Romania

Romania
Name	Romania
Description	The Romanian community
Discord	discord.gg/placero
Artwork	See #Artwork

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. Romania is the twelfth-largest country in Europe and the sixth-most populous member state of the European Union. Its capital and largest city is Bucharest, and other major urban areas include Iași, Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara, Constanța, Craiova, Brașov, and Galați.

The country was formed in 1859 through a personal union of Moldavia and Wallachia. The new state, officially named Romania since 1866, gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877. In the aftermath of the First World War, Bukovina, Bessarabia, Transylvania, and parts of Banat, Crișana, and Maramureș became part of the Kingdom of Romania. Bessarabia and northern Bukovina were lost after World War II.

For r/place 2017 and r/place 2022, the Romanian community on r/place was coordinated by the r/Romania subreddit, while for r/place 2023 coordination was handled by the newly created PlaceRO discord server which incorporated several Romanian communities. The PlaceRO discord was formed as a cooperation between members of r/OkPrietenRetardat and r/Romania.

r/place 2023

Organization

With the start of the 2023 event, the Romanian community was poorly organized as the r/Romania subreddit no longer offered to coordinate the r/place efforts. This led to the Romanian users making a flag around the r/OKPR trollface, who already finished their artwork by that point. Soon after, the trollface was destroyed by the disorganized users. To combat this, a dedicated discord was created in order to coordinate both the users coming from r/Romania and r/OKPR.

First flag

The first Romanian flag being destroyed

Eventually, it was decided to abandon the trollface and focus only on the flag which remained around the 172, 267 coordinates. During this time, alliances were formed with nearby communities such as osu! and Touhou. The flag expanded, however, it did not feature any artwork yet as organization still posed a problem with the newly created discord server.

The flag was expanded when Romanian streamer iRaphahell joined in, though his actions caused more trouble with the already created alliances. By that point, the discord server was somewhat better organized and managed to hold back the streamer's actions.

After he ended the stream, the situation was stabilized, however, the flag did not survive for long as the Brazilian flag and the Fuck Spez community with their text attacked it. On the morning of 21 July, the flag along with other community artworks surrounding it was completely covered.

Final flags

The first impaled Spez drawing next to "Dracula's castle"

The flag was eventually moved to a new position under the already established Hungarian flag. In order to have better chances at survival, an alliance was built with Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia, and a dedicated server for this alliance was created under the name "BSRG Union". Other alliances were also made with Turkey and France. This main flag hosted various artwork, both made by the Romanian community and by others. It was also the flag which had the first impaled Spez drawing. The drawing was made as an original idea based on Vlad III Dracula's punishments and placed next to "Dracula's castle". It was removed by Reddit administrators and eventually replaced with a text reading "Muie Spez!" above the castle.

On the last day of r/place, the Romanian community focused on defending and fixing the flags and did not make any new artwork, though it helped streamer Highman create his shark mascot on a Vietnamese flag in return for his help on the flag of Mexico which was destroyed by a Lithuanian streamer earlier that day. The attempt to retake the Mexican flag was never finished as r/place ended.

Greek and Moldovan controversies

Within the BSRG Union, it was also decided the split the gained territory evenly between its members. While Serbia never managed to get territory near the other Union members, Greece's territory remained much smaller than its allies. An agreement was made with Romania, which at that point had the largest territory, to give away a portion of its territory to Greece. Both the Greek and Romanian communities tried to follow the decision, however, many members of the Romanian community thought it was unfair to give up Romanian territory. For this reason, as well as the several raids on Greece which were stopped with the assistance from the Union members, put an end to the Greek territory claim. Greece would several times more get raided throughout the event, which prevented it to gain more territory.

Since a small Moldovan flag was placed right on the Romanian flag and the Romanian flag needed space to create its artwork, it was decided to move the Moldovan flag to a different place with the help of the Romanian community. However, due to the making of the Bran castle taking a long time and the delays caused by the streamer Bratishkinoff's attack, work on the Moldovan flag was postponed which caused some unhappy Moldovan users to grief the Romanian flag. Eventually, all was settled and the Moldovan flag was relocated.

Attacks

The first attack on the main Romanian flag came from the Russian streamer Bratishkinoff which destroyed the entire castle and the hosted artwork. The attack was stopped with the help of Romania's allies and an agreement was reached with the streamer that he will no longer attack the flag as long as Stitch's ear (a part of which passed a bit over the flag) was kept intact.

Another attack came from multiple bot accounts on the 25th of July which was also quickly stopped, though it managed to destroy the "Muie Spez" text from the flag which was no longer readded. This attack also targeted the flags of Greece, Bulgaria, and France.

The second Romanian flag on the final canvas

Expanding and second flag

With the canvas expansion on the 23rd, France permitted Romania to add another flag next to its own. This however did not work out, as a different French community resisted and made another French flag.

A second Romanian flag was created on the 24th following another canvas expansion. Located under the Charizard card, the flag had several artworks done on it. This flag covered the previous location of the Nintendo Switch artwork, which was then moved to right following a partnership made between the two communities. When the streamer iRaphahell went live again, he was persuaded to help in making two artworks on this flag: the Muștar, and the MiG. Once he had finished, the PlaceRO community had to go back to the flag and fix all the mistakes he and his viewers made with the MiG.

This flag also hosted the second drawing of the impaled u/spez head. This drawing was placed on a previous drawing of a Ciucaș beer bottle made near the supposed 2 AM mark ending of r/place on 25 July. A previous impaled Spez was drawn on the main flag. Both these drawings were censored by Reddit admins.

iRaphahell's flag

iRaphahell's artwork

Once the artwork was finished, the streamer turn his attention to the newly expanded canvas, where he created a Romanian flag of his own. This flag featured his channel logo. He also drew a banknote of one leu above this flag, and the logos of two other Romanian youtubers (zaSami and INSANITY).

Both of these were destroyed: the banknote by streamer Papaplatte, who drew a dragon on it, while the flag itself was destroyed by Vietnamese bots.

r/place 2022

Main flag just before it was destroyed

During r/place 2022, the Romanian Reddit community created two main flags, however, these flags were destroyed by Polish streamers on the last day. Only several smaller flags survived until the Great Whiteout.

During the first day, while the Romanian flag was being expanded, "The Hive Mind" of the Ukrainian flag took over a good portion of it. On the same day, the Romanian and Hungarian flags were expanded over the r/furry_irl logo.

After the Ukrainian flag had stopped, the Romanian flag was also expanded over its territory, while preserving the artwork of several communities such as the Half-Life 3 logo, Adventure Time, and the TNO Mod logo.

Second flag

Void attack

On the second day, after the canvas expansion, a second smaller flag was made. This flag was attacked by the Void but it survived with the help of the streamer Rubius.

First streamer attack

On the third day, a Polish streamer attacked the main flag and destroyed it, replacing it with a Polish flag. After the attack started, a post was made on the main subreddit requesting help to stop the streamer and rebuild the Romanian flag and the communities it hosted, gathering a lot of support.

For retaking the flag, the Anti Void Alliances organized an event on Discord, and together with the help of several other communities, the Romanian flag was restored and reconstruction began.

Reconstruction

The flag under reconstruction, while also expanding

The reconstruction took the rest of the day. During this time, the flag was also expanded over the place taken by the streamer which had been destroyed.

Last day

Conflict with Guatemala

While most of the Romanian community was asleep, the Guatemalan flag expanded over the territory taken the previous day from the Poles. This territory was taken back by the Romanians, who first decided to leave the Guatemalan artwork intact but soon everything was taken over. An agreement was reached with the Guatemalans to help them relocate after the Dacia car artwork, which was to be built on the taken back spot, was completed.

However, the Dacia was never completed as another Polish streamer, Popo, attacked the flag and destroyed it yet again. While the attack was happening, the Nordic Union took the opportunity and invaded the Hungarian flag, while Azerbaijan took a portion of the Romanian flag.

Trying to retake the flags

In the evening of the last day, iRaphahell, a Romanian streamer, tried to help retake the flags. However, as he did not know of the Romanian community's alliances he expanded the Second flag over some of them. Soon, a representative from the Romanian community managed to get in touch with him for better coordination.

All this effort was however not enough to take back the flags. The biggest achievement of the attacks was the destruction of the crude Winged Hussar artwork made by Polish streamers who had also joined in. Relocations of the flag were also tried, but each flag was destroyed by the Poles.

Aftermath of 2022

Before the end of the event, only a few smaller Romanian flags scattered throughout the canvas survived:

• Romanian Community of Risk Universalis III flag
• tiny Romanian flag
• Romanian heart - made by the Bulgarian/Polish alliance
• okptr troll face - made by r/OkPrietenRetardat in collaboration with r/pMegu

2022 Alliances

The Friendship Ribbon of r/hungary and r/Romania

The longest lasting alliance of the Romanian community was that with Hungary. The two made a friendship ribbon together and helped each other build and defend.

Alliances with other communities also existed, such as Moldova, Guardian Tales, Italy, Touhou, Adventure Time, The New Order Mod, Half-Life, and Factorio. The community was also part of the Megaman Accords founded by r/Israel and r/Megaman.

r/place 2017

The Romanian flag and artwork on r/place 2017

In the 2017 event, the Romanian flag featured a flagpole with a golden Aquila on top, which was added before the upward expansion of the flag; a vampire Snoo, which replaced a more human-looking vampire just before the end; a banner with the text "Romania", and a friendship heart with Hungary.

Artwork

2017 Artwork

• Flagpole with a golden Aquila
• Vampire Snoo
• Friendship heart with Hungary

2022 Artwork

Main Flag artwork:

• Peleș Castle
• Romanian Coat of Arms
• Moldovan Coat of Arms
• Dacia 1300
• Friendship ribbon with Hungary - collaboration with r/hungary

Second Flag artwork:

• Endless Column of Constantin Brâncuși
• Romanian Penguin - collaboration with r/penguin

The flags hosed several other communities as well:

On the Main Flag: Half-Life 3 Logo, TNO Mod Logo, Adventure Time characters, Alice Margatroid (Touhou), Little Princess (Guardian Tales), Mayreel (Guardian Tales), "BURO" text (r/Buro. The text was eventually modified to write "EURO"), and Little houses (r/LilHousePlace).

On the Second Flag: Peter Parker and Miles Morales (Spider-Man group), and Romanian themed Factorio belt.

2023 Artwork

The impaled Spez drawing on the second flag

Main Flag artwork:

• Romania map (including Moldova)
• Bran Castle
• Endless Column of Constantin Brâncuși
• Vampire
• okptr troll face
• "Muie Spez" ("Fuck Spez" in Romanian) text (destroyed on the last day by the bot attack)
• Impaled Spez (deleted by Reddit Admins)

The Ciucaș beer bottle replaced by the Spez drawing

Second Flag artwork:

• Buci Hagi
• Muștar La Minut
• ROM chocolate bar
• MiG-21 LanceR
• Ciucaș beer bottle (replaced with the second impaled Spez)
• Second impaled Spez (deleted by Reddit Admins)

Hosted community artowrk: On the Main Flag: Alice Margatroid (Touhou), Little Princess (Guardian Tales), Mayreel (Guardian Tales), Puck (Berserk), Hinagarasu (Haikyuu), Prisoner Bobby (Dead Cells).

On the Second Flag: Pikachu (incorporated into the Romanian flag), Kessoku Band x Romania (Ryo, Nijika and Kita - Bocchi the Rock).