Femmegasm

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Rating Summary

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Background


The first three strips are just inane commentaries on Jemma Griffiths (for some reason), Street Fighter, and Cloverfield. The fourth strip manages to be a semi-funny Super Mario parody. So right from the start, you realize that this is going to consist primarily of pop-culture references, which is the lowest fucking form of comedy. IS NOT COMEDY IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM. PERIOD.



Downfall
The comic always sucked.

Characters
The two main characters are June and Shelly. June is a tamarin (a species of monkey), and Shelly is an Axolotl (it's like a neotenic salamander). Why Robbie Allen decided to make them such obscure animals, I don't know, but I'll give him points for not making them wolves like so many other furries. Below are his own descriptions of them as they appear on the website's cast page:

"If there’s a single word that could describe June it would be impulsive. June will do whatever she feels like doing, whenever she feels like doing it. She’s hyperactive, stubborn, egotistical, confident, and a bit of drama queen. She thinks she’s smarter than Shelly which is all but correct. The only difference is June is more confident in what she says than Shelly. That and June will never admit she’s wrong."

"If there’s a single word that could describe Shelly it would be naive. Shelly has lived a very sheltered life and has almost a childlike curiosity about the world she lives in. This personality quirk only enhances her already abundant cuteness factor. Shelly is shy, cautious, childish, curious, and easily confused. However Shelly’s constant questioning of the world sometimes allows her to be quite philosophical despite her youthful attitude. She’s actually way smarter than June is, but lacks the confidence to really use it to her advantage."



Shelly is apparently a princess but chooses to keep her vast wealth a secret, and this explains how she and June can afford to live in an apartment despite being unemployed. The fact that Shelly is a princess, of course, is never mentioned again, so this is a pretty pointless detail. Something I find particularly interesting about Shelly is her appearance. She looks like a cross between Sonic the Hedgehog and Jenny from My Life as a Teenage Robot. She's also evidently the favorite of the author and seems to be the most popular among the fans, and admittedly, she is a fairly likable (or at least tolerable) character.



June is the less likable of the two. She's violent, but in a zany way of course, and has no inhibitions. She's also extremely promiscuous and has dating issues. She's devious and evil in a whimsical sort of way.

I was quite surprised to find that June and Shelly aren't gay with each other (at least not under normal circumstances). Much of this comic is furry fetish pandering, so I just kinda expected it. I guess it might be because I'm so used to seeing gay fetishism in the webcomics I review by this point. I mean, two girls who share a house in a webcomic written by a man who aren't constantly groping each other? Amazing. However, it does happen in a guest strip (and aside from the making out at the end, that strip is a pretty accurate representation of what happens in this comic). There was an arc in which June had a gay crisis after getting kissed by an old friend of hers named Jennifur (yes, Jennifur, 'cause she's a furry. Get it?), and eventually goes full lesbian much later in the comic. However, Shelly and June don't get gay with each other, so I'll give Robbie some credit for showing some restraint and not making every girl a bisexual sex fiend. He even taunts his audience for expecting that, or even outright demanding it, and he seems to be aware of how sick audiences can be. Sometimes, the characters are seen naked (discounting Shelly, who's naked at almost all times), but thankfully, they're not anatomically correct.

However, there are a few other characters, including some guy named Pembroke, who's the author's avatar. He's some kind of lizard or troll or something. He's basically Shelly's boyfriend, and yes, they fuck. There's also a neurotic dog named Daisy. She's not important.

Other characters from videogames, cartoons, and movies often appear in "parody" strips. However, they often act totally out-of-character, often for the sake of wacky violence. In this example, we see Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog cannibalizing his friends, just to give you an idea of what kind of shit to expect.

Art review
The art is actually pleasantly mediocre. By that, I mean it isn't God-awful animu bullshit where every character looks the same like in the last three comics I reviewed. It has a simplistic but expressive and colorful cartoon style. However, the linework is often choppy and characters aren't always drawn consistently. Take Shelly's profile view for example. A lot of the strips also feature excessive copy/pasting. It gets slightly better with that in later years, though. Particularly annoying, however, is the comic's use of face gags. It reminds me of VG Cats.

Writing review
The comic does actually manage to be funny on occasion. I don't know why, but I found this one funny for some reason (although it could have done without the last two panels). However, such instances are rare. Most of the time, it's just running gags, vulgarity and gross-out humor. Now, gross-out humor can work, but you have to be witty, which is something Robbie Allen rarely does. Take this bit by Sarah Silverman for example. Notice that the punchline isn't "vaginas smell like fish, lol". Simply doing or saying something disgusting or vulgar isn't funny. It's just immature.

Also, much of the humor is memetic. In this strip, we see Shelly doing the leek spin just for the fuck of it. It has absolutely nothing to do with the subject or gag of the strip, like Robbie Allen just wanted to draw Shelly doing it and couldn't come up with an excuse. A lot of random shit like that happens in the comic.

Other strips are just surreal. In this comic, June randomly commands Shelly to "get in [her] belly", and Shelly is oddly compliant. In a later strip, they explain through a graphic flashback how Shelly got out of that situation.

However, the comic relies most heavily on pop-culture references and "parodies", many of which are, of course, running gags. One involves Sonic the Hedgehog getting pissed upon realizing that he's a furry. Another involves Popeye getting pissed off over pirates. Then there's this one.

Other parodies are just fucking offensive.

However, recently (as of the time of this review), the comic has been making frequent references to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, no doubt trying to capitalize on its surge in popularity. The comic has made fifteen references to it this year. Eighteen if you count guest strips. Some of the parodies are even blatantly ripped off.

Other than that, the comic occasionally suffers from walls of text, and the way the characters say "oh my blog" instead of "oh my god" is just annoying.

Oh, also...

Is there some kind of genital-eating theme going on here?

Author biography
According to the website's "artists" page, Robbie Allen lives in Texas and is "mentally unstable" and has a "runaway imagination that seems to question and ponder EVERYTHING". Perhaps he ponders too much. He's also apparently a brony. The other guy is Chris Jones, who also lives in Texas. He does the color because "Robbie is too lazy to do it". He owns a graphic design company called Evil Eye Candy.

Robbie Allen seems to be aware of the comic's flaws and even acknowledges them from time to time. I would just like to point out that simply acknowledging the flaws in your work doesn't make them forgivable.



Conclusion
Did you know that amphibians piss and shit out of the same hole? Well, now you do.

Anyway, the comic has some serious flaws, but it's not beyond saving, unlike some comics which are fucking dead from conception. Honestly, I actually kinda like it. If Robbie Allen would step away from the recycled gags and pop-culture references, it would be, as Rainbow Dash would say, "20% cooler". Unfortunately, his own characters have been featured in only 23 strips from this year out of 48 (ignoring guest strips). That means 25 (more than half) of the comics this year have been parodies, and 15 of those are of My Little Pony. He's sacrificing true comedy for Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer style pseudo-satire bullshit that has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

I'll end this shit with a metaphor: if Robbie Allen would cut that shit out, he could have a basket of flowers floating down a river of chocolate, but instead, he has a corpse floating in a sewer.

See what I did there?

Links

 * The comic
 * The TVTropes article
 * Robbie Allen's DeviantART page