Uh, so playing DAO, I've spent the entire game getting Alistair's opinion of me up (the first act or so he hated me, so I figured this was important), but now he is trying to romance me. So, uh, is it possible to let him down gently and not lower his opinion of me?

I'm not sure you can but his opinion really doesn't matter, as long as it isn't really, really low you'll be fine.

Anyway if you care about it so much you can just give him a bunch of chocolate or whatever other gifts and bring it right back to where it was.

You can hurt his feelings and get your rep back up with him. If you have all the DLC there's plenty of buyable gifts you can give him available right from your camp.

If you follow the wrong conversation options (subjectively wrong) they will demand you make a choice. Ultimately it doesn't matter, the small boost in skill doesn't matter and Alistair is a key character but you don't have to have his rep maxed with everyone.

I doubt the romance removal dialogue is such a massive reputation hit that it hurts anything for long. Don't worry about it.

Also: suck it down Bioware developers who insist the romance shit is completely avoidable if you don't go after it.

It's just as avoidable as anything else "bad" in a RPG: quick reload.

If you don't jump down the wrong conversation paths it won't come up.

Their stance on their forums is that unless you persue someone the romance dialog never comes up. That's total BS though, especially in Dragon Age 2, because I have totally been hit on by characters I never flirted with at all. Just being nice to people causes them to come on to you strongly, especially Anders in DA2.

And in DA2 everyone is bisexual because HAR HAR POLITICAL CORRECTNESS so it's fucking all over the place.

I don't know, I feel like it's just more possibilities. For example, I never played Me2 as a female character, because I wanted to tap Miranda's ass.

I don't want to romance with men :-(

I have not played DA2 yet so cannot comment. In DA:O as soon as I realized pursuing certain dialog options will have negative and positive consequences (which the game properly trains you to recognize very early on, before romance even comes into play), I treated dialog with my party members like a boss fight, prepare, save, see how it goes, if badly try again.

I don't know how DA2 does it, perhaps it's worse, and I haven't read the stance on the forums so I can't say I have any other interpretation of that either. I just didn't think it was overdone or unavoidable in DA:O.

As for the bisexual thing, there were several bisexual characters in DA:O, why is that political correctness? It's just adding in a feature that caters to way more of their fanbase (after all, many men playing female toons don't want to see their chick fucking a dude either).

Well, first of not everyone is bisexual. And secondly, the BIG FAT HEART on the dialogue is somewhat of a giveway to when the romance starts. That's life dude.

Every romanceable character is bisexual.

Sebastian?

I think you are a little bit over-sensitive there. I never had an issue. While I only play male chars, I never found either Fenix nor Anders especially "romantic". Also the Fenix man on man rivalry romance was pretty cool.
So what, without sex it is not a relationship? YOU ANIMAL!

and a good tapping it was, ahh the good old days of mass effect

You need to play it. I think you might like it.