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You sound like a perfect candidate for studying Joseph Campbell and The Hero with a Thousand Faces (AKA the Monomyth). It is not so much that people steal or blatantly copy as it is writers draw up...
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You sound like a perfect candidate for studying Joseph Campbell and The Hero with a Thousand Faces (AKA the Monomyth). It is not so much that people steal or blatantly copy as it is writers draw upon known story tropes or elements from multiple sources (mythology, cinema, comics, etc) that no one story is truly original. Do writers copy other writers? I would answer that with a question of "Have you ever watched The Lion King and Hamlet?" The Lion King is a reinterpretation.