Past Inspirations

So a few days ago, I talked about The Longest Journey, and how it probably inspired me to have my different worlds, all connected to each other.
So I thought I'd mention a few other inspirations. Although I'm pretty sure I mentioned a few of them before.

Dragons. I always liked dragons. But I think there was one story that might have nudged me over the line of the dragon-crazy. In middle school, I was reading through a textbook of short stories when I came across one called The Smallest Dragon Boy. And that story stuck with me. I learned many years later that it was part of a very well-known dragon series called the Dragon Riders of Pern (I learned this by accident when I started reading a book called Dragonsong, that was entirely to similar to be coincidental).
My ideas for telepathy did not come from the Pern series. Nor did they come from Eragon, or the Tortall series or any of that. Instead it came from a book called Kinship with All Life. That book was the start of my entire telepathic system. The other books I mentioned follow a similar system, but they weren't my inspiration. Nor do they work exactly the same.

And these next ones relate more to Fern than my stories in general.
I think the main reason that I created Fern was because of the X-Men. At first, I developed a few mutants to join the X-Men. One of them was actually quite similar to Fern. But eventually they all disappeared, and Fern took their place. And Fern, of course, is more of what I would like to be as a mutant.
Actually, I don't remember why I initially created her. But she has grown a lot from that point.
And I did not draw Fern's powers from the Tortall series (specifically Daine from The Immortals). Ferns main power - shapeshifting came about because that's what I think my superpower would be. And telepathy, as I said, came from Kinship with all Life. Her small abilities with the elements are also sort of along the lines of my research following the Kinship book. The healing is sort of too. Though I admit that Fern's healing ability may have been inspired by Daine. I don't actually remember how that one started.

And then much later I decided that Fern was actually one of a race of people from Magic-Earth, the Shaydens. Her powers echo their mixed magic.