Misused: Ambiguously Gay

As has been discussed in the Ho Yay repair thread (see my post and others on the subject), the definition for Ambiguously Gay needs some updating due to the changes in the way general audiences perceive homosexuality nowadays. Currently the definition is meant to focus on characters who demonstrate stereotypically "gay" mannerisms (aka the Camp part of Camp Gay), but haven't been explicitly confirmed to be Camp Gay or Camp Straight.

However, as it's currently used it's a catchall for characters who, for various reasons, are suggested to be homosexual^note in the sense of implications of attraction to the same gender and/or a lack of interest in the opposite gender by the primary text itself, as opposed to Ho Yay (the fans) or Word of Gay (secondary text). Essentially, analogous to how Ambiguously Bi is both used and defined (incidentally, the page definition for Ambiguously Bi is written with the assumption that Ambiguously Gay is about attraction and not stereotypical mannerisms, in contradiction with the actual page definition for Ambiguously Gay, a further reason to update the main page). Whether or not the characters show stereotypically camp traits is no longer a factor in newer wicks. My thoughts on this are that this isn't. Looking at these four pages alone brings up these examples:

Looking through the wicks for more examples:

• Agent Aika: Both examples are rather ZCE, but again, nothing about stereotypical mannerisms.
  • Rion is this towards Aika.
  • Karen is very ambiguous in R-16 and ZERO thanks to her behavior towards other females.
• DEVILMAN crybaby: The fact that Ryo is very much in love with Akira is made subtler, in contrast with the manga where Xenon outright confirms it. Not about stereotypes, also potentially misuse as it's about a non-overtly but canonically queer character.
• Ergo Proxy: Iggy. Later episodes reveal that Re-l deliberately chose him to sound this way. ZCE but potentially a case as I believe this character uses "lavender speech" associated with gay men. However as an android he's not homosexual, just extremely Camp and thus this trait may not even apply.
• Glasslip:
  • It's implied that Sachi harbours romantic feelings for Tōko, although whether or not this holds true remains ambiguous, as Sachi's actual confession in episode ten turns out to be a request to remain friends with Tōko. Only about attraction and not stereotypes.
  • Tōko's younger sister Hina seems to become rather enamored with Yanagi, going so far as to call Yanagi her "five-thirty girl". See above.
• Princess Principal: Ange and Princess's relationship can very easily be interpreted as a secret romantic one. While the show drops a number of hints (made more plausible by the sneaky-spies-and-espionage theme), it's never made explicit. They mention not wanting to have to hide their relationship; but that could just mean that they want to be friends without dealing with each of them pretending to be the other, and the many plots to assassinate Princess, whichever of them that actually is. About a relationship with implied attraction, nothing about stereotypes.
• Ronin Warriors: The Warlord Sekhmet/Naaza shows signs of this, though the show never draws attention to it. Not only is Sekhmet the name of a goddess, but his "snake-like" physical traits include large eyes with pink-shadowed lids. A lot of his taunts towards the heroes tend to be a bit suggestive. Possibly about stereotypes? But this is closer to Ho Yay either way.
  Sekhmet: Feel my venom, biting into your flesh!
  • The English dub may have given his character a deep, manly voice to counteract this. Natter.
• Samurai Flamenco: In the following episode, Moe is shown eagerly awaiting another kiss, and becomes visibly disappointed when it doesn't happen. In later episodes she states she doesn't mind being used by Mari, and even tries to convince Mari to let her sleep in the same bed as her. Only about attraction, no stereotypes.
• When Marnie Was There: Anna develops a close and intimate friendship with the titular Marnie. They go on a Old-Fashioned Rowboat Date, cute dancing together, and declaring their love for each other. She also gets upset when Marnie shows interest in a boy. The last minute reveal that Marnie is Anna's Dead All Along grandmother as a child really muddles up the story's intentions. About implied attraction, nothing about stereotypes.
• Witchblade: Segawa could practically be an Expy for Waylon Smithers. ZCE.
• Witch Hunter Robin: Harry is a rather effeminate-looking man who runs a stylish bar and is the STNJ's Team Mom. '''Correct usage about stereotypes, but no indication of lack of heterosexual attraction. Could just as easily be a case of Camp.
• Blogging Twilight: Marcus can come off as this. ZCE.
• Optic Ink AU: Sammy and Norman along with Joey and Henry, due to the time period the game takes place in. ZCE but nothing about stereotypes.
• Texts from Superheroes: Mr. Terrific has a weird obsession with balls. Sexual attraction, nothing about stereotypes.

• Tropes A to B:
  • Gus, whose unusually strong attachment to his initial meth-distributing partner (even twenty years after his death) has provoked audience speculation as to his sexuality. Word of God even states that this is a legitimate interpretation of their relationship. He references a wife and kids, but they never show up onscreen, and thus may not even exist. More a case of Ho Yay, even with Word of God input. Again, no mention of stereotypical mannerisms.
  • Gale worships Walt and gives him a copy of Leaves of Grass, by the famously Ambiguously Gay Walt Whitman, that he signs "To my other favorite W.W." The rest of his tastes and personality, especially in his home, brush against some gay stereotypes, although there is never any confirmation either way. Potentially correct use of the current definition as the entry does mention he conforms to stereotypical mannerisms of some kind.
• A Certain Magical Index Gremlin: He's obsessed with Touma and prone to sounding... rather^* "I’m glad to see all the more how extraordinary you are.” questionable^* "I thought that was who the ‘wonderful enemy’ I had imagined was!” when^* "You are not shining in the slightest right now.” he's^* "You’re so amazing! You withstood my first attack without destroying anything!!” displaying^* "I’m all fired up. My engine has been running full-throttle ever since I first heard about you.” it^* "But you have an excellent look in your eyes now. You’ve regained that look. That is the look my enemy needs. The kind of fight that is satisfying no matter who wins is finally looking like a real possibility. I need a fight like that to get what I want.”. Purely about vague attraction and Double Entendre dialogue and nothing about stereotypical mannerisms.
• A New Hope (Danganronpa): Was blushing at how close he ended up next to the 'breathtaking' plastic surgeon. Later confirmed to like him. Too much, actually. Canon gay at this point, but only about attraction and not about stereotypical mannerisms.
• A Very Potter Musical: Quirrell doesn't seem to be too interested in picking up chicks. Not to mention that he admits he has been "single all his life" and has a fondness for flowers and books by Jane Austen. [[spoiler:He and Voldemort have adopted a daughter in the third musical, but the exact nature of their relationship is still ambiguous. Correct usage as it mentions his lack of attraction to women combined with stereotypical mannerisms.
• Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: Scratch seems to show a little too much like for Robotnik. May belong on Ho Yay rather than this. But it's only about attraction, not stereotypical mannerisms.

Of the above roughly 40 entries, only around 3-4 actually fit the current definition of a character whose homosexuality is implied by their stereotypical traits, and even that entry does feel the need to bring up implied attraction beyond the exhibition of Camp traits.

My thoughts are this is less misuse, and more the fact that the current definition for Ambiguously Gay (campiness and certain kinds of outrageous personality traits as an implication of homosexuality) is out-of-date. Many creators nowadays are aware that homosexuality (which is strictly defined as attraction to the same gender) and campiness need not be linked so tightly, as seen by the predominance of Straight Gay men in newer media, which in itself has done a lot to further uncouple homosexuality from campiness. The current definition states that this kind of association does represent a Broken Trope due to the increase in making the homosexuality of such characters explicit rather than ambiguous.

But I do think the concept of the text suggesting without confirming that a character may be a homosexual through means other than gender nonconforming or stereotypical behaviors is still tropeworthy under the current name. Thus I believe the trope definition should be expanded to include this kind of use, since Ambiguously Bi is already used the same way. Campy traits can instead just be relegated to one of the means a text can imply without confirming a character as gay, rather than the primary one. Especially since the current definition also has issues with being a catchall for examples of Camp that don't fall under Camp Gay (for explicit examples) and Camp Straight (for examples that are explicitly not gay).

Edited by AlleyOop on May 14th 2020 at 11:54:55 AM

Sorry for the long wait, ~Alley Oop. Opened for discussion.

Seems reasonable. I wonder if we should spin off a trope (perhaps called Queer Coding) for the current, stereotype-focused definition. This was once quite common, but has fallen out of favor, but is discussed often in enough in criticism/media studies that I think it deserves its own page.

I wonder if it's a good idea to just relegate the old definition as an older sub-class of the current trope as a case of Evolving Trope. Works continue to imply homosexuality using camp traits, they just aren't the majority these days now that standards have changed and Straight Gay became more normalized.

Most wicks that are still strictly of that older version can probably be moved to one of the Camp tropes or split between one of them and this one.

By "sub-class," you're not suggesting making a whole new subtrope, right? Just retool the definition a bit to emphasize that there's this one particular variant that is pretty outdated?

Also, would this be a good time to discuss an Ambiguous Sexuality supertrope? Because I've seen a lot of arguing (mostly over Ambiguously Bi) where a supertrope would help.

Yes, the former. Because it's valid, just rendered kinda outdated by shifts in gay representation and thus what the standards for implied homosexuality look like based on contemporary understanding how gay characters appear in the media.

Certain things, like an implied attraction to men, are timeless due to the way that homosexuality is literally defined. But other things like using Camp in men and butchness in women as a form of sincere queer coding (and not Fanon) are also valid, just perhaps not as much of a component in our current understanding of "normative" homosexuals.

As for queer-coding, Gender-Nonconforming Equals Gay might be helpful.

I feel like the main problem with this trope is the name. There are so many ways a character can have ambiguity about their sexuality, even in works that acknowledge the existence of homosexuality. "Queer-Coded Character" or the existing G Rated Gay may work. There's definitely a workable character trope there, but the misuse is holding it back.

I've actually never been fond of Ambiguously Gay or Ambiguously Bi, because they pretty much derailed into speculation. There are many examples that use it for "Alex has a very intense friendship with Bob". For this reason, I'm instinctively opposed to Ambiguous Sexuality, but we do have Ambiguous Gender Identity so maybe a sexuality variant wouldn't be too bad...

But I agree there is merit in this specific outdated type of "ambiguously gay", tying in with the Queer Coded Villain discussions that were happening in TLP. Maybe a "campy queercoding" trope would cut down the misuse and fandom speculation. I can also see a separate trope too for instances in-universe where characters wonder about someone's sexuality.

Edited by Synchronicity on May 12th 2020 at 12:10:24 PM

We've had this discussion before in other threads like the this Ho Yay discussion thread, and the general conclusion is that that the examples you described don't fit under Ambiguously Gay or Ambiguously Bi in the first place. Ambiguously Gay and Ambiguously Bi are for examples where the implications of same-sex attraction (which may or may not be confirmed) are not subtext, but explicitly part of the main text and thus objective. Tropers putting what you described under Ambiguously Gay instead of on the YMMV page are shoehorning in misuse due to Shipping Goggles. The main definition page for Ho Yay has a clarification point on it to help minimize that kind of misuse in the future.

Edited by AlleyOop on May 12th 2020 at 2:12:13 PM

I understand that those cases are misuse, my main gripe is that the misuse is rampant. I agree that it's the names that are broad.

All I know is that on the Ho Yay thread we got sidetracked by discussing Ambiguously Gay, and sort of came to an agreement that it'd be good to retool Ambiguously Gay to be a gay version of Ambiguously Bi, which is about character interaction rather than personality traits.

I still stand by that, however, I also think the stereotyping is an important thing to note and that a Queer Coding trope would be a good idea.

I think it should be pointed out that queer coding is a more broad concept than either the official or de facto uses of Ambiguously Gay. A character can be queer coded while still being explicitly straight. The canonical example is a Sissy Villain from a Golden Age Hollywood movie, who has a predatory attraction to the female lead, require the male lead to save her. These characters are explicitly straight in text, but are the prototypical example of a "queer coded villain", and where a lot of the idea of queer coding comes from.

Good point, queer coding applies to a lot of Camp Straight characters as well. Ambiguously Gay is not a clear name for this concept.

Yep; that's why I'd rather move those examples to a new trope, and retool Ambiguously Gay.

If we retool this trope so that it matches Ambiguously Bi, what will be the difference between Ambiguously Gay and Ho Yay? Also, I feel like if we do that, Ambiguously Gay is just going to invite examples of "I think this character is gay, so they're an example".

Ho Yay is a complicated beast, so frustrating that our TRS effort was completely dropped without fixing anything.

However, it's specifically about when two characters have unintentional gay subtext.

Ambiguously Gay would just be when one character appears to really be interested characters of the other gender when they're not explicitly gay. It could be intentional or not, but it'd be kept ambiguous if they're actually gay or not; whereas Ho Yay isn't about ambiguity or "hints" about a character's sexuality at all, just about what fans perceive to be happening between two characters.

They can overlap, but they're not the same concept. If they were, Ho Yay would also cover Ambiguously Bi, and it doesn't.

So this is going to be a YMMV trope, I take it? If so, how is it different from Ho Yay. If not, how will objective criteria be nailed down?

Creator intent. There has to be reason to think that the ambiguity is intentional.

Edited by Twiddler on May 12th 2020 at 1:05:21 AM

Is Ambiguously Bi YMMV? No, so this wouldn't be either.

I'm not sure where you're getting the YMMV part from, except for the possibility that fans might pick up on hints that weren't intentional, and as discussed on the Ho Yay thread it's pretty much impossible to separate intentional stuff from unintentional stuff. But since Ambiguously Gay could just as easily be completely intentional, it wouldn't be YMMV. It's not about fan interpretation; it's just about how the character acts in the story and whether or not it hints towards them being Gay or not.

Pretty straight forward IMO, not sure where the confusion is coming from.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 12th 2020 at 4:07:37 AM

I feel like Ambiguously Gay, Ambiguously Human, etc. need to either be made YMMV or pruned of examples where tropers speculate over aspects that are not brought up in the work.

Probably; but I do think they shouldn't be YMMV since these things are often intentional, but also intentionally left vague; so it'd be expected for the audience to notice these things, where a YMMV trope would be based on fan interpretation alone and isn't really that noteworthy.

The only reason I said it might be unintentional at times is because we don't always know creator intent, so you can never 100% be sure. But that doesn't mean they are unintentional. We just can't be sure.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 12th 2020 at 4:14:02 AM

It's the different between text or subtext. Creator intent is not always explicit, but evidence of Ambiguously Gay will always come from objective occurrences within the work, and statements that strongly suggest the capacity for attraction towards the same gender and/or disinterest in the opposite gender, regardless of whom it's aimed at. This allows for a lot of in-universe lamphading, while excluding most "shippy" material, as it's not really indicative of homosexual attraction in general the way the trope is supposed to imply.

There's still going to be some discretion involved even with textual evidence since creator intent is always tricky to decipher if they aren't upfront about it, and because there will always be a group of Heteronormative Crusaders who will be able to concoct some means of attempting to rationalize it away no matter how heavy-to-confirmed but unspoken the text's homosexual implications may be. However, an easy sign to differentiate the two is that Ho Yay, being about subjective interpretations of existing character interactions, tends to be focused on Alternative Character Interpretation of the relationship between two specific characters, which is less indicative of a character's overall orientation, and often is not attempting to provide deliberate hints towards such at all.

Edited by AlleyOop on May 14th 2020 at 11:30:41 AM

Having thoght about it for a while, I believe Ally said it best. I think that the existing trope should be "objective occurrences and statements within the work that strongly suggest the capacity for attraction towards the same gender and/or disinterest in the opposite gender, regardless of whom it's aimed at." Stereotypical mannerisms are already covered by many other tropes listed under In Touch with His Feminine Side and Tomboy, so I don't think they should be a part of the new definition.

What is the line between Ambiguously Gay and Homoerotic Subtext if the former will be defined by what a character is attracted to? Judging by Homoerotic Subtext's description I guess its for canon subtext between specific pairings, right?