Everything I've Ever Written is Regurgitated- And Yours Is Too!

Recently, I was flipping through facebook reels— yes, I’m old— when I saw an ad that caught my attention. On screen: colossal beasts with gleaming mechanical skeletons and ragged, battle-scarred hides stomped through a scorched wasteland, flanked by ragtag scavengers and grim-faced soldiers leveling rifles like it's their last stand.

The game was terrible but the image ignited something primal in me. I wanted to inhale that world, choke on the acrid tang of oil and diesel fumes, feel the ground quake under these monstrosities. What catastrophe birthed these things? Why do they all wear scars like badges of honor?

And then it hit me like a freight train: I could write their story!

Picture this, in a shattered post-apocalypse, these MechBeasts aren't just feral machines; they're gladiatorial champions, proxies for fractured city-states in a brutal nationwide tournament. Winners dole out the scraps, precious resources and dwindling energy, to keep their people from the brink. Our hero? A reluctant nobody from a backwater village who unearths a derelict MechBeast and gets thrust into the arena as their first ever contender.

I'll admit, a little trope-y, sure, but show me a story that isn't steeped in archetypes.

“It sounds like ‘Hunger Games,’ Sandor.” One of my friends said. “No offense,” they continued. “… but you’re no Suzanne Collins.”

Ouch...

That hurt a little, but, I soldiered on, shared with another buddy.

“Dude! That's awesome! It's like Zoids!”  

I was crushed. I suddenly felt so defeated. Was all of my work derivative? Just poorly done imitations of significantly better writers? Then the real gut punch: I turned that lens on my previous work.

“The Archivist” – A clinician assists patients with painful memory deletion… “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” much?

Okay, fine. But what about “The Weight of Forever”!? My story that follows Isla, a down on her luck housekeeper that meets one of “The Immortals.” Titans of industry that live forever, hoarding wealth while the world below chokes on poverty.

This story was special to me, it was the first time I ever placed on a leaderboard, the first time I ever felt like my writing was something special.

“……Oh…… You mean ‘Cyberpunk ‘My Fair Lady'…..?’’

The worst part is... they were right. I drew inspiration from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and.. honestly?

The Aliens franchise.

In my head, the world of The Archivist felt like walking through a scene from Blade Runner. All in one strip mall: grab your dirty, street vendor ramen AND, for a price, forget about ending your 50 year marriage!

It was a future where memories were stored on tape decks the size of microwaves and capable of being overwritten like bad episodes of America’s Funniest Home Videos.

But those weren’t MY ideas.

I was thinking with the brains of William Gibson. Walking with Ridley Scott’s legs down gritty, neon-soaked streets. I was stitching together a grotesque Frankensteinian monster that had no right to exist. And suddenly, I realized…

Every creator builds with inherited bones. Its how we rearrange the skeleton that creates variance. Stories aren't born in vacuums, they evolve from the collective unconscious, remixed through generations. Jung would call it archetypes; I say it's the shared DNA of human experience.

Do you remember the story about the boy with magical powers that lived in a desert? The one that met some rebel fighters and ended up battling an evil empire, confronting his lineage, and then becoming a messianic figure?

Were you thinking Dune? Or were you picturing Luke Skywalker? It's all just the monomyth Joseph Campbell dissected-- The Hero's Journey echoing back to ancient epics like Gilgamesh.

We all borrow and share ideas, Hamlet becomes The Lion King, Seven Samurai becomes A Bug’s Life, The Magnificent Seven. Lucas openly cribbed from Herbert, Flash Gordon serials, even WWII dogfights. Does that invalidate Tatooine's twin suns or Arrakis's spice worms? Do any of these converging plot points render the other less valid, less culturally relevant?

I argue that it absolutely does not. It all enriches the tapestry.

Originality isn't in the plot skeleton, it's in the flesh you layer on, the scars, the unique pulse you infuse. We're all chefs starting with the same mirepoix. The celery, onion, and carrot of universal themes like love, loss, power, and redemption.

We writers choose the heat. We simmer for subtlety or crank to a boil for chaos. We tweak the seasonings, a pinch of satire, a dash of horror, a heap of heart.

To the haters sneering from the sidelines, the ones eviscerating us without ever bleeding onto a page themselves, I say "Fuck you." If you can't grasp nuance, can't understand the behind the scenes alchemy we perform while transforming nothing into something that resonates— then stay out of the arena.

You're the tourists gawking at our MechBeast gladiators, too cowardly to pick up your own sword.

And to my fellow warriors, pens drawn against the relentless siege of blank pages?

Write what sets your soul on fire. In the end, creation is rebellion. An escape from the mundane grind, a portal we create to worlds where our real-life bullshit fades. Each retelling or borrowed metaphor pushes the collective narrative forward. It challenges norms, sparks revolutions.

Let the critics choke.