Hello again!

Are you tired of having to pick which path to do for Astarion's confessions? 
Both options are equally good, and it feels like while the fallback confession is wonderful because it's more spontaneous, his love interest also deserves to learn about Astarion's vulnerable side and to be aware and supportive of how he feels about being physical with people during Act 2. If you pick the spontaneous confession, that part is very much glanced over.

Well, fear no more! Now you don't have to choose one! I bring you a way to have both scenes, separately, at their intended times. :D
This mod was inspired by the description and comments found on the Astarion Confession Dialogue Edit  mod about how cool it would have been to have both scenes.


Please read the instructions below well.

(boring technical part - originally the 2 scenes are set in an entertwined web and reuse same sentences and dialog nodes, some of which linked one to the other in the timeline so they always play together. Sooo, the dialogues AND ALL THE PHASES I needed have been splitted, duplicated and now exist on their own).

I've rewritten a couple sentences and added a few more Tav lines so it feels a little more intimate (in the good and bad way), and rearranged scenes in a different order that makes more sense (at least to me).
Thanks to flags and scripts you can now experience both, with the only caveat that you have to follow the path strictly in the following order to activate everything correctly. 
If you intend to skip one of these things, don't use this mod or nothing will work anymore relationship-wise.
If you've already done the Araj confession without this installed, you need to reload a previous save.


1 - Meet Araj. You will have a choice to either support, befriend Astarion or break up with him. (like you do normally).
Obviously you can pick the others, but this mod is intended for the "supporting his needs" dialogue choice.

After you choose that, Astarion will continue to act as he did before this happened (still "dating"/flirting but not in a relationship yet).
Give him time to think it through. 🥰

2- Talk to Raphael in Last Light. You can do this before Araj, but don't forget. (duh, nobody would)!
Wait to meet him again until he tells you to kill Yurgir.

3- Kill Yurgir.

4- Get Raphael to explain the ritual.

5- Sleep a couple days.

When you wake up in the morning, you'll find Astarion mumbling funnily to himself in a nice little spot in the Shadowlands where he'll confess his feelings.
Please note:
- this is out of camp and happens in armor, so plan your outfits accordingly :P
- the area looks much better if you have already removed the shadow curse by helping Thaniel and Oliver reunite
- depending on how quickly your pc loads the area, please be patient and don't click anything until the scene starts (there is a timer of 12 secs I set there)

You have 2 chances in this second part to also end things with him if Tav has had a change of mind, but past a certain point your only choice will be to show him how much you care. 😊
When the dialogue concludes, you will finally be a couple.


That's it in theory! Images are just for flair except two, we've all seen them a million times. I leave you with the thrill of experiencing the changes yourself :P

(boring technical part again). In truth there's a lot of messy scripting and flag editing behind the scenes to make it work. 😂 I'm still very amateurish with understanding how scripts work T_T .

Note: the added romantic interactions have been stolen from other companions. I had to adjust heights for that, so while they work perfectly for body 1 Tav, I can't guarantee perfect alignment with taller or custom ones and most certainly those animations won't work for short ones. Male body 1 should be fine I believe. Please report what's broken and I *might* make separate versions for other Tavs if all it requires is changing heights again. Also report any weird things you see.

Note 2: Origin Karlach's nodes split away from Tav's at some point based on her status. I have not tested them because I don't have a Karlach save but they should work fine.

INSTALLATION

I don't know if it will happen to you as well, but it does to me. The first time you install this and export load order etc, press refresh on BG3MM and make sure the mod hasn't moved to the inactive tab. If it did, move it back again into active. It should stick the second time you repeat the process. Idk why it does it and can't figure it out but it works, so.... :P

This mod requires SE and is an override. It will keep working for as long as it remains in BG3MM and your mods folder, whether active or inactive. Remove it completeley if you don't need it anymore.

Obviously, it's not compatible with mods that edit the same scene and files.

____________________

- Some post thoughts - 

This took forever to do because I started this idea at the end of November 😅 But I'm glad I decided to, because while in the past I had a lot of external help (for Candle Yeet), and I did repeat parts of what I did there here too, this edit was much more complex and I'm actually very proud of myself this time, because 90% of it was made by me alone patiently putting my brain to work, and I feel like I finally "grasped" a ton of stuff I can replicate in the future for other mods, and most importantly really understood everything I did this time 😊 Unfortunately for me, I don't work too well with theory, so I need to try on my own and spit tears and blood until things are assimilated 😅

This was done manually btw, I'm terrible at using the toolkit. And by manually I mean by copy pasting and replacing value over value over value, cause I can't make my own scripts... Yeah.


Now for a few, well deserved thanks:

Moxi, for the detailed guides on scene editing, the ever useful examples on your website, and for your help with the mysterious _scene lsf and answering my silly doubts. 🩷

Magnetuning, for the easy to understand explanations on the wiki (I'm smooth brained so I need things explained in the easiest way possible 😂) and the timeline updater tool, which is equally no-brainer to use and without which this mod would not be possible (this thing should have more DLs tbh)

Honestly, Moona, who I literally just got to know last week, BUT you've been a great help and talking to you boosted my morale even when everything kept not working :> thanks for helping me brainstorm ways to cheat around stuff and listening to my frustrations 🥰

The people in the scripting channel on the modding discord for explaining why some things didn't work 😂

_______________
I need to take a short break, cause this was mentally exhausting from all the info I crammed into my brain🤯 but I will return to fix a few things that aren't perfect (there are a couple moments in which Tav and Astarion look a tad jittery. I'll have to find what causes it).

Lastly, I could have made the animations a tiny bit better by rotating the angles a bit but unfortunately that requires calculating hellish stuff and I can't math.
If anyone is feeling adventurous and wants to help me figure out a noob way to calculate quaternions that doesn't require you to be Einstein, please reach out, I would not mind :D

Enjoy!

(Next big project will have to be an Empy's romance scene overhaul one, I've promised I'd do one for way too long :P)