the one way through which you can progress the romance is incredibly shallow.
The only way you can keep the romance status is to tell Astarion that you care about him without any reservations. Especially in the Post-Araj scene this is jarring, since in this version his confession that he only used you, comes without remorse, worse he is making fun of you for having been so easy. (...) Yet the PC is not allowed to have conflicting feelings, to be torn between being in love with Astarion but also feeling hurt by him, to maybe even feel disgusted by themselves for involuntarily having added to Astarion's discomfort.
To write about relationships, especially difficult ones, you have to consider both participants and with the exception of Durge maybe, Astarion's romance does a horrible job envisioning the PC and the PC's feelings.
+1 Exactly this thought I had, when I was looking up the possible answers. Astarion is really selfish and mean, laughing about Tav.. but no possibiliy to react on this. I really don't see Astarion as an angel in his act 2 scenes, he cares for himself, not for Tav (or because of the lack of good answers.)
This is a great point. The ability to forgive him while still expressing that he hurt you would be a great opportunity for to further a complex romance.
To be honest, in this scene I didn't feel any resentment towards Astarion after his confession, I was thinking only about him and what he told me at that moment. About how fragile he really is, and how badly he's hurt... It's really a change in my attitude to the character, a new feeling was woven into my love for him - a desire to cherish him, a desire to treat him with all possible tact and tenderness. And a sense of guilt that I had actually used him for my pleasure before, albeit unwittingly, albeit without knowing it. I had sexualized Astarion quite well in my headcanon before this scene. I pictured him specifically as my lover, assuming that even though there are only two intimate scenes in the game (the after party is just a black screen and sighs, but that's actually an intimate scene too), those scenes are just sort of symbolic of the beginning of a relationship, and in fact Astarion and Tav are actually hooking up in the tent almost every night. And I really wanted to apologize to him for that, for not knowing how he really felt. And maybe make a little joke about how he might not have tried so hard, because I was going to protect him even before the seduction. About Astarion making fun of me for being "easy", it was a little funny to me, because after his line during the first night, about how he longed to possess me, I thought something like, "Wow! I didn't expect you to be so easy!" I thought he'd be such an untouchable, evil, and would reject me when it came time to choose a mate at the party (I read that everyone chooses a mate at the party, and Astarion could reject the player), think I wasn't evil enough for him (in BG2, evil companions could make fun of good Tav, or even betray them). And he's suddenly like, "I wish to possess!" before any party...
In general, the "open your mind" option is good because it allows you to imagine expressing your own feelings rather than prescribed lines. "You're full of surprises!" - this surprise of Astarion's is taken as if he saw my feelings and was amazed by them. And all his romantic lines afterward, the kisses, especially the touching, "I do rather like that, you know..." I adore that response of his, and what a creepy contortion that line becomes in response to the sadistic kisses of Patch 6! I had a positive emotional explosion after the Act 2 scene, I was glad that Tav's facial expressions didn't mirror mine, otherwise it would have been horrible to continue playing the game and talking to Arabella about the death of her parents when I can't get the smile off my face. But the scene after Yugir seems better to me too - I want it in my next playthrough. It reflects just the sort of vision of the development of the romance with Astarion that I was hoping for in the future, still walking around in chapter 1. I imagined Astarion as a kind of evil and fun seducer who actually wanted me physically, maybe saw some advantages in becoming the group leader's lover (well, I almost guessed the motivation with "for protection" before, just in a slightly different way), but wasn't in love. Because of his past, he won't let anyone close, he doesn't trust anyone, he snaps a bit in response to displays of warmth towards him (""So cute..."), but eventually he'll be able to get to know me, I'll do something meaningful and serious for him in his plot, and he'll see me as a really close person. I didn't know about the ritual yet, and I thought at the time that there might be some serious recognition after killing Cazador, and the relationship would become a really deep connection. The funny thing is, the scene with Yugir is much more similar to my then idea of the possible development of a romance with him.
I think there is no opportunity to open consciousness in the kneeling scene for one simple reason. In the Act 2 scene, as was rightly pointed out, all confession options lead to the same thing. The player can imagine that he has opened his feelings and Astarion has reacted to it. The range of the player's feelings varies, but any variant fits into the fact that the romance is taken to the next level. In the kneeling scene, the author set his own image of Tav. Tav has become a tool of the narrative. The discovery of the player's feelings, which in all likelihood will not match that tool, will prevent the player from being shown as a person who fits the narrative. And if Astarion reacts only by repeating again: "On your knees, darling!" it will be the most perfect nonsense. The range of feelings can also be different - you have to make a choice of at least some "guiding lines" in your head, like, "What do you want to show Astarion?" And Astarion's reaction may be different from the behavior that was originally planned for him. A novella about abuse might not pan out. That's why this is the kind of rails needed for this story.
