This is going to start out sounding a bit off topic but there's a Rubee related point in here if you stick with me, I promise.
There's an Amazon Prime adaptation coming out in October that I suspect is going to be the latest show the Anne with an E/Little Women/Cottagecore/Light Macademia etc crowd latch onto. The main character is nine at the start of the book and the first half or so follows her childhood- it's very much not A Little Princess or The Secret Garden, but there's enough of a similar feel to it that I can absolutely see Ruby jumping on the bandwagon after the first episode, not realising what's coming. The second half of the book is much, much darker. It follows the main character in her late 20s, though she behaves as though she's much younger than she is in a lot of ways, and there's a definite too pure for this world, sweet, innocent, childlike vibe about her. Both parts of the book/series would lend themselves very well to Ruby's dress up sessions in her Manor House garden- there's even a character for her to cast both Mother Granger and Marfa as. (Getting Mother Granger to play the role of the maternal character in her fantasies would be horribly ironic because she essentially shelters the main character from the brutal realities of her family history to the point that she leaves her unprepared for the real world- although I suspect that irony would be lost on Ruby.)
I know about the Prime adaptation partly because I'm a huge fan of the book, partly because by pure coincidence, the lead role is being played by an actress whose other shows I'm slightly obsessed with (but not in a dressing up, trying to become them, lost in a fantasy world kind of way a la Rubee). Don't ask where this thought came from haha, but it occurred to me last night that the actress playing the lead role would actually be a brilliant role model for Ruby (I hate the word 'idol' with a passion). She's been sensible enough to keep her personal life as separate as possible from her public persona, but from what has made it onto social media, she's a bit eccentric and doesn't conform to the typical things her/Rubee's age bracket are into. She has that same too pure for this world vibe Rubee forces. The difference is a) it's not forced, and b) she seems to understand where the appropriate boundary is with sharing herself on social media. I don't think there's necessarily a problem with Rubee being both a grown adult and interested in aspects of Victorian childhood like literature- the problem is the obsessive roleplaying and so openly presenting it online, and the need for friends who are exactly like her. The actress in this series that's totally going to be hijacked by the Rubees of this world seems to have a very normal, healthy amount of friends who affectionately joke at some of her 'odder' traits, but are genuine friends despite not sharing ALL her interests.
If you've made it this far, I guess what I'm trying to say is Ruby would probably be much happier, healthier and more stable mental health-wise if she realised her black-and-white approach to friendships is doing her absolutely no favours. If she stays determined to limit her friendships to people who are exactly like her but refuses to evolve as a person herself, her friendship circles are going to be increasingly worrying young in comparison to her own age as life moves on and she moves backwards. There's no reason she can't be friends with people with whom she has age in common rather than middle grade fiction.
On a final note, because I've probably bored everyone to death with this post- I dread to think what Rubee would make of the fanbase that is inevitably going to follow the lead actress into the Amazon series if she does claim it as cottagecore/little princess/secret garden core. But she could learn an awful lot from how she handles interactions with impressionable fans.
