Why is Wacky Whapsody and its associated characters licensed under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal? to answer this, you'll have to have some context, which I am more than willing to give.

Assuming you came from the part of the website where I explained how I made most of the Wacky Whapsody characters, you'd've came across the part where I explained that I never sent the Balloon-Man pitch to Image Comics because I was busy making Youtube videos. And on this Youtube channel was a series that parodied Thomas the Tank Engine called "The Little Blue Series."

The Little Blue Series, as one may expect starred a steam locomotive called Gertie, the Little Blue Engine, but what one may NOT expect was that Gertie was a bit of a sex nut. Yes sir, like Nudnik she was originally made for a series me and Ewan Cundill were doing on youtube: Sodor Funnies, a Thomas & Friends fan series. but also like Balloon-Man, Gertie was made to be a little raunchy and crass, and when I say crass, she liked to eat ass. I saw a video on youtube making fun of the concept of bootyhole eating and I thought it was so funny I made that her main personality traits.

Around the beginning of the Little Blue Series, I had met 2 men who also had youtube channels by the names of Reece & Mackenzie who wanted to be part of the series. Reece had developed 2 characters named Benjamin & Samuel. Benjamin was a yellow express engine while Samuel's only thing was that he liked to go fast, though he eventually got a job hauling garbage trains by Episode 6, both Benjamin & Samuel became main characters.

Mackenzie didn't really make any characters, essentially remaining a voice actor, but Reece became something of a character dispenser, and not in a good way.

He'd make characters were essentially just tropes incased in trains, I.E a more successful cousin to another engine, suicidal steamers and whatever else. though I did use the idea of a rapping lawyer engine (Reece the Fatass Engine, named such due to his comically large fuel tender.) nothing else was used outside of the main train trifecta, but that never stopped Reece from being persistent with his rigid one trick tin ponies that I couldn't change anything about lest he get incredibly angry. what I'm getting at is Reece was very difficult to work with, to the point where I'd say I work around him rather than with him, though I did end up finishing the Little Blue Series on a somewhat dismal note, I did restart it as a series of "Audio-Stories" which was essentially just audiobook versions of the Little Blue Series with nothing but a "book cover" for visuals.

By this point, I was reaching the tipping point with Reece. all his obnoxious demands of changing characters designs despite technical and chronological issues and constant episode pitches which were nothing more than backdoors for all of his aforementioned rigid one trick tin ponies with nothing outside of an uninteresting trait you can't even do much with were starting to wear on me, it was getting to the point he'd express disapproval at his characters not making constant appearances, saying he was bored of waiting and he had so many ideas of what to do with them despite me not having any interest. So I decided to "fire" him, and as was very characteristic of him, he got extremely angry and turned most of his youtube audience against me, personally flooded a live broadcast I was doing explaining my side of the story with a bunch of things that I did to him that were either irrelevant and full of equivocation, and overall was, for lack of a better term, being a whiny baby.

Now, even though The Little Blue Series wasn't getting new episodes due to me being in school at this point, you could never be to unprepared. Now, for some reason I didn't think to just ask Reece if I could still use Benjamin & Samuel because I assumed he'd just say "no" in a very moody angry way, so I decided to do something that I'd immediately regret:

Make a fake screenshot of him giving me the characters.

Yes ma'am, Like early Europeans forging signatures from Indian chiefs to colonize their land in a pseudo-democratic way, I did exactly what I just mentioned, and even had the gall to show Reece the fake screenshot. needless to say that after the adrenaline wore off, reality hit me like a truck and sad piano music began playing in my head.

This may sound incredibly corny, but these were actual thoughts I had right after doing what I did. And even though Reece was incredibly obnoxious, demanding and whatnot, I felt guilty. Then I remembered all the times I had stolen other peoples characters (see the Lilly Jewell Lewis section of pastworx)Not just the ones from that one specific girl from 5th grade, but other classmates, other people and other companies. I even felt bad for basing my own characters off of other peoples stuff. During this depressive stupor, I thought I was a leech that deserved to have his stuff stolen and claimed that it was never mine.

As I was in this rut, I thought about how I could make this right, I may not be able to say sorry to those I've harmed, but I could at least do SOMETHING to make up for it that didn't involve drinking a metric fuck-ton of gasoline and then eating a lit match.

Around this same time, the first few Mickey Mouse cartoons became public domain, and not only did this mean I technically own Mickey Mouse, the worlds most famous cartoon character in all of history, but this also meant I developed a bit of an interest in the public domain. You mean to tell ME that there's a whole world of popular and formerly popular characters I can just use? no strings attached? amazing! As it turns out, a lot of characters I like, as well as characters that had influenced my cartoon style WERE public domain, like Felix the Cat and the like. There was even an entire forum I found dedicated to discussing the public domain, during my rabbit hole spelunking, I discovered Creative Commons, an international nonprofit organization that empowers people to grow and sustain the thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture. And wouldn't you know it, they had a license that makes your work public domain: Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal. And with that, I accomplished 3 things.

1. I could finally shake the guilt of me stealing so many characters

2. nobody could steal my characters as they were everybody's characters: every man, woman and child under the sun could use characters from Quincy the Air-Head to Fritz the Mouse. if everyone steals, then no one steals.

3. Saved a good few hundred bucks having to file copyrights for every individual character.

And there you have it, That's why Wacky Whapsody and its associated characters are licensed under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal and you, right now, could use Cotton-Ball Billy to advertise fake fentanyl laced collagen capsules, or put Nudnik the Armadillo in your own video game. Thanks for reading, and be on the lookout for the newest Wacky Whapsody issues!