Should AmbiguouslyGay and AmbiguouslyBi be YMMV?

If a character flirts with people of the same sex, and comments on their hotness, and Word of God says that character is straight... is there a trope for that?

I do believe that is Faux Yay.

^^ It could also be Gay Bravado. Or even a more elaborate example of Sorry, I'm Gay. Faux Yay (which has a frankly horrible snowclone name as it has nothing to do with any of the 'Yay' Audience Reactions) is specifically about a character who pretends to be gay for ulterior reasons.

Still like that idea that some jackass on the first page had about turning these pages into a disambig.

... Why isn't it just Faux Gay?

The tropes are about ambiguity, not completely misleading the audience.

edited 13th Oct '15 3:20:29 PM by Karxrida

It depends on how they are ambiguous and what is the basis of the examples. Are they from dialogues, actions etc that gives a hint that they prefer people of the same gender, or outright sterotypes?

Oh yeah, this is a thing.

Just make it In Universe Examples Only (i.e people In-Universe don't know). Way easier to reign in.

I'm not entirely sure where the line should be drawn between Ambiguously Bi and Bi The Way. Even if a character is not outright stated to be bisexual or proclaims themselves to be into both guys and girls, the evidence of it can often be too hard to ignore. Although I'm not entirely sure. I think such things should be YMMV.

One thing that makes this all particularly tricky is changing standards. It's not that long ago that being gay was actually illegal in a lot of places where it's more-or-less accepted today. (It's still illegal in some places, too, don't forget.) So, older works (e.g. Are You Being Served?) frequently used Ambiguously Gay as a way of getting stuff past the radar. Newer works, on the other hand, are more likely to play up the humour of the ambiguity if they have an Ambiguously Gay character, since they no longer need to Hide Your Gays.

It's almost like there's two tropes: Telling The Audience Your Character Is Gay Without Saying So and Teasing The Audience By Refusing To Clarify Your Characters Sexuality. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to tell those apart without Word of God. Especially with works made during the transition period (late eighties to early nineties, probably, in the UK and US).

Just thought I'd bump this up. I keep cleaning up "the character is presumably straight, BUT THERE'S AN INSTANCE OF HOYAY" to the point that this basically should be YMMV.

I think the YMMV part of Amb. Gay and Bi sort of depends on how you interpret the tropes and the hints necessary for them to be present. That's just me, though; I'm no expert on this kind of thing by any means.

Making it YMMV probably won't help the "bad examples" problem, though; maybe just have some form of rules for examples of the tropes so we don't get as many "probably straight with some ho yay moments" examples?

If Ambiguously Gay were to be made YMMV, then what makes it any different from Ho Yay?

Since I've seen this topic recurring again, I think this should be discussed again.

There's a TRS thread for it now, bud.

Thanks for the notice

removed

Edited by KingOfStickers on Jan 4th 2021 at 8:09:32 PM