The Stories That Shaped You

[rionaleonhart]

What are the works of fiction you'd consider particularly influential in forming your tastes?

I've been wondering this because I've been rereading a fic I loved when I was fifteen, and I've realised it contains a lot of themes I've sought out or included in my writing ever since. The self-loathing protagonist has an intense, unhealthy, antagonistic, sexually tinged relationship with a duplicate of himself who may or may not be imaginary; there are so many things I love in that one sentence!

Animorphs, Life on Mars and Silent Hill 2 were also big influences on me. Characters bonding under intense adversity, characters in situations where it's hard to know what's real and what isn't, characters struggling to cope with the things they've done: all things I love in fiction, and all things that can be traced back to these canons I experienced at a formative age.

So those are the things that shaped my taste in fiction; what are yours?

Comments

[ruuger]

All those whumpy procedurals that I watched in the 80's & 90's have certainly been a very big influence on the kind of tropes that I like :D

I suspect that Silk Stalkins especially had quite a big effect on the kind of het (friend)ships I gravitate towards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_1mbAybyno

In less tropey side, Arthur C Clarke is still my platonic ideal of science fiction, and my sense of humour was basically founded on Monty Python.