#alterous orientation

[aspec-identities]

Reciproalterous

[Id. Image on the top of it is written reciproalterous in bold black text. On the left is reciproalterous flag. The colours are from top to bottom bright pink, light pink, light blue, white and black. On the right is written individuals who dont experience alterous attraction to someone until they know the other individual is attracted to them. End id]

[drachen-auge]

Aliqualterous

Because it doesn't already exists, here's one of my own labels: Aliqualterous is an a*-spec orientation in which one only feels alterous attraction under certain circumstances. Aliqualterous can be considered an umbrella term, in which identities such as demialterous are included under it. However, aliqualterous can also be an identity on its own. For example, some individuals may only feel attraction to a very specific type of individual, or only when in a certain place or at a certain time.

The sexual counterpart to aliqualterous is aliquasexual. The romantic counterpart to aliqualterous is aliquaromantic. The queerplatonic counterpart to aliqualterous is aliquaqueerplatonic.

[alt: Aliqualterous flag. Top down the flag consists of a wide light grey stipe, a narrow dark grey one, a narrow grey one, a narrow dark grey one and a wide light grey one. Vertically in the middle is a semi-transparent light blue stripe on top.]

The flag is based on the aliquasexual and aliquaromantic ones by @genderstarbucks. The blue colour, which is the same as in the demialterous flag, was chosen as it represents alterous attraction and to match other alterous idenity flags.

[thelostgirl21]

My small issue with the current Alterous Attraction Flag design...

So, I wanted to make myself a personal pride flag design - combining all of my own personal pride flags and orientations into one - and suddenly found myself hitting a bit of a wall when it came to the alterous attraction one.

Because, what's absolutely amazing about the romantic v.s. sexual orientation "binary" is that, when it comes to their flags, both flags are the same, except one has a heart on it.

Left: Pansexual. Right: Panromantic.

Therefore, you can combine both orientations into a single flag, by having the heart show your romantic orientation, and the "wallpaper" in the background showing your sexual orientation.

Ex: Bisexual Panromantic.

Or, when they are the same, doing "half and half, or adding the little Pansexual heart somewhere...

So, it works great!

But there's no such symbol attached to alterous orientation!

And there's no guaranty that the person's alterous orientation is going to be the same as their romantic and/or sexual one, either!

And, as a demisexual, it is SPECIFICALLY alterous attraction that triggers my sexual desires for someone, not romance!

What typically happens, is that I'll develop alterous feelings for one of my friends, become deeply committed to that "friendship" and very much "in love" (with absolutely no romance nor desire for us to ever become an actual "couple", live together, etc.) with them.

And, because I feel so emotionally close and like I could trust them with anything, should they also be aesthetically attractive also, I'll (very instinctively, very strongly) desire to have sex with them.

It's that sense of emotional intimacy that runs soul deep, and where I could no longer imagine my life without them, that makes me want to sexually connect as well.

That being said, I can also desire certain people romantically and have powerful crushes.

It's just that I never sexually desire my crushes until we reach a level of emotional intimacy that can match my alterous friendships.

And, when I find myself desiring a romantic partner both romantically and sexually - should they also be are monoamorous - then I'll stop experiencing any sexual desires for my alterous friends. We usually remain physically intimate/at ease with each other (heartfelt hugs, hand holding, etc.), but those intense friendships lose their sexual appeal.

So basically, I was trying to combine my:

Panromantic

Panalterous

Pansexual

Demisexual

Ambiamorous

identities all into one flag...

And was getting heavily frustrated by the fact that, thus far, people were simply making different color schemes for each alterous orientations!

For example, here are two of the suggested bialterous and panalterous flags I found...

Beautiful flags! The person that designed them did a very nice job with the colors!

That's not the problem.

It's just that there's nothing on them that screams that we're talking about a form of emotional attraction that is different, yet just as important and significant as romance.

Romantic attraction has its very own love symbol. It makes no sense that alterous attraction shouldn't be a symbol driven orientation as well!

I'm also having a bit of a hard time connecting those designs with their romantic and sexual equivalents, and recognizing the "bi" or "pan" elements in both. And I don't know where to place them on my own flag design, either, so that people understand that I'm talking about a form of emotional attraction...

What I needed, was a symbol, similar to the heart of the romantic flag, but specific to alterous forms of love...

After obsessing a bit too much over this, I eventually came up with my own personal versions:

Alterous Flag

Meaning

Possibility of replacing the white areas with other personal flags.

Example of a Panalterous Flag.

Example of a Homoalterous Aromantic Demisexual Man

Example of a Panalterous Panromantic Flag

Example of a Bialterous Greyromantic Queerplatonic Asexual Flag

My personal Pride Flags (Panromantic, Panalterous, Ambiamorous, Demisexual, Pansexual).

When combined into a single flag design.

So yeah, I did like the color scheme of the originally designed Alterous Flag, it's just the lack of potentially recognizable symbol for alterous attraction that bothered me.

And I thought that putting 3 hearts like that would have people ask "Wait. Why 3 hearts?", and give us the opportunity to explain that the one in red (or with the red border) means romantic attraction, the one in yellow (or with the yellow border) means platonic attraction.

The flag inside the yellow (if there is one) is about Queerplatonic relationships that are unconventional friendships where the two friends might share the same level of intimacy as romantic partners, but without the romance and/or sex.

So the yellow includes all types of friendships, from the less emotionally intimate to the most emotionally intimate ones.

And the one in the middle, with the pink border reminding us about how those relationships all share affection, is about alterous attraction, a form of love that feels neither romantic nor platonic, but somewhere in the middle and/our outside of it. It can be accompanied by the eventual desire to form a queerplatonic relationship (or not), a need for different forms of emotional and physical intimacy, including sexual in some cases, etc.

The "romantic" crowd sort of "stole everyone's heart" with the romantic flags.

Now, the people on the aromantic spectrum are left without anything to symbolize their own "love".

We need to put the love into the aromantic flag to remind people that love and romance aren't synonyms.

When you remove romance, all that's left isn't "casual sex" or "casual friendships".

I kinda want to see a visual counterpart to romance on flags out there!

Even if that's not my own design!

The reason why I put the "Alterous" heart bigger is not because I believe that "Alterous orientation" is more important than "Romantic orientation" nor "Queerplatonic orientation and relationships".

It's simply because the focus of the Alterous flag should be Alterous love.

It is connected to romantic relationships and queerplatonic ones, but romantic orientations already have their own well-known flags and tons of visibility.

As for the Queerplatonic flag(s), well, let's say that those are relationships we need to talk about about, and having them there on the flag opens the doors for curiosity and conversations, and lets people know that some friendships run as deep and are as powerful as romance.

So I've kept both the same size (romantic orientation + queerplatonic relationships).

And they're not spaces that HAVE to be filled. It's more an added option for convenience's sake to be able to describe what's included in the "red heart" (romantic attraction) and in the "yellow heart" (friendships, if left yellow, or queerplatonic relationships, if a flag is added).

It's a design that I personally could play and have a bit of fun with...

So, if some of you guys enjoy the idea, and want to start using them to express yourselves, until the day we eventually have a more official agreed upon flag, here are the .png files , enjoy!

If you have other ideas that could improve on those designs, too, I'd be very glad to hear them!

(If you want me help you make them, I might be open to do it if I have the time...)

[luxlitemidnight]

Just a reminder that even if you know like, all the labels, you can still discover things about yourself. I figured out yesterday I'm oriented aroace (alterous attraction) when I've known the term oriented aroace probably since 2020 and have been dating my partner since 2022. Anyways, hello oriented aroaces!

[77pink-prin-cess77]

Need a one-night stand but with cuddling instead of sex

[a-neru-neru]

corvus thoughts. and im still on this fic series. apologies for so much stuff at once

[fluidly-polymorphic]

Relationship but we’re both aromantic and tell people we’re “dating” but only we know we aren’t.

[thatweirdnumber]

”squish oriented aegosexual” i mean yeah. youre a child, thats how children work?

No it's not, first of all, my puberty started (I'm 14) so I'm not a "child" anymore and teens can have crushes. I personally use the term "squish" to name a queerplatonic/alterous crush, so not romantic or sexual, but not platonic either, it can be queerplatonic or sensual attraction for example, and that's not something specific to children at all, its in fact not used by them (or used later for example if as adults they discover they are on the arospec and recognize some experiences) and is mainly recoined by aroace spec people. Aegosexual means that sex and kissing disgusts me if performed on me but it doesn't bother me if it's other people, which I see why you think is "normal for childrens" (true, but it's because they haven't started puberty yet so even if they are allosexual they won't feel sexual attraction and also generally they will be also disgusted by the idea of other people kissing or having sex, which again is normal), but as a teen if I were allosexual I would not be disgusted by the idea of sex or kissing performed on me, and I would even want that (by someone I'm attracted to of course).

I hope this isn't too dense and this explains clearly enough why it's not "normal because that's how children works", if you have any other questions feel free to ask, and if you're subscribed to me, normally you should be able to open a page that explains all my identities in detail (it's the pinned post).

Have a wonderful day!

[thefluxsystem]

“do one of the voices tell you to hurt yourself”

sure, if you mean “this guy just double-dog dared me to eat the entire package of pizza rolls”

[mollysunder]

I wish we got to see Vi's reaction to Isha's imprisonment. Isha was clearly younger, weaker, and less able to protect herself than Vi was when she thrown into Stillwater (which still wasn't a lot). Where's Vi's horror to be on the outside looking in at another child thrown into an adult sized prison cell? How does it feel to know someone you grew close to (Caitlyn) signed off on the same abuse you were personally subject to during your formative years? Does it feed into Vi's self-loathing to know she was apart of this? Would Isha recognize this is the same girl who protected Jinx and would have been shot by Caitlyn? There's so much to explore for Vi in that one plot point alone.

[iridescentis]

being desperate and oriented aroace is fucking rough like pick a struggle 😭

24/7 lesbian yearning and yet i haven't been attracted to anyone for 2 years what the fuck

[poker-bah]

First request: can we request a tier 3 of a masc phighting fictive of your choice? thank you!

- 🪫📹

. . masc banhammer !

name : ban , hammer , banhammer ,

pronouns : he/him , it/its , ban/bans , fight/fights , scar/scars , glow/glows .

orientation : gay ( mlm ) .

gender : male , demiboy .

age : 27 yrs .

birthday : december 18th .

species : robloxian , demon , demigod .

roles : protector , avenger , prosecutor , aggressor .

signoff : ❌ 🔨 , 💜 🔨 .

personality : defensive , protective , kind , caring .

likes : hammers .

loves : purple , men .

dislikes : dresses .

hates : redbull .

pos front triggers : monster energy .

neg front triggers : yelling .

faceclaim : [ac 1] [ac 2] [ac 3]

📚 anon -20 , +35 chips :

45 chips total !

[eqho]

I LOVE PLATONIC ATTRACTION. I LOVE MY FRIENDS. I DONT WANT A PARTNER, I WANT A FRIEND

[muscari-melpomene]

Getting back to a bit of art with a bit of identity exploration

[rome-theeempire]

Y'all I feel like I'm a Oriented Aroace.

Like I definitely am cuz I'll see feminine ppl (and yes I mean any gender who expresses themselves in feminine ways) and I just wanna hold them and keep them but not in like a "I'm in love with you"/"I wanna bump pocket books" way but in a "can I hold you, play with your hair and give you occasional kisses, and spend time with you? You're really pretty" way, ya know? Like aesthetic and sensual.

I know labels are NOT necessary but I'm a label whore😗 so I'd love some insight into if there is a label where instead of being attracted to nonmen it's just an attraction to people who are feminine.

[chthonicophanim]

Inimicual attraction

[PT: Inimicual attraction]

{'Inimicu' from inimicus, meaning enemy in latin, '-ual' suffix to turn the noun inimicus into a adjective, taken from sex-ual, sens-ual, etc}

A tertiary attraction based in hatred, rivalry, betterment, and/or competition.

This is by no means a ‘friendly’ kind of attraction, but it usually does have a basis of respecting the object of attraction (even if it’s not acknowledged), and can be formed due to a want (or perceived need) to be better than them.

It differs from rivaline attraction due to its unfriendliness and a lack of a playful/teasing aspect, as well as a larger focus on competitiveness.

This attraction type can occasionally overlap with romantic, sexual or sensual attraction (and other similar attraction types) but rarely overlaps with platonic attraction

Relevent Terms

Alt Relationship/partnership Term : Bettership (eg; "I'm in a bettership with [name]")

Alt Partner/friend Term : Enemy or Competitor (eg; "[name] is my enemy")

Alt Crush Term : Frush {from a mix of frustrated and the Irish word for hate, fuath} (eg; "I have such a frush on [name]!")

[PT: Relevent Terms

Alt Relationship/partnership Term : Bettership (eg; "I'm in a bettership with [name]")

Alt Partner/friend Term : Enemy or Competitor (eg; "[name] is my enemy")

Alt Crush Term : Frush {from a mix of frustrated and the Irish word for hate, fuath} (eg; "I have such a frush on [name]!") :END PT]

{Start ID: two flags with 5 stripes. From the top the colors are a gradient from dark red to light red, yellow, and green. The second flag has a red symbol with two arrow heads (> and <) overlapping each other. The symbol is outlined in black. The third image is a transparent closeup of the symbol previously described. End ID} Courtesy of @scrumblys-ids

DNI: bigots, radinclus, radexclus, pro-endo, if you’re going to try and argue with me on any of these points, if you demonise mental illness, pro-transid (eg; transabled, transage, transrace, etc), proshippers/anti-anti, MAPS/NOMAPS/necro/zoo (full DNI in pinned)