Has a dream that won't feed him or even remotely a chance to make it become true.

If you're talking about his writing (I don't pay him much attention, so that's the only issue I know about if there are more), he actually strikes me as someone who could make a living with his writing.

I'm an author, and in my own experiences and the experiences of other authors I converse with, writing is more about perseverance than inspiration or "talent." He's a bit purple, but that's something that he can learned to overcome (and, in fact, most authors are a shade of purple while new).

The kicker is that he pushes himself to succeed. There are several times that he talks about how his legs are stiff / sore because he spent the morning writing. He also manages to finish a book (how good it is is actually irrelevant, as the key part is finishing it).

When many (not all) people think of writers, they think of flighty personalities that only write when inspiration strikes them, or of the hipsters in a coffee shop staring into the blank screen of an expensive laptop, droning on about being on the cusp of achieving the inspiration for the next great novel while surrounded by meaningless distractions (their own ego included).

The writers that I know don't do any of that. They treat it like a normal 9-to-5 job, sit at a desk, and write, edit, and what have you. It doesn't matter whether what you write is "good" or "bad" because you can edit later. You can't edit something you haven't written, and with many stories, things will change between inception and completion, so editing as you go or in your mind before even writing it is a wasted effort.

That Elliott completed a novel puts him ahead of the vast majority of people who want to be authors, and if he sticks with it, he'll learn and grow over time. He may not be able to sustain himself right away, but few authors can while new. By sticking with it and finishing new books, he'll grow into it in due time (especially if he bothers to utilize the many resources available to aspiring authors in the modern era, but that he doesn't even have a computer is a different discussion entirely).

So don't dismiss him too quickly. He seems (to me) to be one of the few characters in SDV who actually have a chance to achieve their dreams.