20 years of Twilight: Why we love to hate Stephenie Meyer’s brand of cringy affection

Meyer had created a universe so intoxicating that logic exited the chat early, and criticism felt unnecessary. The blue-grey tint of the films was enough to convince you that eternal love was cold, damp, and best experienced in Forks, Washington.

We grew up with these books, and we couldn’t stop ourselves from returning to the theatres year after year for the movies, as if bound by a cultish ritual. In fact, October didn’t fully arrive until we binged the Twilight series. We were willing to overlook everything, including the characters who seemed allergic to self-preservation, emotions that escalated too quickly, and dialogue that made no sense (hold on, spider monkey!).

While Twilight asked very little of us intellectually when we were teenagers, something shifted when millennials finally grew up. Loving Twilight was now an embarrassment, hating it became fashionable. We kept watching it, but now with laughter where longing previously lived. As I see it, this transformation is precisely why Twilight endured. We did not outgrow it – we simply changed the terms under which we loved it.

When loving Twilight was a generational awakening

Being obsessed with Twilight wasn’t a solitary act. It was loud, participatory and impossible to keep private. Reading the book wasn’t just a personal choice, it spilled into classroom conversations, whatsapp group chats and packed movie theatres. The collective heartbroken gasp that echoed through the theatre when Aro pulled Carlisle’s head off was a canon event that I can never forget. To have an opinion on Twilight was mandatory, indifference was the only unacceptable stance.

Twilight: The Team Edward vs Team Jacob debate was infamous.

The now infamous Team Edward vs Team Jacob debate was never really about liking vampires or werewolves, but more about choosing a particular brand of fantasy. We thought that Edward represented intensity and love, while Jacob represented warmth and emotional availability, but in hindsight, both the characters were their own brand of loser – one driven by creepy stalker behaviour while the other by immaturity and clinginess.

Twilight also paved the way for fanfiction culture, with Wattpad just becoming an extension of the text, a place where fans rewrote the ending, deepened emotions and corrected what the original narrative could not provide. These stories were not treated as parody, they were read earnestly and shared obsessively. And of course, they also gave birth to yet another toxic love story – the 50 Shades of Grey series.

The films, meanwhile, transformed Twilight into a seasonal ritual. We watched each fall and overlooked flat performances and baffling narrative choices. The experience was communal in a way which feels rare now – I still remember watching Breaking Dawn: Part 1 with my cousin and aunt, awkwardly looking away during the honeymoon scenes but completely engrossed in Bella and Edward’s marital troubles.

To mock Twilight today is easy, but to remember how completely it once absorbed us is more difficult. At its peak, Twilight functioned less as a book series and more as a shared emotional language – one that an entire generation seemed to speak fluently.

‘Bella, where the hell have you been, loca?’

We did not just wake up one day and start hating Twilight. With millennial adulthood, came hindsight, and with hindsight came the unavoidable realisation that much of what moved us was, in fact, deeply absurd. Scenes we had watched in silence in our teenage years now demanded commentary. Edward pinching his nose as Bella walked into the room – meant to convey his restraint – played instead like an allergic reaction. Soon, we realised that even Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart weren’t into the idea of Bella and Edward.

The dialogue fared no better. Lines delivered with deadly seriousness escaped their narrative confines and entered public circulation, quoted not with reverence but with affectionate mockery. For a solid year, my friends and I greeted each other with “Bella, where the hell have you been, loca?” Every time the friend group asked for suggestions for a hang out spot, one person would chime in with “La Push, baby!”. The text didn’t change but our relationship with it did. What once required emotional submission now invited ironic distance.

Perhaps the most telling transformation occurred around Renesmee – whose very name the fandom collectively refused to acknowledge. She became Ravioli, Ribosome, Renaissance, anything but what Stephenie Meyer had intended. This phase of mockery did not replace affection, it just restructured it. By surviving ridicule, the Twilight saga proved itself resilient. Cringe did not destroy the franchise, but preserved it. It allowed us to grow up without having to let go.

Why it’s ‘Hoa Hoa Hoa Season’ for us every year

We no longer watch Twilight as we once did. We swooned over Edward’s glittery form, and couldn’t look away when Jacob cut his hair off, but now those appearances are completely overshadowed by absurdly bad plots and cringeworthy screenplay. And yet, we keep coming back.

This persistence is not accidental. We were permitted to change our minds, to wince, to joke, to quote lines ironically without being accused of betrayal only because the franchise didn’t collapse under ridicule; it adapted to it. Cringe became its most reliable companion.

The rare achievement of Twilight is that it taught a generation that loving something doesn’t require defending it. The fandom collectively loved the Cullens as teenagers, and then loved Charlie Swan as millennials. This was not rejection, but ownership of how problematic the entire series was.

We now revisit the series the way one rereads old diary entries – with horror, fondness and the relief of distance. The blue tint still arrives every winter, the dialogue still makes us pause and groan, but instead of breaking the spell, we now revel in the absurdity.

Cringe, as it turns out, is just nostalgia without dignity. And Twilight, ridiculous and enduring, remains proof that some stories survive not because they are flawless, but because they give us permission to laugh at who we were – and still stay a little in love.