#bootlegshiloh

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Work doodles

Happy total eclipse day! Have some drawings from work.

We're gradually working toward the next progression. We hope you're ready!

He's not.

User would stare at the eclipse, wouldn't he.

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A mass collection of doodles while we're off in training.

Shiloh being an absolute wreck.

Different hairstyles!

A rare sighting of the OPs.

He's sleepy.

We hope that you missed The Entity as much as we have lately.

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We're hard at work on the next Parable Progression. Thank you for your patience! Sit back and enjoy some filler content in the meantime.

An old Magma drawing.

A bonus from the valentine's post. We'll build up the time to come up with a proper Lovebugged design.

A work in the progress for the Progression's featured illustration.

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We're having a bit of trouble on the other side of the screen trying to get things moving consistently.

We will be completing the road trip thread (despite the fact that July is over), and we'll be answering some recently-recieved asks.

Have some older doodles to fill the gap. :-)

Main character who?

User when Micah.

The second drawing was a study. 👌

A couple of Narries.

New Narrator? What "new narrator"?

And a work in progress of an ask response to close it off.

Take care, readers.

[bootleg-parable]

Announcement :

The Bootleg Parable has been under construction for quite a while, hence the lack of updates to the actual story and the general stalling that we've done involving other posts and projects.

We are asking you, as the readers, for advice on how we should carry this story out after some careful deliberation.

How would you feel if The Bootleg Parable was rewritten from the very beginning? With answers to questions that couldn't be explained with our immature start. With extras that might have come before the story that you know?

This is not guaranteed to happen, but in the situation that we do decide to follow through with this idea, we want to hear your thoughts!

The storyline will not change- not from what has already been altered behind the scenes for future plot. This is just general additives, improved writing, and a moment to improve our art to make the story more pleasing to the eye in comic formation.

We appreciate any and all help to make your viewing experience better.

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Sketches!

A polished version of @emmyisstrange 's narrator!

A wild Stanley?

@blackkatdraws design inspired.

" I...really don't think you should be doing that. "

What The Entity could have been.

A sheep for a friend.

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A couple of aggie doodles.

A quick warmup.

They are going trick or treating. Teller probably isn't familiar with many medias of horror, so User picked his costume out for him.

It is cannon that User and Shiloh used to watch My Little Pony together, and User's favourite character was Rarity. Shiloh dressed up as Rarity this Halloween in honour of their missing friend.

Entity doesn't need a costume.

We are debating putting Bootleg Parable into writing to help develop the story in a format that is easier to produce and follow, while leaving asks up to the tumblr to be answered in illustration. Does that sound interesting?

[bootleg-parable]

ɪ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴡᴏɴᴅᴇʀ. . .

ᴡʜᴇɴ ᴇxᴀᴄᴛʟʏ ᴀʀᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴄᴏᴍɪɴɢ ʜᴏᴍᴇ?

Shiloh was the first to notice when their friend had turned up missing. Watching over the house and the office grew to be a rather tedious way to fill their empty schedule within a week.

That week had long since passed. It had been a few months now. Still no sign of their friend.

The leak in the roof was much more prominent than when the young man vanished seemingly off the face of the Earth. The bucket was full. Shiloh still didn't have to empty it, but the time was coming close. They were lucky it hadn't rained, yet. Their existence was nothing more than a waiting game at this rate. Watching every drop of water inch closer and closer to the brim, only looking up to glance at the door as if it would swing open any second.

It never did.

And with a heavy sigh, and a heavier heart, Shiloh had to come to terms with the fact that it probably never would. . .

-

@springbon-t-art

" Did you get the BROOM CLOSET ending? The broom closet ending was MY FAVOURITE! ...I hope your friends find this concerning. "

It's a difficulty to truly choose a favourite ending. We certainly find joy in the countdown/explosion ending. Letting Narry have an entire villainous monologue; We adore it. But of course, the Broom Closet Ending. What could be better?

Otherwise. . .

New character introduction, this is Shiloh. They are a friend of User's, who's been counting every second that User is missing. To where, they are unsure, but they are not fit to search and find out. So instead, they keep things maintained in User's house and in the office.

And so, the plot thickens.

Complementary extra before the redraw and the tweaking of a few design elements.

[bootleg-parable]

I Dream of the Inevitable ; A Parable Progression

User woke to the sound and the smell of rain. Each pummeling droplet shattered upon the surface of his umbrella overhead- a bright umbrella that broke up the drabness of the bus stop setting. He looked down to stare at the dark-haired individual whose head was laid in his lap. They were asleep, and looked surprisingly comfortable for somebody who was hanging awkwardly off half of a wooden bench. User blinked both of his eyes and raised his hand to the left one that used to be missing. It felt so strange to be able to see out of it again. This entire circumstance came across as bizarre to him.

Just a moment ago he could’ve sworn that he was somewhere else. He was on the couch in an office on the ninth floor of a facility with a name he never knew. And he wasn’t alone. He had a friend- an older man named Teller- who was commonly there to keep User company, should he not have been at work. This was not an office, in fact, it was outdoors, which User had yet to witness in the loop that he thought he was stuck in. But the worst part to him was that Teller was not there, not even close. And when Teller was missing, it usually alluded to the worst. But User would keep his panic tamed.

He looked down again to the person resting against him. Their hair was black, but almost looked like deep shades of blue styled into a pompadour. They were in a uniform that User could only assume belonged to the police force of a city he didn’t remember. He tried looking for a nametag to jog his memory, and without much effort, his eyes locked onto it.

Shiloh Karmello.

Shiloh…

User got hit with a flood of emotion. How could he ever forget about Shiloh? His best friend. His housemate. The person once closest to him before all of this mess. Oh…Poor Shiloh. They must have been so distressed all of this time of User being away, if User was ever away at all. Maybe he was in a coma. Even so, no situation was better than the other. Either way, he had chances of turning up dead and leaving everything behind. Awful. Just awful. But now they looked more peaceful than they could have been, and even smiled briefly when User tapped the bandage across their chin. It was a bandage kind of like his, which was no longer present. User felt at ease here, even if he didn’t understand what was going on.

Even if Teller wasn’t visibly or notably safe.

“Better, isn’t it?” Came that thing's stone-grinding voice, making User shudder once it hit his ears.

He turned and looked up to find the 8-ball-headed beast standing beside him at the bus stop, not looking toward him, but rather gazing out blankly into the land that vanished in the rain’s fog. It continued having these private conversations with User, and even though it never made a move to cause its target any direct harm, User couldn’t help but to feel threatened knowing what it was capable of and knowing that he was alone.

He held his umbrella closer to him and slid his eyes to look elsewhere. He didn’t want to acknowledge its presence beyond its voice.

It continued speaking. “You keep making these silly little mistakes without any regard for how they make anybody else feel. How often do you think about that?”

User would humour it this time. After all, backtalk has never gotten him far. “Would it surprise you if I said a lot?”

“It would, yes.” The monster chuckled, and in that very moment, it almost felt human to User. That wasn’t something that he wanted to get used to. “Because it feels so typical of you lately to only think of yourself.”

That was an insult, but he wasn’t going to pay it any mind, because somewhere in there he knew that it was partially true. He wasn’t thinking of only himself, though. He was thinking of Teller.

“But if you were thinking of Teller,” User’s head whipped around. It could read his thoughts, and now was openly replying to them. “Then you would’ve let him in on your little secret that’s putting him in harm’s way. Wouldn’t you agree?”

It still didn’t look at him, only leaving him staring up at it in his shock at its abilities. And again, it laughed.

“Much like everything else, Donnie, this ain’t real. This is a dream that I control. I’m in your head.”

That would explain the invasive mind-reading. So he was only asleep. He felt like he wasted so much of his time sleeping, but in an outwardly fictional office where he held no occupation, what more was there to do? He’s read a few books in his free time and completed just about every paper craft that he could find. This was all when he wasn’t bothering Teller, however. His entire, trapped life revolved around the older man, but he wouldn’t blame himself for this.

Even though he should.

“Don’t you think she misses you?” Now it was glaring at him with a clear interface.

She?

Its head angled toward Shiloh.

Oh.

User frowned. A sadness washed through him, and the safe warmth he once felt was now cold. “I wouldn’t doubt it.”

“You can go home, Donnatello. I don’t know how else to reach you with this idea. You need to go home.” Why was it being so…gentle with him?

Agh, fuck.

It was right- User knew it was right, he knew it better than anything. Why was he so attached to his imagination? So much so that he would avoid going back to the real world to restore the life that he had. Shiloh was everything to him. Shiloh is everything to him.

Then what other reason did he have to hold himself back other than the one present?

If Teller could exist in his mind, then Teller existed somewhere out there, and he was just as stuck with the monster as User was. He was a face User’d seen before. A voice he’d heard before. There was no way that this random office worker suddenly appeared in his head from thin air; that simply wasn’t how User’s mind worked. What if Teller was in a similar problem? A man dragged from real life into a fake setting that he couldn’t escape. If that were the case, he was handling it a lot better than his companion was…From what User could see, at least. Or maybe Teller has already calmed himself with the idea that this was all some lengthy dream. Teller could still have his own memories- something that User could not relate to.

User’s never asked.

Huh.

“Bright idea, ain’t it?” The beast teased. User scowled. “Shocking how you could’a never thought of that on your own.”

“I’m working on it.”

User could hear the humming of a light’s active filament from the thing standing beside him. The yellow illumination was getting stronger as the volume increased. When it’s voice trailed into his ears this time, he could tell without a moment of second-thought that it was mad, if the silence beforehand wasn’t hint enough.

“Working on it?”

He shrunk in on himself and tried to keep his hands from shaking as it got right in his face.

It went from a lethal whisper to a thunderous shouting that even the weather couldn’t beat. “You ain’t worked on SHIT.”

The rain was getting harder, and the more of it that came down, the less useful that User’s umbrella seemed. A flood was certainly underway. Puddles were expanding on the street below the curb, until the road was transformed into a river of angry water. User moved his hand to shake Shiloh and wake them, but to his horror, Shiloh was melting away right in front of him. Each attack of the rain burned right through them and sent them into wisps of smoke and black ash. If User wasn’t panicking so hard, he might’ve made a witty reference to the Wicked Witch of the West.

Shiloh would’ve laughed at it. That much he could remember.

“You know that I can see every thought and recollection you’ve ever had, right?” It was towering him. User scooted off of the bench, but that would not keep it from grappling him by the shoulders and holding him just inches away from the ground. The rising water tickled the back of his neck. “You haven’t even considered the option of gettin’ out of here until I started pestering you about it, Donnie! You wanna know why?”

He didn’t. He really didn’t. His backside was soaked now. Oh. He was starting to understand.

He’s going to drown.

“The only plan you’ve ever had is your plan to kill me!”

And now the cat was out of the bag, and User’s head was fully submerged into a stormy, turbulent flood. He thrashed himself around as hard as he could to escape. It was only a bad dream, and yet he still couldn’t breathe. But he could hear the monster’s words as clear as day.

“I don’t take lightly to threats, Donatello. Let alone indirect ones.” It pushed him further under. “You’d really ought to start playing your cards better.”

Please- User tried to reason. The only thing that left his mouth were bubbles and gurgled nonsense in the water. This was the most direct that the 8-Ball had been since taking his eye. He swung his fists wildly, but they would not make the monster relent. Could User die from this? Could he suffocate from a dream generated in a false existence? That seemed so odd to him, but felt so possible. His lungs were screaming for air. Even if he was released, he would never have enough time to swim back to the ever-rising surface.

But maybe this was okay.

User?

Dying this far along wouldn’t be so bad.

…User-?

After all, a lot of this was his own fault. If anything, he was getting what he deserved out of all of it. And now that the beast knew he was stalling only to kill it and banish it from a realm that he did not belong in, he hardly stood a chance in future encounters anyways, if more would ever come.

He was being shaken around now. His vision was spotting, and the sounds of water swirling around him were fading from his ears. But he could still hear the finishing trails of his name being called. His eyes were starting to slip shut.

This was it.

The world came rushing back to User in a sudden change of scenery, and he discovered himself able to breathe again. He gasped a few times and turned onto his side, fully convinced that he was about to throw up. He didn’t notice the hand on his shoulder until he pulled himself half of the way together.

User was awake, on the ground by the foot of the couch. He might have fallen off of it, but he wasn’t conscious to know. Teller was beside him, one hand on User’s shoulder and another over his own nose.

“Great heavens,” exclaimed the other as User finally regained his senses. “Are you alright? I was worried sick!”

User blinked, hard. He missed his other eye already. But he turned his head up to Teller and nodded a couple of times, then squinted at how his hand was held before his face. Teller caught the look.

“I didn’t move out of the way in time.”

“Huh?” User sat up and scooted Teller’s hand away. If his nose wasn’t broken before, it definitely was now. The other’s glove was stained in red.

“You punched me.”

Of course I did.

“I’m- God, I’m so sorry-.”

Teller hurriedly waved his hands in dismissal. “I’m okay, User, really! I’m more concerned about you. Are you okay?”

The eldest’s unbloodied hand cupped User’s face before shifting up to his head to check for a temperature. User couldn’t help but to lean into his touch. It was unusually comforting.

“I’m okay,” He said quietly.

The nightmare returned to his memory in clear, picture-perfect frames.One of few truths were out. Two left to go.

“It was just a bad dream.”

~~~~~~~

We must sincerely apologise for the slowness on this project's updates. We're struggling to find ways to progress the story without reaching the end of the arc so early into its development, but that is beginning to seem more and more likely to occur with our trains of thought slowing down. Our untimely disappearances don't help, either.

We appreciate your patience, and thank you to everyone who has supported The Bootleg Parable despite its many hiccups and absences. It means a lot- a lot- to us.

Have a couple of sketches.

The OPs playing with markers.

[bootleg-parable]

Factor of Feeling ; A Parable Progression

Shiloh was generous enough to grant themself this moment of silence. Although it was just another out of what felt like thousands, this moment was different. They slipped their cap from their head and tried slicking the messy frays of their hair back into place. The gel was dry again.

It was always so quiet when they returned to the house. Moving between here and the busy environment of the station was enough of a contrast to put a man into shock. Shiloh was no exception. Even Archie had stopped rushing forth to greet the officer in their arrival. There was nothing that was worth anything anymore.

Not since Donatello’s disappearance.

Shiloh could marvel endlessly at the bizarre and undivulged way of his vanishing-act, but no answers came from the stream of questions they might have asked. This was a mysterious case, and one that bugged Officer Pamello to the ends of the Earth. Nobody held enough of a grudge against Donnie to flat out kill him, and if any quarrell of the sort existed, Shiloh hasn’t come across a single thread of evidence yet. As far as they knew, their best friend had simply slipped off the face of the Earth and left no traces to track back to an answer that could have offered solace.

It absolutely broke Shiloh.

They had enough energy to hang their hat by the door and make their way to the living room, where they sat themself for what would probably be the rest of the night. They’d tried day in and day out to stop the grief from getting to their head, so that they might better focus on their job, but this calibre of pain rivalled that of duller extremities, and became too hard to fight. But why? Shiloh did this kind of work for a living. They have seen things that eyes should never fall upon. They have dealt with horrific cases that humankind should never be crazy enough to commit. Why is it that, out of their entire line of work, this was the hardest case to break, but the quickest to break them? It all felt impossible to understand. Donatello could still be out there. He could be hurt. He could have been abducted. Shiloh couldn't do anything about it. They felt so...helpless.

Every possible scenario in Shiloh’s head made their eyes sting until they could hold the dam no longer. They fell in on themselves, slouching over on the couch with their face cupped in their hands. Every tear was absorbed into their gloves. Every sob was muffled in the fabric. In any normal situation, they would have been disgusted; touching their face with these filthy accessories. But right now, nothing mattered. Sorrow was so much stronger than they were. It only took a healthy 5 minutes of ugly sobbing for Donatello’s collie to come creeping out of the shadows, staring upward at Shiloh with round, worried eyes. Shiloh flinched and sat up at the rough-furred figure that moved into their vision, but they were smart enough to recognize Archie with ease.

“Oh– Archie, I’m so sorry,” They apologised, and they scooted over when the hound hopped onto the couch beside them. “I’m probably stressing you the fuck out.”

Archie lowered her head onto Shiloh’s lap, resting her paws out in front of her. She understood better than any other human-being just how hard this loss was to get around. Donatello was her owner. Shiloh knew that they were rather close.

They ran a hand along her back and used the sleeve of their opposite arm to wipe their face. “I promise we’ll find him, okay?” They took off their gloves to cradle Archie’s face properly in their hands.

She licked Shiloh’s nose. They smiled. A little.

“I promise.”

Teller found such joy in looking through all of the different hardcovers along the bookshelf. Each one felt like a different memory to him, and while some might have been more sombre than others, every recollection got a small grin out of him. He set certain books aside on the desk at the end of the shelves so he could sort, clean, and file one section at a time. He wasn’t usually granted many visits to the in-office library in between work hours. Coming back to it was nice and all, but it was filthy. There probably wasn’t an inch of the room that wasn’t coated in an asthma-inducing layer of dust. Teller glanced down at the tail of his coat. Just as he suspected, the very end of it went from a deep brown to an ash-grey. He scowled.

“Well, that’s just dandy.”

He’d definitely need to wash it when this was all over with. A lint roller would have done fine, but Teller would’ve felt dirty without giving it a proper cleaning. User called him “nit-picky” once. He was starting to see it now.

He lifted a book from the shelf and blew on the surface of its cover, revealing brilliant shades of red and gold beneath the horrendous layering of grime. He regretted his previous choice in an instant, because that exact grime flew into the air around him, and he inhaled just about half of it.

“Oh b– ack!– bugger.” He wafted the debris from his face and stepped back, using the cuff of his sleeve to clean his glasses. “You’d think this place was abandoned.”

He opened the book and flipped through the pages, trying to remember what this scripture was about. He could tell a lot of the books by heart, but there were a few of the bunch that needed a look-through to jog his memory. In his scanning over the text, someone’s finger moved tauntingly up the back of his neck, and at first it had startled him, and he yelped before clapping an embarrassed hand over his mouth.

Teller shook his head and laughed in spite of himself. There was no coworker of his that would’ve done that. It made the identity of his visitor so obvious. “Hah hah. You’re very funny, User.” He fixed his glasses back into their correct placement. “You can’t scare me. But I applaud your valiant attempt.”

The suspect behind him leaned over and took a breath before speaking, and with the sound of their movement alone, the elder man could tell that this person was taller than him. His eyebrows knitted together. Strange. User wasn’t taller than him, that was for damn sure. Who on Earth? The voice that came from behind him was low and close, hovered just over his shoulder. Teller shuddered at it.

“Are you scared now?”

There was also no coworker of his that sounded like that. He turned his head quickly, and he froze up in the shadow of something nonhuman with a figure that blended perfectly into the darkness, except for its brighter, yellow details that were enhanced by the lights. It didn’t have any arms. . .or legs. Or a face, for that matter. Teller mouthed the words “what the hell”, but he couldn’t find his voice to say them aloud. That’s when whatever hand that’d grazed him earlier struck him, and the whole of his sight went to nothing but flashes of black and white. He hit the bookshelf behind him and fell to the ground with a flickering and torturous pain that was making quick and easy work of his head. The pounding of his own heart filled his ears alongside a nightmarish ringing. He tried to scream- to call for any kind of help- but the initial shock of seeing that thing completely stripped that ability away from him.

He wondered if User would break his silence to scream if the other really had to.

For now the elder man could only writhe on the ground in one of the most extreme feats of anguish he’d ever experienced. Every conception in his head fell to pieces. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t even move on his own will. Through the blood in his sparkly vision, he could see that mammoth of a monster coming toward him. He couldn’t ask himself how it managed to walk without any legs while still being in contact with the ground. One of its hands extended toward him, and Teller felt himself get dragged- none too gently, mind you- across the floor. That gnawing ache in his head was starting to drive him to numbness. Fear was no longer worth his perception. That scream that he tried to belt earlier escaped him as a meek groan; the first sound that he’s been able to make since this started.

The earth-shaking thud of the bookshelf collapsing from his impact fell on deaf ears as he slipped into a very comfortable blackness.

User’s panic was loud and alive when he ran into that library. Finding Teller in some sort of trouble was a given- even if it was something stupid- but User had prayed that it wouldn’t actually be anything serious.

Seeing his friend in a puddle of blood beside a fallen bookshelf could certainly be labelled as “serious”. The red smear across the tile told User that Teller must have dragged himself away in time before the bookshelf landed on him. It was lucky that only the end of his coat suffered the gravity of the fall. User worked the other out of the trench for now- he could come back and get it when the time was better suited- and hauled him to the room that they were in before. He should have gone looking for help, but if nobody showed up after the walls shook from the shelf, then what was the point? That’d be a waste of time, and time was always of the essence.

The ground will have to do, User thought to himself while he tried putting Teller back down, gently, but with haste.

He knew Teller would despise him for it, but he removed the jacket loaned to him on his arrival and used it in place of a towel to stifle the bleeding. The jacket belonged to Teller, after all, and he knew that blood was a tough stain to scrub out, especially on white fabric. This jacket was probably going in the trash, after this.

Hopefully he won’t mind.

…

Hopefully he lives. 

User patted the unbruised side of Teller’s face for any sliver of a reaction. What even happened? What the hell kind of organising was Teller doing for this to be the outcome? User didn’t see a ladder…did he? Maybe Teller fell off of it. But that didn’t explain the shelf coming down with him. The elder man was a mystery that carried more mysteries with him, and all of them were endless.

Please wake up.

This couldn’t be it. It was too soon. It was too sudden.

Tears were burning in his eyes. Crying felt like absolute battery acid. User always hated it. He hated how it felt. He hated how it looked and how it sounded. And all of the reasons that a person might start crying.

He hated it.

But he couldn’t even choke it down. His heart was bigger than his body. He wasn’t as tough as Teller was. Not a single version of Teller ever cried in front of User, not even as they were dying. How did he do it? How was he so effortlessly…himself? User could rack his mind for answers for every eternity that he was stuck in, but he’d probably never find a good one.

What would the next Teller be like if this one died? User didn’t want to lose him so early on. But the jacket was already soaked, and Teller was paler than he was when User found him.

This wasn't working.

…Please wake up.

[bootleg-parable]

Giving the Break the Boot!

Oh dear.

We were gone quite a while, weren't we? We apologise, we got dreadfully sick, and were unable for a while to do much of anything creativity-concerned.

We're back now, though! We hope you didn't miss us too terribly much. Have some art that we managed in our time away.

[bootleg-parable]

While we are working toward the next installation of the story, we thought that we might share a recent illustration of Shiloh's better-kempt design. They will be in the next story progression, so we're taking a step ahead in getting their look down.

In the image provided for the voice-claim submission, Shiloh's hair can be seen worn down, falling in messy waves over their face and shadowing the shorter shaves at either side of their head. Their clothes are also not as extravagant as they used to be- they aren't messy, per say, for Shlioh has standards- but it's nothing more than a Varsity jacket with a tie. However, in their first appearance on this page, their hair is done in a pompadour, albeit less fancy and more stylized.

Shiloh is a police officer. When User went missing, they began in a downward spiral, feeling at some sort of fault for their friend's disappearance due to their position in the law-force. Surely they should have been able to find User much easier than this. It can't be that hard, can it? This is their job.

And he's their best friend.

In Shiloh's depressive downfall, they stopped taking as much care of themself as they used to, and with that they refused to keep up their appearance, hence the shaggier hairdo.

Stay tuned to catch the next Parable Progression!