🔩CLOWN👁‍🗨

Delilah calling Baiken big sister has been something that a lot of people don’t seem to understand, usually with people wanting her to call her “mom” instead, but also with what this means for Romeo flying over people’s heads. She’s calling her that because, in her head, Baiken’s behaviors are sibling behaviors. In other words, Baiken reminds her of Romeo. Her only reference point is Romeo, and anything he’s said. She’s never gotten to see any other siblings to see how they treat each other, and even the main character in the movie Romeo damn made is an only child. So in order for her to think that what Baiken is doing warrants calling her big sis, even after Baiken told her to stop, that would mean she’d have to find some similarity to Romeo.

And what do we see Baiken being like the entire time up until Delilah first calls her that? Dismissive and rude. She literally threatens her. They were just attempts to scare her off, but that doesn’t change Delilah’s perception of her at all. She’s still big sis even if she threatens to hurt her. When Baiken refuses to help her, she’s still big sis. No matter how mean she is to her, she’s still big sis. Nothing ever makes her go “a sibling shouldn’t be like this”, the way Baiken acts only seems to reinforce it.

The way she screams begging Baiken to tell her why has always stuck in my head. She assumes the problems are her age and that she’ll mess it up because she’s too young, not the fact that she wants to literally murder someone. Assuming that Chaos’s death is a “prize” to Baiken that she doesn’t want Delilah taking. Saying that she’s done asking for help and that she’ll “do this alone, too”. For a 12 year old that has been isolated for her entire life save for interactions with one person and then another that has barely ever seen her or knows her, the only way these problems would have appeared is as a direct result of said person; these aren’t things a little girl would start to think and repeat out of nowhere. These are all likely things that Romeo has said to her or results of the way he treated her. How many times has she asked for his help and he’s said no? How many times has he outright refused to answer a question and the two of them ended up in a screaming match until one of them left or gave up? Delilah thinks she’s too immature when she’s normal for her age on that front- why would she ever believe that it was a problem unless Romeo made it sound like one?

Do you remember that ramble Romeo goes on in his SIGN Arcade Mode about cats? That house cats live an easy life, but lack freedom, only knowing the world their owners allow them to? Delilah is the house cat. She is trapped in a little box with only occasional visits from Romeo, the person who raised her, who only gives her the information he wants her to know and hides so much from her to the point of not knowing the rest of her family or anything he did. She probably didn’t even know the name “Bedman” was referring to him. Delilah being desensitized to the topic of death at her age, immediately wanting revenge through murder rather than going into mourning- these are all things that she would have- could ONLY have- picked up through him. Watching him, and copying what he does. The same way she does with Baiken, her new big sibling.

All of this combined, I think this is why Romeo likely being an adult is so important- the two of them being in two different stages of life would lead to Delilah developing this way, wanting to grow older and mature as fast as possible, blaming her age for everything. I can almost perfectly picture Romeo going on a “I was so much more mature than you are when I was your age” spiel. Also worth noting that Baiken says Delilah is roughly half her age.

Yes, Romeo likes Delilah, but this doesn’t mean he was ever a good brother or father figure. Romeo’s quote to May is likely not him being a complete hypocrite. Maybe, this entire time, he actually just wanted to pass Delilah over to their mother. What I don’t think people realize is that Bedman has known for a while just how awful he is, and all he did was double down under the guise of undoing it all. He never considered the consequences of if he failed, and the state Delilah is in now is one of them. Even in The Circle, he knows that he can’t make Delilah happy. He just doesn’t want to make her upset. Everything he did, or at least it started this way, was for her sake- her future happiness, but never once considering how she felt in the moment. That is how it turned into the trainwreck it ended up as.