Culturally, we put a lot of emphasis and value on originality. An undue emphasis, as far as I can tell. I believe art (and yes, worldbuilding is art) is founded more on sharing and mixing and reinventing than it is on truly novel ideas. I think we should embrace that.

For context: this follows directly from last week’s post on worldbuilding. Last week I mentioned stealing inspiration and using pieces of other stories, but I focused on embracing inconsistency. I should have also referenced my old post about leaving blank spaces. This week we’ll focus on the stealing, sampling, and paying homage side of things.