Yet, we’re talking about kissing scenes introduced with patch 6, with some big advertising on love and such, and with that particular romance path the one where the player character seems to not enjoy itself.
Prior to that, people were relatively happy with what they had, and even now I guess you can totally ignore the narrative supposedly served with those scenes by just not asking for a kiss. I have to wonder about the strength of a supposed narrative if it’s just easily diminished by a tiny bit of metagaming.
I can get the narrative of Astarion being bad to some extent, definitely once ascended, and the resulting romance being toxic, at the very least. But I don’t think I’ve seen anything in relation to those kissing scenes that would make me think they’re more than a fluke. If it was intentional (which I have to consider as another guess in the absence of any evidence, and so just more or less probable than the rest), and therefore part of a specific narrative, then it is not well articulated. And given the subject it deals with, if intended to convey more in that regard, I would expect to be given an opportunity to deal with it properly. Not just to have to be glad to ask for a kiss, just roll with what happens, rinse and repeat to the point it becomes idiotic, or decide to dump him one way or another without direct connect to the now contentious bit (so not really satisfactory), or just do some metagaming for my peace of mind.
No matter the supposed narrative or the fluke, they’ve introduced with those kissing scenes a problem that wasn’t there (or blessedly ignored, some would say, but no matter), for something that was supposedly a nice sort of Valentine gift. And it’s difficult to make sense of it, for some to not be hurt or triggered, to not feel the disconnect and the breaking of the immersion, and to not scratch your head over it. More so, I’ve seen people on the internet be really harsh with each other talking about ascended Astarion, and a lot of comments on those scenes, like it was the ultimate proof and such (which, right now, is still ambiguous, at best), and sometimes comments that flirt too much with victim blaming for my comfort. That’s, to me, a bit disheartening. I hope we at least know more from official channels soon, maybe it would help me to come to some conclusions of my own, like maybe even hoping is a waste of time (a run with a character is quite a considerable amount of time, after all).
