As a side note, I also hope we get a modification in the Astarion drow scene, where we can pass an insight check and stop it halfway through
HUGE agree with this. I wish we at least had an option about it. I don't mind that it happens, but it feels callous to pass the insight check and then just shrug and keep going.
I know some will feel that this is too much "fanon" or "headcanon". But really, the differences in Astarion and Halsin's responses to sexual trauma are such perfect foils that I just can't believe it was ENTIRELY on accident. So here's the long analysis I wrote out about it, posted with the acknowledgement that few here are going to agree. But I wanted to share regardless.
I don't mean to discourage you from having your interpretation and thank you for sharing. It's good to have a discussion about it. There are a few points I wanted to talk about in particular. Specifically:
Astarion makes a point of avoiding intimacy; he only has a few exceptions with the player. (Ascended Astarion becomes much more confident, but that's a bit different.)
Halsin is incredibly sexually open. He enjoys sex of all kinds; he finds it comforting, the only way he can openly express his emotions after having to stay in control as Archdruid all the time.
I don't think it's accurate to characterize Astarion as avoiding intimacy for the most part. He is not sex averse (only ever describing nonconsensual encounters negatively) and only temporarily avoids intimacy while re-examining his boundaries now that he's in a place to be able to do so. Once he's done with this self-examination (i.e. after his personal quest), he will conclude that he DOES want intimacy and sleep with a romanced player regardless of Ascension status. He will actually sleep with Lae'zel at the tiefling party under certain circumstances. Just because he has used sex as a tool or felt negatively toward nonconsensual sex doesn't mean he doesn't like sex. He just isn't
only sex. Aside from the time when he's doing introspection, Astarion is hypersexual. Sure, it's a defense mechanism, but the argument is that Halsin's hypersexuality is also a trauma response so I think it's fair to point it out.
Honestly, I think the fact that Halsin's dialogue was changed for this scene indicates that they didn't really have a solid plan for it. They didn't consider the full implications of the scene. What I would give to just ask the author "why?" Why was it necessary to do this?
Because here's the thing- It's not hard to find male victims in media who downplay their sexual assault. That is basically the only archetype of male victim there is. There are a couple of ways women have been portrayed as victims, many of which are problematic or weird, but men only get the "bottle it up and downplay it" option. Many of the examples in books, when the writer even bothers to consider what happened an assault, are from romance or erotica books which bring their own set of sexualization and problems to the subject. Often it isn't even really treated as sexual assault- the author treated the Mat and Tylin section of the Wheel of Time books as a joke, and certain viewers of Midsommar thought Christian deserved to be murdered for "cheating" and generally being a bad boyfriend. Frequently, it will be brought up once or twice in the narrative, change nothing, and never be mentioned again. Fanfiction is an exception because it sometimes places male victims in the role of "sex averse damsel" which is itself a problematic trope typically reserved for female characters.
And the repressed, brought up exactly once in the narrative, downplaying, "lol it was sexy and I kinda liked it" pocket is exactly where Halsin fell. Even the revisions don't fully address the issue and it's just a short conversation. You could attribute plenty of things to it after the fact, but I personally don't trust that he was ever written with this in mind. I can completely see an author writing a hypersexual character with no sexual trauma needed and then throwing this in as a joke. Because male sexual assault is frequently a joke. I'm sure it's prevalent enough that I don't need to, but here's a good video with plenty of examples and analysis up to 2018 which was recent when this video was released:
[Pop Culture Detective - Sexual Assault of Men Played for Laughs] To be clear, the underlying joke was that Halsin was a big dude who got assaulted, but also "haha sex slaves are kinky and sexy." And while the rewrite alleviates this, it doesn't fully solve the issue. It's just a lot to unpack and hard to untangle from the initial incarnation of the scene. It's why I really just don't understand the purpose of this narratively or why it has to remain included in the story.
Edit: Upon rewatching
[Part 2] Is even more relevant and has a lot of well-explained and powerful lines, and I encourage a watch for anyone who is comfortable doing so.
