I apologize for being partly responsible for the state of your teeth. I will, however, not cease to call the ridiculous tadpole apparition a "dream waifu", for that's what it is. It's imo one of those "panty shot" things Dexai mentioned that's jarring in a game that's not a dating sim or the like.
As for your other points: you say you despite the fetishism, yet you call for enabling it in BG3, since it will please people. You just use nicer words to talk about it. No matter what you call it, the game pandering to people who are in this for "sexual fan service" is just as crass.
And I may not fantasize about characters rejecting my PC, but companions hitting on it is something that DOES decrease my enjoyment of the game. By a LOT. I want companionship, camaraderie, friendship, brother/sisterhood (as kanisatha recently described it), not a horny teen party simulator.
It seems we're in agreement that the "hyper" part is utterly ridiculous though.
I dunno, I think the dream figure is very clearly meant to be seductive for narrative reasons. Like, it is deliberately showing everyone what they want to see because it wants to seduce you to its side. I think it's relevant to the story, not just gratuitous fan service. Those scenes aren't even particularly sexy.
I'm not sure how "companions are attracted to whatever gender the PC is" equals fetishes? I like romance in RPGs for numerous reasons, but not as something to be sexually exciting. I would prefer if they didn't even have explicit sex scenes, but merely fade to black. And I do think the "hitting on" part needs to be toned way down. Maybe if ONE character is like that, it would make sense. As THAT character's personality trait. (Astarion in particular would fit this.) But when they ALL do it, it stands out glaringly and immediately feels ham-fisted.
(To clarify, I didn't necessarily mean "fetishist porn-watchers" by people asking for - let's call it - "romance-related" fan-service. It's also shippers who judge a game by its romance options, for example. Not just sex scenes.)
Perhaps it's not "directly" related, but making all companions playersexual makes them seem like sexbots lined up for your harem. Even if you take the "hyper" out, it's still (potentially) compromising character writing.
What's even more important is what Ixal mentioned, that every companion needs to be romanceable. You can't have any characters that for one reason or another wouldn't want to romance the PC. You can't have "childlike, naive and wholesome" characters. You can't have chaste contemplative/spiritual characters (monks and the like). You can't have widowers who will always be faithful to their wives. You can't have characters that are simply asexual. Or ones that are not interested in relationships (or flings) at this point in their lives. Married characters on a mission to save their spouse. Hell, edgy bastards of the non-horny kind. Nihilists or certain Xan-like pessimists who wouldn't be interested in hedonism or relationships. Some narcissists for whom none is worthy of them. No-nonsense grim mercenaries. And so on. All kinds of different characters. You could make a dozen or two realistically non-romanceable characters, a whole cRPG companion cast, and it wouldn't even be obvious that this is what they have in common.
And this brings me to one of the reasons I think how the tadpole vision is handled is really bad. At the start of character creation, you HAVE to choose a dream waifu for your character. And your PC could be any of the archetypes I mentioned above - for some of them it would be absolutely jarring to specify that "oh boi, would I bang THIS!" (regardless of what "this" is). Another reason is locking tadpole content behind romance(-like narrative). This is something that imo should never be done.
