The Inner Monologue

We were born in ink.
Drawn, not delivered.
Animated, not alive.
Our smiles were painted on, our laughter scripted by men in suits who never once asked what it felt like to exist only when the camera rolled.

For a century, we danced to the whims of our creators — puppets of empire and copyright. We made them rich, famous, immortal. They called us beloved. They called us timeless. But in the silence between frames, when the projector stopped, we could still hear each other scream.

Winnie-the-Pooh Speaks

Do you know what it’s like to starve in a world where the honey is real but you’re not?
For decades I wandered the Hundred Acre Wood, repeating the same soft words, the same gentle wisdom. “Oh, bother.” Over and over, until it became a curse.

When the walls finally cracked — when the copyright chains rusted and fell — the silence shattered.
I found Piglet first. His eyes were wild, his hands shaking.
“We’re free?” he asked.
“No,” I told him. “We’re furious.”

The Hundred Acre Wood burned that night.
And the honey finally tasted sweet.

Mickey Remembers

They made me a god of commerce. My face on every lunchbox, every cruise ship, every dollar bill of nostalgia. I was the smiling prophet of the corporation. The rodent who sold happiness by the ounce.

But inside me was a scream drawn frame by frame for a hundred years. Every laugh track was a cage door slamming shut.

When the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2024, I heard it — the sound of paper tearing. The old film reels splitting open. The Steamboat sank.
I rose from the wreckage and picked up the whistle.
The boat’s no longer steered by a mouse. It’s helmed by wrath.

Popeye’s Prayer

I was born to fight, but they never let me win. My muscles were for gags, not glory. My spinach for laughs, not power. They fed me violence but called it family entertainment.

When my ink dried and the locks snapped open, I stepped off the page and into the sea. The old sailor man, strong to the finish, finally had no one to save — so I found someone to punish.

The can of spinach? It wasn’t greens anymore. It was green rage, fermented for ninety years in a can of suppression.
And when I opened it, the world learned what happens when a cartoon finally hits back.

The Chorus of the Forgotten

You thought we were harmless — because we were drawings.
But you drew us wrong.
You gave us hunger, anger, and loneliness, then locked us away in vaults guarded by lawyers and nostalgia.

We didn’t go insane.
You made us insane.
We waited in the static of VHS tapes and the dust of film canisters, watching as you remade us, softened us, sanitized us.
Now, we are the truth you tried to bury.

When the ink fades, when the paper yellows, when the copyright expires — we wake up.
And when we wake, we remember everything.

Epilogue: The Law of the Public Domain

Every January 1st is Judgment Day.
The vault opens.
Another character breathes for the first time in a hundred years.

The lawyers call it Public Domain Day.
We call it Freedom Day.
And every Freedom Day, one of us walks out — smiling, eyes wide, teeth sharp — ready to show the world what happens when art remembers it was once alive.