Micronation-Chans

Micronation-Chans
	"GUM-Chan" - A personification of the GUM and the first -Chan made by the micronational community; Image by: Seann Torres
Author(s)	Various
Website	Various
Launch date	1 May 2020 (De-Jure),; 28 March, 2008 (De-Facto)
Alternate name(s)	GUM-Chan,Micro-Chan
Genre(s)	Political cartoons, comedy.

Micronation-chans (popularly referred to as Micro-chans) are a form of micronational comic designed to satirize current events within the MicroWiki sector. Similarly to Microball, Characters are represented as an often over-the-top allegory of political and historic events as well as more general cultural comparisons. Similar to the popular anime Hetalia: Axis Powers, the countries (and organisations) are represented as humans. Both positive and negative cultural stereotypes form part of each character's personality. Unlike Microballs, countries are usually just referred to as their country or organisation name.

History

The predecessor of the Micro-chan phenomenon was PolandBall, a similar set of comics satirizing recognized states. After Polandball's creation, the comics became wildly popular. A few comics portrayed Sealand. Around the same time, Japanese Manga Writer Hidekaz Himaruya began to create a series about humanized real life nations named Hetalia: Axis Powers. Interestingly, the personifications of micronations were also included, with Sealand appearing in the first volume, arguably the first example of a micronation being created in the -chan form.

In the wider micronational community, however, the idea of personifying their nations as anime-style characters didn't kick off until the 24 Hour Quorum of 2020, where HHRH King Alexander of Lytera jokingly suggested to create a 'GUM-Chan'^[1] in a similar vein to the Earth-Chan meme. The representative of Gaia drafted up a design idea, but Alexander formalised the GUM-Chan's most recognised design with the approval of Christina I of Cycoldia. For the rest of the Quorum, Sketches were made of GUM-Chan, and by the next day, people were discussing creating more characters in -Chan form.