Ruby Flashyfur, also known as Vanilla de Vissen is the main antagonist of the Thea Sisters. She is a female student at Mouseford Academy and is the founder of the Ruby Crew and rival to the Thea Sisters and some others.
Biography[]
Barely anything was known about Ruby's early life, besides the fact that Ruby's mother was the founder and CEO of a cosmetics company and that she and her brother Ryder came to Mouseford to study as normal students, and that Ruby most likely made the Ruby Crew (consisting of herself, Connie, Alicia and Zoe) as a direct rival to the Thea Sisters.
Physical Appearance[]
Ruby lives up to her name, having wavy, ruby red hair that reaches down to her tail, accompanying her green eyes and tan-colored fur. Her outfits vary (most of them involving a lot of light green), but the one she is most commonly seen in is a light green short-sleeved crop top with a detailed pale yellow v-neck (sometimes with pale yellow sleeve hems as well), a brown choker with a dark green pendant, a brown belt with a golden buckle, a denim-colored a-line skirt with green flower designs along the hem, light green knee-high socks, and olive green or dark brown boots.
Family[]
The Flashyfur family was a family with immense wealth and commercial success to their name, and Ruby was very proud of it. Ruby's father was unknown as of now, but her mother was a very successful businesswoman and CEO of De Vissen Cosmetics. She also has a brother named Ryder Flashyfur, but she doesn't really care too much about him unless he benefits her in whatever she gets herself into. The two often disagree and end up on opposite ends of arguments, but they care for each other in the end. (Ryder does care for Ruby, but it's unclear if Ruby cares for Ryder. It's implied that she doesn't care for him all too much.)
Personality[]
Right from the get-go in her Mouseford debut, Ruby shows herself to be very prideful and attention-seeking. When an event in Mouseford or Whale Island is announced, the first thing Ruby does is fantasize about how said event will catapult her to popularity and stardom, and the second thing she does is come up with a plan to guarantee success in gaining popularity through said event. If she sees something as purely educational without any sort of popularity gig involved, then she will doubtlessly be disinclined or even adamantly against participating, to the degree of calling it "boring" or "useless" and dragging the Ruby Crew with her or even calling them "traitors" if they don't agree with her. If someone isn't paying attention to her because they're thinking about someone else, she will use her silver tongue to get their attention by talking smack about the person they're thinking about. She has no boundaries for this, as she is willing to even ruin the reputations of her teachers if it means they'll hog up the spotlight from them.
Ruby is spoiled and has the money to compensate for it. She has used an assumed large sum of money in her shenanigans, from hiring renovators to remodel the classroom the Thea Sisters used as a poetry meeting room, to buying a new "more professional" camera even though she already had a very powerful camera in the first place, to hiring professionals to do things for her in supposed student-only contests, to organizing a Flight of the Angels event and even an entire yacht party on her own- it's clear the Flashyfur bank account has done Ruby a lot of favors, and she is more than willing to exploit it.
She almost never plays fair. In nearly every single contest or event she has willingly participated in, Ruby is nearly always willing to sabotage and scheme her way to victory. Every dirty trick in the book is fair game for Ruby, as long as it will help her get to the top. She can even resort to casting aside her own crew and her teammates and even her own brother Ryder if it means victory and glory for her. That's not to say these choices work in her favor, though-- sometimes they even backfire and turn against her. How she fails varies. Whether it's because of her stubbornness, or whether it's because of a critical oversight in her plans, or whether it's because of the Thea Sisters foiling her plans; Ruby holds her head up high as a schemer at heart and will never fail to try to come out on top, even if the way she made it to the top is less than noble, let alone fair.
Ruby's competitiveness is driven by three things: her desire for fame, her wanting to please her mother, and her hatred and envy for the Thea Sisters. The desire for fame is obvious, but her mother has the final say on things in the end. As demonstrated in A Mouseford Musical, should her mother demand something out of Ruby, Ruby is very easily pressured into obeying, even doing things she doesn't want to do simply because her mother wants her to succeed, no matter the costs. It's heavily implied that Ruby got her habit of scheming and using underhanded tactics from her mother Rebecca, who is shown to indulge in the same nefarious and sketchy schemes on the regular in the comics.
Most importantly, however, Ruby often competes with the Thea Sisters because she hates and envies them. She sees them as inferior and often seeks to "prove" it in even the most menial of things involving them, albeit with more than unscrupulous methods. She envies and despises them because of their popularity among their peers, and she dreams of the day when she'll outshine them in the spotlight. This is by far the biggest reason she does nearly everything she's known for doing in the Mouseford books and even in the main books, and it's most likely the reason she founded the Ruby Crew in the first place. She is always seeking to indisputably dominate the spotlight and shove the Thea Sisters into a bad image until they are but a distant, forgotten memory.
The Comic Book Series[]
Vanilla is just as prideful as Ruby, but she's not as attention-seeking, mostly preferring to just stay on the sidelines for the most part and only going into competitions as religiously as Ruby does if her brother Vic or an outside force (like a celebrity arriving on the island or her mom doing something good for the island) provokes her. Her motives are also far less petty and surface-level. The comics (the earlier ones, at least) go into detail on Vanilla de Vissen's perspective on what the Thea Sisters are up to and how Vanilla feels about them. (It's important to note, however, that it's currently unknown if the information in the comics is canon to the Mouseford series. It probably isn't.) Rather than being purely petty and just wanting to overthrow the Thea Sisters in popularity, Vanilla is vengeful for what the Thea Sisters have done to her mother Vissia's plans in The Secret of Whale Island (taking to calling the Thea Sisters "snakes" and "schemers"). She sees herself as responsible for avenging what they've done to her mother, and is keen on exacting her revenge by ruining their public image, perhaps like how the Thea Sisters ruined her mother's plans and put her public image in jeopardy, which they do multiple times. Instead of just wanting to be in the spotlight because of a desire of fame, Vanilla feels that she is representing her mother in Whale Island and wants to make her proud by following in her footsteps and coming out on top.
How she attempts to come out on top, however, is very much different from the Mouseford books. While Ruby in the Mouseford books plots and schemes to win in every little trivial contest she sees worth winning, Vanilla in the comics plots and schemes to manipulate everyone into seeing the Thea Sisters as the ones in the wrong or even as bad people. She makes an emphasis in Revenge of the Lizard Club on using people as puppets (Alicia and Tanya, to be exact, but she doesn't really actively try manipulating Tanya or anything like that in the comic series), and most of what she does in the comics is try to put the Thea Sisters in a bad image or glorify her own mother (turning the students against them in Secret of the Waterfall in the Woods and creating a small conspiracy about the Thea Sisters in Revenge of the Lizard Club as prime examples).
Vanilla's plans do have a lot more substance and are a lot more foolproof than Ruby's, however. In nearly every single scheme that Vanilla has hatched, she's made sure that she was suspicious at most but can't be confirmed to be guilty, whereas Ruby is far less subtle than Vanilla. Moreover, she always makes sure she has a usable excuse to deflect what the Thea Sisters can accuse her of (either using twisted morals or weaponized self-confidence), and she isn't as hands-on in some of her other schemes, choosing to make things seem indirect but in reality be calculated and by all means intentional. Vanilla is much more of a mastermind working and scheming behind the scenes, aiming to put things to her advantage so she can use her assets in the future when the opportunity presents itself, willing to twist and warp things in favor of her own motives, regardless of competition.
In summary, Vanilla and Ruby are different from each other because Ruby wants to come out on top, and Vanilla wants to let her mother come out on top and bring the Thea Sisters down.
Trivia[]
- The name Ruby Flashyfur is a localization of her name by Scholastic. Her original name in the Italian books is Vanilla de Vissen, her mother and brother are Vissia and Vic de Vissen, and the Ruby Crew is called the Vanilla Girls.
- It's unclear whether Ruby is older than Ryder or otherwise, since they never address it in the books. Vanilla calls Vic "baby brother" and Vissia calls Vanilla her "youngest". Either way, it's unclear, but it might be leaning towards Vanilla being younger than Vic.
- Despite the family surname being Flashyfur, an illustration of a Flashyfur helicopter in The Missing Diary shows that the Flashyfur's logo is a purple V in a white background.
- This is a publishing error alluding to Scholastic's localization of the book series.
- Ruby is skilled in the arts (probably as a future career choice), being on the same acting level as Violet and competing for the role of Juliet in Drama at Mouseford.
- While Ruby is good at acting and can hold her own in dancing, she and Vanilla can't sing or play any instruments, due to not having any interest in the latter.
- Ruby landing the role of the Wicked Witch of the West for the school production of Wizard of Oz should be taken with a grain of salt, as the Wicked Witch of the West doesn't need to have a good singing voice.
- While Ruby is good at acting and can hold her own in dancing, she and Vanilla can't sing or play any instruments, due to not having any interest in the latter.
- Ruby has an assistant named Alan, who acts as a butler/henchman for her when the Ruby Crew isn't available.
- Alan is Vissia's secretary instead in the comics.
- She could be seen as a doppelgänger to Sally Ratmousen and the two share a lot in common, like having no honor or respect for morality.