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Notes -
I believe that as much as I believe that guys watch PornHub for the plot.
The key thing to observe here is that Twilight, the version without the hot sex, was outsold by Fifty Shades, the version with the hot sex.
Are you going to tell me that the romance was that much better?
Yes, and trivially so.
Why would you be interested in some sparkly 17 year old (he's secretly much older than that but still acts like a teenager, something that's only really attractive to tween/teen girls) whose only thing he brings to the table is money and power he didn't actually earn if you could instead have a real man who is explicitly described as having attained all of those things himself? (Which is also true in the case of fanfic, I'll add- the man's daring deeds come well-established, so we don't have to come up with any other pre-made reason to ship our self-insert with him).
Men and women have different attraction patterns; men don't generally pursue older women because youth and beauty is important to them, and women don't generally pursue younger men because youth and the ability to gain power/money are generally mutually exclusive. (Women who choose this anyway get a 'predator' nickname for pursuing immature [from a sociological standpoint, not a normative one] men for the same reason men do when they do this to women.)
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