In 2018, I was introduced to the dazzling and diverse world of fanfiction –– a hidden-in-plain-sight world of alternative LGBTQ and feminine narratives to mainstream media.

A year and a half later, with roughly 60,000 words written, I came out of the closet –– now aware of my true gender identity.

It took me a while to notice it, but fanfiction itself –– and not just gender transition –– has found its way into my day-to-day engineering conduct:

It changed the way I appreciate and review code.
It changed the way I use ticketing and bug reporting systems.
It changed the way I write my documents with colleagues.
It's a good idea to take a page, or at least a handful of paragraphs, from the diversity of that unique world that fanfiction has to offer.

First presented at LesbiansWhoTech debug summit 2021
Presented at AllDayDevOps 2022