When the potential emotional space of an idea has been explored, what then?

In a commentary about using rape as a trigger in film, Drew McWeeny writes:

I think it is absolutely the responsibility of an artist to look into darkness without blinking. I think it is important that we talk about morality and character and the way we dehumanize one another. But I also think the point has been more than made on film that rape is a terrible thing, and at this point, if you're not contributing some new idea to the conversation, then you are literally just using it as a button, something you push to get a response, and that unnerves me.

This is one of the big things that's been bothering me as a writer in recent days. We've seen this problem's manifestation on film, where remakes of remakes are being remade, and we're seeing this problem in literature, where repetitious cozies in all sorts of settings (I've seen cozy mystery series unified by the theme of knitting, crocheting (two different series!), cooking, and even home improvement-- that last one, man, every house they flip has a dead body hiding in it somewhere!) are just that: the same story told time and again by similar people surrounded by slightly different furniture.

Drew McWeeny touches on an important point here: is it illegitimate to use the rape of a character onscreen, or on the page, to make a point about the character's vulnerability? It's a cheap trick, and it can still be turned on its head in our culture by confronting the unexpecting reader with something other than M-on-F and writing out the consequences, but that's a pretty daring thing for a film to do. (To this day, the rape scene in Deliverance is treated jokingly, as if to defuse the scariness of it.)

Once an idea has been taken to its hilt, once we've explored the ideaspace of an idea, be it rape, or true love, or whatever, what is left for writers but to tread over the same old ground again and again, hoping to find one nugget of unexplored truth that might not actually still be there at all?

Nitinol!

I loved Omni magazine as a kid, the slick Penthouse-for-Science Fiction readers that Bob Guccione published back in the 80s. One of the best articles, one of the few that sticks in my mind, was about the state-of-the-art in metamaterials, and how weird alloys and structured metals were going to change various industries. I was fascinated by the properties of nitinol, a metal that can be forged into different shapes and different temperatures, and will return to those shapes when exposed to other temperatures in a similar range. The magazine was full of the usual futuristic raves about all the interesting uses for this new technology.

Kouryou-chan's braces are made with nitinol. Apparently, the wire is cooled to room temperature, inserted into the mounts on the molars, then fitted to the rest of the appliance and locked down. As the metal warms up to body temperature, it contracts and exerts the force necessary to bring the teeth into line. Different weights of nitinol wire are used throughout the lifespan of the therapy to moderate the force on her teeth as they get closer and closer to their proper alignment.

Now that's kinda cool. I'm living in my own future.