosity there that can't be fully satisfied, which is frustrating for the characters, but at the same time is fun to play with in the interstices of what they do reveal to each other in some way about the kind of people they are.

And Breha and grown-up Leia meeting is obviously devastating and emotional, which is also often great to write, and was the main purpose of the fic.

The hardest part to write was the last chapter, which I couldn't figure out for like half a year because I hadn't decided on the denouement. I'd already established in the previous chapter what the likely reason the Force had brought Leia there was, but now I was like, how does the Force let them go back? And I'm happy with the way I did it.

✄ what’s your editing process?

I think about the fic a lot in my head before writing the words down, so that's sort of a pre-editing, lol. And I also usually edit as I write the "first draft", so it's actually rare that I think about a fic as a first draft. Although currently I also had a couple of ideas where I imagined conversations in my head so I wrote them down before I forgot them, and then I'll have to go and fill the blanks to make them into proper fics. Then I give it one or two reads where I might do major edits, send them to a beta if I can, and give them another read to do minor edits before posting. And sometimes I read it again in the Ao3 preview to catch those pesky spaces after italicized words, and might fix a typo there too.

Problem is, the first chapter of the fic started out as a funny bit, and then I decided to expand on it as a serious fic, but I didn't have any plans for what Leia would actually decide to do. So it's three chapters, and I planned to write a final fourth one, but 🤷‍♀️ I still don't know what Leia would do and at this point I'm too afraid to ask I wonder if it isn't better to just leave it as it is? I like the ending! it's a good ending!

like, I could and should write a lot more about Old Married Couple HanLeia, but is this the fic to do so? maybe not!

Last chapter of the time-travel AU is posted! Thanks for coming along on this wild and emotional journey; I hope the ending feels as satisfactory as it can possibly be. Note that I won't be held liable for any mental health support you might need :)

💞 what's the most important part of a story for you? the plot, the characters, the worldbuilding, the technical stuff (grammar etc), the figurative language

The characters! The plot is important only insofar as it makes sense for the characters and their journey or the theme I want them to deal with - i.e. I don't care about shocking readers if I can't convince myself that it feels plausible for the characters. I also care tremendously about the technical aspects as an ESL writer because it feels as if I have to "prove" that I write good :P But I also really care about it in Spanish, so.

✨What's a fic you've posted you wish you could breathe life into again and have people talking about it? (or simply a fic you wish got more credit)

I thought my Han/Leia vampire AU would get a lot more attention than it did tbh! It's my longest multichapter; it's smutty (probably my best smut?? if I say so myself??); the premise is a little bit insane and yet it's made to feel like it could fit with canon; it's got the usual Han/Leia beats but packed with angst and feels. I don't know!!

Thank you!

🌈 answered here!

🎈 describe your style as a writer; is it fixed? does it change?

I think my style is big on descriptions, character interactions and exploration of their inner world, with little action. I try to make it feel vivid and real, evocative without it becoming purple prose or hard to read. But I also enjoy trying different styles, occasionally.

🎀 okay, I'll give myself another compliment - I like my writing style and how much I've improved :D

Thank you!