Overuse works against Intention

We often hear about size doesn’t matter as much as how you use something. And up to a point that is true; skill does matter more than mass. There is though another element which makes even skill to not matter as much, and that is repetition.

Something not many are going to admit about martial arts is that they work best when you don’t see them coming. If you are not advertising your moves, or even let your opponent know that you know martial arts, then you catch him off guard and you increase the odds of victory.

Same goes with tropes and stereotypes. They work best when you don’t see them coming. And the best way to not see them coming is to not being fed up by seeing them all the time. That is the thing with formulaic series; they repeat themselves in such specific ways and so often that you can predict what will happen next.

One of the many reasons we do not enjoy shows as much as we did before the internet era, is because we have too many of them. We can binge watch them, or follow dozens of them at the same time, which leads to seeing the formula of every genre way more often than we used to back when there were only a handful of tv channels and each one was airing an episode every week.

This has the illusion of making you think older shows were less formulaic than newer shows. It’s true to an extent, since formulas are being constantly calibrated based on what sells the most, and it was much harder to make these estimates before the age of social media.

Still, this feeling is magnified by repetition and in many cases ends up having the exact opposite effect than the intended one, because you know what’s about to happen. You’ve seen it before and you don’t like where it’s heading. It’s why I don’t like things like time resets or amnesia. I know what they are doing, I see the pitfalls, and I don’t like them.

Which is why writing contests began having restrictions when it comes to light novels. Isekai and teenager protagonists have been saturated to the point they don’t accept them anymore. Enough is enough. That shit got old a decade ago.