Spoiler: Explanation:
Show
teen angel genre? never heard of it. sounds completely stupid. I mean first of all, teen angels is an oxymoron. because teens are physically incapable of being angels, therefore angels are physically incapable of being teens, this therefore means that angels go from childhood to adulthood in a complete instant.
therefore I can only theorize that "teen angel" genre is the latest in a long line of "knight in shining armor" stories of our world. the vampire romance, medieval tales of a knight rescuing a princess, hypothetical werewolf romances, cowboy romances, and whatever other romance of that nature- they are all one story.
why? because think of the medieval times where you'd rarely see a knight at all! Sure the actual knights aren't all that hot, but would a peasant girl know that? nope. they are all uneducated and wouldn't even see a knight, maybe not even once in their life. Therefore, since they are such distant figures, they are easy to idealize and romanticize, and the life of a princess, even easier to romanticize and idealize- your surroundings are trash. knights and princesses are awesome in comparison to brutish life of a peasant, even if the actual life of those doesn't live up to the ideal.
therefore the knight becomes a distant figure, a figure of strength, of the good life, of one who takes action and does great things for the one they love and all that jazz. and fantasy becomes one of that strong active person come to whisk that lowly peasant girl to that good life! to one of wealth, opulence, luxury, so and so forth.
now, let us go through the ages- the knight fades out, and soon- at least in the wild west US- it is replaced by….the cowboy. or in europe, the explorer, the gentlemen adventurer, the men not afraid to go out into the world, explore exotic places, and bring back the treasures from those places, the cowboy being a particularly rough-and-tumble version of this, going out into the west to get gold, fight bandits, romance a few ladies. its the same romantic knight in shining armor archetype- but shifted. its no longer about castles and saving the princess from dragons.
now the man, is one who takes the girl off to exotic places, builds a colony there, gives her exotic trinkets and whatnot, braves tombs and other such dangers, the good life now being idealized as one on the frontier, amongst nature, pioneering the wilderness, expanding civilization….the figure is still distant, strong, idealized and active, but shifted to victorian idealizations, the idealizing of the frontier, of the colony life amongst nature compared to the rapidly industrializing europe, filling the air with smog, pollution, horrid machines and bad working conditions….being poor in europe during the victorian era is not a good place to live. no wonder they idealized the distant, seemingly pastoral frontier.
then we start to shift into the last century. What new image is the knight in shining armor in the 20th century? why, the soldier! a man who has seen combat, who is experienced in hardship, is disciplined, and comes back from a horrible horrible war, surely this returning man, riddled with horrors of such times, can be healed by the love of a woman? surely, this strong soldier man, who has seen far worse in his time, can be the kind of strong husband a good woman desires?
the figure- distant in a way, on the battlefield, but also with the prospect of returning stronger, wiser, more experienced in life, and he is sooo romantic because he is willing to fight for you by going to distant shores to lay his life down for you! surely when he gets back, he will provide you with a good life.
and then, finally we get to the 21st century. the knight, has long been exposed as just another snotty noble, the explorer a racist grave-robbing thief, the cowboy a mere uncouth ruffian, the soldier a shell-shocked veteran whose trauma and military social skills being vastly different from normal social skills, all of these idealized men, exposed as the broken things they are.
so what is left? what distant thing is left to idealize and romanticize? why, vampires! werewolves! angels! stuff like that. these kinds of beings are as distant as you can get. they aren't even real! you can make up anything about them! they are as strong as you want, as active as you want, provide you with the good life that you fantasize about, and are as good in bed as you want them to be. everything a foolish romantic girl could ever desire. thats why you get Twilight. the girl in question makes the vampire sparkly, super-strong, sexy, active, but distant and mysterious, as well as making sure that he can provide Bella with the good life- by biting her, thus making her a sparkly vampire too.
therefore, we can deduce this simple equation:
Foolish Romantic girl + distance + strength + activity + good life + mysteriousness = knight in shining armor.
I shall call it….Knight In Shining Armor Romance Equation.
or, the K.I.S.A.R. Equation