Quote Originally Posted by Traab View Post
I mean, the author isnt trying to make her a precocious darling or whatever. Its being made pretty clear that she has a lot of issues to deal with connected, presumably, to the fact that she was probably a studying hermit under pressure all her life and now that she is a doctor of whatever her fields are she is basically cut loose with no idea of what to do from here because she spent all her time cramming for tests and none learning things like how to socialize or even considering what comes next after getting her degree.
Maybe, but this means Jeph fundamentally misunderstands how getting a PhD works. Classes are only a (small) part of it. The primary aspect is conducting original research which requires at least some ability to function autonomously. Exactly how much can vary a lot - some doctoral students work in large labs and are basically handed some set of experiments to monitor and turn into a dissertation and this is fairly likely to apply to Liz - but there's a floor. No one writes your dissertation for you.

She is twisted up inside because she thinks that as an adult she should be able to handle this and that asking for help would be shameful and spent two years being twisted up inside because she has nobody she feels like she can turn to, and her abrasive personality, being a mixture of being treated as special all her life and not interacting with anyone outside of her professors and parents pushes everyone away before they can really spot the problems she has. When the only interaction she has with outsiders is yelling at moray "Im special leave me alone to do special stuff!!!" once a month, its no wonder that she has a bad rep and nobody guessing what her problems actually were till she forced herself to interact with marten as long as they did. Its not a perfectly written character, but its a pretty solid one imo with logical connections for all her traits and problems.
I think a big part of the issue is that her 'problems' are significantly overblown. Being abrasive and antisocial are only problems insofar as they impact overall mental health. Liz is apparently quite content to pursue research into highly theoretical topics largely on her own. She just needs some direction and a publishing schedule (and someone to tell her 'clean your office!' every six months). Something like 'Liz, you're on the muon modeling team, publish something every six to nine months.' It's a one-sentence fix.