Below is a list of board-tans belonging to various boards of members of the United Chans.
Rodina[]
Rodina was created in 2015 to be used as a mascot for the chan that was uniquely from GETchan in origin, the chan having used several other characters from established media as unofficial mascots prior. Her design contains several references to GETchan, her outfit being based on the GETchan Young Pioneers outfit that was given out in 2014 that was a mixture of a seifuku and a pioneer uniform. Her character design was based on GETchan co-founder Steven Steven Magnet, whose appearance had become a recurring joke whereby people would say he was so malnourished that he looked like he was 10 years old. He was also noted for his distinctive blonde hair and blue eyes, being a Swede. This concept was, of course, genderbent and turned into a cute anime girl as the internet and Japan so like to do.
Her background story states that she's half Yugoslav, half Soviet, and lives in Sarajevo. She was originally conceptualised to be full Yugoslav and use the name "Domovina", but that was ruled out later and she was given the name "Rodina" along with a half-Soviet background to justify the name. This was done in order to have the same number of letters and syllables as Alunya's name, since she has been created on /leftypol/ not long prior and it was already being planned to have crossover art with the two as Alunya had actually appeared beside Cirno in art before. Rodina is depicted as a bubbly, outgoing girl, often in contrast to Alunya who is more closed off and reserved.
Domovina Controversy[]
The controversy surrounding Rodina's name stems from the creation of the Political Ideology Cat Girls (PICG) comic by Catgirl Drawgirl. PICG reimagines various political ideologies as catgirls (such as lenincat, anprimcat, etc.) and both Alunya and Rodina were included with redesigns as well. Alunya was mostly kept the same, with only minor deviations from her design, but Rodina was much more dramatically changed. She was aged up significantly, turned into a catgirl, her outfit was almost completely changed, and her personality was shifted drastically.
Seeing Rodina's design changed so drastically without asking the original board or even creator for permission to do so created quite a bit of tension. Tensions only increased when readers of the comic began to try to pressure /GET/ to change the name of the original Rodina to "Domovina", one of her working names before "Rodina" was decided on. The community refused to do so, and when rumours started going around that Rodina's creator, Druže, had sanctioned the name change, he stepped in to tell them to piss off. The redesigned Rodina eventually fell out of use after PICG ended and the original design remains the far more popular one, especially on /GET/, to this day.
Gallery[]
.png "Rodina character sheet (hat).png (1.05 MB)")
.png "Rodina character sheet (hatless).png (1.03 MB)")
Tania[]
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Tania Banderas | ||||||||||
  The official board-tan of /ref/, replacing the previous unofficial mascot, Moe Lenin. | ||||||||||
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Tania was created in 2015 in response to the creation of Alunya and Rodina, with a thread having been made on /ref/ about designing an original mascot for the board. At the time the board had been using Moe Lenin and Backpack Girl of Doom to some degree, but a new fresh tan was desired at the time due to the aforementioned Rodina and Alunya. Ideas were thrown around and eventually the concept of a backpacker (in reference to BPGoD) and guerrilla from an unspecified location in Latin America was decided on. As such, most ideas that followed about the design revolved around those two things. She was given a backpack with maps and flag patches in reference to /int/ and flag collection, as well as her pava (a traditional Puerto Rican hat) in reference to /carib/, a thread that existed at the time on /int/ which was friendly to /ref/.
Her final appearance came to be when the size of the backpack was reduced from being comically huge. Her name is a reference to "Tania", the nom de guerre of Tamara Bunke, a guerrilla who fought alongside Che Guevara, combined with the last name "Banderas", a Hispanic last name that literally means "flags". Building upon the joke of her being from an unspecified Latin American country, she often uses slang from multiple different Spanish-speaking countries, using slang like "híjole" from Mexico and "boludo" from Argentina. She is often depicted as having a cool, laid-back personality and an interest in national symbols like flags and anthems.
Gallery[]
.png "Tania character sheet (hat).png (1.45 MB)")
.png "Tania character sheet (ponytail).png (1.11 MB)")
Alunya[]
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(Cat) Alunya | ||||||||||
  The official board-tan of /leftypol/ since 2015. | ||||||||||
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Alunya was created on the 9th of May in 2015, when creating assets for the board. Someone suggested creating a board-tan as they were at the peak of their popularity at the time, and a catgirl design was decided upon as a reference to the sabo-cat, a symbol of the Industrial Workers of the World union. The name "Alunya" was chosen to reference the Catalan spelling of Catalonia, Catalunya, to play off of the pun of her being a cat. In reference to the name, she was also dressed in a Spanish Republican uniform in the early drafts of her creation.
Eventually her black and red outfit was decided upon as her first official design, with a redesign later introducing a hat and changes to her clothing. Both designs remain in common use. The original drawings of Alunya were drawn by Comrade King, admin/co-founder of GETchan, backed up by mod testimony. Some also argue that the thread was possibly started by him, however no proof had been presented as of yet. Alunya's personality is often depicted as that of a closed off girl with a short fuse, though with a good heart at the end of the day as seen in her interactions with Rodina.
Ideology[]
A big contention in the community is the ideology Alunya represents, or for some, lack thereof. Some anarchists claim that she represents anarcho-communism, as she's named after Catalonia, which was the main site of the Anarchist revolution in the Spanish Civil War, and also point out that her colour scheme of red and black and her bisected red-black bandanna are shared by ancoms. However, most others agree she represents general leftism/socialism to represent the entirety of the board, which doesn't have an official ideology besides being generally left-wing. In this interpretation, the black is supposed to represent anarchism and the red is supposed to represent Marxism, commonly portrayed as the "unity of black and red".
Additionally, the red-black colour scheme and even bisected bandanna are used by many Marxist movements as well, especially those outside of Western countries. Latin American and African guerrillas like the 26th of July Movement, Sandinistas, and MPLA have been known to use them often. Others also note that for instance Alunya is frequently depicted with the hammer and sickle, a symbol mainly associated with Marxists, and was originally drawn doing the pose of Lenin on the Rostrum and Enver Hoxha's raised fist. Comrade King also claims that he didn't have an ideology in mind when creating Alunya, and that he simply followed the suggestions of the userbase to try and create a non-sectarian board-tan.
Gallery[]
.png "Alunya character sheet (og).png (869 KB)")
.png "Alunya character sheet (alt).png (1,007 KB)")
Tsuki[]
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Tsuki | ||||||||
  The official board-tan of /luna/, replacing the previous unofficial mascot, Luna. | ||||||||
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Tsuki was created in 2017 by Comrade King with the input of /luna/'s users to serve as the board's new board-tan and replace Luna, a character who had been used as an unofficial mascot of the chan for six years at that point. Additionally, her creation was meant to try and spark more interest among the users on the board in hopes to generate more traffic to counter the then-ongoing Era of Stagnation. Unlike other board-tans, Tsuki's character was never fleshed out much due to the stagnation on /luna/ at the time and its eventual shutdown a year later. As such, very little art of Tsuki exists and her character was never built upon as much as the others. Regardless, she was always depicted as an outgoing girl with a bubbly personality.
Unofficial Mascots[]
Cirno (GETchan, 2011-2015)[]
From the Touhou series. Was the most widely-used unofficial mascot of /GET/ before the creation of Rodina and is still a popular symbol of the chan. She had already been heavily associated with GETs through people using images of her for GETs related to the number 9 and one-off fails, as well as having been a staple of chan culture for quite some time. Cirno often appeared on posters and other materials related to GETchan prior to Rodina's introduction, had several themes of her, still has banners of her, and Cirno Day on 9/9 is still celebrated annually. The 9-ball associated with her character was combined with the Soviet star to create the Nine-Ball Star that still serves as one of the most recognisable symbols of GETchan.
Yami Yugi (GETchan, 2011-2015)[]
From the Yu-Gi-Oh! series. Was also frequently used as a mascot on /GET/ prior to Rodina's creation due to the association with the King of GETs. Appeared on the settings and ban page, had two different themes on the site, appeared on multiple banners, and appeared on a poster. Was the default theme on GETchan 1.0. Use pretty much stopped altogether after the King of GETs himself showed up to GETchan in 2015 and requested that the chan stop using his name and image among other things.
Dubs Guy (GETchan, 2011-2013)[]
From the film American Psycho. An extremely popular image on chans for dubs and GETs, character was used from time to time in GETchan's first year and a half of operation. Appeared on GETchan's one-year anniversary poster and various banners. Fell out of use in 2013 as a friendly gesture towards Dubschan, who had begun using him as a mascot as well. This resulted in a bigger focus on Cirno and Yami Yugi, culminating in the creation of Rodina later in 2015.
Moe Lenin (/ref/, 2013-2015)[]
From the book "In Female Form?! Biographies of World Dictators" (にょたいか！！世界の独裁者列伝) which re-imagines historical figures as moe and bishoujo characters. Was first used around the time of the June /int/ Uprising, perhaps in part due to an old /ref/ user who went by the name "Comrade Lenin". Served as the most commonly-used unofficial mascot of /ref/ before the creation of Tania. Was mainly used to represent the board in posters and other artwork, very commonly seen alongside Cirno as a result of this. No longer used to represent the board after Tania was created, but the character remains a popular part of the board's culture still. Each time a move or something similar happens, an image of Moe Lenin walking while carrying a briefcase is sure to be posted by someone.
Backpack Girl (/ref/, 2013-2015)[]
From a stock image used on parked domains. Often referred to the "Backpack Girl of Doom" (BPGoD), her image became quite popular on /ref/ after the first administrator, Boris, forgot to pay for hosting and the site went down for a short while, only displaying an image of this girl. BPGoD has since become something of an inside joke on the board, being referenced like some kind of eldritch horror who does unspeakable things to people and gives the older users of the board post-traumatic shock. As an offshoot of this meme, even backpacks have become somewhat of an inside joke on the board. Even after Tania was created to be the board's mascot, BPGoD still remains a popular meme, appearing on banners and showing up often in threads as well.
PICG Rodina (/leftypol/, 2015-Present)[]
The PICG redesign of Rodina is seen by some to be an unofficial secondary mascot of /leftypol/ alongside Alunya. However, Alunya's popularity and the controversy over the design with GETchan has kept any sort of official adoption of the character from taking place. There have been calls to make her the Marxist mascot of /leftypol/ with Alunya being the anarchist counterpart mascot, but these plans have never been made official.
Luna (Lunachan, 2011-2017)[]
From the My Little Pony series. Served as the unofficial mascot of /luna/ before creation of Tsuki as a rebranding effort. Was more or less only seen as an unofficial mascot due to the board having been named after her, rather than any sort of actual attachment to the character from the community. Regardless, her moon symbol continued to be a popular symbol of the board and was included in both the emblem and was incorporated into Tsuki's design. Additionally, like "Luna" (Луна) means "moon" in various languages like Spanish and Russian, the name "Tsuki" (月) was chosen due to it meaning "moon" in Japanese.