Appendix G

        Many people all over the world have been saying things along the lines of, "Michael, can you write a list of other works that have influenced you? I need to know because you're a big influence on my life. Michael, I want to be more like you. I want to look like you. I want to talk like you. I want to crawl inside you, Michael. I want your friends to be my friends. I want your life to be my life. Michael, I want to wear your skin, Michael. I want you to go away, Michael, and for me to take your place." 

    Sometimes people ask me (really, not like the previous paragraph. I was lying in the previous paragraph) (I don't know why they're asking G. R. Michael, I guess they're desperate) "how do you cultivate a style" or "how do you develop taste" or "how do you reach the point where you can create something and then not hate it". I do not know. Whoever knew that would master the world as if he had it in the palm of his hand. But I know that if you want to write a word you need to first read ten thousand words, and there are no bulk discounts. 

    This isn't even remotely a complete list, nor could a list ever possibly be completed. Every person is a library of sorts. I had to cut a lot of entries for being too recent; there have been a lot of cool and influential things since I started blogging in 2018 or 2019, but I've tried to limit myself to only the things that immediately sprang to mind (which logically are more influential than those things I had to actively try to remember), and to those which predate my blog. 

Web Originals

    I will not apologize for the breadth of my knowledge of dastardly bad webcomics; I have nothing to apologize for. Many early enthusiasts of the web saw potential in the "infinite canvas", and the idea that there were no material restraints on works. In the future, they thought, it would be common to have 3d comic strips, songs that can talk back, robo-toasters, &c. The real revolution, however, turns out to simply be that archiving digital data is cheap and easy. Many of the webcomics, online games, podcasts and blogs I'm about to link to have twenty years of history, but are no more difficult to read than a set of encyclopedias would be, if you already owned the encyclopedias. 

• Rice Boy, seminal work of weird web bullshit from Evan Dahm. If you click on a single link in this entire blogpost, make it this one. That's why it's at the first item on the first list. Read Rice Boy.
• Order of Tales, followup work of weird web bullshit from Evan Dahm. A slightly more conventional tale, with a plot and characters and so forth. 
• Fallen London, what can be said. One of two videogames to ever have good writing, though one could reasonably object that it has no video component, or indeed no real visual component. You could play Fallen London on the original Kindle. You could play Fallen London on an iPod Shuffle. Damn, I wish they still made iPod Shuffles. 
• Neopets, I think this one is pretty much destroyed now that Flash is dead. Sometimes I think that Neopets was the internet promised to us and its death was a sort of mayan 2012 apocalypse type thing. Maybe we've all been dead. 
• RubyQuest, representative of a now-dead medium. A forum adventure, like what Homestuck started as, but much simpler and much easier to read (it's real short). A young rabbit must regain her memories and figure out what kind of Blakean Hell she's found herself in. 
• NanQuest, a pseudo-sequel to the above. This one's about a goat lady, and Hotel California.. 
• Knifepoint Horror, a horror podcast by the inimitable Soren Narnia. I have a draft somewhere with a review of every single Knifepoint Horror story. They're all great, but I would advise new listeners to check out prisoner ("There is a curious fact about the tiny railway station mentioned by the teller of this story that he would never know: almost sixty years before the events he describes, the station was partially demolished in the night by someone or something unknown, and had to be rebuilt from the ground up. "), retaliation ("A cruel game of psychological brinksmanship between thieves breaks the sanity of the more dangerous competitor"), or moonkeeper ("A man thrust onto the streets must navigate their disturbing sights and sounds, all the while living under the threat of a monster moving relentlessly through their shadows").
• Antihero for Hire, a dark cyberpunk tale of superheroes and weird shit. Ongoing, I think. 
• The Water Phoenix King, a long epic in a unique and fascinating sci-fantasy world a little reminiscent of Spelljammer. Kyle Marquis (a name familiar to some of you freaks) has ideas that far outstrip his draughtsmanship, but I kind of like the drawn-in-Photoshop-with-a-mouse look. It's cozy. 
• Digger, a long dark tale about a wombat. Award-winning, finished. 
• Schlock Mercenary, which ran for twenty years as a daily strip (it's also funny and a great sci-fi story, but as Skerples put it perhaps the Work and Get-To-Itiveness is what it most deserves to be remembered for).
• Goblins, a sprawling fantasy tale about goblins. I don't recommend this one to be quite honest, but it had a lot of ideas and it's been going for twenty years on and off. 
• Elf, a tale of an elf. I accidentally reread the whole thing (it's not very long) and it threw me off my mojo and that's why I am posting two months after the Appendix craze ended. Oddly this one also has a wombat in it. 
• Gunnerkrigg Court, an ongoing tale of some magical kids in a magical university. A personal favorite of noted rape-doer Neil Gaiman. 
• Girl Genius, an ongoing steampunk story about a young woman and a magical castle. 
• Unsounded, no relation to the videogame UNSIGHTED. UNSIGHTED looks like it sucks but I didn't get very far so I don't know. Anyway, this one is ongoing. 
• Darths & Droids, wherein some crazy people turn the entirety of Star Wars into a loosely-connected-to-Star-Wars saga of tabletop humor. 
• Armless Amy, a gory neon-colored horror comic. Finished. 
• Broodhollow, a long-dormant webcomic about a washup dweeb moving to a small town and discovering its dark secrets. 
• True Magic, another sprawling fantasy tale. Semi-alive. 
• Back, a strange tale about cowboys and clowns. Finished! 
• 6 Gun Mage, elfs with guns. Finished! 
• Elf Only Inn, no, I won't justify this one, fuck you. Unfinished. Don't click on that link if you're going to bitch about it. Fuck you. 
• Order of the Stick, don't say "that's cringe", it's good, suck my ass. Ongoing. 
• 신의 탑, no, I won't apologize for this one either. I dropped it at some point but it's ongoing. 

Theater

• Coriolanus, not one of Shakespeare's most popular plays but one I've always liked for its treatment of pride. 
• Hamlet, I'm not going to fucking tell you what Hamlet is. Oh my glob. Go fucking watch it. 

Film

• A Dark Song, a movie about a woman and a sex-wizard doing black magic. 
• A Field in England, a movie about life in downtown Abergavenny (pronounced "a'venny" because it's in Wales). 
• We Need to Do Something, a horror movie about found family and learning to love yourself. This one is from 2021 but I liked it a lot so I threw it in. I know I said this would all be old shit, I don't care, this is my list. 
• They Look Like People, an autobiographical film by blogger G. R. Michael. 

Anime

• The Last Unicorn, a tale of the last unicorn in the world and her journey to save her sisters from a wicked king and his diabolical minions. Animation by Topcraft (predecessor to Studio Ghibli), soundtrack by America. All-time great. 
• Hellsing, goes incredibly hard, everyone's fit is tuff. Based. Tres cool. 
• Oban Star Racers, a racing anime in space. Earth must compete against every other civilization in the galaxy to win the ultimate prize — anything you want, granted by the all-powerful Avatar. The first "anime" I ever saw. 

Literature

• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, oh my glob, am I going to have to explain all of these? 
• Moby Dick, just read it. 
• The Keys to the Kingdom, a children's fantasy series about the secret mechanisms of the universe. 
• A Series of Unfortunate Events, I'm not going to tell you about this one either. You know what this one is. It was pretty neat. This and Neopets permanently damaged my ability to speak english.
• that one Stephen King Dark Tower story about spider people
• The Edge Chronicles, a dark and gruesomely-illustrated children's fantasy series about flying ships at end of the flat earth. 
• Nine Princes in Amber, a fantasy series about the godlings who rule the world, and how much they suck. 
• The Book of Swords, a science-fantasy series about a bunch of magic swords the gods made just to fuck around and see what kind of trouble it would cause, in a far far far far future dying earth. 
• A Good Man is Hard to Find, "The dragon is by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the father of souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon."
• Redwall, a children's fantasy series about talking animals with swords. Bloody and violent.
• Deltora Quest, a children's fantasy series about some magical gems and many horrible and unique monsters. Also a phavorite of Flox. 

Poetry

    I'm not going to summarize the short ones, you can just read them. I believe in you.

• The Ballad of St. Barbara, by Chesterton
• The Wild Knight, by Chesterton. I can't find the poem by itself anywhere (on the first two pages of Google results). There's the poem, and then there's a short play script of sorts, perhaps about a wicked man and a good man. 
• The Waking of Angantyr, traditional
• the works of Swinburne, in general. 
• The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot. Elegy for civilization or something. Lots of banger lines. Goes tuff. 
• The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T. E. Lawrence. There's a poem in the dedication. They made a movie out of the rest of it (two movies in fact). 
• Idylls of the King, an epic poem by Tennyson about how fucking cool Prince Albert was. 
• Gateless Gate, I guess this goes here. 

Flash Games

    These are accessible through the Flashpoint archive.

• Ginormo Sword, one of the cunningest flash games ever made. Plotless but compelling. 
• Armed with Wings, a dark fantasy about dueling and shit, went hard. 
• Amea, a psychological horror RPG. 
• Neverending Light, a brief horror game, tuff. 
• Exploit: Zero Day, a puzzle game by Gregory Avery-Weir. 
• Hands of War 1, 2 and 3, a fantasy series about ideological conflict over generations. 

Other Video Games

• Iji, a scifi game about a young woman and her struggles with being a mass murderer (i.e. a video game protagonist). 
• The Crooked Man, an RPGmaker horror game.
• the white chamber, a horror mystery game. You might recognize the aesthetic; the artist now goes by OtaKing on the ol' youtubes. The other team members are also worth looking into.  
• Hitman: Blood Money, peak of the series in my opinion. 
• Rebelstar: Tactical Command, a Julian Gollop game (the XCOM guy) without all the boring basebuilding. 
• Cave Story, I'm not going to fucking tell you about Cave Story. You know about Cave Story already. 
• Zork, bite my shiny metal batty gap. Not the first, but probably the most famous. 
• Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword, a DLC about black powder firearms. 
• The Fool's Errand, a vast and multilayered puzzle/mystery game with a Tarot theme. Makes you feel very clever. 

Art

• the work of John Martin. Goes tuff.