Ruby Gloom

Cute as a button, perhaps even one sewn over your eye, Coraline-style.

Every so often I'll come across a show I've never heard of that takes me completely by surprise and - for a brief time - absolutely demands my full attention. I didn't know it until more recently, but the word for that feeling is "hyperfixation", and it happens to a lot of people, especially people with ADHD or people on the autism spectrum. The jury's still out on whether or not I'm on that spectrum, though I have my suspicions, but back in 2007 or so, I encountered Ruby Gloom by sheer accident and fell into a hyperfixation that lasted several years. So let me tell you a little about it.

Come take a walk on the bright side of the dark side with me.

Ruby Gloom is a cute as heck all-ages cartoon about a group of spooky little monster people who live in a Victorian-esque nightscape land called Gloomsville. All your favorite Monster High archetypes are here: creepy doll, cyclops, skeleton, banshee, frankenstein, etc, and they all live together in Ruby's mansion at the top of the curlicue hill just like the one in The Nightmare Before Xmas. Each episode is just a cute little slice of their totally normal lives.

It is in fact very normal to have trouble sleeping on a bed of nails.

...and what, you ask? That's it, really. There's no other shoe to drop. No tragic backstory, no sudden shock twist, no hidden meaning, no goddamn coma theory bullshit. It's just a cute little cartoon about happy little halloween people going about their day, baking cakes and forming a rock band and putting on plays and supporting each other's weird little hobbies and dreams. I know it's hard in this day and age to imagine a totally straight slice of life show with no hard left turns or deeply meaningful representations of mental health, but that really is all there is to Ruby Gloom.

But, you ask, if there's no deeper meaning, then how did I end up so hyperfixated on it?

I can hear your deep-seated need for emotional turmoil from way over here.

The simple answer is that the show is just genuinely fun. The characters are cute, the writing is simple but playful, the jokes are naturally funny, and the occasional musical numbers are cool and memorable (most of them, anyway). You could put this on for kids and find yourself watching it along with them. I wouldn't call it adult-friendly in the same vein as something like Phineas and Ferb, but a good slice of life humor can make anyone laugh. Just listen to the two heads-one braincell banter between the conjoined brother rock stars Frank and Len. Comedy knows no age limits!

I'm not lying when I say they named an entire episode named after The Who's "Quadrophenia".

Speaking of adult comedy, one thing that really hooked me is the way characters in this show never attack or insult each other. The worst they do is misunderstand or disagree, but they almost never lash out or put each other down. Well, except Misery, who puts herself down on the regular, but you would too if you spent every day dodging random lightning strikes generated by your own bad luck. There isn't a mean-spirited bone in the entire cast's bodies, and that was a nice change of pace for me after the absolutely venomous insult comedy phase of the 90s and 00s. Ruby Gloom's genuine nicey-nice approach hit me during a time when all my college classmates kept insisting I sit down and watch South Park's "Make Love Not Warcraft" episode ad infinitum, and the jarring contrast between the two completely altered my views on comedy at the time.

"I was doing an up-do, and it up and went."

Circling back to Phineas and Ferb for a moment, shortly after my Ruby Gloom hyperfixation ended came a new one for Phineas and Ferb, and I think my time spent with Ruby rewriting my comedy values and my tastes colored the way I viewed Phineas. It really got me thinking about genuinity and accepting people as they are. I started finding new ways of appreciating characters, and it started opening up my character writing and analytical skills, which in part inspired me to write that P&F fan comic (check the Art section for that, coming soon). I know that tragedy, trauma, and raw emotion are what people seem to value most in their writing and in the art they consume, but I think this honest, simple slice of life stuff can be just as powerful. Watching blorbos simply Be gave me a much better picture of who they were than focusing exclusively on their tragic backstories!

The most tragic thing you'll get in Ruby Gloom is Skullboy not knowing what kind of people his ancestors were, which is why he keeps trying new hobbies every episode.

That same simplicity also extends into the show's lovely art style. The gothic aesthetic borrows heavily from artists like Henry Selick and Margaret Keane, but simplifies and modernizes it in a very Hot Topic-friendly kind of way that gives the characters a distinct and charming appearance. I'm consistently surprised Ruby didn't pop off bigger as a character, especially considering she was originally created as a clothing mascot. But I guess there's no accounting for taste in an era that was still obsessed with Gir singing the Doom Song instead.

When was the last time you saw a little goth cyclops who was into extreme sports?

Anyway, classic or not, Ruby Gloom is one of those weird little inexplicable shows that has stuck with me for years, partly because it was instrumental in redefining my modern tastes, but mostly because it's just a nice, fun little show. I'm not nominating it for any awards, not even as a Hidden Gem or Underrated Sleeper, so don't feel bad if you've never seen it. Ruby Gloom is a show you just kinda come home to, sit down and watch, laugh a little, then move along with your evening. I just happened to be there watching it when I needed to be.

Sure, Flash animation was cheap, but it was still used to its fullest extent for its time.