YMMV / Real Life Comics

• Alternate Character Interpretation: When did Tony cross the line from standard Jerkass into a Take Over the World Mad Scientist? Was it when he was forced to kill his hologram to get Hologram Tony out of Liz's games?
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • The FBI arrested Mae, Tony, and Dave due to Tony's world-domination schemes shortly before Mae's wedding. Despite the interrogation, Mae is not traumatized while reciting lines from Dr. Strangelove and Tony and Dave make their getaway. Tony decides to up his game by creating a space station for his scientific endeavors and sending the FBI agent a message daring him to come attack.
  • Harper learns her mother was involuntarily committed, she has two moms now, and Liz is pregnant. As Maelyn puts it, Harper has too much optimism to take it badly.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Maelyn would sometimes go all negative on a certain subject (with a strip discussing Honest Trailers having her acknowledge her own tendencies to do so) and one convention strip had her jokingly give "stop sucking" as advice for webcomic artists to improve. One wonders if this tendency got the wind sucked out of it when part of the reason for the hiatus from 2015 to 2018 was because she got a very negative review of her own comic that discouraged her from picking it up again.
  • When Mae was Greg, she got weirded out when meeting a genderflipped version. This "Greg" was female and laughs on finding out Greg is a male name in the prime universe. Mae during her transition spends a lot of time pondering that she wants to change her name, and her appearance. The cartoonist admitted in hindsight this was her subconscious speaking.
  • The Wild Fandango from 2002 is harsher when you remember what happened nearly four years later.
  • Genderflipped Maelyn reveals that her Liz died ages ago, much to main Liz and Mae's sadness. When Maelyn talks with her inner self, she worries coming out as trans will hurt Liz.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In one early strip, Mae contemplates building an in-game house entirely out of staircases. Years later, Homestuck would show what a house built of staircases would be like.
  • Maelyn acknowledged on twitter that the alternate-dimension gender-swapped version of her was essentially foreshadowing.
    Maelyn: Of note: The very last thing Male Greg says to Female Greg is when she mentions it might be nice to check in every once in a while, and he says "You freak me out in ways I'm not really comfortable dealing with. No offense."
• Retroactive Recognition: Lampshaded when Maelyn points out that Liz had a background cameo in one strip before she became a regular or her girlfriend (and later wife).
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Demonstrated here.

---