I'm calling bullshit

So im so enraged, I was trying to sleep, and all I could think about was the things I wanted to say in critique today.

Basically this girl did this great mario fan art, it was all this silhouette mario imagery creatively arranged on a piece of acetate, and barb decided for this piece that instead of the artist explaining it us to go down the line and everyone say one thing about it first. Which is all well and good, except for that someone who basically was bitter about a critique in another class decided to make a comment, and then blood was basically scented in the air.
It was simultaneously a dig at my work, which I didnt really give a crap about, but something vague about what is she trying to do but showing pop culture, anyway nothing good. Then a girl said they would like to see her do something original. Then last of all a guy was all oh your obviously gonna get grilled for copying imagery yadda yadda. some unimportant but negative shit. geez like this was a great work for this particular girl to make I thought, it was so different from the stuff she usually makes.
So clearly the girl explains the work seems quite upset about it, because the work represented feelings she had when together with her boyfriend who she gave the most recent mario game to, and them playing it together. Not to mention the work was immaculately well cut out, and well done in general.
Barb and everyone had a bit of pontificating over it and then before we moved on I made I thought a pretty good rebuttal
But im just still fuming over it, and it wasnt even mine. I dont even understand how you can call it copying, copying a mario game would be getting on your computer and writing a friggin level or some crap, if you wanna call using a pre-existing image copying than fuck everything is copying. Looking at a landscape and painting it is copying, every other fucking piece that was on the wall was copying. Being influenced by a landscape, or some piece of fine fucking art is no different than being inspired by a video game. Or people that make book or movie inspired art. It's clearly fucking valid and there is a broad audience for fan art.
In a school where we are taught to accept artists shit in a can literally as art, crazy abstract crap, people banging drums, knitting, all as art, why is video game imagery such a hard pill to swallow.

To say that work was unoriginal, that it was copying, thats fuckin bullshit.