Talk:The Cloudverse/@comment-25421326-20141011031156/@comment-1988716-20141011045022

I definitely could have been clearer. There was no "first" human-- in the sense that it's not like every human came from one single ancestor, not with the way evolution diverges. It's also arguable that ideas don't exist independently of linguistics, or rather that we as a species developed linguistics and then we developed abstract thought, which would mean by the time we started having ideas there were more than enough humans around to make things interesting.

But let me put it a different way. After humans figured out how to first communicate, the things we'd have said would bave boiled down to "THERE IS FOOD HERE," "DANGER IS NEAR," "I AM THE DANGER," or "I AM READY FOR LOVE." From there, we'd have gotten abstract and given the first real ideas, which would have likely either been nature-bsaed like "THE SUN IS PRETTY" or language-based like "HOW INTERESTING, WHEN YOU SAY 'PRETTY' IT IS HAPPY BUT WHEN I SAY 'PRETTY' IT IS SAD." Then from there we'd have steadily gotten more and more abstract. But the point I'm getting to is that ideas don't just come out of a vacuum-- they're based on emotion, conflict, subversions of expectations, they are baically about communication itself (or about the things that happen as a result of it and its problems).

So while it is very hard to be unique with one's idea when all ideas stem from similar roots, it is still possible to be compelling and intriguing in ways your audience are not used to seeing. Bring in some influence from something your audience isn't likely to be familiar with, and they'll think you're the most original person in the universe (that happens a lot when writers bring eastern influence to western civilizations, for instance).

SO. tl;dr: Really, don't let worries of originality bring you down. Just make sure whatever you do in your work is there for a reason, and the rest should come naturally.

This ends DJay's Daily Diatribe.