I read the dresden files when I was twelve and I've been enraptured by the idea of doing something similar since. As for favourite genre, probably supernatural more than fantasy, though fantasy is a close second. It's such a flexible genre that lends itself to enhancing all kinds of situations and telling so many different stories.
IRL The forums have made me more thoughtful about how I act in general and introduced me to the reality that opinions differ. I live in a very close knit, clique focused area and if you have friends they rarely disagree with you. Here, not so much. I've also opened up more to my friends and now I'm more comfortable with my hobbies that I used to only talk about here. Hell, I'm no longer a closet weeb and I even roped a friend into LoL recently, which is fun.
Favourite author is Jim Butcher, writer of the aforementioned Dresden files, Codex Alera series and the new series The Cinder Spires. If I had to pick a second it would have to be Wildbow, the only name I know them by, author of the Webserial Worm, a superhero story that has fantastic world-building and more interesting power selections than your garden variety superhero story. Wildbow also recently finished Pact, a supernatural thriller featuring every ghoul and ghosty you could imagine that I'm currently reading now.
as for creating something, one of my biggest crux's as a writer, something I'm resolving now, is that I get moods where I just want to write. Typically it'll be the dead of night, I'll be listening to music and boom, I write. Normally these moods result in half a chapter to a chapter of my main project being written. That said, they're few and far between, thus why a fix is needed.