Avatar

An Avatar is a forum term for a small image associated with a particular poster, typically displayed under their name on the left-hand side of the screen.

The NationStates forums do not allow avatars for individual NSers; this is a restriction imposed by Jolt. Paying Jolt customers and Jolt admins are however allowed to use avatars. NS Moderators should in theory have been permitted to use avatars; however, owing to some technical glitch, they did not have this ability. Some were allocated 'the eye', based on the cover artwork for Jennifer Government. (The pre-Jolt forums did not permit avatars for any user.)

After the Jolt upgrade, mods gained the ability to upload avatars. They quickly went about personalising their accounts with zeal. The following is a rough list of mods and basic descriptions of their chosen avatars:

• Cogitation - stuck with the classic, 'the eye';
• Euroslavia - has already tried out 3 versions, currently settling on The Scarlet Witch;
• Frisbeeteria - initially chose 'the eye', but then adopted an animation of a UFO flying over a road. The craft bore similarities to Frisbeeteria's national flag;
• GMC Military Arms - Aeris the cat from the online comic VGCats;
• Katganistan - a catgirl with dynamic, twitching ears;
• Melkor Unchained - a smoking, bespectacled skull. This was an icon featured on many Warren Zevon albums;
• Reploid Productions - a pencil drawing of Firefury Amahira by LaDy WoLfEtTe';
• SalusaSecondus - his usual masked visage;
• Scolopendra - first went with a sniper kitten, but then changed to a Kzin, created by Larry Niven;
• Sirocco - the flightless hippo;
• The Most Glorious Hack - an edited version of a character from a game called 'Wasteland': a faceless, yellow-robed figure, with the caption Where flap the tatters of the King (a reference to the "King in Yellow" of the Cthulhu Mythos);
• Tsaraine - Was a Photoshopped Carthaginian funerary mask (often mistaken for an evil potato, or "a nut wearing glasses"), now a rabbit-shaped mushroom (or, a mushroom-shaped rabbit) with sunglasses;
• [violet] - a small blonde girl working at a computer.