A decade ago, the first movie in the Twilight Saga hit cinemas at the same time as a global financial crisis wreaked havoc on the world’s economies. But based on the popular discourse at the time, anyone would be forgiven for thinking that the sparkly vampires and their tale of abstinence were a more significant problem. Twilight was everywhere – an unavoidable cultural whirlwind, but people were not happy about it. Stephenie Meyer’s books and their film adaptations became a pop-culture punching bag, despised by anyone who wasn’t a “Twihard” superfan.

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That didn’t stop the aforementioned fans from lapping up everything Meyer’s books and their movies had to offer. Legions of devotees – predominantly female, but varying from preteens all the way through to middle-age – helped the films make more than $3bn at the global box office. That’s not to mention the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise, which started life as online fan-fiction involving Meyer’s characters, before spinning off into a multimedia success story of its own.

The stories are simple – wish-fulfillment tales for audiences too young to enjoy the conservative romances of Mills & Boon. Audience surrogate Bella Swan meets vampire Edward Cullen and embarks on a tumultuous, complicated path to everlasting romance involving hyper-sensitive hunters, a clan of murderous supernatural law enforcers and, of course, a permanently shirtless werewolf to add a third point to the obligatory YA love triangle.

So why did Twilight provoke its own specific brand of ire? In a world already gaga over Harry Potter, it wasn’t the first young adult literary series to become a movie franchise, and nor was it the last – 2008 also marked the publication of the first book in Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy – but it was the only one to provoke such a fearsome and ferocious response. The internet was awash with vitriol and two feature films – Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer’s miserably unamusing Vampires Suck, and the largely unnoticed Breaking Wind – took aim at the perceived failings of the movie franchise and its fans.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Miserably unamusing spoof ... Vampires Suck. Photograph: Alan Markfield

“I wouldn’t say the backlash was wholly undeserved, but I would say it didn’t always recognise how subtle fans are,” says Dr Sara Wasson, lecturer in gothic studies at Lancaster University. She argues that, although the Twilight books and movies were “regressive” in their politics at the time and remain so now, fans used Meyer’s work to engage with the issues that were presented to them in ways that were often more compelling than the original texts.

The phenomenon brought about a vibrant and creative community, producing fan-fiction and art – including romantic “slash” fiction, pairing various characters in relationships – inspired by Meyer’s world. This fan creation, which often focused on queer relationships as well as other issues relevant to the movies’ teenage audience, was considerably more progressive and subversive than the viewpoint put across by Meyer – a Mormon mother-of-three who never shied away from her conservative beliefs.

Chloë Leeson, editor of female-focused film website Screen Queens, says Twilight was “a series that girls claimed for their own” in a world dominated by culture made for men, by men. “It combined romance, fantasy and incredibly watered-down horror elements to create a story that wasn’t just a message for girls telling them how to behave, like a lot of teen movies. It was pure escapism and the fantasy elements allowed young women to take that wherever they wanted it to go, which goes against the grain of most media created by men.”

There’s a sense that, after a decade as cultural Marmite, the tide may now be turning in the favour of Twilight. In her apologetic 2018 video essay “Dear Stephenie Meyer”, film critic Lindsay Ellis described the backlash as “virulent bile that was not in proportion to Twilight’s badness” and theorised that society simply “hates teenage girls” and the culture they enjoy. She pointed out that much of the criticism directed at the movies and the books, of which she confesses to playing a part, came not from men, but from women wanting to distance themselves from a phenomenon so “unapologetically female” in its targeting.

There’s a lot to hate about Twilight, but there’s a lot to love about the way fans responded to it

Wasson says: “There’s a lot to hate about Twilight, but there’s a lot to love about the way fans responded to it. Fans are never passive and never predictable. It was an extremely animated and huge group of people. Fan communities are very varied and interesting and they can never be over-simplified to impressionable blobs absorbing cultural artefacts and their messages uncritically. They tend to be active and curious and creative themselves and that came out very strongly in the case of Twilight.

“I really love thinking of fans as critical, engaged and surprising and I like thinking of all of us as fans to some degree. If a fan is someone who consumes a cultural product, admires bits of it, thinks about it, works with it imaginatively, then I think we are all fans to some degree, even if we’re not writing Jasper/Edward slash.”

Lissy Andros was one of many Twilight fans who moved to the town of Forks, Washington – the setting for the series – at the height of the franchise’s cultural ubiquity. She is now the executive director of the town’s chamber of commerce and runs the annual Forever Twilight in Forks event, celebrating the franchise’s legacy. In her adopted home, more than anywhere else, the existence of Twilight has proven nothing but positive.

“Before the phenomenon,” she says, “buildings were being boarded up and the economy in Forks was pretty bleak. Once the fans started coming, they breathed new life into the existing businesses. Other businesses opened to cater to the fans. It has been incredible for us. It is such a part of life now that even if a person isn’t a fan, they see the benefit to our local economy.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Enjoyably silly … Breaking Dawn – Part 2 brought the Twilight film franchise to an end in 2012. Photograph: Allstar/Summit Entertainment/Sportsphoto Ltd

It has been six years since the enjoyably silly Breaking Dawn – Part 2 brought the Twilight movie franchise to an end and three years since the gender-flipped Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined hit bookshelves straight from the pen of the Cullens’ original creator. EL James and her BDSM juggernaut Fifty Shades of Grey have carried the baton for the last few years, but that world has now closed the doors to the red room of pain behind it, leaving something of a void in the Twilight fandom. True to form, though, the Twihards are not letting their phenomenon die without a fight – albeit a fight that acknowledges the flaws of their shared obsession.

Wasson says: “It’s lovely watching a return of Twilight on platforms like Tumblr. There are a few interesting blogs celebrating the more ridiculous lines from the films and there’s a lovely emotional complexity to the memes. There’s a mockery and an irony, but also an affection. What has happened with distance is that other people can maybe now see that those fan communities were more complicated than people thought and more complicated than Fifty Shades of Grey, which has had the unfortunate effect of drowning out the other ways people responded.”

Leeson says time has allowed her response to the Twilight Saga to mellow into a lasting affection. “I spent so long considering Twilight a ‘guilty pleasure’ that I stopped enjoying it pretty abruptly. The posters were torn down, the merch thrown away and soon even the books were gone from my shelves. But maybe I even love those first couple of films even more now, because I’m not embarrassed about it any more.”

For now, though, it seems that the door has been closed on Twilight. Meyer’s long-mooted Midnight Sun, which would revisit the first book from Edward’s perspective, is no longer in the pipeline and there’s little sign of Meyer copying her YA contemporary JK Rowling and penning a movie series spinning off from her original saga. Now that the dust has settled and some of the sparkle has dulled from the marble skin of Meyer’s bloodsucking romantic tales, it seems astonishing that such a cultural tidal wave – which sparked such passion of positive and negative response – now lives in our collective memory as little more than a ripple.

However, for the Twihards, the films and books still exist as cultural artefacts that made a huge impact on their lives. They may be starting to look a little shabby and outdated in their politics, but for the most devoted fans, Twilight is every bit as immortal as the Cullens themselves.

“It introduced us to the world,” concludes Andros. “The recurring comment we get from fans is they feel like Forks is the home town they never had.”