- TinTin and Asterix. Library had those, read them all through multiple times.
- Wind in the Willows, Lewis Carroll, CS Lewis and other anthro type stories
Same on these though I loathed Lewis false-to-me morality, it just seemed so fake and the vague murderousness of it never sat well with the role Aslan was obvious even to child to be supposed to be filling. Wind in the Willows I was also uncomfortable with how much of a thug Badger was given he was being portrayed as heroic, and I felt they were weirdly too kind of Mr Toad. I had a lot of opinions as a child!
Other big ones for me which I'd consider "formative", i.e. before I had a strong critical opinion with enough experience to properly consider things, so before 13 or so say.
Adventures of the Gummi Bears - There wasn't a lot of high fantasy in cartoons, but this was one.
Ulysses 31 - I mean, this was huge for me as a kid, also I think the start of me liking anime.
Cities of Gold - That's where magitech comes from for me!
Thunderbirds 2086 - This was anime Thunderbirds and it totally ruled. I saw before the puppets and loathed the puppets as a result.
Dr Who - This was huge for SF for me. Mostly Doctors 4 to 7.
2000 AD - I wasn't allowed to read it until like 10, I got it when I was like 7 and my mum took it away because it was too scary in her opinion.
The Riddling Reaver - The exact same thing happened to this except I got it back a little sooner, at like 8 or 9. This was a quasi-RPG so was immediately getting something cooking in my brain.
The Dark is Rising series and
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen series - both of these read as very dark and violent and scary to me but I loved them, and they helped set fantasy for me.
The Worst Witch - Pre-Harry Potter and part of why I was deeply unimpressed with HP when it came out, The Worst Witch was about a girls boarding school for witches, and was charming and probably my favourite series when I was just able to read properly (which was weirdly late, ADHD-related).
The Tombs of Atuan - Specifically. The whole
Earthsea series up to that point was a big formative influence on my ideas re: fantasy, but The Tombs of Atuan for some reason hit me way, way harder than the rest.
Non-main Dragonlance stuff, particularly the two
Galen books (about an inept Solamnic squire) and the books about
Caramon and Raistlin set before the Dragonlance ones all had an impact on me. I didn't really love the main DL books and they didn't speak to me except Kitiara helped me realize "Yeah I really do like strong, non-girly brunettes" as if I didn't kinda know that already.
TTRPGs:
The biggest impacts were from:
A) Having
AD&D 1E described to me. This blew my mind and I knew it was for me, just from the description by a friend.
B)
Forgotten Realms Adventures. Jesus the vibes of this went straight through me, and it still speaks to me.
C) But not anywhere near as loudly as
Taladas. Again a weird Dragonlance spin-off, but to me no setting before this really spoke to me the same way, or informed my view of fantasy the same way.
D)
Shadowrun 1E - This really hugely changed how my brother and I saw RPGs, especially as it seemed like, cooler than the plain fantasy or SF RPGs out there.
E)
Rifts - I can't pretend this wasn't huge, especially Kevin Long's art.
D)
Vampire: The Masquerade. I still remember my brother coming back from the shops with this (our parents clearly having given up by this point lol) and showing me this, it absolutely blew me away and reconfigured how I saw RPGs again.
I think that's the last one I'd consider "formative".
I think what's interesting to me is that stuff that
wasn't formative for me when before I played RPGs, but stuff that hit me afterwards.
1)
Star Wars - I liked Star Wars but I was just not that into it. Not crazy into it like a lot of my friends.
2)
Star Trek - I'm going to be honest, I watched TOS as a kid and I thought "Wow this is rubbish why does anyone like it?!". TNG completely changed my opinion on that, but not instantly, it took time, but that was quite a bit later in the UK.
3)
Marvel - Barely knew who Spider-Man was as a kid, and only from the cartoon, let alone other Marvel characters. At about 14-15 though I was exposed to a gigantic stockpile of X-Men comics and TPBs which permanently warped my brain!
4)
LotR - Didn't actually read it until I was like 15, didn't like it. I didn't really appreciate it at all until I was like 30-something, long post-films.
5)
Dune - Again, read it at about 15 and it didn't really speak to me. It was amazing and visionary and cool but my attitude was "All these people suck horribly" which I feel was very mature and still correct actually!
