Romance with Astarion was never written the way you want it to be, Silver.
About fear, on the player character's face, especially in intimacy.
It's taken out of the context of the story.
That wasn't there when the game was released.
It doesn't fit with the character's idea of being both dark and fun.
Especially there's the weird black and white romance where "I can heal\fix" works even though everyone knows it doesn't work and leads to death. I for one can't remind Astarion of his threat in the epilogue, or see how he's corrupted by the power of ruling 7k given the bent of his personality.
I don't think I have any desire to ask for any of that. It's not a path I'm choosing and exploring.
Maybe I'd like 18 charisma to be affected by something in the game, the actions we make.
It's not about "sanitised for a wider audience". That's more suitable about Astarion's past when he was selling criminals. Well, we won't know why anyway.
I know enough about the genre of dark romance and tragedy, but I can see the idea perfectly, by the majority lines for the game, the atmosphere, it was about consistent and fun to share decadence together.
I don't really agree it's black/white, except for the fact that Larian downplayed the realistic consequences of releasing 7000 spawn into the world. The original "good" route of Astarion people speculated from datamining fit this pattern more: at some point, he was supposed to be curable, with Ethel's wand somehow involved in the plot. They abandoned this idea for the more dubious spawn route, but then backtracked again... I don't hate it, but I still think a more clear good route and a more fleshed out evil route would have been better.
I do see tragic romance in both paths, though I think the AA route is implied to have more of it after the "curtain" closes -- depending on the choices you make, of course. We've already disagreed on what we see as tragic in the prior thread. I don't expect this to convince you, but I really do see it in the AA route the way you see it in the spawn route, if that makes sense.
I will only add one thing: tragedy is not the absence of joy or decadence in a story, nor is it simply abuse or a bad ending. It's also about the protagonists causing their own downfall. Hence, spawn Tav trapping themselves in a relationship they only thought they would want is inherently tragic to me, and very much a path in this game. You cannot ever fully leave as a spawn, this is the cage. The only real divorce is death in that world.
