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There wasn't much romance in the new Top Gun movie either, Cruise spent much of the non-jet parts being dressed down by former lovers which I found a bit irritating and unnecessary. Quite different to the old one.
In either of the Mission Impossible 'Dead Reckoning' movies there wasn't much romance.
Not sure how you can have romance in the modern era where there seems to be so much emphasis on men being denigrated. Traditional James Bond style romance is too rapey, Roger Moore's Bond is right out. Even soft wooing can still give the ick to some extent. The male can't pursue the female without being humiliated it seems,. And if the female is pursuing the man it seems like male wish fulfillment fantasy, the Japanese trope where a very passive guy ends up with a harem of 10/10s because he's 'nice'.
So how do you have a romance then if neither party can pursue? Ironically, lots of women want Roger Moore x10, they want a billionaire werewolf lumberjack cowboy with a massive cock. The 50 shades of grey movie made 570 million on a budget of 40 million, it's a clear success. As in my previous post, many many women want the alpha male version of Malfoy: https://www.themotte.org/post/877/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/187490?context=8#context
But directors and high society/PMC feminists absolutely refuses to permit the alpha male version of Malfoy, Rowling wrote him to be a wimp and a loser. I saw a funny thread on /gif/ the other day where the premise was 'feminists/liberals fucked hard' and so naturally all these commenters joined in a pointless political debate on 4chan's third most degen pornography board: 'you guys are incels posting this garbage', 'its so cringe, trump supporters don't have sex' and nobody realized that the clips were all from the reddit forum, fuckingfascists. It was leftwing and liberal women who were into this stuff, getting fucked by trump supporters, getting turned into tradwives. Femgooners were to blame. You can tell this instantly because none of it or the stuff from fuckingfascists was anime. Clearly it wasn't authentic right-wing content. There's a huge gap between the roles and expectations that society tries to project and what's actually happening, at least in terms of masturbation fantasies.
I'd like a movie where some gigachad Sean Connery secret agent from the 1950s comes forward in time and has to deal with modern norms and lame gadgets, shows all the paper-pushers and pencilnecks what real racism and sexism looks like. The femgooners can have their dangerous alpha male. I can have an antiwoke, fun, action movie. Everybody wins except the directorial class who've been pumping out all these terrible marvel movies.
Something really amusing regarding Malfoy given your mention of 50 Shades, which was Twilight fanfiction with the serial numbers filed off (meaning the author changed the names to be allowed to publish it as original fiction). There's a Draco/Hermione story that is also being published.
The upshot here is that female romance fandom commonly takes franchise characters and smushes them together in transformative works. This is VERY true of Avengers fandom, but a lot of it is slash, because Marvel/Disney are never going to let Cap and Bucky bang onscreen.
Personally, I'm not particularly interested in romance in superhero movies. It feels shoehorned-in.
See also The Mortal Instruments, which was adapted from the author's earlier Draco Trilogy.
In a sane world, writers could just publish their fanfic commercially and send a royalty check to the copyright holder. But we do not live in a sane world.
Cassandra Cla(i)re was well-known in the fandom space. https://fanlore.org/wiki/Cassandra_Claire
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I missed my chance to finish reading Manacled then, probably a good thing. The work is basically an infohazard as discussed downthread in my link, totally alien to the male sensibility. And it holds such power over them too, such incredible desire. Who the hell translated it into WELSH?
Needs industrial-grade shaming. Whatever invective and scorn was poured on the 'I got sent to another world and have sexy adventures with Biccus Tittus and her sisters: now with more hot dark elves' genre should be returned against these people. Hermione is not supposed to be a useless, passive, shrinking violet failing to kill herself. And she's certainly not supposed to be with Draco in a Handmaid's Tale scenario where there's barely any sex, just suffering.
I read it due to the buzz and I have deep regrets.
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If you ever change your mind, you can still find it in the archives.
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It isn't a perfect fulfillment of the fantasy, but the Sylvester Stallone series Tulsa King has him playing a traditional Italian mafia underboss who gets out of prison after a 25 year stint, and ends up in Oklahoma, and has to adapt his older-generation mobster style, macho braggadocio and all, to modern times and a smaller town.
The general theme is that his brand of realistic common sense, his willingness to use violence, and his tendency to take what he wants is actually extremely useful for achieving success compared to the beta males that modernity has wrought, and this likewise gives him success with ladies.
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Demolition Man, but different timeframes.
Demolition Man is the most reactionary movie ever made.
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