1. Aylin spends 100 years in a hell dimension, tortured, killed repeatedly, and when she emerges is fully coherent and gets straight to talking shop with SH about the Shar crap as if it never happened
Yes. And?
She's a essentially a demi-god. One that literally can recover from death. Are you implying that she should be mentally scarred?
2. Trusts SH to be a vital ally in her personal war within seconds of SH going from wanting to kill her to throwing away the spear – no questioning of it, no pause for doubt, just one-dimensional acceptance. This is because the main plot needs to be forwarded along a predetermined path, and allowing the characters to surprise us via self-awareness would make their writing job moderately difficult. Reason? They’d have to accommodate natural, unexpected character development which is the tinder of good fiction
It's almost like she knew the nature of Shadowheart's character because of the fact that she's the daughter of Shadowheart's goddess...
Not to mention her deep insight she has of her about critical moments in her past. Suggesting that she might at that point in time, know more about Shadowheart than Shadowheart knows about herself.
3. She’s presented as mentally stable – more or less – throughout all dialogues, despite her 100 year ordeal, and goes bonkers mad when desecrating Ketharic’s corpse. Random, repellent, teenage-angst-level hissy-fit. Could they not have thought of a more dignified way for her to express her ‘release’, with, I don’t know, words? She comes off as an animal, rather than someone you can respect
I dunno, I reckon most mentally stable people would still fall into a fit of rage when confronted by a person who tortured them for 100 years...
If anything, not having a reaction would be more indicative of mental instability.
4. Comically florid, antisocial line: ‘Now, you will leave us. We must take succour in one another’s bodies and words’ in response to the MC’s innoccous remark that he’s ‘just going back to camp’. Appears out of the blue, is gratuitous and only inserted to heavy-handedly broadcast a particular ‘political message’, instead of organically adapting it into the natural flow of the narrative
Umm... I'm guessing you don't have many friends?
Since such a line is not out of the ordinary between friends. You might claim that it's a bit weird to be considering people you just met friends, but some people do just click pretty quickly. Given her brash, open nature, Aylin would likely form frienships quite fast (Much like Karlach)
Either way, it’s the most succinctly boring approach to writing her reaction to the 100-year ordeal, because the whole thing is made out to be irrelevant. As in, why even include it in the story if it has no bearing on the character’s recovery?
Because it provides information to other parts of the story?
Her being captured for 100 years, highlights the extent of Ketheric Thorm's influence and puts into perspective when he went mad with grief over the loss of Isobel, threw away Selune and devoted himself to Myrkul to revive Isobel.
It highlights how long Aylin and Isobel have been apart, both thinking the other dead.
It shows the strength of her resolve, that she can not only endure that, but immediately agrees to continue fighting once it's over.
Honestly, the only major flaw with Aylin's writing is that she's essentially Karlach 2.0. Both are written in very similar ways. Just one's a Tiefling who's spent however long fighting demons in Avernus under the thumb of Zariel while the other's an Aasimar who spent 100 years having their lifeforce drained by Ketheric Thorm.
