Shon, I can hug you for that.

As I said before, originality literally doesn't even mean 'the first'; it means 'from the origin'-that is, from inspiration or such. The point of it is to express the idea and/or truth, not to be the 'the first'. Whether something is the first doesn't have any effect on whether the story is good or not; it's the honesty and depth that does, which simply copying popular ideas by nature lacks-as does eschewing honesty and depth n an effort to be 'the first'.