so I recently described MCU!Tony Stark to someone by saying he:
- is certain, deep down, that who he actually is fundamentally kind of rubbish*
- is certain, deep down, that he is absolutely not allowed to be kind of rubbish and has to, in fact, be awesome or he is doing something wrong (hashtag gifted kid syndrome)
- is faking (fronting?) so hard, like, all the time, to try to keep up a pretense of being in some way impressive
- succeeds in pretending to be awesome because, ironically given the above, he actually /is/ awesome
and that reminded me of how that entire description also applies to Homestuck!Dave Strider, and got me wondering how many other characters could also go on that list. Tattletale from the web serial fiction "Worm", frex. Anyone got suggestions?
* I very much like the word "rubbish" - it has a very particular kind of connotation that feels appropriate.