Writing Reactively

Anyone else out there do this? Find that you've written a story (or book or poem or whatever) that is, in some ways, a direct reaction to something else that I've read or seen. F'rinstance, some years back I saw the Kenneth Brannagh film of Frankenstein, and finally realized something that had always bothered me about the novel: that most of us produce life and then have to take the kid home and deal for the next couple of decades. (Yes, I know enough about Mary Shelley's life to realize that this may have been a subtext of the work itself.) My reaction may have been colored by the fact that I had a two year old kid. So I wrote a story called "Willie," set in the present day, in which the Doctor creates life and has to deal: how do you get a 6 foot 2 two year old into preschool? How would the child feel as a teenager when he can't find a date for the prom? And so on. Pure, very direct, reaction. And the story just published in F&SF, "Boon," started out as a reaction to the "Borderlands" stories. Don't get me wrong, I love those stories and the world they're set in. But I am contrarian enough to wonder what life in Bordertown would be like for someone who didn't have the wherewithal to get out, but didn't find the elves or the rock n' roll lifestyle appealing. The story took on a life beyond that original impulse, as stories do. And the Sarah Tolerance books are, in some way, a reaction to the tropes of historical romance, specifically Regency romances--the genre in which I got my start. So for the last couple of days I've been considering my ouevre (so called) and trying to figure out in the case of each book or story how I was writing reactively. It's not always clear to me, but it's an interesting thing to mull over in my copious spare time.