Today's Public Domain Character

The Unknown from the Glasgow Willy Wonka Experience

The Unknown is like an evil chocolatier who lives in the walls. While the story of Charlie & The Chocolate Factory are copyrighted still (i believe owned by Netflix currently as they bought the rights to all of Roald Dahl's works a few years back)

The Unknown is an original character that was created using AI to write the script for this event. AI creations are not able to be copyrighted. Therefore, its public domain

God works fast but fanfic writers work faster

nice of mr wonka to invite us over for a singular jelly bean and a quarter cup of lemonade eh luigi?

im sorry i just love them so much

My favorite Willy Wonka character

EDIT: noticing WAY too many comments misgendering the actor, the unknown is not a man!

THE UNKNOWN!!

Quick doodle, and my mind can't stop bringing up DT/UT.

Webweave for The Unknown from Glasgow's Willy Wonka Experience

Why does The Unknown from the catastrophic Glasgow Willy Wonka Experience feel so famili—WAIT A MINUTE

lives in the walls ✔️

wears mask ✔️

makes candy ✔️

I want to believe they ran away together

The Unknown is so interesting to me, the concept, the look, the sheer aura of it. But also it highlights something, the script for the event was made with AI yet the thing thats brought so much joy and beauty from this trainwreck of the event was not the AI images promoting it or the script the actors begrudgingly went throught. Its the human elements that followed.

The actors speaking about the event and interacting with people online

the mountains of fan art of the unknown and the oompa loompas

the litney of memes surrounding it

it really shows how much more natural and joyous creativty and soul human creativity brings to the table. As good as AI tools get, they can't replicate that. They cant replicate the joy sparked in making memes, making art, laughing it up and creating with your fellow beings.

Would AI be able to make Goncharov? maybe but not in the way tumblr created it, not in the shared bouncing off each other for months, not in the organic way of inspiring and reinspiring artists and writers for weeks on end because they wanted to be a part of a collective project.

AI cant take our souls away

magolor's first attempt at a merry magoland was. not too hot.

to me the fact that the unknown from the willy wonka experience was played by a 16-year-old girl makes the whole thing ten times funnier because of how relatable it is. like yeah that's just what it's like trying to find acting jobs in high school. sometimes you end up in an empty warehouse with two oompa-loompas and a single jelly bean.

Holy shit there’s already “Willy Wonka/The Unknown” fics on Ao3 from the Glasgow Willy Wonka AI experience

The thing I love about The Glasgow Willy Wonka Experience is that it feels like one of those things that went viral naturally. These days, when you read an article about something "going viral" 99 times/100 if seems to me like it just got boosted by The Algorithm on whatever site (Binley Mega Chippy for example), or it was designed in a marketing organisation's lab with the explicit intent of going viral (see: any meme about a Disney film that pops up during the marketing period, such as "Avengers is the most ambitious crossover of all time")

It feels like these earnestly viral things only happen maybe once a year, the last thing that entertained me in such a way was Goncharov. It's a bit sad because it felt like most memes were like this in the early days of the internet, but now they're the exception.