I figured you wanted to show his evil and what he was capable of. To which I responded by pointing out that for a character like Astarion it's important to have the balance that Larian does.
My main grievances I think you know. Larian could add more trigger phrases for Lord Astarion to show abuse. There are many possibilities, kissing is not one of them. But to make it fit his complex evil character. Not like with Minthara, when she says: 1 - "We don't need gods, we make our own power". 2 - No, Du, bye, you haven't taken the power of a god. Kisses are made for the very complexity of romance.
In this case I wasn't trying to say anything about AA's character, just talk about the clues we have regarding authorial intent.
Regarding giving AA more opportunities to display abusive behaviours to make it feel "coherent": Honestly, I don't think that's necessary. I think they did a good job. Abusive people are more complex than "I hit you and demean you" and they balanced it pretty well with him, for what he is. If they make it really blatant it's probably going to end up cartoony, like a bad TV show depiction of abusers. It's often much more complicated than that, and I've brought this up before but I like how they implemented one abusive tactic that isn't talked about often in media, lovebombing: basically, showering someone with affection to make them easier to control, as they start relying on that love (I guess the sincerity of AA's lines can be put into question here, I will say that in my opinion Neil's delivery of those lines is really fake, as the devnotes put it for one of his lines, "overly sincere"). I think when people ask for more evidence of him being abusive they want stuff like those lines being removed because they think they're genuine and thus a "good sign", when to me it's quite interesting that they're there and an authentic depiction of abusive individuals.
Overall, I wanted more exploration of evil in romance. I'm not sure how much it should be called abusive, not always. I assume different things that Ascended Astarion wants, but I don't absolutely want my Tav to be locked into the role of victim, unable to play ally and lover.
