✩°｡⋆ paulo ⋆｡°✩

Somebody on the medical team put him on his bunk in a wrong way...

I refuse to draw him in pants btw

BUT

I have a serious criticism that at most like 12 people have heard me out on and I need to talk about it and I need people to listen okay so it’s about Lancer and King Spade

There will be minor spoilers for chapter 4 towards the end of this post! I’ll tell you when they come up with RED text.

First I’ll go over what I’ve been saying for years:

KING SPADE IS AN ABUSIVE PARENT

Like, not even just the rooftop scene at the end of the first chapter, but that should be all the proof anyone needs, so I’ll talk about that first.

So everyone saw him grab Lancer by the neck, right? Before chapter 2 everyone hated him for it? Rightly so? Yeah… and you can’t argue he’s grabbing Lancer by the shirt rather than actually closing his hand around his neck, because he turns Lancer around and you can see his fingers gripping his neck.

(But even if he was just grabbing him by the shirt, this is still an abhorrent way to treat your child, let alone a child as young as Lancer…)

King also says he’ll “drop him off the edge and let him splatter”, and forces Lancer to watch him kill his friends right in front of him.

And when he is overthrown, he screams at Lancer and all his subjects that he’s going to kill them. He’s enraged, maybe he means it, maybe he doesn’t. But either way, don’t scream that at your child…

So, there’s more than that scene - things that imply the King doesn’t feed Lancer, or at the very least doesn't make sure he's fed or supervised properly, and puts him in danger.

In the field, Ralsei will comment on Lancer’s unbalanced opposing team, comparing them to “a dinner made out of three glasses of milk.” Lancer then says “and that’s, um… unusual, somehow?”

This kid has nothing but milk and worms for dinner…

Rouxls talks about having to feed Lancer worms when he doesn’t eat like it’s a regular occurrence.

Lancer isn’t allowed to pick the dark candy for himself, either, and comments about how he hadn't eaten anything the day of chapter 1 when you talk to him at the stump. I suppose the dark candy thing COULD be because they're so bad for him ("Like my teeth are disintegrating!"), but the other stuff...? Is NO ONE except Rouxls making sure this kid eats anything? Even then, Lancer yells for it himself...

On top of all of that, the King pawns Lancer off to his subjects, who really couldn’t care less about looking after him, they just half-assedly do it because they’re both too scared to defy the king and also hate him enough to not try hard enough at their jobs, let alone looking after the unruly prince.

Why trust your child with people who don’t care enough? And the comment about how no one really likes Lancer and that no one would be his friend really just gives the feeling of "yeah, no one cares enough to actually watch him properly." Lancer rides around the kingdom on a flaming bike completely unsupervised. Ummm…

He's also scared of his dad, doesn't seem bothered by putting him in prison, is worried about making a mess OUTSIDE (could see this as just him being an obedient child, but like... he's not, really? He's shown to be pretty unruly and chaotic, he just seems scared to defy his father when you factor this in with the dark candy stuff), isn't bothered by Susie beating him up (he brushes off the basement scene super quickly) or threatening him, taking her threat to literally bite his face off as her teaching him (why is he reacting to such violent threats like that?) and has been commanded to kill the Lightners, which is a pretty tall and violent order to give your young son. He has no idea what these Lightners are like, whether they're violent or not. He can't know what they'll do to his son.

But anyway, I’ve been screaming about all that for years. It’s time to get onto my criticism with the writing. I’ve been upset about this since chapter 2…

And it's about how, seemingly, Lancer's abuse is being forgotten.

In chapter 2, when you visit the King in prison, Susie will comment on how he was going to drop Lancer off a cliff, and that she doesn't trust him. He tells the party that he was bluffing, and that even if he DID drop him, Lancer would just bounce.

Umm... okay. What? Where did this come from? He wouldn't get hurt...? What? Surely I'm not the only person who thinks this makes no sense.

Like, I get it, Lancer is a silly bouncy boy and it's supposed to be... funny? I guess? But like, it just doesn't feel like the place for a silly thing, it just feels like the game trying to brush off what happened to him because he's not really important enough in the story outside of being a silly comic relief character, even though chapter 1 shows he can have serious moments. Lancer is a deeply troubled kid... it feels like he was forced to grow up way too fast around the King, and he goes to Rouxls when he wants someone to act his age around since his dad doesn't care. Annoying him with MP3s and stuff like that. I know he doesn't have a canon age or anything, but he can't be any older than like, 10. Personally, I can't see him being older than 8.

I was so upset about the whole scene that I just decided the king was lying about bluffing in order to gain the Lightner's trust so they would let him out of jail, because what reason does he have to change his tune? He has more reason to be infuriated with his son and the Lightners than ever before, why is he saying this now???????????????? He's angry at Lancer for betraying him! When Lancer hit him with a spade so he could escape and find help, the king screamed after him, calling him a traitor. Why care about him now...?

Some people say that the Knight doesn't have control over him anymore, so he's not evil anymore.....? But he didn't have a redemption like Queen, he was just... evil. And if Toby is TRYING to redeem him, then, like... I really hate the way he's going about it. At least show us him apologising to Lancer directly if you're going to take this route? (I would still be angry if he was redeemed in any way, but this would be better than just acting like the abuse never happened). He calls Lancer a bouncy pumpkin and... the fandom just kinda... forgot. About everything he did to his son. Just like that. Annoying and upsetting, but mostly because of the fandom, not hugely about the writing, though it was still a little disappointing to see it handled the way it was. MINOR CHAPTER 4 SPOILERS BELOW

Until chapter 4. You can bring Tenna back to Castle Town and trigger a cutscene in the prison with him, Lancer, and the King. Lancer is INSIDE the cell on his dad's head, and the King is being... pretty nice? And while it would be fantastic for him to be a nice parent for Lancer's sake, it just doesn't sit right with me at all, because that's not the way he was laid out in the beginning of the game. Like I said before, I would rather see an onscreen apology to Lancer if this sort of thing is going to happen. No fault of Lancer's, he's super cute as always and I don't mind when he's friendly to his dad because he's a child and, yeah, he probably does yearn for a normal, loving relationship with his father. I'm just genuinely upset with Toby for never bringing up the abuse again. It's like the game is trying to act like it never happened because it's not relevant to the greater story, and it's really, really disappointing to see. And the way most of the fanbase just brushes it right off with the game as well, like, did we play the same chapter? I don't know. It's just really upsetting to me.

If you read all the way through, I hope you can understand me, and know why I'm upset, even if I may not be the best at articulating. Hopefully people can see this whole post, because this topic is really really important to me. I love Lancer. He's either my first or second favourite character of all time, and I hate seeing his abuse just be swept away in favour of the "more important" characters - like I know Lancer is not a MAIN main character in any way, and the story is about Susie, Noelle, Kris, Ralsei, and the Knight, but like... you know what I mean, right? It feels gross how the abuse was just brushed off and swept away rather than being addressed, ESPECIALLY with Lancer being as young as he is.

Original picture under the cut (⁠•⁠‿⁠•⁠)

Which not only emulates his idol Sherlock Holmes, but is similar to his mother without him even knowing 😭

I’m so mad we didn’t get to see more of them together… he really is her son as much as he is Noonien’s