she really went into a monologue on how all the berries growing on a couple of brushes were gone by the end of fall, and how magical it was that so many passersby must have picked and eaten them, maybe made jam from them...
I started to rewatch this video to relive the hilarity and no less than a minute in, Ol' Rubes has offered up the following gems:
"I use Scrivener when writing, it's a wonderful program for writing, I would highly recommend it to anyone... (Sharp intake of breath, then awkward cut)"
Umm...yes? You were saying? Why is it good? What useful features does it have to warrant a recommendation? What makes it better for writing than, say, Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, etc.? Is this not a writing vlog? (I've used Scrivener before and personally found it very unwieldy and cluttered, which sounds right up the Rubester's alley as "cluttered" and "overly busy" are synonymous with "productivity" in her mind.)
"I'm writing a middle grade book, I've never written a children's book before..."
Rubert, do you have dementia? The only book you've written is a children's book! It's literally in the description of your video: "My Middle-Grade book."
My husband and I went on a day trip to pick up our new campervan last week. I say new but I really mean old because she was born in 1970, just like me. We could have driven to collect her in our car but the husband wanted us to stick together so we had the buzz of both returning home in Gloria...
www.whatapalaver.co
"To begin with it felt like sensory overload as a couple sitting behind me were noisily watching a Bollywood film. I had to keep re-reading my chapter of the wonderful book Hamnet I am enjoying immensly. My husband's eyes and attention were glued to his phone, so he was in the zone. A lady voice came over the tannoy informing us which stations were approaching and that the buffet cart would be too. Trains screeched as they tumbled past one another and ours rumbled on towards its destination. There must have been about a hundred people on one of them, all looking at their phones like zombies and just one other middle aged woman and a teenage boy staring out at the scenery. I overheard other passengers chatting but they are not loud enough for me to decipher exactly what they were saying, not that I'm nosy or anything. The couple behind me moved seats and then it became more relaxing, sitting back on a near empty carriage, watching the world go by. I've always loved seeing the trees and fields drift by in a blur, looking out of the window - gazing into people's gardens and daydreaming away."
This is a blog about buying a campervan. Why is there a giant, self-indulgent paragraph about train rides? Fuck if I know. But it's an enlightening read to say the least.
Mother Granger is instantly annoyed at the couple behind her. The heavy implication is that they're an Asian couple - this isn't just any film the couple are watching, it's a Bollywood film. (Shock, horror!) The seething Tory disdain for minorities practically drips off the page. How dare these people enjoy a film to pass the time on a long train journey in seats they paid for? Don't they know that Ruby Granger's mother is trying to enjoy literature? The distinction is clear: Bollywood films are annoying pop culture trash, but Ruby's mum is sampling the delights of high art, and that should take priority on this train.
Daddy Bones is glued to his phone, but this is no unproductive session of social media procrastination. He's IN THE ZONEStock market numbers are increasing, financial portfolios are through the roof, the Cayman Islands are filling up with Scrooge McDuck pools of gold. Whatever he's doing on that phone, he's crushing it. (In reality he was probably drafting a letter of complaint to the train company/their local MP over the couple sat behind them, or starting a petition to bring back segregation on public transport to protect the upper-middle classes from such audacious Bollywood abuse.)
The passing trains didn't just speed by. Oh, no. They screeched and tumbled past one another. Seems like a mass vehicular disaster, and I'm shocked nobody died. There must've been a hundred people on one of them, after all. Ruby's mother has Erimentha's gift of keen observational and cognitive superpowers, and is evidently able to count the number of passengers on a train flying past at high speed. She could also tell that they were all mindlessly looking at their phones aside from a single teenage boy and a middle-aged woman.
Again, clear distinction: When her husband is staring at his phone an entire journey, he's IN THE ZONE When the unwashed masses look at their phones, they're mindless zombies.
Mother Granger's observational powers apparently don't extend to superhearing, though. Try as she might, she couldn't hear the conversations of random passengers. Not that she was eavesdropping, of course! She'd have to be content to spy into people's gardens.
Spelling errors, muddled tenses and flowery bullshit writing, all to tell a rambling tale of self-importance, entitlement, hypocrisy and casual disdain for the lower classes. Ruby's definitely her mother's child.
We've reached our first antagonist, Kimberly. Her family spent the summer in Cancun, which must be the upper-middle-class equivalent of 2 weeks in an all-inclusive in Magaluf via Easyjet. She also has icy blue eyes; Ermientha has an unhealthy obsession with other people's body parts in this book. More on that later.
Erimentha is pissed that they stayed in their forms, missing vital classes where she could have harassed her teachers into reading her stack of book reviews. I hope these public servants belong to a union.
Her classmates are giggling. She introduces herself to the teacher and says, "I would like to apologise on behalf of our table for our behaviour."
EXCUSE ME? Who is bullying who in this story? It's their first day of school too, and this charlatan takes it upon herself to speak for the table? Is this an attempted coup?
Out comes the infamous Globalisation speech during the Geography lesson, and I'm starting to feel triggered by hearing a child repeatedly say to an adult, "Did you know?"
Erimentha decides to ignore Kimberly for the rest of the lesson as she made a smart-mouth comment (deserved, in my opinion) and after class she takes it upon herself to squeeze the teacher like an old lemon. The teacher suggests Erimentha write a presentation on the subject as a way of getting her to go away. Erimentha earnestly writes a list about it, totally missing the hint.
It's lunchtime and the school is serving the proles stodgy filth of fishcakes and chips. Erimentha being vegan, virtuously piles her plate with salad and so does a classmate after being shamed about eating ones seven-a-day. I double check that this is a book about others bullying Erimentha, and not the reverse.
Another antagonist, Izzy (note the cheap and cheerful names given to them - they are Lidl to Erimentha's Waitrose) deliberately spills water on Erimentha (at this point, I would have force-fed her a saveloy) but she sternly tells Izzy off and not to worry as she bought a spare uniform with her (because of course she has)
Kimberly accuses Erimentha of being a psychopath, accusing her of tripping Izzy during watergate. Erimentha denies being one - she's read the DSM-V and doesn't meet the diagnostic criteria, which is something all 12 year olds do.
I'm beginning to wonder if Erimentha isn't in fact, a dark overlord mastermind in this story.
------------
Disclaimer: this is a light-hearted poke at someone's creative writing exercise. When I was Ruby's age, I'd write a small chapter about my drunken uni one-night-stand(s)
Eve did it with coffee, I just know she's going to cash in on the tea obsession eventually with her own brand of Pumpkin ProductiviTEA which will be twice as expensive as Bird and Blend and leave a bad taste in your mouth.
That granola jar looks just like a bird feeder. Unless Daddy Bones is transforming into a pigeon for the holiday season, I don't see how he'll find Ruby's gift remotely enjoyable.
''You know how you love sticky toffee pudding?''
''Yes it's my favourite!''
''Well look here - I got you a small ration of oats.''
''But I can buy a big portion for £1.50 from Holland and Barrett.''
''That's right, Daddy. Enjoy your famine oats!''
*interesting historical reflakshun about Victorians and famines*
''But...I bought you a cottage, 500 books and a new camera''
''Thank you SYO much. Next year I might paint a sparrow on piece of bin liner.''
''Ruby Philomena....''
''Happy crunching!''
Conversation is interrupted by loud crashing noises as Mother Granger falls from atop the Christmas tree: she dangles upside down, feet caught in gold tinsel, while the fairy lights zap her intermittently with mild electric currents (or currants, as Ruby would say). A reindeer, a snowman and two Father Christmases are caught in her hair. She will later describe these events as a 'festive mishap'. Ruby is left to wonder why there are no edible currants on the tree.
I think the whole ED speculation is probably accurate but it’s dangerous to assume and quite problematic from my perspective. Speaking as an ED survivor, it’s an individualised illness, so to put that onto Ruby is difficult to see.
That being said, the perfectionism traits are so strong in Ruby. I really hope she finds some value other than being the best at academia.
You know, I'm a huge advocate of this, but there is just too much with Ruby. No way she doesn't have one. Many people here also deal/dealted with eds, it's not random haters calling her anorexic because of her weight. And I'm gonna let the physical part of the disease aside, because I do think you should not make assumptions based on it, and that it's very weird to talk about someone's body like that. But :
-She has the most typical profile for anorexia ; privileged, white, always had food on the table, type A, very obssessive and adamant about how her life should be, control issues...
-She is vegan, and the correlation rate between being vegan, being a rich white girl and having an ed is high, really high
-She does constant, blatant body checking in her videos. Almost one shot out of two is her recording herself in a way no one does to body check.
-She eats really weird foods, like, not in a "weird taste" way, weird "no one would ever like that but under starvation vegetables taste really sweet to your brain" way.
-She drinks an insane amount of water and tea, and you can see she has self-imposed tea quotas, because she shugs it, she doesn't drink it like she enjoys it.
-She eats frozen stuff still frozen.
-Even in her oldest videos, she has some sort of obsession with excercice, she does so much just... Moving around. She used to do a loooot of trampoline, and clearly didn't enjoy it.
-She has an obsession with being a child, wich is a very typical ed trait.
-You can actually see she doesn't care that much about eating vegan (she sometimes eat non vegan stuff because she doesn't check well enough, and she doesn't mind wool or honey somehow) and is only using it as a way to restrict.
-She drinks matcha alone, no milk no sugar, and I'm sorry but unless it's part of your culture and you're used to it, only an insane or sick person would do that.
-She talks a lot about what she eats off screen, or that she took seconds, she justifies her small portions, when no one asked. Because she knows she's starving herself.
-Her portion sizes are soooo small. We're talking a quarter of a cup of oatmeal or half a toast, with the tiniest bits of nut butter or anything that contains fat.
-She is cold all the time, way too cold for it to be normal, and she often gets cold on purpose.
-She has cognitive dysfunctions. We can see it all the time in her videos.
-She chews her food for very long time, and takes very tiny bites.
-She watches a lot of binging and mukbang videos.
And I'm getting bored with listing all that but there is more.
Also as I said I didn't list anything physical because it's weird and could be because of illness other than an eating disorder, but she has a lot of physical signs of starvation and malnutrition as well.
I honestly don’t know how she’s managed it. I guess she really does frolic in the muddy fields and then sits her grimey ass on a white chair. Super gross.
Keeping these chapter overviews behind a spoiler, that way if Ruby is choosing to read this thread, she can walk on by. These are not intended as a personal attack on Ruby. I once noted in a diary entry the, "definite sexual tension," between me and an A level tutor. Narrator: there was no sexual tension.
Erimentha gets up, makes porridge and makes a list. Items include talking to Kimberly and Izzy to clarify the exact reasons for their unkindness. "From there, adjustments can be made as necessary." Adjustments? Re-education camps? Frontal lobotomy? The dark turn this novel is taking scares me.
At school, a friend is doing last night's homework and Erimentha offers to check it, as she is obviously far more capable than the adult paid to do it. A new antagonist, Beth, pulls a dick move by throwing Erimentha's post-it pad out of the window. She demands a meeting with the three of them to hash this out. Writes a new post-it to remind herself.
In history class, Mr Aldridge asks the class about Oliver Cromwell. Erimentha's hand shoots up, but given that she is already monopolising the class, he gives the answer to another student, and she said he was a ruler in Britain. She lifts her hand even higher to the ceiling, to the point of almost standing up. She will not allow this intellectual inferior get the final say! Now in real life, the teacher would take the reins and not allow this show-off to embarrass another classmate, but as this is fiction/autobiographical, the brow-beaten Mr Aldridge has no resolve left. She dazzles with her answer and is given a fucking housepoint.
It's the end of class and it's time to confront the others. They say she has no sense of humour and doesn't socialise. To be fair, this is fairly constructive, they haven't name-called and so far seems accurate.
To demonstrate there is actual bullying going on, Kimberly tells Erimentha that she's decided the whole year group will hate her, and throws her gum at her.
After classes, she sees her friend Simone who is excited to come to her place tomorrow. Erimentha has already made a list of what's required for the volcano. They don't keep vinegar in the house as Nathan's allergic (another fault of his) and Simone agrees to bring it, as well as dry ice.
Where is Simone, an 11 year old going to get dry ice from?? I'm doing a PhD in chemistry and I don't even know where to source it outside of a chemistry department.
Also actually dying that Nathan is allergic to vinegar, a naturally occuring acid (which, according to wikipedia, is a component of vaginal lubrication. I hope to poor man doesn't go into anaphylaxis the first time he has sex)
"Hi Ruby, I'm in Year 10, in a shitty underfunded state school, I'd love to pair with you, sadly it will only be temporary as I'll be going off to have my 2nd baby, but my classmate will be returning from rehab real soon."
In classic Ruby fashion, she tried to take a rest from "wahhhrk" during the Christmas break, but her natural instinct to pretend to study won out - she proudly declares that she intended to study for 15 minutes but ended up studying for an hour and a half.
It's a tried-and-true "set the bar so low that you'll accidentally step over it without trying" move, since there's no opportunity to get much (if any) real studying done in 15 minutes. Even so, there's no evidence that Ruby studied or learned anything in this 90 minutes of JANUINE WAAHHHRK.
For instance, Ruby claims she gets "so much more" from reading a manuscript "than when you read it in print". As with everything she studies and provides vague details or opinions on, she refuses to elaborate.
This is a "study vlog" in which Ruby defiantly avoids talking about any of what she's studying. She wants you to fill in the blanks yourself and assume she thought up thoughts and learned many things and there's not just a dusty void where her brain should be.
Ruby celebrates her hour-and-a-half of imaginary waaahrk with some gifted-but-undeclared tea from BARDEN BLAND in a "Spirited Awaywot Mog" that Martha got her for Christmas.
Ahh, yes, "Spirited Awaywot" - my favourite Ghibli film, right behind 'The Cat Returnswhy', 'Howl's Moving Castlewhen', 'Princess Mononokewho' and 'Marnie Was There'.
Ruby's unable to make any videos about her "Yearly Planner" because she'd have to explain in detail that it's not a yearly planner at all, but a half-yearly planner printed on dirt-cheap, nearly transparent paper and intentionally mislabelled to trick her fans into buying a half-sized, even-worse-quality planner revision than the last, and for an inflated price.
Instead, she'll have to settle for just including undeclared ad shots of the cover throughout her videos and hope someone accidentally buys one. Ruby uses her planner so little that she assumed from the hardcover that it's another book she's pretending to read, so she shoved a bookmark halfway through it to give the impression that she's speeding through it and JANUINELY YEEZES THIS AVVERY DAY. Ruby's apparently so productive that it's already March in her world.
Ruby must be feeling insecure again about people noticing that she never changes her sheets, so she pretends to do that. She's so used to HONNASTLEE doing it VARRY OFTEN and is so accustomed to the process of how it works that she puts a double sheet on a single bed.
Her horrifying bed hygeine habits are no surprise at this point, but her bedding change process happens like this:
She takes the penguin cover off her duvet.
She throws the cover to one side.
She throws the duvet directly onto her dusty, dusty floor.
She puts a double sheet on directly on top of the single sheet that was there, without removing the old sheet.
She grabs the duvet from her soiled rug (which she often uses as a throw directly from the ground) and throws it back on her bed, with no new cover added.
But she's VARRY MOCH a JARMAPHYOBE, JANUINELY.
Speaking of Piglet in Bed, Ruby has decided that the day is suddenly over and she's changed into her HONNASTLEE NWOT GIFTED AT ALL HOW DAEHHRR YEEEEUUUU pyjamas from Piglet in Bed.
There's no way these weren't gifted, but even if they were, Ruby's been gifted products from the brand before fairly recently and is supposed to declare that when featuring their products, even if she bought them herself. Apparently "follow ASA rules" didn't make it onto her "NYEU YAHHH'S RAZZOLYEESHONS" list.
Ruby launches into robotic, script-reading mode as she recites a pre-prepared statement about how this was the BASST AND WARRST year of her life because she felt lost for much of it. She doesn't elaborate further. This being a study vlog, it would've been interesting if Ruby opened up about her obvious academic insecurities and the experience of being out of her depth and struggling at Oxford.
But that would mean acknowledging that she's not the destined-for-Oxford, effortlessly productive genius she desperately pretends to be in faked vlogs, so she just says "onsaaartanteee is awhlwheys hard", congratulates herself for being an AWKSFWUD STYEEDENT and reverts back to advertising gifted products.
Ruby's decided that coffee is a new part of her fake personality now. She shows off some Chamberlain Coffee in the same way she shows off all her gifted (and almost always undeclared) products. And in true undeclared ad fashion, Ruby claims she's OBSASSED with it.
Ruby still does not appear to actually like coffee. She chooses the smallest jar she can find to put it in and spills half of it.
She yammers some nonsense about the power of "manifesting" and claims this helped her succeed with her Oxford application. She does not mention the other time(s) she applied for Oxford or clarify if she simply forgot to "manifest" anything on those occasions and that's why they rejected her.
Ruby shoves a makeup routine interlude into the video for variety. Apparently she needs to compensate for being too overwhelmed and desperately trying to tread water at Oxford to show herself doing her usual repertoire of fake activities, so this cluttered video is here to make up for it.
It's thoroughly boring, no surprise. Ruby shows off a Starry Night makeup palette that Martha got her for Christmas. Ever the KOIND AND SYO VARRY THORTFOL PARRSON, Ruby shows that she's already managed to smash the mirror and then mentions that she'll probably never use these because she doesn't like glittery makeup. Ouch, poor Martha.
Ruby joins mummy in the kitchen, where her mum's making desserts, because desserts constitute 95% of Ruby's diet at this point.
Ruby points out that mummy's making her "famous Bakewell tart" but is making it vegan this time. Golden Child syndrome rears its head again; Ruby points out that the vegan change means Martha won't be able to have any because she doesn't like almonds.
Ruby is not vegan, as evidenced by her frequently buying leather and wool products and accidentally revealing herself eating non-vegan food all the time. By all accounts nobody else in the family even pretends to be vegan, it's just Ruby. So Mummy Bones veganned this dessert up purely to fit Ruby's fake YEECHEEB persona at the expense of her other daughter being able to eat any of it.
Mummy Bones points out that she made a second, non-vegan cake, but mostly burnt it and put almonds in this, too.
Not to worry! Ruby's making a dessert, too! "MOIY famous almond cake," she says. By "my famous almond cake", she means "someone else's recipe that I found online and took credit for" (she waves that recipe book that she plagiarised during this segment). And by "almond", she means those things that Martha doesn't like. It's 0/3 for Martha on the dessert front!
Ruby mentions that some family friends are coming so one of them might happen to bring a dessert and it could possibly be something Martha likes but there's no reason to do anything crazy like check or make anything that doesn't contain almonds.
Wait, not to worry! Ruby's going to make another cake! Oh, never mind, she's just making another almond cake.
Then she gives a smug "who gives a shit, it's only Martha" shrug. The mask is totally off for this segment as Ruby's fake OIY'M SYO VARRY MOCH AMMA WATYSON, OIY AM accent variants have almost completely vanished.
To add insult to injury, Mummy Bones then mentions that last year nobody even wanted any of her almond tart, after choosing to make four almond desserts between them. Hope the dog's hungry!
There's an abundance of almonds but they're running low on sugar, so Ruby suggests just using a fraction of the sugar and throwing something sweet in, like maple syrup. In a rare example of common sense for this family, Mummy Bones stops Ruby before she starts improvising and throwing Jolly Ranchers or cans of Coke or something in there as sugar substitutes and reminds her that this isn't how recipes work and she should use the correct measurements of actual ingredients.
Ruby says she forgot to film any footage of the finished cakes, but misses moments like that with her parents while she's away at uni. Oh, and the sister she keeps forgetting about! She misses her too, JANUINELY.
It's family party time and the guests look distinctly unimpressed with the 'Oops, All Almonds!' selection of cakes or the taste thereof.
One of them just feeds it to the dog.
Ruby says they spent much of the night just trying on a load of wigs, which she suggests doing at any party.
And then it's SODDANLEE JANUAHRRY FARRST of TWANTEE TWANTEE FWORE. Ruby claims that this is a "MOCH MWORE INTUITIVE YAHHR" than "TWANTEE TWANTEE THREE", apparently just because it's an even number?
She's VARRY TOIRD because she was awake until TYOO THARTEEE and has already JANUINELY had a coffee off-screen because she HONNASTLEE LOFFS CWOFFEE. So she's going to have green tea instead.
Ruby chooses Twinings, even though she prefers "TATLEE", but the absolute VARRY BASST green tea, according to Ruby, is "the Tea Pigs one". Guess which of the three brands gifts her teas? Spoilers: It's the one she claims is her favourite.
It opens with the obnoxiously loud crack of her gas lighter. She films herself using this multiple times because she's so bereft of ideas that filler has become the whole video now. And if that assault on the eardrums weren't enough, we're then audibly attacked by the same loud, ill-fitting music that Ruby plays in every video she ever makes.
After she's done setting the tone for the rehashed crap to come, she jumps right into the lies and incompetence.
See if you can spot the first major lie.
Ruby claims she started the day by planning some morning dissertation work, and shows herself scribbling down the day's entries:
It's Wednesday 9th March, apparently.
Her list is almost entirely nonsense, and it's such a short and vague list that it begs the question, "Why do you need a to-do list for that shit?" Or perhaps, "What the fuck is 'acrojtricn'?".
She also continues her bizarre obsession with "inside jokes", but never seems to understand what an inside joke is. Whether it's gift ideas, random planner reminders, or the records of information on her acquaintances that she compiles like a serial killer, she always fixates on the idea of "inside jokes".
Someone told her once that human beings share these with friends, and now she's desperately trying to adopt the concept. But inside jokes come naturally. They're called inside jokes for a reason: because the people inside that social circle of two or more are the people who will instantly remember and understand the joke where other people wouldn't and naturally drop it into conversation at an organic moment.
Inside jokes aren't jotting down something someone said and then instantly forgot, so that you can remind them of the date and time they said it months later. If people have to be reminded of it, or have it explained to them, it's not an inside joke.
She's apparently trying to focus a chapter of her dissertation on dedicatory poems, acrostics and Lewis Carroll's inside jokes, I guess, into her dissertation. Every time we see more of it, it looks more like a disaster.
Anyway, after some random timelapse footage of clocks again and Ruby chugging water, she then cuts to a shot of her putting on the throw/blanket/cape she was already wearing:
She just slaps footage together blindly, without a second glance, resulting in a visually incoherent, non-linear mess like this.
Ruby informs us that this 'day in my life' video will be focused on her doing some writing for one of her two final modules. She starts this glimpse into her writing process by taking the English language out behind a shed to beat it beyond recognition.
"If you didn't knyow, I'm dyooing ayy writing for childrens module this yaahr," she says, pluralising the already plural.
Reminder: Ruby is in her final year of an English Literature degree. She recently signed with a literary agent with the intent of writing things in English as a profession.
If you ever had a moment's doubt whether you were good enough, talented enough or smart enough for something, just remember that Ruby does not have a functioning brain and still managed to somehow make it this far at university not getting booted out or caught for relying almost entirely on other people's work.
The lesson to learn is this: If Ruby can make it this far in an English degree with zero understanding or command of the English language, then you can be a fucking astronaut if you want to. That and the grading bar at Exeter University is so low you can moonwalk over it.
Ruby rambles about the creative writing module and raves that it's so great to have an excuse to just write. I mean, she's had a wide open schedule for essentially her entire life and nothing stopping her from just writing instead of filling her days with redundant busywork. And I'm pretty sure a creative writing module isn't just a free ticket to write whatever incomprehensible bullshit you want.
Ruby says she's going to sit down and write a "tyoo-dyoo list" of things she wants to do, because she can't decide which public place she wants to force herself to study in for some reason, and supposedly this will help.
Did you spot the massive lie?
Somehow the morning of Wednesday 9th March has magically become the morning of Thursday 10th March. How'd that happen?
But for Ruby, lies are like Pringles, and once she's popped, she just can't stop.
She says she's going to read 'Loveless' by Alice Oseman. It's a YA contemporary book that is completely outside Ruby's wheelhouse and she's absolutely not going to read. But that's just one layer of the multi-tiered gateaux of lies she's served up.
Ruby says this book is "one of the books that was recommended". By who? Her Instagram followers? A lecturer? A random librarian? The staff at Waterstones? A passing stranger? Ruby doesn't say.
She does, however, slap this passive-aggressive, defensive title (complete with EXCLAMATION POINT!) in the timeline chapter for the video.
She stresses that it's for her module, either because she believes any pretend reading for pleasure is a waste of time, or because she knows it's obvious that she's only skim-reading this book to strip-mine it for ideas for her own YA book which treads similar ground.
Funny how she logged it on her Goodreads back around when she first started writing her own book, and is now picking it up again when it's time to do a massive from-scratch revision of her novel.
Ruby has zero experience living a normal teenage live, doing everyday student things. She's shut herself off from that entirely and refused to socialise, certainly not with anyone who's not identical to her. So it's definitely suspicious that she only picks up YA books when it's time to write her own, and I'd wager she's definitely just cribbing ideas, themes, relationship examples, tropes, etc., from them because she won't be able to write realistic, diverse characters or general teenage situations of her own.
Also note that she didn't start reading the book until March 13th on Goodreads, even though this "day" happened on 9th and/or 10th March.
She shows multiple clips of her flipping through the book, backwards and forwards, as though she's never opened a book before and is trying to figure out how they work and what all those black squiggly things in them are.
Ruby instantly gets bored of pretending she knows how to read and films some gross, sloshing footage of her making more tea. She perches the mug precariously on the arm of her sofa even though there's an ottoman/side table right there, because she's an unquantifiable fuckwit.
Because she needs to pretend to be doing lots of different activities to get maximum fake productivity out of this whole fabricated 'day in my life' that's really multiple days stitched together, she tosses in some footage of her "illustrating". I'm pretty sure she's said before that this project was due weeks ago, so who knows how old this footage actually is.
And because you're not being productive if you don't have an audience, Ruby gets ready to go into town to study for the peasants to see.
She makes the ill-advised choice to film from floor level, providing a close-up view of the filth and debris littering her carpet. I know that student housing slumlords usually furnish the homes with the cheapest, most low-quality carpets possible and there's only so much life in them, but that doesn't explain why everything else in the house (and Ruby's other house) looks like shit, too, including the crumb-covered tiles.
Also her outfit magically changes, and she's wearing her beret like a beanie again.
She places her camera on a random wall in a populated street just to film herself walking yet again. Terminal stupidity.
Ruby interrupts the video for an ad break, complete with ominous, black title card and ellipses (but no capital letters, because Ruby is deathly allergic to literacy).
I feel like that's a dangerous precedent to set, though. Is she gonna put this title card before all her ads? If so, 76% of the video is going to be that and the rest will be footage of snack bars.
I'm kidding, of course; there's no way Ruby will declare even 10% of the gifted products she shoehorns into her content.
Of course, she's studying in a café, so this video is sponsored by "Nord V.P. Anne" - another service she never uses unless she's being paid to. Ruby spouts some half-remembered corporate blurb that shows she forgot the script and has no idea what a VPN is or does. According to Ruby, you should sign up if you're looking to "change your V.P. Anne addrass or if you're looking for something loiyke that.".
She shows off familiar, likely recycled footage of her grimy, disgusting laptop screen (which she ALWAYS disinFACTS AVVERY DAY!) as she pretends to use Nord VPN.
Concluding the ad, Ruby says, "let's get back tyooo the video and JANUINELY the LOVELIEST writing SASSION at...The Explyoding Bakereee". So she clearly didn't enjoy it and got nothing done.
She gets there, and it's clearly quite a small café, but Ruby starts unloading all her shit to syphon WiFi and electricity and take up seating while ordering just a small pot of tea.
Ruby blurs out one staff member's face, but leaves every other face of the customers and staff unblurred.
"I got a pu'er tea, which I'd navver tried before!" Ruby says, as she either lies again or malnutrion-induced dementia grips her brain.
Ruby, just because you pronounce the names of things differently every time, doesn't actually make them a different thing. You've tried pu'er tea before. You're a "tea enthusiast", you should remember these things, right?
"Syooo, I wasss wahrking on TYOO things HYARR...I wryote a CHAP-TARR of...theee...middle-grade BOK that I'm...writing forrrr...myyy...MO--[AWKWARD EDIT]--CHILDREN'SWRITINGMODYOOOLL-[AWKWARD CUT]"
The fake posh cadence and awkward, belaboured pauses after every word make it seem like her brain is simply melting.
And then there's just an uncomfortable long shot of Ruby pouring and sipping tea before she finally, after what seems like an hour, tells us what the second thing she's supposedly working on is.
"And then aaahfter that...I was...WAHHKING...onnn...a BOOK that I'm restructuring and rewroiyting at the moment...UHH...[audible smiling]...FOR MOIY LITERARY AGENT."
Just listing to her mush-brained drawl as she struggles to connect words to finish sentences is enough to make you feel drunk. It's so bizarre.
Ruby only managed to rewrite three of the chapters before her laptop apparently "ran out of charge". It wasn't her fault she couldn't get any more work done! It definitely had nothing to do with her NOT having her VARRY OWN TABLE or because other people had the audacity to sit and order actual food at the same table as her in a public café...
Ruby occupies space in the café for ages as many customers arrive and leave in the background.
She starts out sour-faced from the get-go, but she gets visibly more frustrated throughout her time there. There's many possible reasons why, but knowing Ruby, this might be the main one:
The person who was sat at the same table was also there to work. And also uses a MacBook. And was likely getting more done, on a less filthed-up laptop.
Ruby only wants to "study" or "work" in public to be special - to be the self-proclaimed "gifted child" in a café full of mindless, uncultured peons who will gaze in wonder at her intelligence and diligent hard work. It's why she never studies in the uni library - because everyone there is studying, and they're all smarter than Ruby.
When she realises she's not unique and special, suddenly she conjures up a reason to leave.
She cuts to a weird shot of her pointedly showing her watch and adjusting it for the camera.
It's meant to be a casual shot, but it feels so deliberate and awkwardly cut in that Ruby clearly did this intentionally to try to prove to people that she was in the café for hours. But since watches can easily be adjusted and she's already fucked up and left in mistakes that showed she's lying about the timescales of this video, it's just embarrassing.
Ruby heads to M&S to buy some "rooey-busstea". Translation: "Roibos tea."
The packaging even has the English translation on it, to save ol' Rooey-Buss the embarrassment of trying to pronounce it. But nope, Ruby had to try, and couldn't be bothered to expend the tiny amount of effort and Googling it'd take to learn how to pronounce it.
After embarrassing herself yet again, she heads to the library to "return some books and get out some YA books".
"And oiy say it's for my module, but...LAT'SBEE REAL...oiy MAINLY CHAYZZ--CHOSE these books...[audible fake smiling]...BEECAUSE THEY LOOKED VARRY, VARRY GOOD."
And let's really be real...
Again, Ruby hates YA books. Hates books with teen relationships. Hates books that aren't about wealthy girls aged 13 or younger. Hates books in general, really, judging by the fact that she does anything she can to avoid reading them while claiming to be a massive bookworm.
A quick reminder of what Ruby thinks of YA books and how she reacts to plots which contain any teen relationships or depictions of teen life, even when they're integral to the character and plot:
She gets bored and skips them.
So no, Ruby, nobody believes you're "JANUINELY" picking up these books because you have an actual interest in them.
Let's take a look at the books she expresses an interest in:
YA books, including two teen mystery-thrillers, one of which is about a girl named Hettie trying to find a missing student at an all-girl's boarding school...
Reminder: Ruby's unpublished book is about a girl named Lottie trying to find a missing student at university (and guaranteed, it'll be an all-girl's boarding school, because Ruby won't want to have gross, icky boy characters messing up her book with their cooties, blegghh!)
Hmm...The name similarity is an odd coincidence, but the sudden interest in YA mystery thrillers is textbook Ruby. She went through the same phase of reading lots of middle-grade bullying books when she decided to write her own middle-grade bullying book, and the end result was a self-insert mess and borrowed stereotypes and clichés. She writes her essays with the same cannibalistic approach to other literature and writers. She's incapable of summoning any passion, originality or creativity of her own, so she just steals it from other people.
She's 1,000% looking for more ideas to steal and grabbing books similar to the one she's already been borrowing heavily from One of Us Is Lying, Good Girl's Guide to Murder and others for, and it's no coincidence that it happened at the exact time her literary agent asked her to do a full rewrite from the ground up.
Rooey-Buss is Rooey-Busted.
Writers take inspiration. That's a natural part of the process. But Ruby usually goes far beyond that to avoid doing any work of her own. And writers usually tend to take inspiration from and write in genres that they enjoy. It says so much about Ruby that despite never showing any interest in YA lit, suddenly that's what she apparently wants to write. I'm sure it has nothing to do with that being one of the highest-selling, easily-marketable genres and Ruby's not just trying to chase money...
She shows her "return trip" from the library, but it was obviously filmed at the same time as the earlier shot of her first heading out:
Note the guy leaving the building and the car waiting at the traffic light. Same dude. Same car. Same fucking clouds. She didn't even try.
Ruby did her usual 'put the camera down, film myself walking ten feet, turn around, walk past the camera, turn back, collect camera and use it as two separate shots' thing. It's not like we'd be confused how she got back home without a recycled establishing shot, so the end result is that she just looks like a lazy idiot to viewers and the general public who saw her filming.
She gets home and does a 'library book haul'.
It's mainly an excuse to protest tyoo moch about how she's reading them all for her module, JANUINELY! The dead giveaway that she's lying is that she says that they all look "SYO GOOD", which is her trademark line when bullshitting about how much she likes the gifted products she hates or has never tried.
And then she does a "dramatic reading" of the back cover blurbs, complete with her usual eyebrow-waggling, forehead-furrowing emphasis on random words.
I was joking earlier about the librarian recommending books to her, but it turns out that actually happened.
Her school librarian recommended this, apparently, but it's also her twin friends' collective favourite book (by "friends", she means the children of her mummy and daddy's friends who get forced to go on a playdate with Ruby occasionally).
Ruby claims she's wanted to read this ever since the movie came out. Since Ruby doesn't watch movies, I don't see how that's true. But also, that movie came out nine fucking years ago. What's been stopping Miss 'I READ HUNDREDS OF BOOKS A YAHHR' from reading this before now?
Ruby says she doesn't really find the plot blurb to this interesting. That's the most she actually reads of most books she marks as 'complete', but this time she'll have to skim through some of it to find stuff to steal, so she's resigned to "give it a gyo".
She's back to pretending to write "SYO MOCH" of the middle-grade book for uni. Her nails once again looks encrusted in filth.
She interrupts herself and her narration amateurishly overlaps itself as she announces that she's now "re-SAARCHING" and struggling to find out how much stand mixers cost "at the time" her book is set because she can't "find any adverts", and that's apparently vital to her middle-grade book...
Ruby's clearly a moron. She also keeps claiming she has tonnes of "reSAARCH" skills and experience, to the point where she thought that might be a viable career. And here she is, with no research or basic problem-solving skills. And her dissertation sits unfinished.
And then she hurtles forward in time several days.
This "day" in Ruby's life now includes:
Wednesday 9th March.
Thursday 10th March.
Sunday 13th March.
Unsurprisingly, her outfit has changed again.
She says she's working on her own novel now, as much as a book compiled from stolen material can be considered "hers". She wants to rewrite a chapter and add in two more chapers. "Syo I got started on dyoing that...NOW." She says "now" so abruptly and aggressively. It's bizarre. She also can't keep her past and present tense straight, which bodes well for a prospective author.
Ruby forces Blakeney to appear on camera for the first time in forever.
Ruby mispronounces "roibos" again, and Blakeney immediately raises an eyebrow and is mystified by it.
"How do you pronounce that?" Blakeney asks. "'Rooey-boss'...I can't say 'rooey-boss', I say 'roy-buss'..."
She politely tries to coax the correct pronunciation from Ruby, and then gives up, leaving Ruby with the slim hope that maybe she's saying it right and it's Blakeney who's wrong.
"That's why you say 'redbush'," Blakeney adds, applying the basic common sense that will forever elude Ruby.
It's a brief, but interesting glimpse into the house dynamic: Ruby constantly saying things wrong, Blakeney politely refusing to point out how wrong she is.
"BOTH OF US...love...redbush," Ruby says.
"Mmhmm," Blakeney says, not at all convincingly.
Ruby rambles about how much fun she's having writing "SYO MUCH", even though she couldn't look any more fucking miserable.
She rants about how "children's literature is the myost important literature there is PARSONALLY because the books that we read when we were young really shape us, they change the PUH people we become, they hep-help us see new things, they inform our opinions and how we see the world--(And then she immediately goes into her outro without pause, like one giant run-on sentence.)"
As she says "really shape", there's a weird ghostly gasp of air that's not from Ruby. I can't tell if it's from the generic piano music tracks she's slapped on, or if it's the ghost of Charles Dickens come to enact revenge for her crimes against the English language. Either way, it doesn't make her impromptu rant seem any more normal.
Ruby only actually reads the books she read when she was younger and she hasn't changed mentally since she was in primary school, so I'm not sure what point she's trying to make, other than she's a complete fucking moron, which is the ultimate conclusion of this and all her content: What a lazy, lying dimwit.
That porridge was not made with all milk, that’s obvious just from looking at the colour. I generally try to be “eloquent” in my comments, for want of a better word, but I am just going to say it. STOP F**KING LYING.
My blood is boiling and I am genuinely writing this in tears, because her content is so damaging and hypocritical and phoney and I wrote this as someone who used to think she was amazing. Who believed she was genuinely a breath of fresh air on social media. Now I realise that she represents so much of what it wrong about it.
LIFE IS NOT ‘AESTHETIC’. It is not a show, it is not a game, it is not to be wished away or invented, it’s REAL. You know what Ruby?
As you are there wishing for storms to get your autumnal aesthetic, people’s homes are being destroyed by floods.
As you glorify in dark academia crap and fetishise restriction, people are on ED inpatient wards like I was exactly 3 years ago, crying over a slice of toast as my university friends graduated from Exeter.
I am honestly disgusted by her content right now and I feel so powerless. On silver lining is that I am been able to see how secure I am in my own recovery, as I am remarkably not triggered - instead, I’m angry. Yet this is where the silver lining ends, because I know how she will be affecting a young, impressionable audience an it makes me want to cry with frustration. Edit, I AM CRYING IN SHEER FRUSTRATION. Mainly because I went to her IG just now and I saw that no less than 4 girls who I was in treatment with (and still follow on there) had “liked” her latest photo. I also know that none of them are near recovered.
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she really went into a monologue on how all the berries growing on a couple of brushes were gone by the end of fall, and how magical it was that so many passersby must have picked and eaten them, maybe made jam from them...
IN THE ZONE
Re-education camps? Frontal lobotomy? The dark turn this novel is taking scares me.
