The closest thing to a negative emotion I felt for that line was surprise, that the game would so blatantly point out that a player who ascends him might be someone who likes to be dominated. It's not a source of anxiety for me; it's something I've long accepted as something I'm into.
That is interesting. I think the game is making a lot of assumptions about the player with Astarion and not giving a wide enough variety of choices, especially if you ascend him. Personally, I'm not that into being dominated in fantasy and would like to have the choice to gently push back on this line. My Tav wants to be with him, not to serve, though it wouldn't be a deal breaker fro my Tav, I could head cannon it that he'd just assume Astarion was still a little insecure and humour him.
The assumption that you like degrading yourself - (Astarion says this if you use detect thoughts) I really think the player should be able to respond to this either to confirm or rebutt it.
The assumption that choosing ascension is because the player wants to be a vampire or is some sort of vampire sex kink (player using him for their own gratification in other words)
The assumption that the player will be terrified of him when asking for a kiss.
I don't have an issue with most of these assumptions being made if the player is given a choice to respond in a different way. Unfortunately, we are being railroaded at certain points and given no meaningful choices at all. The kiss is an outlier because it completely contradicts what is said in the text when you speak to Ascended Astarion.
I'm not sure if this stems from 'moral panic' over material that appeals mainly to women and non-cis males or if it is simply that the writer(s) felt a little uncomfortable with the Dark Romance genre, did not like it personally, and then made assumptions about the sort of people who would enjoy it.
Interesting point that U.S. culture may be less comfortable with Dark Romance than say European, where it has been a long-established genre.
