Maturational Theodia

Aethodian/Theodian history
Era Model:	Foundation Transition Maturation Modern
Other models:	Flag Model

The "maturational" period of Theodian history is considered to have begun with Theodia's declaration of a provisional government in June 2015, and ended with Theodia's return to intermicronational politics in early 2020; which means this period of Theodian history occurred during and between the Polarised and Discord eras of the MicroWiki community. It is so-named, because during this time, the rapid progress of the Transitional Period gave way to slower development, and allowed the country time to mature. It is the single longest period of Theodia's history thus-far, and ended when the global crisis caused by SARS-CoV-2 spurred Theodia back into action.

Early Provisional Theodia

Collapse of the government

The bureaucracy attempted in the previous era completely failed, as Swena remained the only citizen actively contributing to the society. Realizing the difficulty of developing a robust government by rule of law with only a single person, Swena decided to refocus the country upon developing its non-legal aspects, and so suspended the previous government, instituting in its place a temporary provisional government, with all power being vested in Swena, and law being determined by decree.

Land reform

Until this period, Theodia had maintained several disparate claims around the world, with some in North America, and others in the Indian Ocean. This disunification of locality was perceived as presenting a significant barrier to the country's further development, so it was decided to focus upon a single piece of land. The North American claims were practically unfeasible, Karia was too tiny, and Amstria was far too isolated; so a new claim was sought. Considering the 5 regions humans have not yet managed to massively settle (tundra, polar, continental desert, the oceans, non-Earthly domains) and picking the region se felt most suited to figuring out how to develop (tundra), Swena, by means of Google Earth, began surveying Alaska and, later, Eastern Greenland, for suitable locations, eventually finding them in the form of Heden Plains, Schuchert Valley, and Ørsted Valley in and around Jameson's Land. Theodia internally claimed Jameson's Land in 2015's February, but did not publicize its claim until 2015, June 28, when it renounced all its previous claims. The final claim includes the portions of Stauning's Alps from Schuchert Valley to the border of the Northeast Greenland National Park, the northern third of Liverpool's Land, and all but the south-eastern tip of Jameson's Land; such that Theodia claims no developed or protected pieces of the land apart from the hunting-cabin at Sydkap and the abandoned Gurreholm station.

Decrees

Unitarian Universalism was decreed the official religion of the Republic on 2015, June 18. This was intended to present a novel approach to religious pluralism.
Also, the country adopted an official tagline: "Rethink everything".

Systems-reform I

The official calendar was again changed in this period, with Swena working on it throughout the month of 2015's July. It replaced the thirded system with a halved system, each half of the year having 2-3 intercalary days for major holidays and located at a solstice. Each half was then divided up into 3 parts, each representing one of the 6 ecological seasons. The epoch was also changed to commemorate the officiating of Constantinople as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.
There were also numerous improvements to the mathematical standards of the country during this time, with trigonometry being made more transparent, the conventions surrounding the Cartesian plane being made more compatible with other conventions in Theodia, and circles being likewise compatibilitized.
Further, the nation's system of cartography was overhauled.
Additionally, a passable numeral system for Theodian was finally developed; and the language's grammar became increasingly complete, with the adoption of a unique system for expressing logical expressions. The Theodian script was made TtBtT-LtR for better compatibility with other systems in use in the country.

Revocation of claims

On 19 December 2015, Theodia revoked its claim in eastern Greenland, citing issues such as sea ice which would make it very difficult to supply. This left Theodia without a land-claim, for the first time since its founding.

Systems-reform II

In 2016 January, the official calendar was changed again, such that it consisted of 144 days and 12 weeks. Although this decoupled the Theodian fiscal calendar from Earth's seasonal cycles, it resulted in a highly regular calendar which is ready for use by a multi-planetary organization. The epoch was also again changed, this time to the first time that humanity intentionally escaped Earth's gravity-well.

New flag

The seventh national flag

The flag's crest was reverted to the classic gear symbol, and the golden trim was removed. This was intended to make the flag more iconic.

Legislation-development

On 2016 March 20, Swena finally created the legislative development-hub se'd promised since 2014. In the months following this, se has gradually worked towards a stable release, capable of running the country fully noocratically.

Systems-reform III

In 2016 May and June, a cohesive system of traffic-regulation was developed, complete with signage — although all signs and such were created as raster-graphics. This system was not publicly documented until 2023 June, by which time much of the original system had been lost.

Diplomatic actions

Theodia, in 2016 July, was approached by Nedland and Abelden with treaties of mutual recognition, both of which it accepted. This was the first time in years that the country had participated in any kind of intermicronational diplomacy.

Linguistic advancements

In August 2016, Theodian's letters and numbers received novel names, designed to encode their features twice and maximize the differences between each letter, in order to make it easier to spell things over radios and phones when signals are bad. As well, pronouns were finalized, math was cleared up (although a description of it was not published on MicroWiki until April 2018), and the vowel graphemes of Theodic were regularized.
In September 2016, a barcode was created from the same binary tree as the Morse code.
In November 2016, Theodian was judged by David J Peterson (from Game of Thrones), who considered the language to be not half bad. His gripes were that much of the language could not have arisen naturally from another language, and that the existence of allophony unnecessarily complicates what is supposed to be an engineered language. Swena understood where he was coming from, but disagreed that those were problematic in Theodian. Most of Theodian is supposed to be completely a priori, to the point that it's not supposed to be capable of even having a protolanguage, so whether it could have arisen naturally is unimportant, so long as the language is featurally naturalistic. As for the second criticism, Swena argued that some allophony is inevitably going to arise in any language, and that there was nothing wrong with documenting it. Swena also argued that certain allophonies (like assimilation) can make a language easier to speak once you've learned it, and this meets one of Theodian's primary goals: ergonomics. Se also pointed out that the existence of allophony in Theodian didn't really matter much, anyway, since none of the rules affected comprehension, and so were technically optional. Even so, there were a couple rules that Swena agreed were superfluous, but se decided to retain them for artistic purposes.

Territorial changes

On 28 October 2016, Theodia reinstated its claim on Jamesonland in Greenland.

Cultural advances

In November 2016, a specific chirality (clockwise/right-handed/top-right/bottom-left) was selected to be the standard for screws, fans, and other chiral things.

In December 2016, the heptatonic major scale became the standard scale for traditional Theodian music.

Slowdown

This was one of the least active periods of Theodia's history, and lasted for about two years. However, while times were slow, the silence was punctuated with moments of great significance, such as Theodia's attendance of Microcon 2017.

Cultural advances

In early 2017, Swena developed a novel electrical outlet for Theodia that solves many of the problems with older designs, such as the standard US one.

Some additional work was done refining Theodia's culture and systems throughout the rest of the first half of 2017.

Flag change

The eighth national flag, over Theodia's MicroCon display

In June 2017, the flag was streamlined, with the central hexagon removed, all thicknesses and distances carefully calculated, and the colour changed to magenta for the sake of symbolism. This is the most professionally designed flag Theodia has ever had, and a physical copy of it was produced for use in MicroCon 2017. That makes it the second Theodian flag to have ever been physically produced, and the first to be in the possession of the Theodian government.

Legislative advances

In June and October 2017, some minor legislative development occurred on GitHub. Most of the work done was administrative, such as updating the readme, updating assets, and adding/improving configuration files.

MicroCon 2017

Swena attended MicroCon 2017 on behalf of Theodia. This was the country's first in-person diplomatic summit, and resulted in the strengthening of ties between Theodia and several other micronations. Aigues-Mortes exchanged mutual recognition with Theodia, and this was the only change to formal diplomatic relations that Theodia experienced in 2017. At the gala, Swena was presented with a Medal of Micronational Service from the House of Homestead. Matt Roth, the photographer, remarked that Swena was the "headiest micronationalist" he'd ever met, beating out even the Sôgmô. Swena was interviewed by VICE News, but the interview did not make it into the final product. Swena was also interviewed by Atlanta Magazine, which made mention of the 3D-printed prototype Swena had made of the Theodian lamellar pattern.

Cultural/linguistic advances

In July 2017, a simple notation was developed for Theodian music. In September, Theodia replaced the green-yellow-red colour scheme of the West with green-white-magenta, in an effort to improve colour-blind support. This new colour scheme has since become quite wide-reaching in Theodia. In October, the names of numbers and letters in Theodian were tweaked to avoid (rather than encourage) allophony. In March the next year, a specification for the proper order of round-robin systems was released. In May 2018, the basis for a national cuisine was laid-out, focusing on porridge and sandwiches. As well, the coffee vs tea debate was settled: matcha won. Religious policies were also clarified.

Adoption of Discord

In mid-2018, a Discord channel was created for Theodia. However, it laid dormant until March 2019, when, after joining MicroWiki@Discord, Swena invited all Theodian citizens to join the national Discord channel. Discord quickly supplanted Theodia's 5-year-old Facebook group as Theodia's main means of interaction with its e-citizens.

Inactivity

Relatively little occurred in Theodia in late 2018.

Revival

Legislative advances

In March 2019, new legislation was written for the first time since 2016. This legislation laid out priorities and expectations for future legislation, and is hoped to help avoid the tediousness of moral debate.

At some point before MicroCon 2019, Swena had hoped to commit the design of the legislature to actual legislation on GitHub and implement a framework for international affairs to restore the country's ability to enter into relations with foreign nations. However, wiki renovations ended-up taking up the majority of the time Swena had to prepare.

Cultural advances

In early 2019, Theodic was tweaked, and some minor work was done on the Theodian lexicon. Additionally, a new type of garb was theorized for the country; and Swena reached out to Dr Takashi Suga to better-understand his unit system, which is expected to form the basis of Theodia's measurement system. The two exchanged emails a couple times, but little progress was made.

Wiki renovation

In May 2019, Swena began a substantial Wiki cleanup project, in preparation for MicroCon 2019. By the time of the convention, Swena had made 581 new edits to MicroWiki, making this one of the most-active periods of Wiki editing in quite some time. This also marks the first time since the move from Wikia that a Theodian article has achieved "good article" status.

MicroCon 2019

MicroCon 2019 (in mid-July) was Swena's first time in another macronation, and Theodia's first time sending a delegate through the territory of a macronation other than the USA.

Unlike with MicroCon 2017, Theodia did not initially request or prepare a table exhibit. However, after seeing there was some space left (due to no-shows) and seeing how beneficial having a table was, Swena requested such a table; and it was granted. Theodia's exhibit consisted of Swena's laptop with the Theodian MicroWiki article, and a stack of notecards on which Swena wrote passers-by's names in Theodic. On the whole, Theodia received much-less media attention this time around than it did at MicroCon 2017, and Swena attributes this to, in part, Theodia's comparatively lackluster exhibit this time around.

Tables were arranged alphabetically, which placed Theodia between Sovermia and Überstadt. Theodia and Sovermia showed great affinity for each other, with both being led by a linguist and both being advocates of demarchy. Swena also got along well with ser other neighbor, King Adam I of Überstadt; and the two hung out together on-and-off throughout the event. Sovermia's presentation on conlangs included a worksheet with some Hànzì on it, which Swena and Crown Princess Greta of Ladonia, at the time seated aside each other, both read aloud, to each other's great surprise; both then became friends.

At the gala dinner, Swena was sat with the representatives of Boshka and a couple other micronations. While there was some initial hesitation from all sides, everyone turned out to get along fairly well, and each table-member left with an appreciation for the others, and some even exchanged information.

At the end of the convention, two laser-tag battles were held. Theodia came in first place among all participating micronations, with the highest average score; while Swena hirmself came in fourth place, after 3 Slabovians.

MicroCon 2019 taught Swena and Theodia many lessons. One, discovered by Rankin MacGillivray, was that Theodia's vertical flag could drape like horizontal flags if hung from only one point — this proved very useful in the flag display. The other lessons were jotted down as things to do ahead of MicroCon 2021.

Media presence

In mid-August, Swena was invited onto Mortitia's Micronational Minutes, a micronational talk-show by Mortitia von Elphburg of Ruritania. The show went well; and afterwards, Swena and Mortitia partook in Theodia's national sport: Battlegaming. Due to exceptional circumstances, though, Theodia's episode has, as of March 2020, still yet to air.

Adoption of Agile methodology

In late August, Swena decided to adopt Agile methodology within Theodia's government, and set up a Taiga.io backlog to further this goal. The backlog saw little use until May 2020.

Cultural/linguistic advancements

In November 2019, Theodia refined its position on gender roles; and in December, created a national standard for the representation of magnetism.

In February 2020, the Theodian language finally made decisions on copulas and topic-prominence, opting to use the former in total lieu of the latter. This was followed by a reanalysis of the language, with linguist Jason Hagler arguing for an Active/Stative Fluid-S analysis, and linguist Will Zieburtz preferring a Pro-Drop Nominative/Accusative analysis. Swena had proposed both, and after going with the former analysis for a time, eventually chose the latter, with an canonical acknowledgement of the former.

Website development

In February 2020, work began in earnest on developing a custom national website for Theodia in Angular.

See also

• History of Theodia
• Flag Model of Theodian History
• Transitional Theodia
• Modern Theodia