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The sisters are not going to like hearing this, but I think an unromanced Astarion is a better character than a romanced one. This is because Astarion is forced to self-reflect on what freedom is worth to him and what his worth is, consider what kind of eternity he wants for himself once Cazador is dead, and what kind of person he really is. None of these requires love as a catalyst, and entangling himself with Tav risks turning their relationship into an emotional crutch that stifles both his growth and agency. How can he separate "this is what I want for myself" and "I owe this to my dear savior" once a Tav who romances him becomes part of the equation - allows him to bite her on a nightly basis, teaches him to trust again, kills his master for him, becomes the one he owes an eternal debt? None of the other romances have this dependency angle to them. Romance enriches their characters without feeling like a burden. Both unromanced Astarion and romanced Astarion have to wrestle with difficult questions at some point, but the former is free to do so without the weight of feeling like he manipulated someone or was manipulated. Unromanced Astarion doesn't have to bat his eyelashes at Tav or start another coy request with "Darling..." He would have nothing to offer. He would have nothing to bargain, plea, or promise. He would have nothing to owe. His independence would be the first step of his liberation. The sister will argue that romance is an important part of his healing process (missionary with him over his grave), and that Tav as a lover helps him confront his trauma, and that it is beautiful and poignant that way. Maybe she's right. Or maybe his trauma is a different matter altogether, and he can only truly start to face it, on his own terms, once he has earned his freedom. That wouldn't work in the context of the video game, because the sister needs her romance just like the other players (it's only fair) but I think it's an interesting "what if" to consider.
Female fans (henceforth referred to as "sisters") of Astarion, the vampire spawn of Baldur's Gate 3, often share ritualistic posts on 4chan such as "Missionary with Astarion" or "Making dhampir babies with Astarion." Sisters also often share pictures of Astarion shirtless, clad in some fetishistic leather that leaves his chest bare, or fully naked - to the point where normal clothing would signal that the poster is likely a tourist. The overtly sexual nature of these posts is not accidental. Although some sisters prefer a more tender approach, such as giving him affectionate nicknames ("Pookie" or "precious baby") or fantasizing about cuddling with him and stroking his hair, the undercurrent of sexualization is never far away. Likewise, the apparent sisters' preference for the confident and dominant Ascendant Astarion over his meeker spawn counterpart is not surprising. Ascendant Astarion plays to the sexist stereotype of masculinity - the macho idea of how a real man should be and how close a leash he should keep on his woman. A man should not show vulnerability. A man should be sexually dominant. Astarion becomes, through the daily repetition of such posts, and in the Welchian sense, a sex object. Reduced to a perfectly sculpted body, devoid of imperfection and eternally young. Critics have long praised Astarion for his nuanced and layered characterization, but all of that is flushed down the drain once he ascends. Vampire portrayal in fiction has a long history of intertwining forbidden danger and eroticism, but that alone cannot explain the heights of "Astarion posting" that eclipse the sexualization of popular female characters in the game, indeed of other sexy vampire characters that came before. Call it the ASS (Astarion Sexualization Syndrome), if you will. Astarion unfortunately epitomizes the sexual commodification of characters who were meant to be more than sex objects, from the thousands of smut works on Archive of Our Own to the dark corners of 4chan.
