Imperial Decree #425: Precautions (Oustfest)

[Kaiser Leto III]

Imperial Decree #425: Precautions (Oustfest)

By the power invested in me by the Gods,
The Oustfest on the 14th January (Vivantiana 25) of the Gregorian Year 2009 will be marked with following important changes in Shireroth that will take effect from that day:

A. Our current flag will be renovated and replaced by the new design, drawn by Scott of Hyperborea:


B. Straylight will have my approval to be annexed by Yardistan. When both Dukes agree, the annexation will be completed and the Straylightian subforums moved to where they belong (in Yardistan or the archives).

C. This decree gives Erik the opportunity to complain. Not that it matters.

Signed by my Nifty hand at Raynor's Keep,
on this 23th day of Vivantiana, 3812 ASC
Leto III Ozymandias

[Scott of Hyperborea]

Whoa. I was gonna ask the Landsraad about the flag. I might still just put it through a Landsraad confirmation vote, if that's okay with your Niftiness. Wouldn't want to do something that important without giving the nation a chance to speak.

[Malliki Tosha]

You would have to do it as a resolution, where the Landsraad confirms its support. A regular bill would be useless.

[Leo Fenrir]

I will rebel.

[Malliki Tosha]

Oh please do. We can use Goldshire for target practice.

[Harvey Steffke]

Pssst Leo. We should get with Dolor and put out some articles of rebellion or something.

[AryezturMejorkhor]

All of Goldshire would be in revolt if I joined in

[Leo Fenrir]

Pssst Leo. We should get with Dolor and put out some articles of rebellion or something.

I say we skip that, order a strike on Tosha, and proceed to burn everyone of those blasphemous flags.

Or do all of the above AND still write the articles.

[Harvey Steffke]

You know, if Brookshire suddenly burst into flames for reasons that are untraceable to space-based doomsday weaponry, I think I might sleep better tonight.

[Leo Fenrir]

space-based doomsday weaponry

Ya well mine got esploded.

I'll need to fix that some day.

I do agree with you however. Brookshire is a scary place.

[Erik Mortis]

NO.

....I won't even try to argue. I will say this. I will use ALL means at my disposal to stop this.

Goldshire.. let's start up those articles.

[AryezturMejorkhor]

This is not something to revolt over.

[Erik Mortis]

You have no idea how much it really is.

http://shireroth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=158&t=12588

[Harvey Steffke]

My Lord, it is exactly something to revolt over. Flags, in many ways, are the nation. By changing the flag the Kaiser has, in effect, changed our oath of loyalty to the country. I do not see that as a change to be made trivially or without popular support.

[Scott of Hyperborea]

This is very quickly becoming a symbol of everything I hate most about Shireroth.

Kaiser, you shouldn't have unilaterally decreed the flag without consulting the Landsraad or at least giving public opinion more time to show itself. Erik + rebels, you should be talking to the Kaiser about this and convincing him to back down instead of immediately throwing a fit and revolting (and you're in violation of the signature law). If we can't scorching handle a discussion on replacement of the flag without having a complete breakdown in national law, what right do we have calling ourselves a country at all?

Forget the flag being drawn by a twelve year old with MSPaint. We're ALL acting like twelve year olds. All we need now is for someone to get so angry they emigrate (yeah, I admit I thought about it for a second).

The flag is ten years old and we don't usually change something that old. The flag is also awful and hurts our self-respect and the respect other nations have for us. They're both good points. We need to find a solution to both of them. Here's what you're going to do:

Jonas, please revoke or suspend this decree. Everyone else, suspend the rebellion. Then everyone who wants a new flag will discuss what they want in it and how we're going to do it without deviating too much from the old flag or copying any other country or whatever. Then I or someone else will design it, and then we'll have a Landsraad vote and either accept or reject it. If the vote is close, we can start worrying about whether we can have two different things, like a flag + a naval banner or something.

[Gryphon Avocatio]

See, this is one of the reasons why I left.

To be fair, the new flag isn't any better than the new one (really, it isn't).

I never really understood why people are so apt to change the flag. It's really not that bad at all. It's endured for over a decade and is thus, by its very age, one of the most recognizable symbols of the nation. I think anybody would be remiss to change it.

[Scott of Hyperborea]

Yeah, Nick. It's the worst flag in micronations, no one's even so much as proposed changing it for ten years because they were too afraid of a huge overreaction by the "NOTHING CAN EVER CHANGE!" crowd, me proposing an alternative that's 95% the same has started something close to a civil war, the country's stayed practically frozen in time since Raynor X, and yet you say you left Shireroth because people did stuff like change the flag too much.

You left Shireroth because you stopped being interested. If you want to rejoin, rejoin. We'd be happy to have you. But don't ignore the country for five years then jump in and try to use your absence to make us feel guilty when we do something you don't like.

[Gryphon Avocatio]

You misinterpret me. Let's clear a few things up.

I lost interest in Micronations partially over the constant immature bickering over nonsense and the inane overreactions people had to random things---basically, the exact thing you are lamenting here--- but I mostly left because I had things in my life that I wanted and needed to attend to, and those things took precedence. I am back right now, by request, to help out with something that I hope will add to the cultural identity of a micronation in which I once played an active part, and I'm only doing it because I do care about Shireroth, but I have no intention of returning for the long term.

What this means is that changing the flag, to be entirely honest, doesn't affect me in the least. That doesn't mean I won't voice my support. Saying the new flag is 95% the same is a meaningless argument. You can't reasonably quantify that. All I know is that it's different, I don't like it, it isn't significantly more esthetically pleasing than its predecessor---certainly not enough to outweigh the cultural and historical impact of doing away with that predecessor---and I disagree with its hastily replacing the old one. I like the old flag, and I support it.

Sure, I haven't been here in just over 4 years, and if that's grounds for discounting what I say, then so be it. I don't, however, appreciate being accused of trying to manipulate people. I'm allowed to voice my opinions on matters unless the Kaiser, my Duke, or my Baron tells me I can't. My absence is not a legitimate reason for me not to have an opinion, and I certainly am not using it to try to make people feel bad. I don't have enough investment in the situation to want to, and I am somewhat taken aback by the idea that you would even levy such a charge at me.

[Kaiser Leto III]

Jonas, please revoke or suspend this decree. Everyone else, suspend the rebellion. Then everyone who wants a new flag will discuss what they want in it and how we're going to do it without deviating too much from the old flag or copying any other country or whatever. Then I or someone else will design it, and then we'll have a Landsraad vote and either accept or reject it. If the vote is close, we can start worrying about whether we can have two different things, like a flag + a naval banner or something.

I expected this to happen. That's the reason why it didn't get in effect immediately.
REBELLION!

I hope you don't mind it if I make it the (temporary) flag of the Imperial County, Scott? At least, until the Landsraad has done something.

I'm allowed to voice my opinions on matters unless the Kaiser, my Duke, or my Baron tells me I can't.

Speak! SPEAK!

[Scott of Hyperborea]

@Nick:

Then I misinterpreted your "This is one of the reasons why I left." My apologies. I am glad you're back to help us.

[Scott of Hyperborea]

Actually, Nick, I'm glad you mentioned your language work, because maybe it can help me make you understand.

Since you left Shireroth, I've become pretty interested in graphic arts, and sorta kinda good at them. I've made stuff like the Quetzal project and some Hyperborean scenes and money featuring handsome people like this. I'm certainly not a professional by any means, but I'm passionate about good graphics in sort of the same way you're passionate about linguistics.

Now, imagine that in April 2000 Erik had decided to make a Shirerithian conlang. And not knowing any linguistics, he made some godawful English cipher - the sort of "'Speak' is 'zas', 'to' is 'li', so 'Scott spoke to Erik' is 'Scott zassed li Erik'" thing you get with amateurs. And let's say that this conlang appeared everywhere on Shireroth's website, wiki, and international embassies, and was the first thing most people saw when they discovered Shireroth, and further, that this is an alternate universe where people are really into conlangs and speak them all the time.

Would you say "Let's keep that conlang, it was made in 2000 so we should never change it?", or would you be embarrassed to be associated with it and be pushing for a redesign to take advantage of the greater linguistic knowledge currently available to Shireroth?

[Cho'Gall]

What if we were to compromise and try to smooth out the current flag without losing too much of it?

What about something along the lines of


Yes I know its raw, but it does help some of the pixel issues, and it retains as much of the original flag as possible

[Ryan]

No offense, but that looks like a big jpeg blur.

I think what is misleading about Shireroth's flag is the narrowness of the bars. Typical flags have much thicker bars. The pixelation is really not that much of an issue. Look at the Flags of the World website and you'd see that 90% of the flags on there are pixelated and drawn in MS Paint with a palette under 256 colors.

Now take this rendering:


I've added secondary lines on either side of all the bars. This gives the impression of greater width, and adds depth to the design.

Simple improvements like that can go a long way.

[Scott of Hyperborea]

Cho'Gall, that does get rid of the pixellation, but it also makes it look kind of blurry. Maybe Bill or someone would know how to make something like that in vector. I think that would fix both problems.

Ryan, I think you're right about the narrow bars, but I don't know if I like that particular solution. It looks too pixellated and busy. What about starting with the original flag but changing it to look kinda like the ray motif from FYROM? Something like:

[Ryan]

I like it. My only suggestion would be to replace the white center with an 8-pointed star (also white). See if you can't align the rays to meet the tips of the star's points. I think that'd look really cool.

[Scott of Hyperborea]

Ryan, you're right it would look better, I'm just thinking if we want a snowball's chance in PRH of getting this through we need as few modifications as possible. I'll try it later tonight and see if it looks so good that it's worth the extra six hours of yelling at Erik it would probably require, but I don't think it would be.

[Harvey Steffke]

Is this flag design ground zero now?

I think my main problem with the Scott-design flags is the general curvy-ness of all the lines. Everything seems to bend and bow in. I can see that those lines are straight if I focus on them, but it's sort of an optical illusion and it's troubling.

I agree with Ryan that the stripes are too thin. Maybe we could widen the heck out of them, see where it gets us?

Also, one thing that has always bothered me about our flag is the fact that the white square in the middle always looks besieged by the lines around it and has turned into some sort of concave box, as if it were made of paper and about to collapse. At the very least it should be a proper square - maybe something else, but I think the sunburst images being thrown around go a bit far.

[Aurangzeb Khan]

the fact that the white square in the middle always looks besieged by the lines

Rather like how Shirekeep is always under siege by bastard mutinous ingrates from the duchies. Quite apt then.

[Gryphon Avocatio]

I think Ryan is on to something about the thicker bars. I can't say that it hasn't occured to me before.

I also agree with Jason. The *curves* just don't work. But the box in the middle isn't really a box, but actually concave. Closer analysis makes it look as though the green and brown lines are bound together.

[Ryan]

If you insist on keeping the square, then rotate it 45º and make it a diamond.