@quidcumque Another excerpt where I have (only from this excerpt and my past experiences with SFF) a different take. When any character is described as a genius, I get a little bored and my expectations for the book drop (Oh, another super duper brilliant savant! This story will definitely be original and interesting!). There are ways to do it that don't make me roll my eyes, but I think it's pretty difficult to make that trope feel like anything besides the power fantasies of a teenage writer. I suspect describing this character as sort of bumbling toward career success was an attempt to dodge those criticisms.

Women in this role are (paradoxically, maybe) sometimes even worse as characters because I often feel there is an air of chip-on-the-shoulder misogyny. Heinlein and Stephenson, for instance, have superGeniusBrilliant female characters and their fans get really pissy when you point out that those characters' apparent intelligence was often a smoke screen to distract from their fundamental function as reward objects for those authors' male protagonists; their "brilliance" is eventually cast as just another feature to make them desirable reward objects, like lustrous hair or large breasts.

The "ooh, another story about a [misunderstood / dominating / quixotic / incomprehensible / christ-figure] genius" thing is generally uninteresting to me as a reader, but when it's about a female character my eyes narrow and the author is on thin ice until they show me they aren't writing a slightly spiffed-up version of neckbeard anime fanfic.