Picture this

I need an Avatar for my blog. I'm not sure if my current one does it for me. I started off with a picture of the snow capped Kilimanjaro simply because I needed a picture. It was weeks before I realised the halo2 connection. It was purely unintentional. I've never had a kilimanjaro in the game. A couple of killing sprees, yes, and my highest spree is 7 kills, but I digress. I felt that picture was a bit bland and not very clear so as a stop gap I found a little animation of my country's flag, the Saltire (or St Andrews Cross), fluttering in the cyber breeze. Turns out someone else on the site has the same picture as their forum avatar. Perhaps my choice was subliminal but it's best not to cause confusion. As I said, it was only temporary anyway but I was beginning to warm to it. So the quest continues.

What makes a good Avatar? Why do people choose the avatar they do? Each to their own I suppose. There are reasons, there are randoms and there are those with no thought or message whatsoever. Or are there? Is it not the case that every Avatar has some thought behind it? Take those with a picture of themselves who still use a gamertag and not their real name. I find that interesting. It seems like a contradiction. I'm not sure what, if anything,I want my avatar to say about me.

The current symbol is the Scottish Royal Standard. The Scottish monarchy is no more. A long and brutal story a thousand years in the making so I won't go over it here. There's probably a wiki on it, go look. Even if there was still a Scottish monarch, I'm not sure that  I would be a moarchist even though i'm passionately Scottish. (I think living in another country on hightens your nationalism). I'm certainly not a British monarchist. I don't beleive for a moment that anyone deserves more respect than me simply because of the family they were born into. I guess that makes me a republican? So why would I choose such a symbol. I suppose the red rampant lion on a field of gold has come to mean something different in modern Scotland. It is often waved along with the saltire as an extension of national pride and symbolism rather than a political or royal statemant. On the whole though I do prefer the Saltire so I think I'll look for another one to use, even a plain old non-fluttering picture.