sometimes family isn’t two kids and a mom and a dad.
sometimes family is one (1) boy detective, the grim reaper who secretly is a massive dork, a cynical elf wizard who pretends he’s not soft for his whole family, a functional 30 year old man, the 30 year old’s dog army, an elderly beach-living dwarf who runs a summer camp, the beach dwarf’s son and daughter, a gnome pilot, a distressed and exhausted leader of a nonprofit on the moon, a grim reaper who wears blue jeans, his grim reaper wife with a penchant for fire spells, a dragonborn rogue who likes doing flips, her half orc wife who likes doing flips, the actual goddess of death, the actual goddess of fate, a random dude who worked on the moon and fired the 30 year old and the beach dwarf and the elf wizard out of a cannon, and two to three cats owned by the grim reaper dork and the elf wizard.
sometimes garfield shows up.
Lup Taaco’s full name is Chalupa. Yes this is 100% real and no I don’t make the rules.
continuing on my "Lup and Barry get married every cycle and the ensuing weddings encompass a very wide range of tones" bullshit: consider, if you will, a cycle where they mean to get married early on, they really do. but the hunt for the Light is just so intense, and the time flies by so fast, that they still haven't done it by the time the end is closing in...
and in the final fight for the Light, a little under a month out from the Hunger's arrival, Lup is grievously wounded. she lies in Barry's arms, bleeding out, and with her dying breath, she whispers her final wish:
"reanimate my corpse and put her in a nice dress for the wedding"
and who is Barry to turn down a dying wish from his wife, let alone a dying wish that's that fucking funny, so Barry loyally throws some wedding plans and some necromancy spells together so that Zombie Lup can attend the ceremony. her soul doesn't reside in her body anymore because no one was willing to burn the spell slots on True Resurrection (it's only a month out from resets, come on), but she's very well-behaved as Barry very sincerely declares his eternal love and wiggles this cycle's ring onto her finger.
Taako hates it so much. the energy in the studio is incredibly uncomfortable. Lucretia takes a bunch of photographs of every moment so that Lup can enjoy it later upon respawn. most of the crew eventually looks back and recognizes this instance as the start of the slippery slope that lead to lichdom, but Lup and Barry refuse to acknowledge how fucking weird it was. they will treasure those pictures forever