Originally Posted by Sereda2
@Marille Ugh! I hate to say it but that's a very plausible explanation. It also implies this was made primarily with male players running fem. avatars in mind (probably not the main market for Astarion romance!). It would certainly explain why Tav is so passive and, as other posters have pointed out, acting like a sex doll. It would also explain why some people are getting off on this.

Indeed if the animators were thinking it's for a male audience they really need to do some research on the audience BG3 has gathered as most "Astarion Fans are female in real life" especially if you look into the streaming community it's the slightly goth ,cosplay orientated and modding crew primarily female wearing their elf ears and had a thing for vampires seeing this twisted relationship all of a sudden after banging in hundreds of hours to even get near act 3 It doesn't work the animation is jarring.
That is no where like our playthrough was meant to turn if we chose this, its mainly evil players that want the evil Astarion but why are we scared of him if we played the ascension card we knew what we were letting ourselves in for and it wasn't to be scared of him.
We're the ones asking for the kisses in dialogue
End of the day Tav was the main character not Astarion . (rough kisses i'm fine with its the face animations of the recipient that bothers me)

No judgement but it does seem that male players like dressing the origins up in harnesses and bearly any clothes though they prefer Shadowheart over Astarion that hair pulling dark Justiciar kiss is what they want.