The problem I have with the new kissing scenes is close to what Zayir voiced. It feels disjointed from the narrative up until now. They are trying to hammer home their point about abusive Astarion with a sledge hammer now and it just feels cheap. Like they don't trust in their own storytelling anymore. The hints are there from the beginning that this will sooner or later turn into something toxic. But until now this has more been a creeping development. Tav could still hold up the illusion of him caring for them in all eternity. Yes, his lines were pretty on the nose at times ("you'll be wonderfully obedient...."), but he was still mostly trying to manipulate Tav, telling them "what they wanted to hear", being all seductive and ingratiating.

While I've always found his change of behaviour after the ritual a bit too sudden, it is now just jarring. He goes from seductive/manipulative to right on full abuse in an instant. Remember also that everyone still has their tadpoles. He can't use his coercion power on Tav and he has not really developed all of his powers yet. When you ask him about his powers, he is pretty peturbed about them not having shown themselves yet. It does not make any sense for him to go full on abusive on Tav as long as they can still break up with him and he can't do shit about it. Astarion has been shown to be a survivor, using all of his assets to get out of a situation alive, it's very OOC for him to not play it safe for the moment.

For me, the kneeling kiss is just way too much. Tav could just say "nah" and Astarion couldn't do anything about it. He'd not risk that. This kiss would be perfect on the other hand for the epilogue party, showing the development the relationship has taken the last six months with him getting more and more powerful and now able to control Tav. So, for now, Tav should have the chance to very much be into the rough kisses, at least the Karlach kiss and the lip bite.

And talking about the lip bite - why is Tav suddenly pouting about that? They could have been offering their neck to him every evening, but suddenly a little bite is making them all resentful?

And about the degrading line: I have written this in another post, but this line does not make any sense for the romance path. It is a callback to a dialogue option you get on the friendship path with him after the Araj incident in Act 2. Tav can tell him that he has great power over people and should use that to his advantage (this is just one out of many dialogue options - you can also tell him that he can stand up for himself). Then he gets an epiphany and says "Yeah, it's not degrading that I get on my back to get what I want, they are degrading themselves to fall for it!" So, there are two problems with the degrading line:

1. He only gets the idea that falling for his seductions is degrading for the people falling for it when talking to Tav on the friendship path.

2. We are on the romance path and Astarion had already gotten past that notion. He wants to be something real without manipulating Tav because he actually has caught feelings for them.

The writing is extremely inconsistent here. And with the newest patch it has only getting worse.

In one of the romance party banters that never trigger, Astarion can tell one of the other companions (don't rememer who) that he turned Tav so that they could never leave him. That in iteslf is abusive enough. Keeping someone under your control (and with a true vampire towards their spawn this is literal) because you want to possess and control them is horrible. We don't also need the total degradation from day one with kneeling, hurting and telling Tav they "deserve a treat" like a dog. It's just cheap shock value (and unfortunately fan service for those who are into this) and devaluates a well written story IMO. It was not needed.