#queerplatonic stockshop

[secreterces5]

The full saga from this post of mine. President Bishop, pinnacle of keeping his thoughts to himself, and Dr Stockman, as loud as he is clingy. I wanted to have all the drawings in one place :)

Ngl, trying to draw them both so many times was a harrowing challenge. You’d think by now I’d have them down 😅

Woah guys did you know my commissions are open btw. That’s crazy

[teenagemutantninjatrauma]

Oh, sorry, there must’ve been a misunderstanding! A president can’t afford to be an attack dog! He’s supposed to be peace loving and kind and altruistic!

The mad scientist who doesn’t owe anything to anyone, though… the same guy who called the Shredder idiotic? Who can swing a gun around so well he takes out the entire Foot Elite AND their boss AND Hun in two minutes? The guy who, upon possibly experiencing the end of times and reuniting with his old enemies to solve it, went “okay so why don’t I just kill all of you right now?” and had to literally be told by Bishop to control himself? The guy who regularly goes on murderous rampages?

This guy?

He is the emotional support attack dog. Where Bishop can’t really say anything because of his social status, Baxter has no such obligations except maybe to Bishop himself. So he will just call you an idiot to your face if he thinks you deserve it. He will say out loud what they’re both thinking, because they’ve been around each other for too long and are both ill.

It’s just that…. Baxter is also touch starved as hell, and in a new time, in a new place both literally and mentally. And ironically, the only familiar fixture in all this… is Bishop. So when you’ve got a bunch of new limbs that you’re getting used to alongside your new body (again) sometimes you just. Grab onto something that grounds you. I don’t even think he knows he’s doing it.

Bishop, of course, doesn’t really know what to make of this, either.

Touchy..

[teenagemutantninjatrauma]

thank goodness for enablers let me figure some out...

ACTUALLY. LET ME TALK ABOUT THEM DURING THE EPF ERA HOW ABOUT THAT. LET'S TALK ABOUT HOW MUCH THAT WOULD'VE SUCKED!

@agenticed you asked so you get tagged, and @tamsinswriting will probably like reading this so you get tagged as well :)

so here's the thing, right, both of these bastards SUCK at communication and also they're like. bad people. in general. so whatever develops here will always be rotten from the start

they're not the type of pair to be awesome villains together. they're the type to make each other worse.

they are, however, unknowingly perfect for each other anyways. that one post that's like. actually let me find it. (img description in alt)

let's break this down - so Bishop and Stockman, unknowingly, have extremely similar traumas unique to them (technically so does Donatello of all people I guess but Donatello is not having to suffer this relationship so let's not worry about him)

they've both been through that experience of a total loss of control and bodily autonomy, and they both fight violently to take back control and enact revenge upon their torturers. they both come out the other end something else, something not human.

Bishop arguably copes with this better at this point in time than Stockman because he's had centuries to gain power, and so feels in control. Stockman has been repeatedly proven that he has NO control, to a point where a lot of his self preservation methods carry over from working under Shredder to working under Bishop

for example, he starts out as a massive suck-up because that's what the Shredder wanted, for his employees to be less than worms, for him to become akin to a god. He also has a tendency to lie about unsuccessful missions, even if the failures aren't his fault - a lot of the time, he viewed lying to the Shredder as preferable to just going "well the turtles' dead bodies weren't in the rubble so you didn't kill them well enough clearly" and he carries this over to the EPF, avoiding telling Bishop about the outbreak they caused with the fake invasion.

most importantly, Stockman is scared out of his MIND. all the time. Because he has nothing, he doesn't even really own his own brain anymore, people are just carring him around and handing him over back and forth, in jars and mechs and repurposed bodysuits, and obviously, even for someone with his ego, that's gotta obliterate your confidence. That's going to kill your ability and willingness to protect yourself.

So what I'm saying is that EPF era dynamic is unhealthy as fuuuuck

it's also not gonna be a standard relationship by any means in general honestly. it could still happen but it's... well, it's weird and bad, because they're both weird and bad!

I think what the attraction comes down to is Stockman having a misguided sense of solidarity and Bishop feeling enabled by him.

Because they've been through the same pain, even if they don't necessarily have all the details, there is a sense of understanding. Stockman feels like this is the one place in the entire world where he'll be safe, because surely Bishop, who understands this pain and has been fighting this fight for centuries, will be able to protect him.

And because they've been through the same pain, it carries more weight for Bishop when Stockman is like, "this is a righteous fight and you're doing the right thing here. all this cruelty and paranoia is justified." And that feeling of validation is like a god damn drug, because nobody else is gonna get it. Nobody else will say "I understand where you're coming from" and truly mean it. Stockman will. Bishop knows that for a fact.

i don't think a lot of physical intimacy happens and if it does it looks more like violence (because it is) or fucked up science (which it also is). You can't really kiss someone's holographic face but you can connect their newest prototype of an artificial nervous system to a small control pannel and fuck around with it to mess with them, you know what i mean?

and we know from BTTS Hacking Stockman that he DOES ACTUALLY BUILD HIMSELF NEW NERVES. So. There's undoubtedly some gay ways to test that out that I could think of but am too embarrassed to say out loud on this blog.

it goes the other way too btw. there's undoubtedly something very addictive about your partner(?) being in this hulking mech that could prrrobably take you in a fight but being also entirely at your mercy and under your control. it's the same feeling as vivisecting a specimen strapped to a desk. it's about power again.

and y'know up to this point you could probably argue that it's not THAT bad, I'm sure there's good moments in there.

Stockman asks Bishop how long he's been doing... this. How long has he been what he is. Bishop doesn't entirely remember, but he describes the customs, the clothes, the army - and finds that Stockman can guess the time and place pretty accurately off the top of his head.

Stockman has a bunch of historical questions about this, too, and is kind of disappointed to find that Bishop doesn't really... remember that much. He didn't exactly care for the wider world, ironically enough, he cared about building up the EPF to protect people.

He still got to witness a lotta fun stuff. He was there for the transition from horse carriages to cars. He knew how to work an alien ship before he knew how to drive a car. He traded alien weaponry for funding and affected the development of technology, I'm sure.

He talks about this, sometimes, rarely, and Baxter finds it fascinating, to know, to hear the experiences of someone who had been there. That part of it all is interesting and not at all bad.

and I'm sure sometimes it's a relief to have Stockman around. Because Stockman moves right past the horror of whatever Bishop is and straight to fascination, it means skipping an adjustment period a normal human scientist would likely need.

it means that if or when something goes wrong with the clone bodies, Stockman works insanely fast to find out what it is.

i also stole Ade's headcanon that Bishop doesn't really eats more than the bare minimum to function efficiently and I'm sure there's at least one occasion where he has to participate in a social event, forces himself to eat what would be a normal amount of food for a normal human, and spends the night horribly sick.

and Doctor Stockman calls him an idiot and then sits with him for the entire night, checking on all the fuckery his body is supposed to be doing, and makes sure Bishop doesn't die. and Bishop wouldn't admit this over his dead bodies or his living ones, but it's the first time in centuries that he's let someone kinda sorta take care of him. And he hates it, but the solidarity kicks in again - Stockman has seen worse. Been through worse. He's gonna talk a big talk but he'll be normal about it. And that sense of safety is reassuring.

unfortunately, the trouble is, I think, that they are as much lab experiments to each other as the aliens imprisoned all around them. Bishop is going to treat Stockman as sadistically as he would an alien and Stockman is going to dehumanize Bishop as much as he would an alien.

making horrible jokes and comments about taking each other apart on the daily. this triggers their traumas, but they don't really realize that's what they're experiencing, they just become angrier and take it out on each other more.

you know that one "Nano joins the Justice Force" episode that starts with Stockman and Bishop failing to contain Nano, and Bishop's like "I'm starting to see why the Shredder took all your body parts away"? that was RUTHLESS and they become like that more and more as time goes on for sure.

and that solidarity slowly goes away entirely. it's just mutually dealt pain that there's no escape from because this is Bishop's entire life and Stockman has nowhere else to go. They have each other because otherwise they'd have nothing.

frankly most of this isn't even necessarily stockshop i think this stuff just. happens tbh. they are such shitty people up until they almost die together.

it's another story post lab collapse, after Head of State. But before that, during the EPF era, they are not in a place where they would be able to heal, so it's toxic old man yaoi all the way baybee! and I'm bad at that so I haven't really written fics about it. I wanna skip to the part where they do this but like. it actually helps them become better, y'know? i promise i'll write another post that's like. more wholesome than this. but for your consideration, EPF era Stockshop.

i realized i barely post stockshop headcanons and i should get on that because nobody understands them like i do

[teenagemutantninjatrauma]

I might not have been completely fair and honest with you guys. There is a third part.

Yeah, Stockman is the loud one, and he’s also the clingy one. But Bishop’s guilty of keeping him around on purpose, and therefore making himself very clingable. Can’t be helped, and I think when he figures that out, he leans into it.

(Ft one of my favorite Bishop dress designs I’ve ever made tbh. Give that man some Sun imagery)

Touchy..