I have played the AA route a few times. I like it. I have played basically everything except Origin Astarion because I'm busy these months. I even datamine every scene he's in to check the devnotes, which are not much kinder to Ascended Astarion. A Tav can absolutely enjoy being degraded (the insight check says as much) which is why I pointed out Tav's facial animations don't make a lot of sense in that specific situation. Astarion's, however, do. What do you think doesn't fit together now? An abuser can still feel love and be abusive, it's not so black and white, I think, and he doesn't need to be raping anyone to be abusive, there is much more nuance to abuse. But Ascended Astarion's whole life philosophy is obviously going to extend to his relationships as well.
It doesn't fit together because Tav has a disgusted face after the kisses and looks like he would prefer to break up. But before the patch he enjoyed Astarion. I like the kissanimations itself. But in these facial expressions you do NOT FEEL any kind of love between them. But the Player did feel love between the two in the Romance scene. That's a huge difference. And YES, as you said: Tav CAN enjoy being degraded (and so my Tav would like to do this), but the kiss animations do not SHOW or let my Tav do it. And yes, if you say the animations make no sense, so we are saying the same ;-)
Last edited by Zayir; 17/02/2411:34 AM.
"I would, thank God, watch the universe perish without shedding a tear."
