Katt Briones loves to read (and occasionally writes) romance stories. She graduated with degrees in Business Economics and Information Technology and is currently working in systems. When not busy with work, she spends her free time reading, cooking, and playing Stardew Valley. She currently resides in Melbourne, Australia.

1. You chose the trope “enemies to lovers.” It’s personally a fave so I know why I like it, but why do you?

I grew up watching anime series like Sailor Moon and Wedding Peach, and those shaped my preferences because the main couples were enemies-to-lovers. The away-bati dynamic is really cute if/when done well, as long as it’s not toxic and not causing actual harm. Banter/asar dialogue is also, for me at least, easier to convert to flirty banter. Like you get to a point where the character’s going “Are they pulling my leg or was that an actual hirit?” And as a writer/reader, it hits my kilig button. When I read, I’m yelling at the character “landi ‘yun, ano ka ba!!!”, and when I write, I’m giggling to myself. Haha. It’s my fave.

2. You’ve set your story in the tumultuous, chaotic world of…Kpop fandom (lol). Are the fan wars/fic wars really that serious? How likely is it that you can have an enemies to lovers situation?

From someone who spent a lot of time in K-Pop in Twitter before darkness took over (haha), sometimes it is, but I observe the fighting more with rival groups. Though in 2014 when a girl group that was the “inspiration” for Era of Maidens had a similar disbandment-adjacent event, the fic/individual member fandoms/ship wars were intense because the member who left had a very dedicated sub fandom and was part of one of the most popular ships. I was more on the spectator side though, so I don’t have enough information or experience to know whether it’s likely IRL. Though I’d say as long as we keep the IRL shipping at a healthy level and not actually pick fights with people IRL, and actually ask “why do you ship what you ship?” and listen without judgement – it can be a good start to a friendship, or more.

3. There’s a lot of other themes your story covers–WLW, fanfic, angst, and happily ever afters. How do the romance genre rules apply to fanfic, if at all? Is WLW fanfic different? How much of the writers and readers consider themselves contributing to the romance genre?

I’ve only read a very specific niche of WLW so I can’t tell if the romance rules apply at all, and an educated guess based on that wouldn’t suffice (sorry! huhu). One thing I noticed in WLW fanfic is it’s a lot safer to read for women and a lot less triggering (because man pain is nowhere to be found haha). Endings vary, there are still a lot of non-HEAs (I’ve written in this hugot / sama ng loob in the story haha) but I feel it’s much easier for me to read the ones that are HEA because it’s more often earned than the M/F fics I’ve read. 

4. Do you have fic recommendations for us?

Two – one is HEA, “catch me if you can (if you wanna see me again)” on AO3 – this features TWICE members and it’s heat level 2 if I remember correctly. The second one – I pretend it ended differently – Alive on LiveJournal (!!!) by limnological (this features Girls’ Generation members). The second one is the source of my “why write it so well if you’re not going to make them end up together” hugot. Those are what I come back to, depending on my mood.