#kanotynes

So Kanotynes's cards that inspired Toby Fox have been made into ACTUAL ASS CARDS YOU CAN BUY!?!?!!!!

AND new art with these two?!?!

AND its only sixteen smackers (american) before shipping?

[ID: A store page on Fangamer.com, showing Deltarune playing cards by Kanotynes for $16. end ID.]

TRANSCRIPT:

The dummy was the tutorial fight, but Lancer is the first enemy you fight in Deltarune ever. And boy he makes an… impression. While Ralsei is the first Darkner to introduce himself, Lancer is the first Darkner you meet—albeit, he's cloaked in shadow. But even then, you can still glean a sense of goofiness from his silhouette. He's short and stout, with a pointy head—the little guy's even posed like teacup! But the accompanying music, along with the rain of spades is able to let Lancer have some level of menace before…subverting it.

But yeah, Lancer is an interesting intro to Darkners (Ralsei is a special case, I don't count him) because he showcases a new category of design. In Undertale and Deltarune, Humans are children, Monsters are mostly based off animals, and Darkners are based off objects.

Fun fact: Lancer, and quite a few chapter one enemies were not designed by Toby Fox. Kanotyne's designs for these members of the Card Kingdom actually predate the development of deltarune, and Toby worked with Kanotyne—and got her permission—to use her designs in the game.

So yeah! That's why Lancer looks like something goofy but relatively "new" (for an Undertale audience that only had Chapter 1 to work with back in 2018). Like the fact that Kris can't tell where Lancer's clothes end and his body begins. This kid has action figure energy. Another thing that contributes to said energy is the fact that Lancer doesn't have a walk cycle. Like sure, Toby Fox probably had him like this cuz it looked funny (and it does), but to me I think it works to give Lancer this…intentionally flat, "cardlike" energy. He is based off the Jack of Spades, after all.

And yet, despite these "flat" characteristics, Lancer is also canonically bouncy. Like, really bouncy. It's a contradiction, but an interesting one. I like to think that, to Lightners like Kris and Susie, Lancer looks like he's two-dimensional from every angle, yet he still somehow exists and navigates in three-dimensional space. And yeah, I think stuff like this is yet again another example of how Darkners have shape-shifty properties. Like this. I like to think that Lancer full-on morphing his face in this way for the sake of a bit isn't an exaggeration or a metaphor, it's something that's literally happening within the world.

[ESP] Tres cabezas piensan mejor que una… NO! Clover no se puede poner de acuerdo. Clover creada por @kanotynes

The “face cards” of @kanotynes‘ playing card deck, a.k.a. what inspired Toby Fox to make Deltarune. I managed to extract these by picking apart the GIFs they were originally posted as.

Lancer calls himself “Dark Jack Lancer” at one point in Deltarune, and it would seem he really IS a Jack, the Jack of Spades, to be exact. His father, Spade King, seems to have a halo around his head in this original drawing, as opposed to the crown he wears in the Deltarune demo.

What really gets me is what apparently Lancer’s mother, the Spade Queen, looks like: two heads sharing the same body, not unlike your traditional Card Queen artwork (or CatDog, for that matter).  In fact, it would seem all the queens in this deck have multiple heads sharing one body. Perhaps we haven’t seen these ladies yet in Deltarune because they’re just so gosh darn freaky!

Rudinn and Hathy are apparently Jacks to their respective suits (Diamonds and Hearts), while it may be that Clover is the Jack of Clubs. Maybe she’s a princess? The Club Queen looks like Clover, but with four heads instead of three, and the Club King has FIVE heads!