Octovexillology III – The Language of Flags
This is the third in a series of articles describing a type of “graphical group identification device” known as “ovexes” (singular “ovecs”), as used in the world of Pasaru. In this article, we will put the ovexes that previously described in context, and describe what meanings are implied when more than two of them are put together by means of a flag language. Additionally, we will also discuss how ovexes are used and how they are different from flags.
While ovexes are to a large extent very similar to flags, they are not drop-in replacements for each other. This is not particularly noticeable if we look at each of them as entities unto themselves, but becomes much clearer once we examine how more than two of them interact with each other in the world.
In particular, ovexes can be used to express complex ideas and complete sentences by putting two or more of them next to each other in various ways, optionally with other props to join them together. This is enabled by the development of the flag language, which started with several separate ways that various civilisations have innovated in modifying ovexes and eventually evolved into the complex language of today.
1 What flags represent
As previously mentioned, a ovecs can represent many things, from individuals to entire countries and even larger entities, just like flags. Unlike flags however, this generality is vigorously used, and ovexes can also be used to represent extremely mundane things such as a single minor bridge or even a moment in time as experienced by someone. In other words, a single event can have multiple flags, and the same concrete object can have multiple flags that each corresponds to different units’ subjective perception of it.
For the latter case, we can appeal to the diatonic major scale. Two civilisations use the major scale extensively in their musical culture, but they are very slightly different to each others’ understanding, as well as our own. Appropriately, the experiences would have different flags, like this:
- ☐ Make the flags
Furthermore, it can also support fictional entities as well. This inevitably leads to trouble as certain fictional entities may have flags that are easily confused with flags of real entities, but they have histories or characteristics that diverge from that real entity, which leads to further confusion and perhaps hurt feelings of some sort. And sometimes, this is done deliberately!
1.1 Documentation flags
So with that in mind, and in order to enable documents like this one, several very simple flag designs are set aside to be “documentation flags”. (18|29) Ideally, this means that they are only usable in describing how flags work and to name things that are meant to be for documentation purposes only; in practice, individuals and organisations still accidentally or deliberately adopt flags that look like this for their own, so the actual statement is that anyone that uses these flags to represent fictional entities are immune to any legal consequences by anyone or anything who chooses to use these flags to represent themselves.
Such as it is, the definition of a documentation flag is a little fuzzy, with a few tens of thousands that are definitely “in the clear” and a few tens of thousands more that are not always so. Regardless, these flags are usually extremely simple. They contain the following properties:-
- a single, plain colour as the background;
- one of a specific list of twelve devices, which is always marked on the centre and is either white or black to contrast with the background colour;
- a legend consisting of exactly two digits; and
- a pole that is either white or black.
The twelve standard devices are as below:
- ☐ Draw the standard devices.
Any flag that satisfies all these conditions is guaranteed to be a documentation flag, but some flags that only fulfil some of the conditions may also be considered to be a documentation flag.