@Triplefox ok but. that's still not relevant to anything i said and also wrong. even if you don't *mean* that condescendingly (and I don't know, you could mean it that way, i'm just giving you the benefit of the doubt that you don't deserve), calling whole swathes of media "formulaic" is still massively condescending. but also "formulaic" is totally irrelevant. one can make interesting, engaging work within the confines of genre fiction, popular songs, or even soap operas! what matters is not the circumstances of the creation of media but the value you get out of it.