21 Years Ago, A Story About Straight Vampires Launched a Thousand Queer Awakenings

The cold wind of October blows, Julia Wolf’s “In My Room” is on repeat, and the leaves across New England have turned that oh-so-colorful triad of red, orange, and burnt yellow. It’s official: Fall is here and with it, the official Twilight re-watching season.It’s hard to believe that 21 years ago today, the first entry in Stephenie Meyer’s vampiric fiction series hit bookshelves everywhere, prompting the sexual awakening of an entire generation — or even two, depending on who you consider to be a member of Gen Z. (Twilight actor Robert Patterson himself certainly has thoughts.) But as many Twihards watch with nostalgic whimsy, documenting their elaborate PNW-themed parties o, it’s the perfect time to reflect on Twilight’s cultural impact.Unfortunately for me, as a self-proclaimed hater of all things “mainstream” as a tween (with the blue fringe to prove it), I refused to engage in the Twilight wave when it originally occurred. Though the aesthetics of the films appealed to alternative sensibility, it felt too popular to engage with as a self-identified outsider. I opted for the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series instead — a much more mature, I thought, and explicitly horny vampire fiction series from the 1990s that seemingly no one had heard of, which was great for my indie cred. To this day, no one is making edits on TikTok about Anita Blake. But as this “hoa hoa hoa” season began, I decided it was time for me to finally crack open the ancient texts and view them in their totality with adult eyes. I needed to watch Twilight. That is ultimately what brought me to watch the full series for the first time with my roommate, a die-hard stan who engaged with the series at its peak. In doing so, I’ve come to realize just how gay the television franchise was. If you also observed the series from afar, you might be scratching your head in confusion, wondering what part of Stephanie Meyer’s condemnation of premarital sex, thinly veiled as a s