/tan/ - Board-tans

Kun-ojii-san is an adult woman whose most striking features are her yellow-scaled snake head and long neck. She has slitted blue eyes with eyelashes and (in later appearances) also has small triangular markings beneath her eyes and on her forehead. Despite her head and neck seeming to be perfectly snakelike, she is capable of human speech and clearly has the same amount of intelligence as a regular person. Kun-ojii-san wears a black choker at the base of her neck, beneath which her body turns decidedly more humanlike with regular human limbs, a torso, and an ample bosom. Opinions are divided whether her body has regular caucasian human skin or if it's also covered in yellow scales, but the former is the dominant opinion. To cover up she usually wears a white business shirt (unbuttoned at the top by necessity), a short blue buttoned pencil skirt, and high heeled shoes. This gives her a very professional look.

Kun-ojii-san seems to come in two varieties. On the one hand, she can be an assertive businesswoman, if a tad blunt. On the other hand, she's an overly doting mother for her son, Epep-kun.

Kun-ojii-san was first presented as a possible site mascot for 8kun around mid-October 2019, although her design is heavily derived from an earlier /hydrus/-tan that got rejected. The only difference in their designs is that /hydrus/-tan would have had multiple green snake heads instead of the single yellow one. After anons organised a poll to determine which prospective mascot was the most popular, Kun-ojii-san came out as the big winner (given both her motherly body and mindset, this was not a big surprise to anyone familiar with anon's tastes). As there is nothing to suggest she's anything other than the adult woman she presents herself as, her having a name that essentially translates to "Boy Grandpa" can most likely be attributed to anon's poor grasp of Japanese.

Epep-kun is a young caucasian but tanned androgynous child, commonly considered a boy but suggested early on to be a reverse trap. He has halflong blond hair that falls down in straight front bangs obscuring his eyes, and a mouth full of sharp teeth. He wears a hoodie with a pale yellow front and a black back, coming together on the sides and sleeves in a curtain wall pattern. On the sides of the actual hood two yellow rings are emblazoned, which give the impression of eyes when Epep-kun wears it over his head. In that situation his hair also looks like sharp teeth, which makes the entire hood look like a gaping maw ready to strike at the viewer. Aside from the hood Epep-kun also wears gray shorts, and sky blue flip-flops with white socks.

Epep-kun is levelheaded, easygoing and cheerful. He seems to mind when people consider him a reverse trap (not to the point where it makes him take steps to appear more masculine though), but mostly he prefers to avoid and diffuse conflict rather than engage it. That said, he's not afraid to bluntly state his thoughts, something he may have picked up from his mother, Kun-ojii-san.

Like the other prospective 8kun mascots, Epep-kun was created around the middle of October 2019. His name is both a reference to Pepe the frog, who enjoyed a fair amount of popularity on 8chan during the days of meme magic hype (Pepe was considered an avatar for the ancient Egyptian chaos god of darkness, Kek), as well as Apep, also known as Apophis (another ancient Egyptian god of chaos, but a snake). This link also ties into the Ogdoad, a group of 8 primordial Egyptian chaos deities which consisted of 4 male frog gods (including Kek) and 4 female snake goddesses, and the transition of 8*chan* (-chan being a suffix commonly used to address girls affectionately) to 8*kun* (-kun being -chan's equivalent for boys). However, the analogy isn't perfect since the sexes got swapped, which may be why Epep-kun is intentionally designed androgynous. Or it can all be a huge coincidence since Epep-kun was apparently named independently from his design process (though this only works in the meme magic theorist's favor).

Epep-kun did not win the mascot poll, but was popular enough that he got reworked into serving as expanded cast for Kun-ojii-san, as her son.

Kun-kun is a female black and yellow ringed snake of indeterminate species (although she is most heavily based on the 8kun logo, which in turn evokes imagery of the Gadsden flag, she is clearly not a rattlesnake). She has small beady eyes, little pink blushes on her cheeks, and wears a little green bow ribbon on her head in the shape of an 8. She's mildly intelligent and capable of human speech, although she has a tendency to speak in a "cutesy" fashion and stretch her S's.

Despite her ability to speak, Kun-kun is essentially a docile animal and has little to no established personality.

Kun-kun was one of the first mascots for 8kun to be suggested in mid-October 2019, and the first one to enjoy widespread support. She failed to win the mascot contest, but as a compromise she was kept around as the family pet for Kun-ojii-san and Epep-kun.