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The user in question (courtesy link to history
) has only made a few edits, and it seems most of them are deleting entries they don't like (more than once in the case of AB entries, with the same "removing misinformation" reason), except back in 2020, where they were focused on objecting to Star Wars villains being described as Nazis By Any Other Name (hardly controversial) and adjacent tropes.
Maybe a bit of an agenda? It's hard to say with just a few edits to go on.
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If they're removing Ambiguously Bi entries and calling them "misinformation" thats definitely an agenda.
I feel like it kind of depends on context, though? Like if it's attached to characters who in no way have any ambiguity about their orientation, then it could be misinformation. Or maybe they just don't understand what Ambiguously Bi means (and that it's not us saying a character is bisexual, just that they could be based on their portrayal and actions).
Or it's an agenda. My point is though that there's some other explanations to consider here.
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I agree with Skyla. If it walks like a biphobic agenda and squawks like a biphobic agenda, it's a biphobic agenda.
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Found the tweet where Word of God states that they specifically avoided making him bi to avoid the Depraved Bisexual trope.
^^ To give you some context: if the Inquisitor (the main character) is a female elf, she can respond to Solas' aforementioned comments with flirtation and start a romance. It can't be overstated: this is the dialogue chain that starts Solas' romance sidequest. For everyone else, the dialogue chain stops there. So, that's ambiguity right there. And Solas is a ...complex character in a highly spoilery fashion, so there are In-Universe reasons why he can't be romanced by anyone other than a female elf.
Edited by RoundRobin - Fly, robin, fly! - ...I'm trying!
Okay, then yeah, it sounds like it's a bad removal then. I just want to be sure we don't always assume bigotry where it might just be ignorance.
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.....it's usually bigotry though
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I don’t know, I think the fact that we have Word of God stating Solas was deliberately made straight eliminates all ambiguity.
The line is the same for male and female Inquisitors but we know that Solas is only interested in women. The unclear part is not there.
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This discussion makes me wonder why the Ambiguously X tropes aren't ymmv (ambiguously brown aside) as they seem based on audience interpretation
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^Well, I think they are supposed to be objective. Ambiguously Bi is not "the audience thinks the character may be bi", but "the author has put in some clues that the character may be bi but also clues that they may not be".
But you have a point - if the author is deliberately ambiguous, it's hard to keep audience interpretation out of the examples. For example, what one reader interprets as a clue may be totally innocuous to another reader. And how do we know that the "clues" are intentional if we don't have Word of God?
It doesn't help that the trope definition itself talks about audience opinion. I don't know if that was there in the original definition or if it's been added to adapt the trope to misused examples (which is not kosher unless there was a TRS discussion about it).
Edited by GnomeTitan
I agree with Hello 83433, if we have Word of God that he is straight, Ambiguously Bi should not be listed on his page. The original troper who removed it could have left a better edit reason, though. I removed an Ambiguously Bi example from an MCU page myself recently for the same reason - the head writer explicitly stated that the relationship between two characters was never intended to be romantic, and he never intended to put in any "clues".
I also agree with Gnome Titan that if the author is deliberately ambiguous, it's hard to keep audience interpretation out of the examples. Probably, having a sizeable portion of the audience see the "clue" is enough?
Edited for clarity.
Edited by Asherinka
I see you points. I was under the impression that Ambiguous Whatever tropes were to be listed if there was enough corroborating evidence, regardless of what Word of God has said (because writers sometimes accidentally fumble characterization and whatnot).
The edit reason could have been better worded, but since this example is a misuse of the trope, I'm happy to leave it out.
I believe this matter is resolved now.
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The following entry under Ambiguously Bi was removed from Characters.Dragon Age Solas:
The reason given for the removal is:
Ambiguously Bi is, as the name implies, when a character's words or actions cast ambiguity on their sexual orientation. The only thing that can count as "fanon headbands" is the note at the end of the entry; everything else happens in-game, and the dialogue is the same for both female and male players.
Should I restore this?
Edit: fixing typos
Edited by RoundRobin