Quote Originally Posted by BRC View Post
That said, it's possible that Jeph's writing can't really distinguish between "Adult that looks like a child and wants to be treated as an adult" and "Child who wants to be treated as an adult". As this current strip shows, it seems like we're supposed to sympathize with Elizabeth for wanting to be taken seriously, but everything else we see about her kind of makes that hard.
Quote Originally Posted by BRC View Post
That said, it's possible that Jeph's writing can't really distinguish between "Adult that looks like a child and wants to be treated as an adult" and "Child who wants to be treated as an adult". As this current strip shows, it seems like we're supposed to sympathize with Elizabeth for wanting to be taken seriously, but everything else we see about her kind of makes that hard.
I think it makes sense if he's going for an 'insufferable genius' trope. We're supposed to sympathize with the not being taken seriously part, but still not necessarily like this character (at least at the moment). If this character was introduced in a plot that people generally liked, I wouldn't bat an eye at them -- they are meant to fill a specific need. I am guessing (almost pure speculation) that the story will proceed in telling how she was really bright and precocious oh such a young overachiever (and wanted you to know it) and the Cubetown robot octopus was fascinated with her and simply had to have her on staff and brought her on board and told her to 'go do genius things' and then... promptly forgot about her and let her stagnate and now she's twenty-X and just a person with two PhDs* and having done so really early doesn't matter anymore and why can't she get published, dammit?! Or something similar where her genius is wasted and now she has to warn Claire lest her genius** suffer a similar fate.
*which those of us who have been to grad school realize isn't better than one PhD and several years of putting it to good use. They aren't Pokemon or Pogs where you try to collect as many as you can.
***quality of retroactively being good at calling people out and get them organized or something.