The first was Friday’s Original Life comic (though to be honest, Jay Naylor started things out a week earlier by introducing the dragon Spike from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic to a Nordic Dragonborn looking for a dragon soul to add to her collection. Okay, it was more chasing the kid sister off the television to play computer games, but it was a fun nod to both popular genres. Besides, Naylor’s glimpse into elements of Skyrim continues a tradition of the comic’s characters playing various games, including Mass Effect and Skyrim.

But what’s especially amusing about the glimpses we’ve been given of Skyrim is how much it strikes to the heart of various oddities. For instance, we have the eating of food in the middle of an armed conflict to replenish health, the inane quests from people too lazy to walk up several stairs to make a delivery (and paying hundreds of gold for this – laziness pays well it seems)… or even the… side effects of the Amulet of Mara (and let’s face it, in real life dating would be sooo much easier if something like this existed). Sure, these comics have had little to do with Original Life… but they’ve still been fun.

The second is a slice-of-life webcomic called Real Life Fiction that defies easy classification. Although I suppose you could call it a combination insanity/gamer comic. Unlike Naylor’s comic, RLF bounces from topic to topic like a hyperactive squirrel hooked on caffeine (which may be ironic, seeing that the main character has a squirrel perched on her head at all times). While the first comic didn’t make any sense to me (seeing that I have no idea who Garrison Keillor is or why Robin would associate him with the god Talos from Skyrim), the second comic on the Dwemer (or Dwarves) was delightfully twisted.

As anyone who’s played the game is aware, the extinct Dwemer (often called Dwarves by the humans in the game, despite the fact the Dwemer were in fact subterranean elves) had a demented interest in death traps and various torments. In fact, this rather delightful group enslaved some of their brethren who begged sanctuary from them and twisted them into a species that, despite the disappearance of their tormenters, wants nothing more than to wipe out every surface-dwelling creature in the world.

The game never does quite explain what happened to the Dwemer. Thus, in the tradition of gamer webcomics everywhere, RLF takes a stab at this mystery by suggesting the death traps that litter Dwemer domiciles in fact became so lethal that they wiped out the Dwemer race when they tried to do such ordinary chores as taking out the trash or checking on the laundry. The last panel, with the hardened warrior staring in shock and horror at the murderous washing machine busy mangling his laundry while charging him, just rings true somehow.

In an amusing twist, a ways back Real Life Fiction also poked fun at MLP:FIM by suggesting the series could “ponyfie” classic literature stories, such as Frankenpony or the Scarlet Cutie Mark. Though considering the series has already paid homage to I Love Lucy, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Besides, the longer a series runs, the more likely that it will attempt to adapt a Shakespearian play at some point. So ultimately, RLF may have been prescient with its suggestion.

Perhaps part of the reason lies with Dan himself. Here we have an adventurer who has on multiple occasions fought and killed the demon Dark Pegasus (who, like most effective villains, has family on the side who resurrects him each time some hero comes along and lethally thwarts his latest scheme) and who has faced some nasty critters in the past… who is afraid of clowns. Well, perhaps that’s too strong of wording. He’s crept out by clowns and honestly doesn’t want to sleep in a bed that is surrounded by clown dolls (including a headboard that is basically a huge clown reaching out at you – that alone would make me consider sleeping off the bed).

No. It’s the glow-in-the-dark paint that gets him. And this is where I have to applaud Williams for one of the most effective uses of copy-and-paste art I’ve seen. By darkening the room, with just bare glimpses of light on Dan’s arm and eyes (and the glow of over a half dozen clown-dolls providing just enough light to shift the dolls from harmless but slightly-creepy, to downright disturbing and ominous figures), she managed to disguise quite nicely the fact it’s virtually the same panel. (I also enjoyed the cartoonist avatar insert on top of the headboard. It was a cute touch.) My only question is… will Dark Pegasus learn of Dan’s newest fear… and does that mean he’ll be putting clown makeup on prior to his next confrontation with the young hero?