Concept Art Dump: Squirrel Girl and the Sibling Squad

yeeeeeah it occurred to me there’s no way Perry and Tibbs would have just the one kid. They want a big family! Altogether, they have four children, though for now we’ll just meet the first three.

Snickerdoodle is their first child, and also the only one they adopted at birth. After years of struggling to adopt through agencies, they only end up with Snickerdoodle by chance. She was conceived for a planned surrogacy, but when the adoptive parents backed out, the birth mother needed to offload the unwanted baby quick, and was connected to Tibbs and Perry in a spot of serendipity. The double dad duo adore Snickerdoodle, the hyperactive squirrel girl is their entire world- and also the cause of many, many a grey hair. Just. All the grey hairs. “Flying” squirrel is a misnomer, Snickerdoodle, so please stop jumping off the roof.

When Snickerdoodle is around 3, more independent and heading into preschool, Tibbs and Perry start feeling baby fever again. Adoption agencies are yet again unwilling to match a queer pred/prey odd couple to “good” kids, and instead only introduce them to their “undesirables”. No precious newborns this time around, only the oddball children that have issues or quirks that have made them unappealing to prospective parents. In every case, Tibbs and Perry first brought each child home to foster temporarily, just to determine if they were a good match- before inevitably falling in love with each and every kiddo. In order of adoption we have:

-Edmund. The closest to Snickerdoodle in age, he was adopted when she was 4 years old, and he a 2 year old toddler. Edmund was written off by the adoption agency early due to his venomous spurs and lack of cutesy kid behaviors. Edmund didn’t giggle or babble- he didn’t talk at all, actually. He avoided eye contact and sat apart from the other kids. He had meltdowns when overwhelmed by bright lights or loud noises. He was an extremely picky eater and often had to be coerced into meals. Edmund is a child with challenges, and thus the adoption agency cheerfully dumps him on Tibbs’ and Perry’s doorstep.

Edmund is the only son in the family, and he is Tibbs’ and Perry’s precious baby boy. Finally afforded grace and patience and an escape from the stress of living in an underfunded noisy group home, Edmund comes alive. Nothing about him changes, only the way he is perceived and treated. Tibbs and Perry do not regard Edmund as a problem to be dealt with. To them he is simply a little boy.….A bright, curious child with unique needs and wants. To the best of their ability, they accommodate him. Slowly, slowwwwwlyy, Edmund warms up to the family. He even warms up to the loud, boisterous playmate that is Snickerdoodle (Perry found it helpful to give Edmund headphones until Snicker learned what an “indoor voice” was). Edmund doesn’t like hugs, but he does enjoy holding hands and proximity. One day, Edmund clambers up on the couch, settles in with his juice box, and casually puts his tiny hand in Tibbs’ massive one- and he and Perry abruptly realize they are long, long past the point where they could give him back to the agency.

Edmund quite likes swimming, and though he isn’t super keen on Perry’s yowly singing voice, he’s polite enough to humor him. Seeing as 2 out of their 4 kids are aquatic creatures, Perry and Tibbs had a pool installed at their home~

-Nessie: Nessie is their third child, adopted when Snickerdoodle is about 8, and Edmund 6. Reptiles tend to be unpopular candidates for adoption, and a crocodile child was always going to be a hard sell. As one of the largest reptile species on the planet, Nessie will outgrow all her siblings before she graduates elementary school, and as an adult she’ll have a hundred pounds or so on Tibbs. A frightening prospect indeed, particularly when paired with her bottomless appetite for destruction. Oh, and food. Nessie can devour a barrel of anchovies in moments, and will gnaw on anything that fits in her mouth, including people. The agency presents her as an exciting potential match for Tibbs and Perry, and they tentatively take her in to foster.

Nessie largely communicates via squeals, gurgles, trills, and other odd velociraptor-sounding noises. Although she very rarely speaks, she is fully capable of doing so, and her vocabulary is uh, distressingly advanced for a preschooler. Tibbs and Perry are quite startled when Nessie abruptly reveals she can talk, and inquire why then did she spend so many months pouncing on them/chewing on them/screeching at them/biting off her dolls’ heads and leaving the headless plastic corpses arranged in ominous sigils on the floor. Why not talk sooner? “Because”, Nessie says, “I was having too much fun.” And she smiles with her many, many, many teeth.

As a species, reptiles pride themselves on cold logic, and thus tiny terror Nessie can be reasoned with. She will not bite Edmund because she knows Edmund might then jab her with his venomous spurs, so in terms of prey he’s more trouble than he’s worth. Snickerdoodle is also safe, as Nessie has reasoned that hurting Doodle will mean her big sis will no longer want to play dollies with her, and Nessie cannot cope without Doodle dolly time. Although biting Perry was fun at first to learn all the colorful cat swears he knows, she’s found that Perry makes for a more fun stalking/pouncing partner than he does prey. Tibbs tho? It’s open season. It’s on sight. Tibbs meanwhile is a walking slab of muscle with a nigh-impenetrable boar hide, so sometimes he’s not even aware he’s being chomped on, to Nessie’s tiny indignation.