Originally Posted by Marielle
Originally Posted by AnnaMyrk
"You're right to be afraid."...

Thank you for your excellent post. Yes, the game's story clearly shows - both in lines and facts, and even just on an empathy level (Neil played Astarion perfectly in both cases) that there is indeed something to fear. “Just an expandable frail spawn who will burn to a crisp soon enough”. The world is dangerous. The state in which Astarion remains, having sacrificed his chance to feel alive again, is not only tragic but dangerous. It's odd that the script doesn't take into account the fact that Tav (as well as the player himself) can also be afraid. There is, after all, not only the standard understanding of fear as an instant reaction to some scene that is presented as “scary”, like shoving a maggot in your eye or something along those lines. Such scenes in BG3 are quite mild, I have to admit, and generate interest and curiosity, but while this game is certainly not a horror game, it did manage to make me feel scared once. When I first read in my journal, “Astarion's fate is sealed. He will remain a spawn forever.” Fear as a valuable defense mechanism that warns us against “taking a wrong turn.” By the way, after the Ascension, the diary says that Astarion is grateful for the help. Even this small but important tool, which helps us navigate quest chains by showing us what we need to do and how we accomplished what we've already done, makes it clear how Astarion's quest was accomplished.

Just to clarify, and I'm not sure I'm understanding, so excuse me if I'm the one misunderstanding- "You're right to be afraid" was used in the context of Adam Smith saying that the AA path is Tav telling AA "You're right to be afraid" and that, in Adam's words, sending him (AA) to a terrible place. I thought that was relevant to clear up, since one of Adam Smith's statements was brought up earlier to try to argue against further changes, although I feel that the statement used wasn't even necessarily directly even tackling this route or the kiss issue.

Quoting it so there's no chance of me attributing anything to his words, take into account he's specifically talking about the evil ending throughout:
"So with Astarion, his evil ending is actually him...much of what he does is out of fear. And as a player, you can say to him, "You're right to be afraid." And that sends him to a really horrible place, and that I think is really powerful."

I honestly think the statement doesn't leave a lot of leeway for it not to be interpreted as him implying it's his (or one of his) bad ending/s, whether or not he should be saying that or whether or not people agree with that assessment. However, I agree with other users that have said that he's not saying anything about the romance path and whether or not he's or should be abusive, so this is not proof of that- but rather that, in the writers' opinions, /this/ is his fearful ending. Indications to this are also present in the devnotes, where one of the AA lines has devnotes for Neil that says he's "afraid, deep down" when he says he wants to conquer the world.