Blasé Boast
The Blasé Boast is Badass Boast being played as if it were ordinary business.
It may look like someone acting dismissive of their deeds, but the boaster is actually very proud of them. They are just being dismissive to mess with someone's head, or to seem more Badass.
If the "boaster" is honestly dismissive of what they did they're just saying But for Me It Was Tuesday and thus not a boaster. If they're ashamed, they won't bring it up outside of Your Approval Fills Me with Shame or Never Live It Down.
Compare Think Nothing of It.
Literature
- Alaric Morgan, his thumbs hooked in his swordbelt, addressing Mearan prisoners in The King's Justice. He's boasting about his Deryni powers (Mind Reading), which most of them only know by fearsome reputation. He's more overt when he proposes this to Kelson, "I assure you, my culling would be far more than just lots," and he reminds Kelson that he (Morgan) already has an infamous reputation.
"All right, you know who I am," he said, his voice stern but without deliberate menace. "I'm going to have a private little chat with each of you. While you're waiting for your turn, I suggest you give careful thought to which four of you deserve to die for what you've done--because I'm going to ask you that, and I'll know if you're lying. That's the fairest way I know to see that justice is done--though I'm sure His Majesty is right that more than four of you probably deserve to hang."
- In the Ciaphas Cain books, Cain does this a lot. He makes sure to remind the reader that he only does it to seem like a Humble Hero.
Webcomics
- In Tales of the Questor, Quentyn's father can be one evil old goat.
- In Grant, the eponymous character states that no-one is strong enough to rip a padlock off a door. Then he calls the lock a piece of junk when he does precisely that, startling his boyfriend. He could also be hiding his true nature from a girl he's rescuing from the horse trailer the padlock was on.
Web Original
- Twitter has #humblebrag.