Flags

Questions or discussions about Almea or Verduria-- also the Incatena. Also good for postings in Almean languages.
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Yalensky
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Flags

Post by Yalensky »

Can we talk about the flags Zompist recently posted on Almeopedia? Some of them seem to me (how to put it softly?) incredibly ugly: the flags of Celenor and Curesi are particularly egregious examples. Svetla has a weird '90s color palette going on. I'm not too into the teal that abounds.

But I also find ugly design naturalistic. A "realistic" conworld after all shouldn't consist solely of good design. The flag of Irvesi, which recursively shows itself twice, feels like it was inspired by real-world examples. My only quibble is that a lot of the "bad" designs feel similar to flags invented in the 19th and 20th centuries, and considering that Verduria has the technology of a country circa 1800 at most, the ugly flags would seem anachronistic, at least if one couldn't allow for various out-of-step technologies in a fictional world (flag design being only one such "tech" that might be ahead or behind of our own world's).

Favorites: Verduria, perhaps because it's been displayed on the Virtual Verduria homepage since time immemorial. Aodo, for its rather unconventional quasi-calligraphic design. Xurno, which is neatly simple, and square and purple enough to seem somewhat foreign.

Questions:

1. Am I right that some of these flags are intentionally uglier than others?
2. What are the things on Hroth's flag? (I like the flag's shape, too)
3. Are there meanings to any of the flags not already explicated on Almeopedia?

zompist
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Re: Flags

Post by zompist »

Heh. Well, nothing is intentionally ugly, but one thing I was trying to avoid was looking exactly like every other terrestrial flag. So, though there are some of the usual tricolors and stripes, I tried to use different colors and shapes.

Curesi is of course a blend of two flags. I think they'd each look great on their own, but I admit the combination is startling. (There's a heptagon on one of them, but of course the division kind of ruins that.)

For an Almean, Celenor would be boring rather than busy. The two symbols are those of the Cadhin and Eledhe religions.

The symbols on Hroth's flags are pikes-- five of them, representing the five constituent duchies.

I should probably add explanations of the colors and symbols, but most would be pretty boring (e.g. blue usually represents the sea or rivers; Zelm's evokes both trees and mountains).

For those who don't know what we're talking about: http://www.almeopedia.com/almeo.html?flags

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Soap
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Re: Flags

Post by Soap »

The Haitian flag is the only national flag that depicts itself .... but the inner flags are small enough that the second order flag can be safely neglected.
Sunàqʷa the Sea Lamprey says:
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So Haleza Grise
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Re: Flags

Post by So Haleza Grise »

I had no idea that Kebri's flag was what was depicted on the grammar.

My favourite is probably Xurno's; it has a pleasing simplicity to it, just like the flag of Japan.

I suppose that Dhekhnam doesn't have a flag?

Does the saffron on the flags of Ctésifon and Krasnaya represent Caďinas?
Duxirti petivevoumu tinaya to tiei šuniš muruvax ulivatimi naya to šizeni.

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Re: Flags

Post by Mornche Geddick »

So Haleza Grise wrote:I suppose that Dhekhnam doesn't have a flag?
The chrems can't agree whose flag to use, probably. And whenever they try to design a completely new one, there's always someone, isn't there, who points out that the new flag looks a bit like either 1) his own flag, or 2) his rivals'. Thus, stalemate.

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Re: Flags

Post by zompist »

So Haleza Grise wrote:Does the saffron on the flags of Ctésifon and Krasnaya represent Caďinas?
Yes. That's actually why yellow is used in the historical atlas for Central languages.

(And for that matter, the Xurnese flag is why I used red in the atlas, and purple as a background color on the language pages.)

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