Nu ser jeg natten i farver

If Niall even brought up the idea of a polycule he’d be in the figurative and literal dog house for the foreseeable. He knows Ruben well enough to not bring it up anyways.

i wonder how and why alby is so sexually confident/carefree for someone that grew up the way he did. like he cant shake hsnds but can hold someones penis. and presumbly he was about to have sex with niall with no condom or anything like that. it makes me wonder

That was one of the cunty-est lines in the series and I love it. I think so! But more in rebellion to his upbringing rather than because that’s how it’s done in his social circle. To shake hands is a near-universal gesture, and to reject that in the establishment class is another way to say that he won’t buy into that system. This is Thatcher’s Britain after all.

Some of the men in my husband’s family went to private school and from what they’ve shared, same sex relationships among the pupils were pretty common, with most of them not considering themselves gay/queer. So there is a strong possibility that is where Alby’s own sexual awakening occurred. I must also add that abuse of pupils by staff & other students was not unheard of well into the 1980s so we cannot discount that as the source of his experience. Though he doesn’t seem to have hang ups about sex itself, those stem from his sexuality making him a target.

I didn’t pick up in the lack of condom in the scene, but he doesn’t strike me as the type to be reckless in that regard, especially with the AIDS epidemic at the time.

I also find him to be a layered character whom a British audience can reflexively understand & place in the social hierarchy, whereas the international audience may not. His fish-out-of-water persona becomes more intriguing when we see that:

- Alby is at the very least middle class. He has the classic RP accent of the 1980s that indicated social class rather than geographic origin. This was and still is the exception in the UK, where your accent is usually telling of where you’re from, your class, and your education. This would make him stand out at the uni in the show.

- He was privately educated before uni. Historically, only about 7% of students in the UK attend fee paying schools. Given the tuition fees and the relative low salaries here, only a small part of the population can afford to send their children to private school. Attending one of these schools is just as much about the prestige, connections, and etiquette as it is the (debatably) better education. It’s not inconceivable that Alby is the first “posh” person Niall’s truly met.

In an excellent bit of casting, Bilal Hasna aka Young Alby, went to the old Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Hertfordshire where the yearly high school tuition is now £32,487 (US$43,325.00/€37,500). The school dates back to 1690.

- Alby is English. He is just one of many students to travel the well-worn path from London & the Home Counties to the North of England and Scotland. However, they tend to go to Stirling, Edinburgh, & St. Andrew’s. Going to Glasgow West University is a bit left field and probably his parents bargain as he explores what he wants to do. If he were Scottish, even middle class, he would have that accent. He could be very upper class Scottish, the type that send their children to English boarding schools à la Rose Leslie, but then he wouldn’t end up at a 2nd tier uni.

This last point is why I’m baffled that he even returned to Glasgow as an adult. Why would you go back to the city where you were viciously attacked? To overcome your fears? To stand pound and say “I not only survived but thrived”? Sir I’m intrigued I need to know more.

And this is all before we add the elements of his sexuality and race. The first played a direct impact on the story, but the latter doesn’t really seem to impact it at all. Potentially a modern tolerance dropped into the script.

Still all of these elements make him stand out at Glasgow West and quite intriguing, foreign, and exciting to a closeted working class lad from a Glaswegian housing estate 20 minutes up the road.

Lori Kennedy is a lot of things. And like all of us, not all of them flattering. But she knows her son and she’s seen more than anyone the relationship between Niall and Ruben develop into something she doesn’t fully have the words for, but that she can see the magnitude of. More than either of them could until it was too late.

She is happy Niall is settling down with Alby, someone steady & kind that will allow Niall to live authentically. But the second she knows Ruben is on his way to the wedding, she is resigned to something big occurring. She knows the connection between them is too great & too strong to allow them to move forward separately once they reconnect. It’s why she’s knocking back glasses of Sauvi B before the wedding speech. She knows the day will end in a dramatic way - her sons eloping or someone dead.