The way I see it, the player character on that path is currently portrayed as unaware of the change in Astarion's temperament ascension would bring with it, and does not want to break up if it weren't for that change.
The period between being turned and the ending scene is one of profound unease and growing suspicion. Yes, even if you never pick these dialogue choices, the game decides you're just not letting these feelings show. Your feelings are decided for you. That usually happens if a lead writer has very strong opinions of what's going on, and they're not well translated.
Because of limitations of the engine and the late addition, the overplayed emotions in the kissing scene and some of the not so matching romance pathing are rather jarring. In a way, you're supposed to imagine the player character is on edge now all the time, but it's only visible in the kissing scene. This is objectively not well done. However, I have strong doubts Larian would do this without motivation. It's expensive to create such scenes. It was meant as a statement on how the player character *ought* to feel, which is ironic when one in game path is living in blissful ignorance of how Astarion would actually react when defied. It's a tragic romance with most of the tragedy set to happen *after* the ending of the actual game.
They've merged this subtle, withering path with the one where Tav is immediately deeply unsettled by what he has become. For what? I can only assume to make it more "obvious" to read what was intended, but now that is has been released, it falls under "death of the author" and people will just not care what the "right" reading is. Few will say: "Aha, that settles it, this is what Larian was going for!". They'll say: "How could Larian infringe on my personal interpretation like this? I have a personal connection to this character, saying he hurts my character, hurts me".
There are positive, uncertain/neutral, and negative dialogue options for everything in the game. For all romances, you can play as happy, or unhappy and break up. In the evil route, you have the option to be evil and enjoy being with an evil vampire lord, grow uncertain, or be deeply unhappy and breakup.
It is illogical to include a consistent positive dialogue path where evil players are allowed to revel in their choices, only to be scared. In the event of wanting to be unhappy for RP, the logical path is a break up. Not a kiss mechanic. A kiss mechanic that the PC *requests*, no less. If the PC is as frightened as the expressions showed, they would not ever select to give the LI a kiss as a personal initiative repeatedly. It is not logical.
The writers of the character have talked extensively about the branching paths. Never once have the mentioned "this is a story of abuse." The game's themes are about power. As stated verbatim in the game. Its fine if AA abusing Tav is your interpretation, but that is not shared by everyone, and the faces for patch 6 kisses did not reflect good RP for the majority of players. The faces were not mocapped. It was not some "lesson" by Larian to make players feel abused. This has always been a branching narrative. Larian is not going back on a vision just by realigning kiss expressions to what they already were beforehand.
Asking for a choice in expression for Astarion and Astarion only doesn't make any sense. Neutral works for everyone. It just feels like some are upset that neutral doesn't force other players to play the way *they personally* think they should. It's a bit silly.
