Originality is DEAD. Simple as that.

Guys, I need to talk to you about something.

First, you probably noticed that a fuck-ton of things on my fic Guardians of the Aura are based and/or references to games, memes, and even other fanfics. If you think that I stole them by using on my fic, shut the fuck up and accept this fact:

NOTHING IS ORIGINAL ANYMORE.

See below the break to understand why I'm saying this.

There will always be someone who did the same thing as you. The only thing you can do is try to make it unique, but it's impossible for it to be 100% original.

My fic for example. It's basically a story about a wingless griffoness that's a hybrid with magical powers that moves from another country to protect Ponyville from the Everfree Forest while trying to live their lives there. It also features Gamer Luna and Gamer Spike.

Fuck, it sounds awful when it's descripted like that.

Anyhow, let's see:
Hybrid protagonist - The Whiching Hour
Magical powers without being a unicorn - Griffin the Griffin
Moving from another country - The fuck-ton of HiEs are from a dimension to another, moving from one country to other is nothing.
Protect Ponyville from the Everfree - Past Sins
Gamer Luna - There's an entire group for that.
Gamer Spike - This one I never saw, or at least I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure there's one or two other fics about it.

See? Now, those things are just coincidences. What about real basing/references/copying?

There's a few things that I admit I based off of other things.

Mirror Moon - obviously based off of Memory Mirror, Luna's Gamer Tag on My Knight In Faded Armor.
Sapphyra - a bit more obscure, but most of her character I based off of Sapphire, from Love's A Drag-On and Love Keeps Dragon On, two great SpikexOC shipfics.
More than a half of my spells were based on animes/games attacks, especially Pokémon.

Now there's another one that's a bit more complicated. You see, Aguion is my first OC ever, I created him way before I even heard of MLP:FiM, and I use his mane on every site/game/forum/whatever I register myself and don't need to use my real name.

He's a Speed-based Dancer that fights with two swords and has more than one element, but mostly uses Thunder and Air.

His signature spell, Feather Step, is a dash of speed that makes him so fast for a few seconds that most will swear he teleported, and leaves a trail of energy feather on his wake that he can control with his other Air spells.

Now, imagine my surprise when a fic I read a long time ago updated, and when I re-read it one of the characters used a spell with the same name AND concept.

Well, fuck.

See what I mean? I didn't even remember the fic when I created the spell and it used the same spell! Great isn't?!

I'll change the name from Feather Step to Feather Walk, but the Feather part will have to stay since it's basically what gives sense to the name.

I just wanted to get this out of my chest while I still remembered and before anyone could say I was copying a random fic that I never even heard about.

Thank you for hearing my ramble. And I hope you won't downvote GotA just because of this, since it was pretty obvious I based those things, anyway.