Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2024: Week 23

From the parody zine, The Absurd Season. The artist is P.S. Nim: "We watched a flower open," The Beast tells Father.

The consummation scene (often referred to as "roses and lava") between Vincent Wells and Catherine Chandler in the Beauty and the Beast (TV) episode "Though Lovers Be Lost" was a long-awaited event. It was also, for many fans, a great and silly disappointment.

Fans found the surreal collage of flowers and music as a metaphor for sexual intercourse to be ridiculous, cryptic, hurried, unsatisfying, and offensive for several reasons.

The first reason was because it was presented as a collage of cheesy images of flowing lava and opening flowers accompanied by music, "The First Time I Loved Forever."

The second because the scene was one in which Vincent was apparently unconscious. Because of this, Catherine Chandler's sexual contact with him was non-consensual.

The third reason was that not only does Vincent not remember the scene, he doesn't remember Catherine Chandler for a time afterwards, something that fans found heartbreaking.