🍙 - What story (fanfiction or published work) had the biggest impact on you?
For my writing style - honestly, fanfiction that has sprung up around any one of Neil Gaiman's works. There are so many fantastic writers in those fandoms writing the most beautiful, hilarious, heartbreaking fic and it really inspired me to get into prose writing.
Emotionally and morally - the works of Andrzej Sapkowski. I know those unfamiliar with the Wiedźmin cycle outside Netflix (and a few who are familiar but just miss the point) assume he's writes like this grimdark fantasy stuff similar to GRRM (although I am quite a fan of GRRM as well) but Sapkowski instead kind of takes all that and turns it on its head.
Because the stories aren't really about monsters and fantasy and fake politics - they are about humanity and empathy and real politics and about the power of choice. They're about how fate or "being doomed by the narrative" is BULLSHIT because we have the ability to make choices, because we have empathy, because we have the power to use that empathy to make choices that accept and heal those around us. They're about false narratives spun by people in power and about how we can fight back.
They're about You Can Make The Human Choice. You can care for those you love, and you can support those being crushed under the heel of powerful oppressors with even the smallest act of human decency, and everything else is bullshit as long as you can be human.
It's this beautiful philosophy dressed up in grimdark fantasy clothing. Wiedźmin was quite popular in the country I grew up, and reading the cycle as a preteen really shaped my emotional and moral core and for that I'll always hold it dearly close to my heart.