How can you possibly know if I copied this? For your information, no I haven't copied it from anywhere.
Maybe stealing intelectual property is normal in your world but not in real world.
So by following your logic if I'm a musician I can use anybody's tracks/music and paste it to my own album because the real authors are selling the same music? Seriously?
His competition has nothing to do with this. EOT for my side.
You know what? You are absolutely right!
You wrote a fabulous masterpiece comparable to Game of Thrones and therefore it should be protected by copyright.
The actual perceived "quality" is entirely irrelavent; he could write something comparable to Game of Thrones or he could write about what he ate for breakfast this meowing. It's still his intellectual property regardless. Plagiarism is plagiarism.