ratio tile is an interesting character– it seems like a lot of your readers really sympathize with or like him from the get-go! on the other hand, it took me a bit to get past an initial reaction of

“this guy is such a cartoon compared to maria or miranda or james like come ON” and “i think im supposed to be charmed or amused, but mostly im irritated.do we really need another sci-fi math genius dude w Emotional Distance + Arrogant Lack Of Tact?”

Yeah, the latter is an understandable response and one I was fearing, so I’m glad the character got enough of a positive response overall to make me feel like I did some sort of a good job.  (I did lampshade the “cartoonishness” with Cept’s talk about “flatness” but lampshading flaws doesn’t mitigate them – we rightly growl when, say, Andrew Hussie acts as though it does)

Part of what I was going for was to actively use that Sherlock Holmes / Newt Geiszler “I’m weird and smart and offputting and you just have to deal with it because I’m indispensible!!” archetype, but actually make the character a viewpoint character in a way you don’t usually see with that archetype, so that he’s a real character as much as anyone, rather than a mysterious other, comic relief, etc.  Also, I was thinking of how a lot of the actual scientists I’ve met do have sort of over-the-top personalities – like, I was saying “those scientist guys in Pacific Rim, say, are closer to reality than you might expect.”  And this ties into the “sometimes reality really is cartoonish” theme that comes up in various places in Floornight.