One is inevitably present in one's writing, and the reader nigh-inevitably cannot see that. They're going to see something, but it is rarely what one worried about.

There's quite a lot of formal criticism and theory about fanfic that points out it's not merely specifically about getting what one wants from fiction, but a huge conversation and development effort around how to get fiction to do what one wants. It makes writing fiction in any professional sense much harder; standards are higher, and increasing. (I think this is a good thing.)

There is no way to tell who your writing's friends will be, or when it will find them. My own experience is that there were far more friends than expected.