This page is too awesome for words. It’s going to take repeated reads this week for me to catch all the story-telling you did with the art alone on this page. Absolutely amazing!
That’s kind of like saying “please, readers, guess harder and more bizarrely wildly all over my comments, I beg you”. Perhaps the equation nearest his foot in panel five is important? Or the slight shift in position of the part in his hair between six and seven.
Anyway, my request not to kill him off still stands! Not that that has any influence on anything when you’ve already written the thing and you’re probably sensible enough to ignore whining like that from readers, but you know, for the record.
ha ha, I know. But I also wouldn’t tell anyone if they did even get close to guessing it.
But maybe someday! A year from now or whatever, someone will be rereading this and they’ll be like DAMN. Look at all that planning!
I don’t take story suggestions from readers. It generally turns out badly. Not to say that readers have bad ideas, it’s just that it usually doesn’t jive with the overall thing I got going on. :D
I look forward to the day when I’m doing something and randomly some obscure reference comes across my mind and I go “OH! SH*T!” because I finally put something together. X3
Waitwaitwait I got it. Auditore is turned into a lizard man by the Church of Scientology and it takes over the world. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody.
When I saw the rainbows I thought of that Erasure song Always.
Always I want to BEEE with oyu and make BELIEEEVE with you and live in HARMONY HARMONY OH LOOOOVE
Langstrom, Schtein’s nemesis that he (accidentially) killed. The warden’s sister, that other guy’s friend, a big jerk. He showed up last in Chapter Two. What fun! That ghosty guy on Schtein’s fever trip.
Thank you for being polite about that. It is a very rude word, had it gone through the moderation queue I probably would not have approved the comment, but I’ve got the comments set to where you only have to comment once before and then all your comments are magically approved from then on (anti spam measures, really.) so sometimes stuff like this slips through while I’m sleeping or out of the house.
I’m sure Jack just doesn’t know, society is still pretty terrible towards queer people, and words like that are ingrained in a lot of us as sounding more neutral and less harmful than they really are.
It’s not for the weak of mind. Frankly, I am amazed that Schtein is taking this so good – the cell-room-setting and his mental state are so bad that I would expect him to have a real bad trip. Auditore probably hoped for this as well. But I guess Schtein has a guardian angel named Beckey who is pulling some strings to make it go just fine (but that is just my theory ;).
It is awful, isn’t it. Never plan on using it myself XP
It’s good you’ve never used it! Now I don’t have to worry that LSD may run this comic down the road! Just imagine, rainbows. EVERYWHERE.
well, I did upload a much larger version to DA… People could if they wanted, though I dunno if it would really make that great an icon. The rainbow panels would work a lot better, really.
In general I really like this comic, but I find it very hard to suspend disbelief for this particular strip. Unless Schtein actually trusted this guy, he would be having a severely awful time at this point. LSD alone would take a couple of hours or more to really kick in. And there’s no need for a needle, either. So it’s about as realistic as a guy drinking four beers and then a couple of beautiful women start paying attention to him, just like in the commercials. Well, unless there’s a couple of other drugs involved or something. And even then, it wouldn’ t have really kicked in yet.
Hours? I don’t think so. It depends upon the dosage and how it’s administered. Even then the time for the effects to kick in is highly unpredictable. Blotters and gel caplets can take as little as 30 minutes. The higher the dosage the less time, and also I think stress can decrease the amount of time because of blood pressure and so on.
I’m not going to say it’s totally realistic since I’m having to rely on second hand information, but I don’t think it’s as unrealistic and you’re making it out to be.
I’m still going with my idea that part of him wanting to talk/ramble also has something to do with the ‘ease’ of him just talking the guy’s ear off. Cuz he can always look back on this moment as write off as “the drugs made me do it” latter when his defenses are back to full strength. That I have seen people do before, and not just with drugs or alcohol. *shrug* I’ve never been on a drug trip and the worst I’ve been drunk is seeing double, but I don’t see what Schtein is going through unrealistic or strictly based on information from drug/anti-drug propaganda.
the rainbow might be a bit unrealistic, LSD tends to distort perception of reality rather than produce such tangible hallucination. the rainbow is absolutely cute tho :)
high intravenal dose of LSD would mean that he will spend something like next 2 days tripping in a solitary confinement. not an experience for the weak…
You may have a point about how fast. But set and setting are critical, and if this isn’t a recipe for a bad trip, I don’t know what is. I guess maybe the unnamed other stuff helps there.
Visuals would be more like patterns that aren’t really there, and flat surfaces starting to heave around a bit, or problems with relative size, rather than anything blatant. Cars might look like they were growing, not just coming nearer.
Toast might smell like burning plastic.
More powerful would be conceptual stuff, like the thought that there are people around who can tell if someone is tripping and then kidnap them. (that’s the bad side) or that the space between the ground and the clouds is the inside of some enormous organism (not so bad). Also increased awareness of emotions.
——–
BTW, one might not have to be nuts to become easier to talk to in that state. One might merely have a touch of ADHD.
In case of the Jimsonweed its poisoning – the amount needed for hallucinations is very close to the amount needed to kill you. Also, the amount needed differs from plant to plant. Easy to overdose.
Drugs like LSD, pot and the morphines on the other hand work because our brain uses similar substances. LSD for example interacts with the chemical systems of our Brain in a way that increases the connectivity of our nerve cells – with some quite “interesting” results.
@LR
You ‘re right that he should be having a real bad trip right now.
But you’re wrong in terms of how quickly the LSD would take effect.
You see the main thing that limits how quickly drugs act is the length of time it takes to reach the sensitive tissues of the brain.
Ingesting LSD means it has to pass through your stomach, into your intestines, be absorbed by your intestinal wall before even entering the blood let alone effecting the brain.
However if you where to inject LSD directly into the brain it would take effect almost instantly.
In this case it was injected into the neck and took a few minutes to start work.
Bearing that in mind (and the fact that the effects of hallucinogenic substances on the human brain are ludicrously complicated and poorly understood) LSD is an immensely unpredictable drug and the speed with which it effects someone varies wildly from person to person.
(Disclaimer: While I seem totaly confident in what I’m saying. Biology isn’t my strong point and I haven’t been bothered to fact check what I’ve said. Feel free to correct me on any point)
I think a lot of it is absorbed before it hits your stomach. There’s a reason you hold those little paper blotters under your tongue. There’s veins there that are very close to the surface.
But, again, it all matters on how quickly it can cross the blood brain barrier, and how large the dosage is.
The reference. Its definitely that Schtein is going to accidentally open a wormhole that lets out the lizardmen, using that stuff he wrote on the walls. Then, he becomes a wizard king and must fight them using the power of rainbows that set stuff on fire, until he befriends them because they are strong enough. Dr. Leon is a lizardman. He is desperate for the gauntlet.
Proven by panels 4,5,6, and 7.
Great page as always today. :D This one makes me very happy. *insert witty remark about Spongebob, Robot Unicorn, Double Rainbow, My Little Pony, or all of the above* And Schtein is looking particularly attractive today. Rrrow. I don’t know why but I seem to like guys in prison uniforms, and I don’t usually go for bad boys. o_O Schtein, Jason Lee in My Name is Earl… Hell even the boys from Supernatural in prison uniforms. Gah.
ha ha, wow. Everyone I know who’s related their experiences has told me more like they hallucinated states of being rather than imagery, but as far as I know everyone’s different.
There were a bunch of people in the kitchen who were stuck to the floor since they believed it was glue. Everyone who wandered in also got stuck. I guess you’re open to suggestions when you’re high, I dunno. I’m not entirely sure anymore what they were on, though. Maybe mushrooms.
Most of the bad trip stories I have heard more involve DMT. I probably should have made that the chaser ingredient, but I didn’t want to draw Dr. Schtein barfing again. :S
Yeah, prison hasn’t taught him much now, has it?
It’s taught him that he gets free LSD? :D
Sweet!!
Page looks fantastic! Shame he can’t appreciate the rainbows properly..
They’re in his brain, so I think he can see the colors in his hallucinations at least.
I see rainbows when I’m really tired. …Just saying (¬_¬)
Really lovely effects in this page! Even if it’s not enjoyable for Schtein!
BEST PAGE EVAR!
That’s the fastest icon making ever.
Come on, admit it. How long have you been waiting to draw Schtein shooting rainbows out of his hands? :P
You handled the LSD trip really well.
I’m enjoying this sequence much more than I thought I would; It’s fab!
I hope you don’t mind that I read panel 6 as a silent moment between a man and his rainbow.
Of course, of course. That seems about right.
I love the flaming angel!
This page is too awesome for words. It’s going to take repeated reads this week for me to catch all the story-telling you did with the art alone on this page. Absolutely amazing!
not to mention the hidden reference to the next chapter that only I will get for now. :y
Oh god the Doctor’s gonna burn. Please tell me the doctor’s gonna burn.
Is Auditore gonna get killed next chapter? Dangit don’t kill him off, I like him. ._.
Well…..the comic is called “String theory” and I’ve seen at least one clear black hole reference….plus a bunch of math…….
Addendum: The reference I’m talking about here is V. SUBTLE and there is no way anyone is going to guess it. >:D
That’s kind of like saying “please, readers, guess harder and more bizarrely wildly all over my comments, I beg you”. Perhaps the equation nearest his foot in panel five is important? Or the slight shift in position of the part in his hair between six and seven.
Anyway, my request not to kill him off still stands! Not that that has any influence on anything when you’ve already written the thing and you’re probably sensible enough to ignore whining like that from readers, but you know, for the record.
ha ha, I know. But I also wouldn’t tell anyone if they did even get close to guessing it.
But maybe someday! A year from now or whatever, someone will be rereading this and they’ll be like DAMN. Look at all that planning!
I don’t take story suggestions from readers. It generally turns out badly. Not to say that readers have bad ideas, it’s just that it usually doesn’t jive with the overall thing I got going on. :D
And I thank you for that! I’ve seen comics go bad from taking suggestions from readers that didn’t end up working in the great scheme of things.
I look forward to the day when I’m doing something and randomly some obscure reference comes across my mind and I go “OH! SH*T!” because I finally put something together. X3
Waitwaitwait I got it. Auditore is turned into a lizard man by the Church of Scientology and it takes over the world. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody.
He’s using his IIIMAAAGINAAAAAATIOOOOOON!
LOL I left that spongebob icon on Becks’ DA post of this XD
DAMN! beat me to it.
When I saw the rainbows I thought of that Erasure song Always.
Always I want to BEEE with oyu and make BELIEEEVE with you and live in HARMONY HARMONY OH LOOOOVE
Haha wow! The final product of this is just stunning, you did a really fabulous job.
Thank you. C:
man, I forgot: Who’s Benjamin again?
Langstrom.
Langstrom, Schtein’s nemesis that he (accidentially) killed. The warden’s sister, that other guy’s friend, a big jerk. He showed up last in Chapter Two. What fun! That ghosty guy on Schtein’s fever trip.
*Warden’s brother. Don’t think he’s a trannie.
Hi, this isn’t a big deal or anything, but could you please not use the word tranny again? It’s a bit rude…
Thank you for being polite about that. It is a very rude word, had it gone through the moderation queue I probably would not have approved the comment, but I’ve got the comments set to where you only have to comment once before and then all your comments are magically approved from then on (anti spam measures, really.) so sometimes stuff like this slips through while I’m sleeping or out of the house.
I’m sure Jack just doesn’t know, society is still pretty terrible towards queer people, and words like that are ingrained in a lot of us as sounding more neutral and less harmful than they really are.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IFloXOuLgA&feature=related
what
Um
I love a good Louis CK reference as much as anyone, but
uh
time and place maybe?
My favorite page so far.
That’s a pretty neat trick Schtein, but can you handle a DOUBLE rainbow?
nobody can handle a double rainbow, bro. You ask too much. D:
man, this page is amazing! I love it!
Schtein’s hallucinations are so entertaining. XD
Really loving the use of color in this, quite vibrant!
Thanks! It was fun to actually get to use colors for once. Dang ol’ drab prison!
I wonder if he’s hallucinating this rainbow in colors.
I think he is. Hallucinations are a product of the brain, not the eyeballs.
Hell yeah, rainbow shooting hands.
You make LSD seem like a really good idea.
How awful. I’ve never even done LSD.
It’s not for the weak of mind. Frankly, I am amazed that Schtein is taking this so good – the cell-room-setting and his mental state are so bad that I would expect him to have a real bad trip. Auditore probably hoped for this as well. But I guess Schtein has a guardian angel named Beckey who is pulling some strings to make it go just fine (but that is just my theory ;).
He’s got a guardian angel called barbituates, but unfortunately they’re wearing off, as sodium thiopental wears off extremely fast.
Definitely not me, I’m a sadist towards the poor fellow.
It is awful, isn’t it. Never plan on using it myself XP
It’s good you’ve never used it! Now I don’t have to worry that LSD may run this comic down the road! Just imagine, rainbows. EVERYWHERE.
Will he perhaps teach us that Friendship is Magic?
He already is. ;)
That fourth panel looks like Tool art for some reason.
probably because I was eyeballing an alex grey painting.
That first panel is the most terrifying Schtein I have ever seen and I would like to vote it for Iconship.
well, I did upload a much larger version to DA… People could if they wanted, though I dunno if it would really make that great an icon. The rainbow panels would work a lot better, really.
In general I really like this comic, but I find it very hard to suspend disbelief for this particular strip. Unless Schtein actually trusted this guy, he would be having a severely awful time at this point. LSD alone would take a couple of hours or more to really kick in. And there’s no need for a needle, either. So it’s about as realistic as a guy drinking four beers and then a couple of beautiful women start paying attention to him, just like in the commercials. Well, unless there’s a couple of other drugs involved or something. And even then, it wouldn’ t have really kicked in yet.
It’s not LSD alone at all.
Hours? I don’t think so. It depends upon the dosage and how it’s administered. Even then the time for the effects to kick in is highly unpredictable. Blotters and gel caplets can take as little as 30 minutes. The higher the dosage the less time, and also I think stress can decrease the amount of time because of blood pressure and so on.
I’m not going to say it’s totally realistic since I’m having to rely on second hand information, but I don’t think it’s as unrealistic and you’re making it out to be.
I’m still going with my idea that part of him wanting to talk/ramble also has something to do with the ‘ease’ of him just talking the guy’s ear off. Cuz he can always look back on this moment as write off as “the drugs made me do it” latter when his defenses are back to full strength. That I have seen people do before, and not just with drugs or alcohol. *shrug* I’ve never been on a drug trip and the worst I’ve been drunk is seeing double, but I don’t see what Schtein is going through unrealistic or strictly based on information from drug/anti-drug propaganda.
the rainbow might be a bit unrealistic, LSD tends to distort perception of reality rather than produce such tangible hallucination. the rainbow is absolutely cute tho :)
high intravenal dose of LSD would mean that he will spend something like next 2 days tripping in a solitary confinement. not an experience for the weak…
Yeah, I know, I’m just being cartoony. It is a comic, afterall. Besides, how could I resist? :D
You may have a point about how fast. But set and setting are critical, and if this isn’t a recipe for a bad trip, I don’t know what is. I guess maybe the unnamed other stuff helps there.
Visuals would be more like patterns that aren’t really there, and flat surfaces starting to heave around a bit, or problems with relative size, rather than anything blatant. Cars might look like they were growing, not just coming nearer.
Toast might smell like burning plastic.
More powerful would be conceptual stuff, like the thought that there are people around who can tell if someone is tripping and then kidnap them. (that’s the bad side) or that the space between the ground and the clouds is the inside of some enormous organism (not so bad). Also increased awareness of emotions.
——–
BTW, one might not have to be nuts to become easier to talk to in that state. One might merely have a touch of ADHD.
oh cool, that plant grows in my parent’s yard.
It’s so pretty and nice smelling.
A lot of plants will cause hallucinations if you eat them. It’s because they don’t want us eating them. ;)
In case of the Jimsonweed its poisoning – the amount needed for hallucinations is very close to the amount needed to kill you. Also, the amount needed differs from plant to plant. Easy to overdose.
Drugs like LSD, pot and the morphines on the other hand work because our brain uses similar substances. LSD for example interacts with the chemical systems of our Brain in a way that increases the connectivity of our nerve cells – with some quite “interesting” results.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShownTheirWork
Grundy shows the work. Aww yeah.
@LR
You ‘re right that he should be having a real bad trip right now.
But you’re wrong in terms of how quickly the LSD would take effect.
You see the main thing that limits how quickly drugs act is the length of time it takes to reach the sensitive tissues of the brain.
Ingesting LSD means it has to pass through your stomach, into your intestines, be absorbed by your intestinal wall before even entering the blood let alone effecting the brain.
However if you where to inject LSD directly into the brain it would take effect almost instantly.
In this case it was injected into the neck and took a few minutes to start work.
Bearing that in mind (and the fact that the effects of hallucinogenic substances on the human brain are ludicrously complicated and poorly understood) LSD is an immensely unpredictable drug and the speed with which it effects someone varies wildly from person to person.
(Disclaimer: While I seem totaly confident in what I’m saying. Biology isn’t my strong point and I haven’t been bothered to fact check what I’ve said. Feel free to correct me on any point)
I think a lot of it is absorbed before it hits your stomach. There’s a reason you hold those little paper blotters under your tongue. There’s veins there that are very close to the surface.
But, again, it all matters on how quickly it can cross the blood brain barrier, and how large the dosage is.
The reference. Its definitely that Schtein is going to accidentally open a wormhole that lets out the lizardmen, using that stuff he wrote on the walls. Then, he becomes a wizard king and must fight them using the power of rainbows that set stuff on fire, until he befriends them because they are strong enough. Dr. Leon is a lizardman. He is desperate for the gauntlet.
Proven by panels 4,5,6, and 7.
Obviously!
Awww, he’s teaching us valuable life lessons, and even has his own little “The More You Know” rainbow!
This makes him endlessly credible. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go find some spiders.
Also: Dude, if you wanted Schtein to be on-topic, you shouldn’t have given him LSD. XD
o_o I had to Google ‘strop’. *is stupid*
Great page as always today. :D This one makes me very happy. *insert witty remark about Spongebob, Robot Unicorn, Double Rainbow, My Little Pony, or all of the above* And Schtein is looking particularly attractive today. Rrrow. I don’t know why but I seem to like guys in prison uniforms, and I don’t usually go for bad boys. o_O Schtein, Jason Lee in My Name is Earl… Hell even the boys from Supernatural in prison uniforms. Gah.
I had to google it, too. I couldn’t remember exactly what it was.
Man, you’re nuts. And here I was congratulating myself on making Dr. Schtein look especially gobliny on this page. Ah well~
Aww, sorry. :X
Hahah, it’s okay, I guess I underestimate how people out there have just as terrible taste in men as I do. Hooray for the unconventional.
can we get a wall paper of panel 4 and or 5, for i find them so much fun!
Don’t draw the pages large enough to do that, so I’d have to rework them a bit.
Although a wallpaper of Schtein tripppppin’ balls is actually a pretty good idea. I’ll see what I can do!
I like that he became much nicer and easier to talk to when he got on LSD. So few people are so profoundly crazy that this could happen, bravo.
that’s probably more the barbituates, really. It’s nice to write him being chatty for a change, though!
I know someone who says they saw little flying toasters and such long before it was a screen saver-they were all in neon colors!
ha ha, wow. Everyone I know who’s related their experiences has told me more like they hallucinated states of being rather than imagery, but as far as I know everyone’s different.
There were a bunch of people in the kitchen who were stuck to the floor since they believed it was glue. Everyone who wandered in also got stuck. I guess you’re open to suggestions when you’re high, I dunno. I’m not entirely sure anymore what they were on, though. Maybe mushrooms.
Most of the bad trip stories I have heard more involve DMT. I probably should have made that the chaser ingredient, but I didn’t want to draw Dr. Schtein barfing again. :S
Why is his rainbow upside-down? It disturbs me more than it should.
Oh, I did do the colors inside out, didn’t I?
OOOOOOPS, guess I can’t even draw a rainbow without using references. What a terrible artist. :D
Or maybe it’s like an upside down cross. The anti rainbow.
Don’t worry, that’s just Shtein’s hallucinations. Shtein’s LSD rainbows are upside down.
On another topic: I did NOT know what a Stope was. Thanks to my dictionary I now know what a Strope is.
Yay, me neither! *high five of ignorance*
Panel 5 reminds me of those motivational posters at school: “Just say no to drugs!”
Your work has improved considerably since the first page.
I want to draw rainbows with my fingers SO HARD.
Lizard Auditore seems so much nicer than regular Auditore. I vote for an art change.
Just read through the whole comic. This is fantastic.
Thanks to this scene, I knew the answer to a question on Cash Cab. Sodium pentothal for the win! See? Educational. Thanks, Beckey.
that’d much cooler if you were actually IN the cash cab. :D
Alas, I am not in New York. But yes, that would be much cooler.
The line effect is awesome, so are the wings in the background, but I got to ask. Is that a crown over Schtein’s head?
Looks like it. Man, the lines on his arms got my eyes goin’ all wonky.