Yes, maybe her new slightly less constricted and more frail/human look is better now than it was before, since it apparently slightly detracts from the "beauty" of her retrograde storyline.
Sorry, but you can't really separate the aesthetics of someone's story from their face. I think her previous look was aesthetically more functional/traditional/regressive within her 'M. Butterfly' -type of story, which is where her perceived beauty, or lack of it, lies. Zooming in on bad makeup, hairstyles etc. is just another way to avoid tackling the "sacrificial idiot foreign madwoman"- aesthetics of her storyline. Based on reactions to her new look, it appears she was more palatable sacrifice as long as her looks were more in line with her crude characterization as a fanatical, one-dimensional, morally reprehensible, subjugated and mentally shattered foreigner: a psychopath with subjugated "mad eyes" and corresponding makeup, that, if we believe OP, previously signaled both psychosis and psychopathy(psychosis and psychopathy are two totally different types of "crazy" btw), at the same time.
BG3 slightly modernizes this sacrificial storyline mold in the sense that it allows the player to join Minthara in sipping the flayer cult squick-koolaid and doomer romance her as the romantic proxy of the new emerging squick god.
This thread is to discuss our opinions about her facial aesthetic; yes in this thread we are examining aspects of her appearance pre patch 5 and patch 5; so yes we are zooming in on the details of her appearance, skin, makeup and etc ; it would be hard to examine the changes to her facial aesthetic if we didn't do that; so we're comparing and contrasting pictures; I don't need to tackle the "sacrificial idiot foreign madwoman"; I didn't start this thread to do such a thing.
