Ho Yay/Playing With

Basic Trope: Two same-sex characters, often canonically heterosexual, have romantic subtext.

Played Straight...uh, we mean Homosexual: Bob and Charlie, while canonically straight, have been known to hold hands, hug, and exchange flirty banter.
- Alice and Carol doing the above with each other.
Exaggerated: Bob and Charlie are pretty much living in the Transparent Closet, hugging and holding hands every single episode, gazing longingly at each other, and even kissed once. On the lips. Everyone Can See It but them, who insist on dating girls.
Up to Eleven: Literally the Transparent Closet.
Justified: Bob is bi-curious.
- Bob and Charlie are intensely close Heterosexual Life Partners who, although they may consider themselves straight, are comfortable enough with each other to jokingly flirt and act like a romantic couple.
- Bob and Charlie live in ancient Greece, or some similar culture.
- Either Everyone Is Bi or it's just them.
- The main cast is made up entirely of one gender.
Inverted: Bob and Charlie are the Official Couple, but Bob has insane amounts of UST with Alice, so much so that Bob/Alice has become a Fan-Preferred Couple.
- The romance is actually the text-text. Fans interpret this as a stealth hatred.
Subverted: Bob is exchanging flirty banter with someone, who we are led to believe is Charlie. Just as he asks the person out, the camera zooms back, and we see it was Alice all along.
Double Subverted: ...Alice: "I'd love to go out with you, Bob." Bob: "Uh...I was talking to Charlie, actually."
Parodied: Bob acts perfectly straight around everyone else, and Camp Gay around Charlie.
- A parody of Star Trek decides to take the subtext between the Kirk and Spock Expies Beyond the Impossible.
- Now I shall force Yugi to duel the one he loves most! And according to all the fanfiction I’ve read, that would be Joey.
Deconstructed: Bob is bisexual, and unable to accept himself for this. Charlie is attracted to Bob, but doesn't want to make him uncomfortable. The confusion and angst this causes winds up tearing the friendship apart.
- Bob and Charlie live in a setting that is oppressive to gays, and because of this, views any close male/male friendship with suspicion, making it hard for Bob and Charlie to be friends.
Reconstructed: They learn to accept themselves and each other for who they are, and wind up together.
- They decide they don't care about anyone else's opinion of their friendship.
Zig Zagged: Bob and Charlie act perfectly straight in one scene and not so much in another. In another Bob flirts with Charlie and Charlie shoots it down, and then the two switch places in yet another scene.
Averted: It is clear in the work who is straight and who is gay, with no confusing subtext.
Enforced: "We want to attract a periphery demographic of Fangirls, so we'll add in romantic subtext between the two male leads."
- Although Bob and Charlie aren't intended to be any kind of romantic couple, the actors portraying them have clear chemistry and they play it up for a laugh. When the fan-base responds approvingly, the producers decide to just go with it.
- For Les Yay: Girl-On-Girl Is Hot.
- They want to hint a relationship in an American kid's show.
Lampshaded: Charlie: "Bob, are you hitting on me?"
Invoked: Faux Yay
Defied: Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?
Discussed: Interviewer: "Considering the exceptionally close relationship between yourself and Charlie, and the rumors about you two, would you provide a comment for us? Bob: "Uh... I had not been aware of the rumors, though I was told Charlie had encountered them, uh..."
Conversed: "And scenes like that are precisely why I ship Bob/Charlie. Now for the grand finale... Yay 60s!"
Played For Laughs: Bob and Charlie are actually straight. However, everyone around them is intractably convinced that they're gay, with the result that women that they're interested in reject them because they believe them to be gay, gay men keep hitting on them, and everyone encourages them to take those final steps out of a closet they aren't actually in. This causes them quite a bit of frustration.
Played For Drama: Bob and Charlie's close relationship cause them both to neglect Alice and Carol, their respective Love Interests. This leads Alice and Carol to leave them, and Bob and Charlie have a falling-out, only to ultimately reconcile and go back to being close, but with added bitterness.
- Bob and Charlie initially play it for comedy by trying to seduce a girl and having a threeway with her, and then they never speak to each other again.
Plotted A Good Waste: Used to foreshadow Bob or Charlie's eventual Coming Out Story.

Back to Ho Yay