Fic and other survival tactics

Started writing fic at fourteen on a Nokia C3. The phone broke when I dropped it off a jeepney in 2018 and I lost everything on it, which I'm still not fully over. I'm a final-year Indonesian literature student at Universitas Indonesia and everyone in my department has an opinion about fan fiction. Most are wrong. Fan fiction is where actual writers learn the craft because nobody is holding the grade over your head. The thing I write about: source material where something went unresolved. A character who didn't get an ending, or got the wrong one. I pick that up and write it forward. My longest fic is 140,000 words, written over eight months on my phone on the Transjakarta during rush hour. Standing, one thumb. It's a slow-burn fix-it for a manhwa I will not name because the fandom drama is still ongoing. I also write original poetry. It is not cheerful. My lecturer Pak Suharyanto told me I should think about widening my emotional register. I thought about it for a week and then wrote a poem about what it's like to be told your emotions are too narrow. I did not show him that one. Speculative fiction is next. Short stories. The genre lets me take things that are too heavy to write directly and put them somewhere slightly sideways from reality. I finish my degree in July. I am 22 and those decisions feel both very close and not quite real yet.