interesting actually how a doll is usually seen as a plaything, or generally just something with a role to serve others. bloodborne’s plain doll kinda overtly acknowledges this fact, and ranni’s body model (with the four arms) is likely based around the battle mannequins used for nothing but tools of war. one of those battle mannequins is even a butler role in nightreign… but ranni is a doll, and she is not in any position of servitude, and in fact finds her liberation through becoming a doll. i really adore the subversion
and usually she’s posed like a decorative collectible, perched up high and ethereal and fully dressed. but then when we see her after slaying her two fingers, bare of any clothing, covered in blood, outright a soiled and disheveled mess… that’s where the tarnished pledges their undying loyalty to her, no less. she is not a decoration or an heir to be martyred, she is raw and exposed and her body is herself. she is a doll and even so soiled and ragged and covered in blood she is the most beautiful thing in the world!!!!!
