the world is fit for all manner of mysteries

i love being a cowboy in the 1920s i might just teake out my poorly repressed feelings for my brother onto his jailbait vixen stepson until he murders me with anthrax

AMC really struck gold with the unreliable narrator idea because now people will insist that any flaw in the storytelling is actually a genius premeditated reflection of a fallible narrator, any pacing issues are actually a genius premeditated reflection of a characters psyche, and any lack of character development is actually a genius premeditated reflection on a characters refusal to face their own trauma, and having cheap looking production is actually a genius premeditated reflection of a characters memories, and any unwarranted deviation from the source material is actually a genius premeditated lie that will be proven false at some unspecified point, and any poor handling of sensitive subjects is actually a genius premeditated commentary on the characters own failings, etc, etc.

i guess when i've said in the past that ruben does not know niall is gay (pre 2014), its less that i think ruben believes niall to be straight as like. i think ruben is the kind of guy to whom "gay man" is more of a discreet gender category than it is a description of sexual attraction and behavior. so i do think ruben has some degree of conscious awareness that niall is attracted to him, but ruben is also attracted to niall so that's not necessarily evidence of gayness. i think if ruben was given a truth serum and forced to articulate his conscious understanding of what he and niall feel for each other he would honestly say "we're brothers and that's why i love him so intensely and it can feel so overpowering and uncomfortable that's just how it is with family". on the other hand i think he intuits that there's Something Different about niall w the sixth sense of every schoolyard bully and he's very aware that niall is constantly failing at manhood as ruben understands it. which is sometimes fine with him (when it makes him feel like more of a Real Man by comparison) and sometimes excruciating (double the humiliation if niall out-performs him in some metric of masculinity). so like. he knows and he doesn't know. he's okay with it and he's not okay with it. hope this helps!