One of the puzzling results of the latest patch for Baldur's Gate 3, which came along with a lot of bugs and many hotfixes to follow, is, yes, the Grinching of Astarion. It has only happened under certain mysterious circumstances, but it is certainly happening. Spoilers for Act III and Astarion will follow.

The brouhaha started when a video of Astarion's new Act 3 epilogue scene (shared by skarsghardy on Twitter) sparked a lot of memes about Larian's new "Astarion jumpscare."

Look. There's nothing wrong with it if a person just looks like that - there's even a certain cuteness - but it's suspiciously glitchy considering that Asterion is a typical full-lipped prince, looking like he belongs on the cover of a smutty romance book (shirt optional), upper lip to lower lip for about five minutes. I've been trying to smile while folding my upper lip into my lower lip for about 5 minutes, but it doesn't feel natural.

Astarion's de-grinchifier by magnetuning of Nexus Mods To prove that Astarion's superfans aren't just losing their gourds, magnetuning has created a comparison video.

Seeing that Astarion does not look like this at lower graphic settings, magnetuning initially thought the problem was due to "missing LOD" (referring to real-time simplification of polygons) when compared to other fellow characters in the game.

In a pinned comment, they explained that "adding the missing LODs also makes a difference (and removing them brings back the grin somewhat). I have no idea what's going on."

According to magnetuning, moving Asterion's pretty face in Blender may also be hindering his expressiveness, like digital botox.

"Also, to be honest, he just kind of looks like that! Sometimes you just have to love an old lady just the way she is. While making sure his model is working properly."

They really seem to mean it wholeheartedly, as there is an optional mod available to re-grinch the asterion if you are using a custom head." This is for those who love his Grinchface and are disappointed that the custom head has made him into a Grinch for no apparent reason."