Shireroth

Shireroth needs a facelift. We're one of the largest and most important micronations online, and we're also one of the least professional looking. For example, here's our flag, as it appears on the National Symbols page of our wiki:



Okay, the blurring around the borders is my fault: I did it many years ago just after I discovered the blur tool when I still thought that was kind of cool. But the rest of it is just plain unexcused bad flag-ness.

I know Shireroth will never give me permission to remake the flag from scratch, though really that's what it deserves. However, in the spirit of Oustfest (kicking out anyone and anything that's not pulling their weight) I propose a facelift of the flag that keeps the same basic spirit but makes it a little less hideous:



This flag is similar to the old one, but it makes a few changes. First, in grudging almost-accordance with the Good Flag Bad Flag guide, the colors are now down to five, which is slightly closer to their recommended 3-4 than the previous 6 was.

Second, it's loosely based on the FYROM flag. This is nice for us, because it means we have a very professional template for which we just need to change the colors, and where we know everything's aligned properly. Second, it's symbolic, because the FYROM flag is a very loose adaptation of the Star of Vergina, also an old Alexandrian/Tymarian symbol which can be seen in eg our coat of arms and the flag of Yardistan.

Third, the main dark blue color, which is slightly different from the original, encodes Shireroth's independence day. Its RGB value is 4/24/200, compared to Shireroth's independence day of 4/24/2000. I do believe we would be the first nation to encode symbolic information in the RGB value of our flag.

Although it's not perfect, the five colors mesh with the five duchies' official board colors pretty well. Dark red is Brookshire, gold is Goldshire, white is Elwynn, green is Yardistan, and, well, a gray flag would be ugly, so Kildare gets to be blue. Maybe once Straylight gets annexed by Yardistan, we can blueify Kildare on the board as well.

Soooo...how many people would throw a fit if I proposed a Landsraad bill to officially replace the flag?

FYROM... Scott, just call it Macedonia. Nobody cares about offending Greek sensibilities here.

And I approve of the change whole-heartedly.

I get a bit of an unsettling vertigo sensation when looking at it for some reason.

Nevertheless, it's a hell of a lot better than the old flag. Approve.

I get a bit of an unsettling vertigo sensation when looking at it for some reason.

Yet another way it represents Shireroth!

Aurangzeb Khan wrote:FYROM... Scott, just call it Macedonia. Nobody cares about offending Greek sensibilities here.

THEY ARE NOT MACEDONIA. THEY ARE BULGARIANS. MACEDONIA IS GREEK.

Chrimigules wrote:

Aurangzeb Khan wrote:FYROM... Scott, just call it Macedonia. Nobody cares about offending Greek sensibilities here.

THEY ARE NOT MACEDONIA. THEY ARE BULGARIANS. MACEDONIA IS GREEK.

Oh have a 3rd Balkan War already.

The hell they're Bulgarians.

I approve very much. I've always felt that the current version looks like it's made by a 12-year-old with Paint (no offense).

Malliki Tosha wrote:I approve very much. I've always felt that the current version looks like it's made by a 12-year-old with Paint (no offense).

To be fair, that's not too far off what actually did happen.

It's about three years off, I think.

I know, but it doesn't have to look like it.

200 Erbs that Erik disapproves.

bets have already been made in #micronations :P lol

If bets are still open, I say he approves or at least doesn't totally veto it. He's been much better at the whole "change" thing since the Reconsolidation, and this flag is similar enough to the original that I think he'll understand that it's a friendly amendment and not a hostile takeover.

No. I don't like changing something that is 10 years old.

Blue is good for Kildare. But changing the flag... hmmm...

It's not changing, it's renovating.

I'm gonna miss the crosses...

Wow, Scott's doing something more controversial than me!

I like it. But I like the old flag too.

This expresses my opinion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRdfX7ut8gw

This is change. Renovation would have been keeping the same flag and just cleaning up the edges, making it not pixilated.

I'm still trying to devise a response extreme enough to handle this...and that doesn't violate my own personal rules about how I deal with Shireroth. The flag is 10 years old. It's perhaps the ONLY thing that has survived from the first rendition of Shireroth.

I can handle the color change to the blue. That I kinda like.. the rest... no.. and how Jonas is handling this...... even worse...

I will likely have a response soon... once I decided.

Erik stands not alone. I liked the idea far better before I realized it was just ripping off Macedonia with a color swap. Tradition is not something lightly cast aside, especially when replacing it is just more stolen material. The old flag may be primitive, but at least it's ours, damnit.

Further, the heavy-handed decreeing of the flag change is extremely worrying and shows signs of a Kaiser that simply doesn't care what the rest of the country thinks. There was no talk of making this proposal official, not even in the IAC. Goldshire's pride towards the Imperial Throne is strained when the throne seems to take little regard in the opinions and well-being of its subjects.

Expect a response shortly.

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

As have I.

Scott, instead of the "new" design, why can't you just straighten the lines and essentially just replicate the old flag in a more professional manner?

Harvey Steffke wrote: Further, the heavy-handed decreeing of the flag change is extremely worrying and shows signs of a Kaiser that simply doesn't care what the rest of the country thinks. There was no talk of making this proposal official, not even in the IAC. Goldshire's pride towards the Imperial Throne is strained when the throne seems to take little regard in the opinions and well-being of its subjects.

Nah, I just assume that everyone who doesn't like it, ignores it and uses the old version.

But I have an idea... It will become the flag of Shirekeep, so that means we can keep the old one.

The old flag is and remains truly awful. Now why does every attempt at improvement end up being drowned in the inevitable and tedious cat-calls of "Tradition" as if this were some overrated faux-Yiddish musical. It took Babkha three attempts to arrive at a decent flag. Shireroth ought to have had the courage to experiment years ago, and without the dead hand of Erik it probably would have.

Then again without the dead hand of Erik remaining constant at the tiler the ship of state would have probably wrecked itself on the rocks of inactivity years back.

So mindless reactionaries have their uses.

What a world.

I just enjoy being difficult.

Ardy, Ryan actually linked to the same thing :P

Thank you for the redundant criticism spangle. [Edited for tired sullen bitchiness... ]