A long time ago for a bunch of their modern jet kits, Hasegawa's kit decals included stencil blocks where the minuscule stencils were printed inside fields of carrier film. They were oriented (more or less) to the correct position on the jet and made applying 358 teensy decals so much easier. I know the current trend is to intentionally make this process more difficult and tedious, but does anyone make decal sheets like this? I care far less about silvering and visible carrier film than I do about my motivation disappearing because I have more stencils stuck to my fingertips than the surface of the model.

Absolutely true, Wes @avispa93. Stencils never seem to end up where you want them and always seem to be a problem when you clear coat them. There are times when I don't use all of them, just enough to make the plane surface look suitably busy. I build a model a few months ago that I made a real effort to get them all on, and was just patting myself on the back when I noticed in my post-build photos that one of the stencils had very obviously ended up diagonally to where it should have been.

Right? I can deal with one large block of clear decal film that has slight silvering issues a lot easier than I can with 333 individual cases of silvering and peeling.