Needs Help: Ambiguously Gay

What is this trope exactly about, anyway? Is it about people who act stereotypically gay, but does not fit into either Camp Gay or Camp Straight, or is it about people whose interactions with people of the same sex hinting that they are gay? I see two versions of the same trope or two different tropes here.

Some of these examples aren't even about homosexuality. They would fit better in In Touch with His Feminine Side or Tomboy/The Lad-ette. Also there are several Zero Context Examples, and some where the viewer might have just thought they were gay.

edited 19th May '13 10:46:34 AM by MikuruFan

Definitively not the first. Previous topic.

I don't like the first definition either. It's too subjective.

edited 19th May '13 11:53:21 AM by MikuruFan

The trope is supposed to refer to a character that shows gay stereotypes, but has no clear sexual orientation. However, pretty much every example I've seen for this trope misuses it as a synonym for Ho Yay or Homoerotic Subtext.

edited 19th May '13 3:14:41 PM by MyTimingIsOff

It is supposed to be about characters that display gay stereotypes but the author is never clear whether or not the character is in fact gay.

Unfortuantly, because exactly what constitutes gay stereotypes is somewhat subjective, and the trope rarely depends on Word of God it has often turned into a mere excuse for tropers to display their Slash Goggles rather than a reliable exploration of authorial intent.

edited 19th May '13 3:18:04 PM by Catbert

The "Ambiguously X" family apparently is about things that lean towards X, but not overtly so. Easy for such a thing to end up being abused as hell.

So, the trope name is ambiguous. The trope is about something ambiguous. The description of what said ambiguity is is ambiguous.

I wonder if there's a flaw in there somewhere that may lead people to misinterpret the trope. I'm not sure what it is, though. It's so... what's the word?

Apparently this is Hide Your Gays, but for individuals, rather than couples, am I right?

Perhaps Ambiguously Gay could be made into an ambig for tropes like Ho Yay, Homoerotic Subtext, Hide Your Lesbians, and so on?

Sounds good to me, although I'm probably biased since the trope as-is rubs me the wrong way. Personality traits don't code to orientation in real life.

^^ Good idea.

I wouldn't object to it. This page does seem a bit Shipping Goggles-y.

Unlocked and moved to TRS per request.

Retagged the article.

Yeah, I think this should be a disambig. In practice, this is nothing but "character that some troper thinks might be gay for whatever reason".

I don't think there is any issue here to be resolved. The description is perfectly clear. Whether or not someone likes that this trope exists isn't the point.

2000+ wicks; healthy inbound links. A mild state of "subjectivity" does not call for such a major uprooting.

edited 27th May '13 12:05:43 PM by FastEddie

Wouldn't it make more sense for this to be a YMMV instead of getting rid of this and making it a disambig? I mean, what the stereotypes of a group may be can differ from region to region; it's my understanding that the stereotypes for gay men in the West is the effeminate, skinny, and flamboyant men while in the East, the hyper-masculine and strong men is the stereotype.

I realize we have a thread for the YMMV banner, but what I don't realize is why this is in TRS or Projects (which I think is where this thread was placed before being moved to TRS).

This thread was all the time in TRS and it was about the definition being unclear.

Different stereotypes are not really a reason for YMMV, though, since they depend upon the production country, not the audience.

"Unlocked and moved to TRS" is what I was going off of.

Anyways, I was trying to say that it'd be ambiguous to one group and completely unrelated to homosexuality to another.

The thread was locked and auto-moved to the TRS Morgue. That's why.

As for the second thing, I assume that we ignore complaints that ignore the national origin.

I'm still skeptical that "character meets some gay stereotypes but never actually shows attraction to the same sex" is actually a trope. (For the record, I tend to assume all characters are/might be bi unless demonstrated that they're not attracted to one sex or another.) Ho Yay is a trope that already covers behaviour that might or might not actually indicate attraction to a member of the same sex. Gay Stereotypes are also a trope. A lack of overlap between the two is not a trope.

edited 27th May '13 3:10:53 PM by Pig_catapult

Clock is set.

Clock's up; locking for inactivity. No action is to be taken based on this thread.