Quoiromantic Pride Flag (2015, Cor / epochryphal)
Identity Pride Flag ·
A deliberately non-rectangular flag for the quoi cluster, designed by Cor (Tumblr: epochryphal) and posted on 21 September 2015 as one symbol for quoiromantic, quoisexual and quoigender together, co having coined all three terms. [1][2] The field is the named colour Cool Grey and the four question marks are web lavender, both as co named them; the white around the silhouette is an artefact co wanted rid of: "i would if i could. bc not! rectangular!! ye." [1]
Key facts
- Designer
- Cor (Tumblr handle: epochryphal)
- Created
- First documented public use
- In use
- 2015–present
- Aspect Ratio
- Non-rectangular; the silhouette is not a standard flag proportion
- Stripes
- 0
- Represented Identity
- quoiromantic
Also known as
- WTFromantic Flag
- Whatromantic Flag
- Quoi Flag
- Quoisexual / Quoiromantic / Quoigender Flag
Status Canonical
Archive categories Sexual & Romantic Orientation Pride Flags
Overview
To give the quoi cluster (quoiromantic, quoisexual, quoigender) a shared visual symbol for the shared position of stepping outside the relevant attraction or category framework rather than locating oneself within it. [2][3]
Cor proposed quoiromantic in December 2012 as a more pronounceable alternative to Sciatrix's 2011 coinage of wtfromantic. The original term was a half-joking, frustrated comment about the difficulty of fitting personal experience into the framework of romantic orientation. Cor's renaming kept the meaning but replaced the profanity with a French interrogative, making the term usable in everyday speech without losing its original anti-categorical force.
Three years later, on September 21, 2015, Cor designed a single flag intended to cover quoiromantic, quoisexual, and quoigender simultaneously. [2][3][4]
Identity & Context
- Represented Identity
- quoiromantic
- Subcommunity
- aromantic spectrum
- Language Context
- The term quoiromantic uses the French quoi ('what'). Cor's French-Canadian heritage is the documented reason for the choice. [3]
Creators
The Creators
Cor / epochryphal
Coiner of quoiromantic, quoisexual and quoigender; designer of the 2015 quoi flag
Cor is a trans ace writer of French-Canadian heritage active in aromantic and a-spec community discussions on Tumblr under the handle epochryphal. Beyond coining quoiromantic and designing its flag, Cor wrote 'On Lith and Stone' (May 27, 2014), a defense of the lithromantic term against appropriation concerns. The two contributions reveal a person who has been a long-standing participant in mid-2010s a-spec vocabulary work, including in disputes about appropriation, definitional drift, and what counts as a community-grounded coinage. [2][3] Co uses co/coself pronouns and gives co's location as California. [1] Co coined quoisexual and quoigender as well as quoiromantic, which is why the 2015 flag was offered as a single symbol for all three. [2]
OK PROBLEM SOLVED, i found a color called "cool grey" that looks like. grey?? purple?? yessssss (also the question marks are web lavender, which is distinct from irl lavender, which is awesome) [1]
i have no idea how to make the white part transparent but. i would if i could. bc not! rectangular!! ye. [1]
how is THAT for an Official Quoi Flag, eh [1]
Motivations
Sciatrix
Coiner of the predecessor term wtfromantic (2011)
Sciatrix is a WordPress blogger at Writing From Factor X who coined the term wtfromantic in 2011. Sciatrix later described the coinage as 'a flippant, honestly fairly sarcastic frustrated comment, not an attempt as a serious identity designation,' one she did not expect to resonate. The term originated in her post 'Writhing in the Throes of Unrequited Like.' [4]
It started as a flippant, honestly fairly sarcastic frustrated comment, not an attempt as a serious identity designation.
Sciatrix's own description of the wtfromantic coinage, reproduced in secondary sources.
Attribution notes
Cor is a trans ace writer and community member of French-Canadian heritage who posts on Tumblr under the handle epochryphal. Cor is the documented coiner of the term quoiromantic (December 2012) and the documented designer of the original 2015 quoiromantic flag. [2][3] The relationship between Cor and the wtfromantic term is one of inheritance rather than collaboration: Cor proposed quoiromantic in 2012 as a more pronounceable French-rooted alternative to the term wtfromantic, which had been coined a year earlier in a frustrated half-joke by WordPress blogger Sciatrix in a post titled 'Writhing in the Throes of Unrequited Like' (June 2011). [4] Cor has since spoken out against simplified redefinitions of the term, on the basis that flattening it into 'questioning' or 'uncertain about romance' undermines its specific meaning of active disidentification with the romantic orientation framework. [3] Cor posted the flag on co's own blog on 21 September 2015, presenting it as an "Official Quoi Flag" and naming its two colours: a colour "called 'cool grey' that looks like. grey?? purple??" and question marks in "web lavender, which is distinct from irl lavender". [1]
Origin
- Digital Origin
- Yes
No verified physical origin location. Without a confirmed location, Indigenous land context cannot be attributed.
Originated on Tumblr. Cor is French-Canadian by heritage but no specific physical origin location is documented. [3]
Dates & Chronology
- Year Created
- Exact date
- First public use
- Period in Use
- 2015–present
The 2015 design has been reproduced in aromantic and a-spec community spaces and in pride flag wikis. Several later simplified variants have been proposed, including a triangular three-question-mark version intended to be easier to physically reproduce. None have displaced the 2015 four-question-mark house-shape original as the primary version cited in secondary sources. [2][3]
The wtfromantic coinage is one of the rare cases in pride-flag and identity-label history of a frustrated half-joke becoming a stable identity term. Sciatrix's documented surprise at the term's uptake is preserved in secondary sources. The non-rectangular shape of Cor's 2015 flag is one of very few pride flags in the broader archive that breaks from the stripe-based convention; it sits alongside the intersex pride flag (2013) as a design that uses shape itself as part of the symbolism. Cor's single flag did not hold the cluster together. By 2019 separate striped designs were circulating: a black, white, lime green and sky blue flag described as covering quoisexual and quoiromantic; a quoiromantic flag in black, faded green, muted sky blue and medium grey; and a five-stripe quoigender flag. None is Cor's, no designer is named for any of them, and the poster who reproduced the last was openly unsure of it, writing "if i got the gender flag wrong please tell me but its the only one i've seen used". [2]
Lineage
- Direct predecessors
- Aromantic Pride Flag
- Indirect influences
- Intersex Pride Flag
The flag's closest comparative neighbors are not other aromantic-spectrum flags but flags whose form steps outside the stripe convention, particularly the intersex pride flag (2013) and the rabies-pride flag. [2]
Lineage tree
Every record reachable from this one through documented parent and child relationships: 3 records across 3 generations.
- Ancestors -2
- Aromantic Pride Flag (Yellow Center, 2014)
- Ancestor
- Aromantic Pride Flag
- This record
- Quoiromantic Pride Flag (2015, Cor / epochryphal)
Colors & Symbolism
The flag visually marks the experience of actively disidentifying with the romantic orientation framework. Cor describes the identity not as 'questioning' or 'uncertain about romance' but as feeling that romantic-orientation categories are 'inaccessible, inapplicable, non-sensical' for the person using the term. [3] The non-rectangular shape and the question-mark symbol step outside the striped-flag convention used by most identity flags, matching an identity defined by stepping outside the standard attraction-category framework. [2]
| Colour | Hex | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Cool Grey (field) | #8C92AC | Named by the designer as a colour "called 'cool grey'"; #8C92AC is the standard value for that name and the posted image samples at exactly that. [1] |
| Web lavender (question marks) | #E6E6FA | Named by the designer as "web lavender, which is distinct from irl lavender", the CSS colour of that name; the posted image samples one unit off, consistent with JPEG encoding. [1] |
- Four lavender question marks rotated in a ring around a single shared center dot
- The question marks reference the questioning and disidentifying basis of the quoi cluster. The single shared center dot binds the four marks together as a single device. The choice of four marks (rather than three or five) is deliberate but not formally explained in the located sources. [2][3]
- House-shape silhouette (rectangle with peaked top)
- Replaces the standard rectangular flag form. Cor proposed the non-rectangular shape deliberately, in line with the quoi cluster's broader resistance to fitting standard categories. [2]
- Cool grey background
- Cor specified the background as a cool grey deliberately chosen to be ambiguous, hard to definitively call either purple or grey. The ambiguity is part of the design's argument. [2]
Cor's documented design intent is preserved in secondary sources but the original 2015 epochryphal post has not been verbatim-recovered. A 2019 follow-up post by epochryphal at /post/187077916372 is the best secondary anchor for the design intent. Direct verbatim quotes ('web lavender, distinct from irl lavender'; the cool grey description) circulate in secondary sources but remain unconfirmed against the original post. Cor named the colours but did not assign meanings to them; the question marks carry the sense of the word quoi, French for what. [1]
Unusually for a flag of this period the colours are creator-specified, because Cor named them rather than choosing them freehand, and both names carry canonical values that the posted image confirms. [1]
Design
- Aspect Ratio
- Non-rectangular; the silhouette is not a standard flag proportion
- Orientation
- non-rectangular
- Stripe Count
- 0
- Layout
- non-stripe emblem
- Center Symbol
- Four lavender question marks rotated in a ring around a single shared center dot
The flag is a house-shape silhouette (a rectangle with a peaked top) rather than a standard rectangle. Inside the silhouette, four lavender question marks are arranged in a ring so that all four marks share a single center dot. The background of the silhouette is cool grey, deliberately chosen by Cor to resist being read as definitively either purple or grey. The lavender of the question marks is described in secondary sources as 'web lavender, distinct from irl lavender,' though the verbatim phrasing has not been independently verified against the original 2015 post. [2][3]
The design is deliberately not a rectangle. Cor posted it over white and said so directly: "i have no idea how to make the white part transparent but. i would if i could. bc not! rectangular!! ye." The white area is therefore an artefact of the file rather than part of the flag. [1]
A non-rectangular pride flag for the quoi cluster (quoiromantic, quoisexual, quoigender). The silhouette is a house shape (a rectangle with a peaked top) on a transparent or white background. The field is filled in cool grey. Four lavender question marks are placed inside the house, rotated in a ring so that all four marks share a single dot at the center of the flag. Designed by Cor (Tumblr: epochryphal) and posted on September 21, 2015, as a single shared symbol for all three quoi-prefixed identities at once. [2][3]
Usage & Adoption
- Online Usage
- Reproduced in aromantic-spectrum and a-spec pride flag guides, the LGBTQIA+ Wiki, the Aromantics Wiki, and the MOGAI Wiki. [2][3]
- Current Status
- active
Used in aromantic-spectrum and a-spec community spaces but rarely reproduced in mainstream pride flag databases, in part because its non-rectangular form does not fit the standard layouts those databases use. [2]
Image Archive
Flag design
Later community design
Discourse & Debates
- Whether the term should be read as 'questioning' or 'uncertain about romance' versus Cor's narrower definition of active disidentification with the romantic-orientation framework. Cor has spoken out against the broader simplified readings on the basis that they undermine the term's specific point. [3]
- Whether later simplified variants of the flag (triangular three-question-mark versions) should be treated as the same flag or as distinct artifacts. The 2015 four-question-mark house-shape original remains the dominant version in secondary sources. [2]
- Whether a single shared flag for quoiromantic, quoisexual, and quoigender adequately serves all three identities, or whether each warrants a separate symbol. Cor's original framing was the shared design; later community designs have sometimes split the three apart. [2]
Common misidentifications
- Quoiromantic is sometimes flattened to mean 'questioning my romantic orientation,' which is not the term's documented meaning. Quoiromantic refers to the experience of feeling that the romantic-orientation framework itself does not apply, rather than to uncertainty within the framework.
Quoiromantic, wtfromantic, and whatromantic refer to the same identity. Cor proposed quoiromantic in December 2012 as a more pronounceable alternative to Sciatrix's 2011 wtfromantic; whatromantic occasionally appears as a softened form. All three remain in use; quoiromantic is now dominant. [2][3][4] The 2019 explainer sets out two definitions of the prefix: the older, that one "disidentifies with {sexual/romantic} attraction/orientation as sensemaking, accessible, or applicable to oneself", and the simpler, "can't tell the difference between two attractions". It objects to the second being used alone, "The latter definition is often used as the sole definition of quoi. It is not. Do not use it as such", and insists the terms are not interchangeable: "Do not use quoisexual to mean quoiromantic." [2]
Footnotes & Citations
Sources and footnotes 6 sources
- 1. Primary statement Official Quoi Flag post. Cor (epochryphal). Tumblr (2015-09-21). Accessed 2026-08-16
- 2. Social media Quoisexual/Quoiromantic explainer. Dormouse, drawing on posts by epochryphal. epochryphal (Tumblr) (2019-08-17). Accessed 2026-08-16
- 3. Encyclopedias & Reference Quoiromantic. LGBTQIA+ Wiki. Accessed 2026-04-07
- 4. Blogs & Personal Sources Quoiro / WTFromantic: a brief timeline of disidentification with and personal rejection of romantic orientation. The Ace Theist. The Ace Theist (WordPress) (2019-01-04). Accessed 2026-04-07
- Encyclopedias & Reference Quoiromantic. Aromantics Wiki. Accessed 2026-04-07
- Blogs & Personal Sources What I'd Like To See. Sciatrix. Writing From Factor X (WordPress) (2011-06-12). Accessed 2026-04-07
Image Sources
- Rendering
- Cor / epochryphal (September 21, 2015)
- Reconstruction of the flag Cor posted on 21 September 2015, drawn to the colours co named: Cool Grey and web lavender. The silhouette is deliberately not rectangular. [1] · Credit: SVG reconstruction; design by Cor (epochryphal) · SVG reconstruction
- A later striped flag for the quoi cluster, in black, white, lime green and sky blue, described in 2019 as the quoisexual and quoiromantic flag. It is not Cor's design and its designer is not named in the sources located. [2] · Tumblr circulation