Comics. Often dirty. Indexed.

September 18, 2023 6:27 PM

A search index for the very-NSFW web comic Oglaf. On Mastodon, Esther talks about how she built it. [previousliest]
posted by jessamyn (55 comments total)

This makes me ever so happy. To celebrate, I here share my favorite SFW Oglaf: Bilge.
posted by ourobouros at 6:33 PM on September 18, 2023 [8 favorites]

OMG and here's mine: Hello Twiggy
posted by MengerSponge at 6:40 PM on September 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

This tool is awesome. I no longer have to search for The Automaton
posted by BetaRayBiff at 6:53 PM on September 18, 2023 [8 favorites]

weirdly, if you google oglaf you don't get the website. and yes that's irrespective of safesearch.
posted by Sebmojo at 6:53 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Truly, the Fountain of Doubt strip is brilliant.
posted by rmd1023 at 6:59 PM on September 18, 2023 [26 favorites]

8 Legs of Love doesn’t get you the strip but “PFUT” does, so I guess searching by body text is the way to go.
posted by Artw at 7:06 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

This is some good internet
posted by device55 at 7:09 PM on September 18, 2023 [4 favorites]

It took me years to remember that my favorite was titled Upcycling and I've had a few archive crawls looking for it. Not exactly time poorly spent but still this is good

(Upcycling is not nudity-NSFW, but it's a little dark and violent by implication. May be SFW if your workplace has seen some shit.)
posted by stevis23 at 7:22 PM on September 18, 2023 [12 favorites]

Tax Deductions is, surprisingly, both wholly safe for work and almost surgically on the nose.
posted by mhoye at 7:38 PM on September 18, 2023 [29 favorites]

I'm having fun just typing random words in and seeing what's on the other side. The site itself has grown considerably larger since I last visited!
posted by not_on_display at 7:48 PM on September 18, 2023

ah, you beat me to the fountain of doubt! i'll have to go with the glamazon way.
posted by Clowder of bats at 7:57 PM on September 18, 2023 [4 favorites]

the OG cumsprite arc. the thawing of the winter princess. oh yeah these are nsfw but if you begin in the beginning you will find them in due time.
posted by sibboleth at 8:06 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

I wasn't sure if Fountain of Doubt was my favourite, but after some searching I found Babes of the Abyss.
posted by krisjohn at 8:14 PM on September 18, 2023 [10 favorites]

My favorite SFW Oglaf is "Skulls!" but that wasn't too hard to find even before the index because it's about skulls and it's called "Skulls!"
posted by babelfish at 8:22 PM on September 18, 2023 [6 favorites]

Unfortunately, named characters don't seem to be indexed, e.g. Greir. Oh dear me, I'll have to reread them all to find her, gosh darn the luck.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:31 PM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

weirdly, if you google oglaf you don't get the website

I bet this is because Oglaf returns an error if you try to fetch its robots.txt.
posted by mbrubeck at 8:49 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

I was about to say that "Skulls!" was-- but thanks, babelfish
posted by The otter lady at 8:57 PM on September 18, 2023

What's the one where someone is rowing a boat in mid-air, or possible, underwater .... I can't find it on search. It's just one panel shows the boat and is sort of orthogonal to the rest of the strip if I recall.
posted by Rumple at 9:00 PM on September 18, 2023

I bet this is because Oglaf returns an error if you try to fetch its robots.txt.

The default behavior though would be to index? Does Google really assume you don't want to be indexed if you don't give them what amounts to explicit permission?
posted by JHarris at 9:08 PM on September 18, 2023

I haven't tried the search index yet, but - NSFW or not, doesn't matter, Oglaf is one of the few webomics that's consistently clever and inventive and funny enough to keep me reading it long-term.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:18 PM on September 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

Thanks for reminding me that I’m due for a complete Oglaf reread.
posted by supercres at 9:33 PM on September 18, 2023 [4 favorites]

Here’s the one that makes me laugh hysterically every time (SFW): Labyrinth.
posted by ejs at 9:53 PM on September 18, 2023 [18 favorites]

One of my all time faves is this one. Oglaf is SO GOOD at facial expressions, and at absurdist logic.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:46 PM on September 18, 2023 [7 favorites]

I mean seriously the top right panel. That guy's face!
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:47 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

HI I'M ON METAFILTER
posted by tula at 12:34 AM on September 19, 2023 [18 favorites]

HI I'M ON METAFILTER

*pores over strip to find any plates of beans, plates, beans...*

Metafilter : DOES OVERTHINKING TRIGGER THE TRAP SOMEHOW?

Okay, fine. Fair. Totally fair.
posted by revmitcz at 1:02 AM on September 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

The site itself has grown considerably larger since I last visited!

A most Oglaf thing to say.
posted by chavenet at 1:02 AM on September 19, 2023 [6 favorites]

I'm disappointed to discover that The Fucking Oubliette is not, in fact, an Oglaf comic.
posted by krisjohn at 1:35 AM on September 19, 2023

Sport is the first Oglaf strip I ever saw, and then I had to read the whole thing from the beginning, and I still check each Sunday for the weekly update.

It might not be the best, but it's my favorite.

(Labyrinth is riiiiiiiiiight up there, though, and Fully Fleshed is such a delight for anyone who is into fanfiction, as it so clearly encapsulates The Eternal Struggle while giving us the term "bespoke fucks" and the word "fucksmith" as decent synonyms for "slash fiction" and "slash author")
posted by tzikeh at 2:04 AM on September 19, 2023 [7 favorites]

Trudy Cooper is a deranged genius.

Thankyou I will not be taking questions at this time.
posted by prismatic7 at 4:48 AM on September 19, 2023 [5 favorites]

Yesss, amazing.

My favourites are Ulric the Just (technically NSFW because of female-presenting nipples) and the understated Northerner (technically SFW because all the nipples are male-presenting).
posted by confluency at 4:55 AM on September 19, 2023 [4 favorites]

(I've caught up on everyone else's favourites, and how could I forget about Skulls?!)
posted by confluency at 5:02 AM on September 19, 2023

OMG...I haven’t thought about Oglaf in ages! Thank you for this!
posted by Thorzdad at 5:08 AM on September 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

Honor works! This is truly victory at sea.
posted by Ber at 5:09 AM on September 19, 2023

Skein is still one of my favorites.
posted by which_chick at 5:28 AM on September 19, 2023 [7 favorites]

asexual stamp of approval

I've loved oglaf (platonically) for years, it's always a delight to get a reminder that it exists and of course have to start over from the beginning every time.
posted by Baethan at 5:45 AM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

someone is rowing a boat in mid-air

Rumple, that's The Trammels of Mistertique. It's not an enigma if there's nothing behind it!

I found it by looking up "abstruseness," which made me impossibly happy, like this entire project.
posted by miles per flower at 5:50 AM on September 19, 2023 [5 favorites]

If I ever need to laugh maniacally, I always go look up the dwarf episodes. Their eyes just kill me ded.
posted by garbhoch at 5:57 AM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

swanfucking
posted by chavenet at 6:12 AM on September 19, 2023

I don't think they publicize it nearly enough, but they have a patreon page where they post stuff too weird even for oglaf dot com, and nearly all the content is free to view whether you patreonize them or not.
posted by moonmilk at 6:52 AM on September 19, 2023 [11 favorites]

An underrated part of Oglaf is the…. I guess you’d call it marginalia, at the top of the strip, next to that instalment’s title. They are usually unrelated to the theme of the strip and tend towards the Steven Wright/Mitch Hedberg style of one-liner or occasionally koans. Some of my faves over the years:

• Expect disappointment and you won’t be disappointed.
• The chaos army seems suspiciously well-organized.
• I’m so bad at shoplifting it’s technically looting.
• I am enjoying this sex act, but I wish it wasn’t an act.
• This is just a phase the moon is going through.
• A fairytale ending is really bad for about half the characters.
• If I meet the man of my dreams, I hope he doesn’t know about my dreams.
• Involving other people in your sex life just complicates things.
• Q: Which mythological creature casts no reflection?
A: All of them.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:55 AM on September 19, 2023 [8 favorites]

I haven't read Oglaf in ages! This is great, I have a big back list to get through.
posted by nubs at 7:07 AM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

Here’s the one that makes me laugh hysterically every time (SFW): Labyrinth.

I have gone back to the well on this one so many times. The last panel is perfect shitpost material in the right context.
posted by cortex at 7:21 AM on September 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

My single favorite thing about Oglaf is the variety of fucking that goes on in the strip. If there are two (or more) people of the same gender having sex, it's only rarely because the joke requires it; it's generally because some men fuck men and some women fuck women and that's just completely normal and uncommented on in the universe of the comic. Same with people of different races (or occasionally species). You could change the pairings and the humor still stands.

People fuck for the sheer joy of fucking and I am so here for it.

It's ludicrously dirty and overwhelmingly sex-positive.
posted by fader at 7:48 AM on September 19, 2023 [8 favorites]

There is only Sithrak. The Blind Gibberer.
posted by zenon at 8:45 AM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

still check each Sunday for the weekly update.

I so glad they recently (?) added RSS so I don’t have to remember on Sundays.
posted by terrapin at 9:14 AM on September 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

There is only Sithrak.

An insane god for an unjust world!
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:23 AM on September 19, 2023 [5 favorites]

We are sharing favorites!? Owlbear! The apex predator!
posted by procrastination at 9:52 AM on September 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

I just posted this on the 'don (oh god how that sounds that's short for "Mastodon" it's not a euphemism for toilet), and I mean it:

I was just perusing the Mefi post on Oglaf and... sometimes I think most of using the internet is about remembering these things exist? And going back to them often enough so that the makers know they're loved, and keep doing them? It's SO EASY to forget great things exist, and it's REALLY COMMON for things to stop existing while you're gone.

The ways the internet has for reminding you of great things are all deficient. Google? Sucks now, and if you don't remember what to search for you'll never find it anyway! RSS? Okay if the site has a feed; many don't! People reminding you? EXTREMELY SCATTERSHOT. Social media? Twitter _outright deranks your posts_ if you have the temerity to link to something!

I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it
posted by JHarris at 11:31 AM on September 19, 2023 [6 favorites]

Here’s the one that makes me laugh hysterically every time (SFW): Labyrinth.

I wish I were as happy about anything as the labyrinth builder is in that last panel.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:24 PM on September 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

The charm of Oglaf is that it seems like it could be sex jokes, but most of the time there just happens to be sex and the punchline is a non-sex pun or slapstick.

My favourites are Rivulets and Collider, but I heartily second the recommendation to check the Patreon. There are NSFW versions of SFW comics, and SFW versions of NSFW comics, and the contrast between them usually makes me laugh way harder.
posted by irrediated at 3:31 PM on September 19, 2023 [4 favorites]

The Spoooooom!
posted by JHarris at 4:13 PM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

"No. Your other honor."
posted by cnidaria at 10:06 PM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

That’s a stick. It’s always been there.

One of my favorites. Probably NSFW?

But who doesn’t like a randy sentient tree named Sticklebark?
posted by slkinsey at 4:25 AM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

There is only Sithrak. The Blind Gibberer.

“Talking dog continues silent protest amid doubts.”
posted by Songdog at 7:18 AM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]