I finally managed to get around the forced squares, sort of. Some avatars like yours truly's still have to have some empty space around them to display in the correct dimensions, but in principle the forum now defaults to 192x129 pixels for avatars, which should work a lot better with flags of all kind. Avatars will look slightly deformed on mobile devices, I might or might not be able to do something about that.
Let me know what you prefer.
Let me know what you prefer.