Doll: trauma victim or sociopath? An essay.

So welcome to my essay on Doll. First things first (Please keep these in mind). 

I am not a psychologist. Everything I'm about to say is from my own research and understanding so if there is a psychologist in the comments, feel free to correct me. Credit to O4ZZ (u/Minimum_draw_5335) for their V essay which inspired me to actually start thinking critically about these characters and properly analysing them. I’m about to share two ways of perceiving the same character. I’m entitled to my opinion and so are you. I’m not saying Doll is a sociopath and neither am I saying she isn’t. I’m saying that this is an essay on two ways she can be perceived. Ready? Let’s begin.

So what am I discussing? Doll. Is she a sociopath? Or is she just broken and deeper than she seems?

First, let's define what a sociopath is. Google says; ‘a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behaviour’ which doesn’t give us much but it does start to link into Doll. Another point to make is that Psychopaths are thought to be born but sociopaths are thought to be a product of their environment. I've also heard it described as “A psychopath is the kind that wants to wear your skin (Looking at you Cyn) and a sociopath is the kind that will step over your dead body to get to their car.” Does this seem like Doll? Yes. She murders happily and doesn’t seem to care about how her actions affect others. At least on the surface.

Next let’s look at some hallmarks: 

• Lacking empathy and remorse
• Ignoring wrong and right
• manipulation
• deceit
• impulsivity
• a disregard for the rights or feelings of others
• Disregard for typical social behavior
• Formed by their environment.
• Egoistical

Does this sound familiar? Let's start with point 1.

-Lacking empathy and remorse.

We see in episode 3, during the knife fight that Doll easily and unremorsefully kills several of her classmates as well as it being revealed that she killed at least 3 before the episode started. The only counterpoint to this is how she shows empathy for Uzi at the end of the episode when she realises they're in the same boat. And that it isn't a particularly nice boat to be in. Overall, she is very emotionless. She tells Lizzy what happened to her parents in a very deadpan manner and only seems mildly inconvenienced when Uzi fights back in the knife fight.

-Ignoring wrong and right.

I think this one speaks for itself. She kills. She lies. She is deceitful. Yes, she does bad stuff. Why? To do something good. There is a lot to be said about morality in this show as a whole but I will save that for later. Overall, she does seem to ignore the fact that killing is wrong and continues to do it even when she gains nothing from it. Only counterpoint: she throws Lizzy out of the window. She doesn’t kill her. This shows that she still cares about Lizzy despite her emotionless demeanour. (I'll talk more about Lizzy later.)

-Manipulation.

Lizzy. She manipulates Lizzy (Off screen) to get V in a vulnerable position so she can hurt her. Whilst possibly not intentionally, she does manipulate Uzi by promising to help her then not following through.

-Deceit.

Same reasons as above. She makes promises that she doesn't keep.

-Impulsivity.

Randomly killing her classmates during Prom could be considered impulsive. It’s not something she needed to do yet she still did it. Taking back Keybug from Tessa and J could also be considered impulsive.

-A disregard for the rights and feelings of others.

Episode 5. When she gets Keybug from Uzi she only focuses on getting Keybug and throws Khan into the wall. Ep3 she locks the door and she ignores their right to leave and escape what would've been a bad situation. She had no reason to do this. She disregarded how her classmates felt.

-Disregard for typical social behaviour.

A ‘typical’ person would not keep their parents dead corpses in the dining room and act as if they were still alive. (More to be said on this later)

She stalks Uzi in Cabin fever.

Giving the Keybug to Tessa then taking it back.

The complete 180 in behaviour at the end of episode 3. She goes from wanting to kill Uzi, N and V to wanting to negotiate with Uzi in the span of about 5 seconds.

Finding joy in killing.

Keeping her victims everywhere in her house.

-Formed by the environment.

‘Genes may make you vulnerable to developing antisocial personality disorder — and life situations, especially neglect and abuse, may trigger its development.’ Possibly, the lack of proper care after her parents were killed made Doll develop into a sociopath quicker. Lacking anyone to really help with her emotions may have hindered her emotional development, causing the sociopathy that we see.

-Egotistical.

She predominantly focuses on herself and how what she does affects her. Someone recently asked me, “Why does she care about the planet?” and my reply was that she was one of the ones who lived on it. Letting Copper 9 be destroyed means she wouldn’t have a home. No one else would but she focuses on the fact she wouldn’t have a home any longer. She focuses on how killing V affects her. Now, her taking the keybug back from Tessa nicely segways into the second part of this essay.

Me trying to convince you to ignore everything you just read!

Yes, I did type out all of that and tell you to ignore it. No, I do not regret doing it. Yes, you can focus on what you’ve already read and just jump to the comments. No, I will not be so vague and I will definitely expand on all of Doll’s actions in this next bit.

So, what do I think is wrong with our favourite Russian?

Trauma, Abandonment Issues and Trust Issues. And let me just tack emotional repression on there as well.

So a brief explanation. Let's start with Trauma as that's probably easiest and most obvious.

She watched her parents get murdered right in front of her. Pretty self explanatory. Pretty simple. Now, here's where it gets deeper. I think by watching her parents getting killed it triggered some emotional repression. I say some because she still showed emotions. She still felt them. The sadness at seeing her parents die? Morphed into copious amounts of rage and anger which lead to the killing at Prom. There's also something to be said about how she keeps her parent’s corpses around. I will get onto that soon enough but for now let’s say that keeping her parent’s dead corpses around is a trauma response as she hasn’t properly been able to deal with her grief. She puts off feeling sad about their deaths by acting like they didn’t die. She does not cope with her grief well because she has no-one to help her through it. Whether she chooses not to deal with her grief or accidentally avoids doing so is both unclear and irrelevant. She could actively avoid it to not appear weak in the hellscape that is high school or accidentally avoids it as she is overly focused on her end goal and has little time for emotions. This doesn’t matter as it leads to the same outcome. Her not dealing with her grief can be linked to her general lack of emotions. By pushing down the grief so she doesn’t feel it, she ignores it but inadvertently pushes down most of her other emotions sans negative ones. 

Trust issues!

Okay. This one might need a little more explaining. In the first 2 episodes we see that Doll only really interacts with Lizzy. She doesn’t have any other friends. The wiki confirms this by saying that Lizzy is Doll’s former best friend. The only other character in the Allies section is Keybug. And even then, it’s situational. We see Doll and Lizzy interacting fairly positively in eps1&2 and beginning of ep3 but that is the extent of it. Within ep2 though, there is something to mention. Trust issues encompass a fear of being vulnerable. Doll’s only moment where she could be perceived as vulnerable is telling Lizzy what happened to her parents. Given that Lizzy shrugs this off, this is probably the most likely point where Doll’s trust issues manifest. If she is vulnerable and it’s simply shrugged off, she may be hesitant to be vulnerable again which is part of having trust issues. I believe the whole “Me and V are now friends” thing from Lizzy solidifies them. For practically her entire life, she has had about three drones care about her (that we know of). Her Mother. Her Father. And Lizzy. Her mother and father were killed by a murder drone and what does Lizzy do? Befriends that same Murder drone and chooses her over Doll. Lizzy went and betrayed her best friend for the murderer of her best friend’s parents. Imagine the issues that would cause. Doll then displays absolutely no trust for anyone for the rest of the series. She gives the keybug to Tessa, then takes it back because she doesn’t trust her. She promises to help Uzi but doesn't trust her enough to go through with it.

Finally, abandonment issues. Specifically, abandonment trauma. As I just said, the few drones Doll trusted left her, laying the foundations for some abandonment issues. Her parents died and her best friend abandoned her in favour of a murderer. Think about how she’d be feeling. Like she can’t rely on anyone because she has nobody but like she can’t find someone to rely on because she doesn't trust that they’ll stay? Sad. On top of this, the wiki states she doesn’t talk to anyone because she thinks no-one knows how to help her and that she has deep psychological problems from her trauma. Think about what’s happened from Doll’s perspective. Her parents died and that could've been perceived as them leaving her. Because of this, we know she was left to fend for herself for Robo-God knows how long and was left to deal with her own trauma with no-one to help. We’ve already established that Doll has some level of denial about her parents' deaths and hasn’t dealt with the grief of losing them so her keeping their corpses could be a trauma response just as much as it could be her keeping them around just to have someone. Since Lizzy betrayed her and that also could've been perceived as her leaving as well. If someone’s been burnt too many times, they begin to avoid the fire. Being burnt is having her trust broken so she starts to not trust at all. This is how she died. She died because she couldn't trust anyone, but not of her own fault. Of Lizzy’s fault. And V’s. As for Lizzy, at first, she and Doll are best friends. Lizzy knew about Doll’s parents and about what happened. At least some of it. So she must've had some idea that her friend was in a fragile mental state from the trauma she suffered. And yet she still chose V. Without going too deep into Lizzy’s character, we can see that she's more of an extrovert whilst Doll is more of an introvert. From this we can see that Lizzy has no problem making new friends (as seen with V) whilst Doll really only has Lizzy. This is important because Lizzy seems like Doll’s closest and best friend whilst being the ‘popular girl’ who doesn’t dig too deep into emotion based relationships. Despite this, she does indeed still care for Doll as she is seen holding a funeral at the end of ep8. 

Regarding V though. This is where it gets even more complicated. If you have even thought about V then you may have some understanding of the fact V is a heavily traumatised character. (There are many essays and videos exploring this topic. Go look for those.) And as the saying goes: “Hurt people hurt people.” V is hurt so she hurts Doll. Doll is hurt so she hurts others. It’s a cycle. V is the root for all of Doll’s issues. V was the one who killed her parents. V was the one Lizzy chose over Doll. V was one who Uzi trusted which meant Doll couldn’t really trust her. V was also one who did, for a short period of time, kill Doll. Doll has nothing but hatred and contempt for V and how does that come out? By Doll murdering, killing and lying her way into getting revenge on her. I've said before that Doll does bad things for something she considers ‘good’. She believes that killing V and getting revenge for herself and her parents is a good thing. She believes that all that she has to do to get to that point are also good things because they get her closer to her goal. She likely knows that killing is wrong but the anxiety of getting caught is less than the joy she’d gain from doing something that would reward her. Killing Kelsey Day at the start of ep3 is a good thing because she's the last candidate for Prom queen. Eliminating all prom queen candidates means Doll has the chance to kill V. This is simple reward, punishment and reinforcement. Removing something bad is negative reinforcement so she would continue to do it to remove unwanted obstacles. The secondary reinforcer of the other candidates dying leads to the primary reinforcer of killing V. I do realise I've gone a little off topic so let's get back to that.

Sociopath vs issues. Conclusion.

I'm about to rattle through a few things I've mentioned twice and how they can be applied to both Sociopaths and the collection of issues I think Doll has. Ready?

Giving Keybug to Tessa then taking it back again. Egoistical, focussed on herself, sociopath. Giving it to Tessa then taking it back again. Lack of trust. Trust Issues. 

Lacking remorse. Lacking emotions, sociopath. Lacking emotions. Emotional repression. Trauma. 

Keeping her parents' dead corpses in her home. Ignorance for social norms. Sociopath. Keeping them because she has been unable to work through her grief over their deaths so deludes herself into believing they're still alive. Trauma response.

Dying alone. Either because she was too focussed on herself to help others. Sociopath. Couldn’t trust anyone. Trust issues.

What do I think?

I think that the theory that Doll has trauma, abandonment and trust issues, slight emotional repression, unresolved grief and a skewed set of beliefs holds many more candles than the simple label of ‘sociopath’. Yes, she does do things that can be considered sociopathic but there are other moments when she shows who she really is. Someone broken. Someone who got given lemons, planted them and became the owner of a whole load of lemon trees. Someone who really didn’t know how to live in the presence of others due to some small but incredibly important formative experiences. She trusted and was betrayed by her only friend and the only person she trusted, leading her to be unable to trust others and leaving her to die alone. As to why Doll seems unable to trust at all after one betrayal is because of the size of the betrayal. Her only friend chose the drone who turned Doll’s life on its head and took away the only other drones who ever cared about her.

Is this whole essay an answer to who Doll is? Absolutely not. It's an essay on two possible ways of viewing the same character. Feel free to share your thoughts or butt heads with me. I will absolutely debate with you. Now, you might be wondering why I've come to a conclusion when there's still a good chunk to read and that is because I will be going into detail about morality. 

Good or bad. Who's to say?

I am. It's been said many times before that Doll is pretty morally grey. She does bad (killing, manipulation, stealing) for something she considers good (killing V and getting revenge and refusing to allow the solver to use her to destroy the planet). If she was simply bad then she would do all of her bad things without her overarching noble goals. If she was simply good then she wouldn't do her bad things and simply focus on finding a peaceful solution to her problem (I'm not sure there is one given the situation but that is not what I'm discussing). Google anti hero vs anti villain and see what comes up. No need, I've already done it. ‘The anti-hero does the right thing, but not necessarily for the right reasons. Whereas the anti-villain does the wrong thing, but their reasons are often understandable.’ This is Doll. Both of these statements apply. She does the right thing (keeping the solver from using her) but so she can continue to live and survive (selfish reason or trust issue? You decide but that's the reason). She does the wrong thing (Killing, manipulation and stealing) but so she can achieve something good (Revenge and the death of something ‘bad’). This has created a nice paradox where Doll is both an anti hero and an anti villain therefore making her both a hero and a villain. However, given her noble goals and her ability to see the good in others it would be more correct (to me at least) to label her a good person despite the bad things she did. She can see that Khan ‘raised a good daughter’ after Uzi gives her Keybug and she empathises with her upon realising she also has the Solver. Doll knows that by killing V she is not only getting revenge for herself but the others who have lost family to them. 

Final section. Parallels and contrasts with Uzi.

Parallels: 

Only have one person to rely on at first. Doll only relies on Lizzy up until ep3. I've already talked about how this was the catalyst to her possible trust issues but it’s still obvious that she doesn’t rely on anydrone after this. Uzi also (up until about ep4) really has no-one to rely on. She has her dad but given the strained relationship they have, it’s more accurate to say that she doesn’t rely on Khan as much as she comes to rely on N in later episodes. Other than that she doesn’t have any drone given the lack of friends she has in the first 2-3 eps.

Lost parents to Murder drones. Yes, I am saying both parents. Doll, it's obvious. They were killed by V. Nori was perceived dead because of the Murder Drones (The fact she is still alive is irrelevant to my point) and Khan having to ‘kill’ her was what caused him to pull away from Uzi meaning she lost both her parents in a sense despite not actually losing either.

Both have goals they didn’t achieve. Doll wanted to kill V and patch herself from the solver. She achieved neither. Uzi wanted to kill all humans and find out what the Absolute Solver was. She only achieved the second one.

Both have the absolute solver that they inherited from their mothers. I don’t think much needs to be said on this. Nori and Yeva both had the Absolute Solver which they passed down to Uzi and Doll.

Both possibly have abandonment issues. So. I have already explained why Doll could have abandonment issues. With Uzi though, it's a little more complicated. Actually it isn’t. To put it simply, watch how Uzi acts around N in eps3&4. She begins to trust him. You could view Khan leaving her to die in ep1 as a possibility as to why they formed. Similar to Doll, the only one she trusted left her possibly creating abandonment issues. As we see in ep4, she is scared that N is gonna leave her and is reassured when he tells her he won’t. Weaker argument than for Doll but it still stands. Uzi also displays jealousy in ep4 when N is hanging out with the other campers, indicating she is doubtful about the strength of their relationship. She does feel better though when told that N isn’t going to leave her.

Potentially sociopathic. You’ve already heard my thoughts on Doll but here's some on Uzi. Lacking empathy, ignorance for social norms, impulsive, formed by environment, ignorance of rights and feelings of others. These all also apply to Uzi. I'm not about to do a deep dive analysis of Uzi (go find one from someone else if that’s what you want) but if you want to perceive her as a sociopath then feel free. If you want more of my thoughts on sociopath Uzi then just ask but this is all I’ll say for now.

Contrasts: 

(Ep3 really picked up with the contrasts.) Uzi talks but Doll is quiet. Again, quite obvious. Uzi says a lot throughout the series. Because she is the main protagonist. Doll says very little in comparison. She has an average of about 5 lines per episode and that’s just the episodes she speaks in. If you include all 8 episodes, then she averages out saying 3 lines per episode. Compared to Uzi, this is very little. 

Uzi can trust whilst Doll can’t. As I’ve said, Doll does not trust after ep3 but this is when Uzi starts trusting. “I'm not dealing with anything well, but I'm done dealing with everything alone.” is really the line that shows she considers N a friend and knows she isn’t alone any longer. Uzi trusts those around her to help with her problem and ends up achieving her goal. Doll died because she couldn’t trust anyone to help her.

Different levels of control over their Absolute Solver abilities. All solver hosts (With the exception of Yeva and Doll) were controlled by the Solver at some point. Nori in ep7, Uzi in ep4, NVJ in ep1. My theory? Since Yeva was patched, she gave Doll a version that made it harder for the Solver to control her which is why neither of them were shown to be controlled at all. I think, because of this, Doll had a higher level of control over her powers since she had neither the threat of being controlled nor the fear of what her powers could do if she were controlled. Despite that she still looked for the patch as a fail safe for if she could be controlled. (My guess, she didn’t need it given a variety of factors.) Uzi on the other hand has fairly minimal powers compared to Doll. Regeneration, telekinesis, black hole creation and solver metamorphosis. Doll has Regeneration, matter replication, illusions, matter synthesis, teleportation (I am willing to argue about whether this is really teleportation), matter transformation and lock manipulation. It is quite possible that Doll has simply had longer to train her powers but this is still a difference between the two.

Thank you reader for reading all 4000 or so words I have written on Doll (and others. But mostly Doll.) Feel free to share your thoughts and yeah. e5Ki0n out.