Blasé Boast

Alex: You mentioned backup from Lalivero? Let's go meet them together, shall we?
Tolbi soldier: Hey, pal! When they get here, you'll really be in for it!
Alex: Do you honestly believe that even a hundred of you could stop me? This should be interesting.

— Golden Sun: The Lost Age

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. Alternatively, it may be that they're confident enough that they don't need to boast or bluster—if you're stupid enough to mess with them, you will go down, and that's all there is to it.

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 Once Done, Never Forgotten.

Compare and contrast Think Nothing of It, in which the badass character genuinely does downplay an accomplishment after being complimented for it.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• At the end of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, when David is facing down Adam Smasher, one of the biggest and scariest entities within the setting, the latter treats David with at best mild interest, noting that David must be taking on some serious strain from his cybernetics while he himself can handle his own chrome. And earlier, he refers to the Cyberskeleton that David is using as "a child's toy, barely worth his time".
  Smasher: You're packing some pretty heavy artillery, boy. I'm surprised you could string two words together.
  David: Likewise, Choom. Heard you went no-ganic full-borg, so I gotta ask. Any brain left in that chrome dome of yours?
  Smasher: You could say I'm special.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Jack Rakan gets one of these in a flashback, while he's helping rescue Queen Arika.
  Rakan: Oh? You wanna throw down? You sure? I mean, you don't have that many forces.
  General: You fool. Our forces are much greater than what you see here. We have an entire fleet of airships on stand-by and elite combat mages numbering greater than 3,000! Even you cannot...
  Rakan: Like I said... you sure? You really think that's gonna be enough? (Note: It isn't enough. Not by a long shot.)
• Symphogear XV sees Carol Malus Dienheim, freshly Back from the Dead, musing how the things she cast aside were what saved her when Noble Red's Millarc tries a sneak attack, only to be casually blocked. Carol is not amused, and lets them know before she sends them packing.
  Carol: "You interrupted my reverie. You know you're going to pay for that, right?"

Comic Books

• Astro City: Roy Virgil, a.k.a. the Astro-Naut, was a Badass Normal adventurer who was so smart that he could copy the alien technologies he saw on his space adventures without the benefit of reverse-engineering them.
  "Just knowing they exist, knowing that whatever they do actually can be done... well, that lets me know it's possible, if I only find a way. So I do."
• Gran'ma Ben in Bone does this when a horde of ratmen attack the farmstead in the first book. As Thorn and Phone Bone flee for their lives, Ben dismisses the entire attack (while busy fighting off the entire wave using nothing but a poker and her bare hands):
  Gran'ma Ben: Don't worry about me... I fought th' rats back in th' big war!

Fan Fiction

• In Child of the Storm has several examples:
  • Doctor Strange, when asked by Odin what kind of game he is playing in chapter 72 of the first book:
    "The only kind of game I ever play, sire. The kind whose rules I write, whose deck I stack in my own favour, whose course I have plotted before it has even begun. In short, sire, it is the kind of game that I intend to win."
  • Strange also gives a quiet, subdued one to Thor in the sequel when the latter goes into Papa Wolf mode:
    "We both know that no prison built will hold me. I've been through enough tortures that anything you could do to me would be at best amusingly quaint and frankly, cathartic."
  • And even later, he casually mentions that Mab is willing to relinquish her interest in Harry Dresden in return for certain favours, and because, as he puts it, "Mab and I understand each other. She knows better, much better, than to get in my way.” Mab, by the way, is the Winter Queen of Faerie, undisputed ruler of some of the most wicked and terrible creatures in faerie, and as powerful as Thor or Loki at her weakest - and they consequently step lightly around her. Harry Dresden, who ends up duelling Gravemoss, twice, despite being far out of his depth, is sensibly terrified of her. Strange, not so much.
  • Earlier, when Loki is asked if he can track down HYDRA's wizard commandos, he gives a light-hearted response:
    Captain, I could do it blindfolded and drunk.
  • Steve, meanwhile, upon seeing the horrendous storm raging outside in the Rockies, simply says, "I've fought in worse."
  • While interrogating Draco Malfoy in the sequel, Jean-Paul gets this bit of dialogue:
    Draco: You think I am a threat.
    Jean-Paul: If I thought you were truly a threat, we would not be having this conversation.
• A Darker Path: Some of Atropos' PHO tags are outright boasting; "(Can Actually Kill Anything) (Yes, Really) (Watch Me)". And then there's a later addition, "(Verified Dethpicable)". Those in the know realise that it's actually a brag all of its own; she's flaunting the fact that she killed the Simurgh, and made it look easy, while re-enacting a Looney Tunes skit.
• Limpet AU: In "Driving Lord Vader", Anakin Solo worries that he might fail his space license test exam. Vader assures him that it'd be fine, by casually mentioning his piloting achievements in The Phantom Menace.
  Anakin: I'm...just going to screw this up.
  Vader: Stop saying that. If I could fly a starfighter into orbital combat when I was ten, then you can certainly pass a routine space license exam.
  Anakin: You what?
  Vader: Or perhaps I was nine.
• Fallout: Equestria:
  Littlepip: [To the next adversary] Have you met us?'''
• During her duel with Leviathan in Manehattan's Lone Guardian, Gray states that she is "The cat that walks by herself", and that all places are alike to her. The way she herself speaks it makes it come off more as a statement of fact as opposed to any sort of boastfulness, but it doesn't make her any less dangerous.

Film — Live-Action

• Not a boast, but in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Cap realizes that he's been ambushed by nine men, all of whom are top-level combat specialists, who surround him in the elevator and prepare to take him down. He very calmly asks if anyone would like to get out before they get started. Cue Curb-Stomp Battle—from the one.
• Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan, describing the moment that Jon Osterman was torn into atomic shreds, later forcing himself to rebuild himself into a Physical God from nothing.
  Manhattan: I felt fear. For the last time.

Literature

• The Chronicles of Narnia: In The Silver Chair, Aslan chooses a chillingly nonchalant way to describe his Physical God status. The book notes that the Lion "didn't say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it."
  Jill: Do you eat girls?
  Aslan: I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms.
• Codex Alera: Aldrick ex Gladius spends the first book telling everyone whom he fights that they may be good, but the only person who ever defeated him was Araris Valerian, who's dead now. He usually follows this up with a killing blow. Zig-zagged towards the end of the book, when he's about to kill Tavi, and another character blocks the fatal blow. Guess who it is.
• Cradle Series:
  • In Blackflame, Eithan, a janitor from a family of janitors, is ambushed and cut off from his allies by the patriarch of a warrior clan and his entourage. Eithan is incredibly unconcerned.
    Eithan: Gentlemen, this is a mistake.
  • In Bloodline, Lindon realizes he's caught in the middle of two enemy factions who have allied against him because they are convinced that the only reason he could be there is to kill them all. Despite being outnumbered dozens to one, his biggest concern is that he'd prefer not to murder them all.
    Lindon: Gentlemen. This is a mistake.
• Deryni: 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."
• The Dresden Files:
  • Skin Game: Donar Vadderung, aka Odin, says of The Spymaster Fallen Angel Anduriel that "he knows very nearly as much as I do." He had just told Harry Dresden that Anduriel can, with concentration, look out from any being's shadow, hear what they're saying, and sometimes even see through it.
  • Battle Ground: A Jotun asks to know Harry's greatest deeds before they do battle, listens to Harry's bombastic recitation, compliments him as a Worthy Opponent, then answers simply that he himself battled Thor and lived. Harry admits that it's an unbeatable humblebrag. Inconveniently for Harry, he was hoping the Jotun's boast would, like his longer one, buy his allies more time to run for their lives.
• In the Harry Potter series, Albus Dumbledore contemplates Azkaban, the hellish abomination-guarded prison from which only two escapes have been carried out in its multi-century history (and one of those, it's implied, was because said guards were looking the other way). Also bear in mind that while at least part of Dumbledore's power comes from wielding the most powerful Magic Wand ever created, all prisoners at Azkaban naturally have their wands confiscated. Almost all varieties of magic when used without a wand are (at best) unfocused and uncontrollable. Dumbledore is implying that for him this is not the case and that he doesn't actually need a wand at all, putting him on a whole other level than other wizards.
  Dumbledore: I have absolutely no intention of being sent to Azkaban. I could break out, of course, but what a waste of time, and frankly, I can think of a whole host of things I would rather be doing.
  • Minerva McGonagall gets one in Deathly Hallows, when asked if Hogwarts can defend itself against Voldemort:
  McGonagall: We teachers are rather good at magic, you know.
• In Interesting Times, it's brought up that the Emperor that the Silver Horde is here to overthrow has some very special guards. Then a throwing star tinkles to the floor.
  Boy Willie: Met them.
• The One Who Eats Monsters: Ryn, an unkillable monster older than time, is so nonchalant about her incredible abilities that it often takes people a while to realize 1: she's not lying, and 2: she's not wrong.
  Dust: Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you must be too young to know. Deva can't kill asura. Unlike you, we got no bodies to kill.
  Ryn: I am from the black places and the Long Ago. I can kill anything that can die, and a few things that cannot.
• Star Wars Legends: Shatterpoint has Mace Windu calmly explain that Kar Vastor (who's stronger in the Force and physically) "is not the most dangerous man in the Korunnai Highlands." He then proves it. Repeatedly.
  Nick Rostu: You only say that because you don't know him.
  Mace: I only say that because he doesn't know me.
• The Stormlight Archive book 2, Words of Radiance: The Inexplicably Awesome Hoid completely disregards the priceless and extremely lethal Soul-Cutting Blade Jasnah Kholin is pointing at him, only mentioning that he would be surprised if it posed him any threat.
  • The Sleepless also tend to produce these with alarming frequency, fully aware that there is almost nothing they will encounter which is actually a threat. One says it can't claim killing two hostile Skybreakers was self defense because it was too easy, and another states with complete confidence (and accuracy) that there's nothing its captors can do to make it talk. While the readers are aware that it isn't even actually contained.
• In The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign, Lu injects the fact that she killed Elvast Toydream (Government Award 1000) into every conversation possible, even those with no relation to combat or Awards. However offhanded her tone may sound, it's clear she's proud of the deed.
• Warhammer 40,000: In the Ciaphas Cain books, Cain, THE HERO OF THE IMPERIUM, does this a lot. He makes sure to remind the reader that he only does it to seem like a Humble Hero. If he talked himself up too much, after all, he'd get missions more dangerous than the ones he's already assigned.

Live-Action TV

• In Arrow, when the title character is dueling Ra's al Ghul, he tries to get off a Badass Boast, but Ra's calmly replies with a Blasé Boast.
  Oliver: You're unarmed.
  Ra's al Ghul: I'll take your blades when you're finished with them.
• Doctor Who:
  • The Doctor, as a Living Legend who exemplifies Beware the Nice Ones, has had a few of these throughout his time. Most notably, in "The Impossible Astronaut":
    "Don't play games with me. Don't ever, ever think you're capable of that."
  • The White Guardian gets an excellent one in "The Ribos Operation", when telling the Doctor about a quest that needs undertaking.
    The Doctor: Ah! You want me to volunteer, is that it? And if I don't?
    The Guardian: Nothing.
    The Doctor: What? Nothing? You mean nothing will happen to me?
    The Guardian: Nothing at all. [Beat] Ever.
  • River Song also gets a good one in "The Big Bang". After making a Dalek beg for mercy, there's a Gilligan Cut to Amy and Rory. When they see River coming down the stairs, this bit of conversation ensues:
    Amy: What happened to the Dalek?
    River: It died.
• Death in Supernatural alternates between this trope and But for Me, It Was Tuesday when talking to the Winchesters. As a cosmic entity as old as the universe, he's beyond taking pride in his work, but he does like to remind them why their attitude does not impress him. Once, when they ask him for advice:
  Bobby: That [door to Purgatory] only opens in the eclipse, and that's over...
  Death: I'll make another.
• Omar Little from The Wire is a stick up man, that is, an armed robber who targets only drug dealers and other criminals to steal from. While Omar has Moment of Awesome after moment of awesome throughout the series, there's something special about the following exchange in "All Prologue", at the start of the trial of a drugland assassin who tortured and murdered Omar's boyfriend Brandon.
  Asst. State's Attorney Ilene Nathan: What exactly do you do for a living, Mr. Little?
  Omar: I robs drug dealers.
  Asst. State's Attorney Ilene Nathan: And exactly how long has that been your occupation, Mr. Little?
  Omar: Oh, I don't know exactly, I venture to say about... eight or nine years.
  Asst. State's Attorney Ilene Nathan: Mr. Little, how does a man rob drug dealers for 8 or 9 years and live to tell about it?
  Omar: [smiles, shrugs, and sits back in his seat] Day at a time, I suppose.

Puppet Shows

• Fraggle Rock: In "Scared Silly", Boober scares Wembley by hiding under a pile of laundry, then jumping out of it. Wembley tries to scare Boober back by doing the same thing. Boober isn't fooled, as he sees Wembley's tail sticking out. He hides, waits for Wembley to jump out of the laundry, then scares him again. When Wembley complains of this...
  Boober: Well, face it, Wembley, I'm an expert on fear.

Video Games

• Golden Sun: The Lost Age: At the beginning of the game, Alex defeats a few soldiers. The two still standing yell for reinforcements, and Alex says, in a normal tone of voice, "Do you honestly believe a hundred of you could stop me?"
• Half-Life: Alyx: When you finally breach the massive prison ship hovering above the city, and release its inmate, they turn out not to be Gordon Freeman, as the Resistance initially thought. When asked about this, the G-Man practically plays it off like a joke, even if an unusually threatening one even without his usual inflection.
  Alyx: Gordon... Freeman...?
  The G-Man: Gordon Freeman... Heh. Miss Vance, you wouldn't need all that, to imprison... Gordon Freeman.
• River City Girls 2 has Misako and Kyoko dropping a Badass Boast version of this in their encounter with the first boss, a Yakuza member who is determined to kill them. Given that they've already torn through the city once, they're not kidding.
  Misako (amused): "I mean, you can try."
  Kyoko: " But that usually doesn't usually work out too well for people."
• Warframe: One of the first lines in the game is the Lotus noting that your long time in cryosleep has robbed you of your memories, and an army is coming to kill you. She flatly says it doesn't matter; you are Tenno.

Webcomics

• In The Dreamland Chronicles, the dragon Nicodemus has ruled the Dreamlands for a very long time, and likes people to know it.
  Nicodemus: Please do not lecture me on the old ways. I created the old ways.
• Erfworld: When she claims the divine artifact she believes she was destined for, Wanda says "For these, I have wrecked and ruined more than you have" to a man who'd just destroyed a city and two armies via weaponized volcano.
• Genocide Man:
  • When the veteran One-Man Army Jacob meets someone who accuses him of almost killing her, he shows how it's done.
    Jacob: Child, I don't think I've ever "almost" killed anybody.
  • In the middle of a tense moment during which an unbelievably clever AI that would be losing its mind soon is giving directions and informative gifts to the protagonists to help them on their quest, one of them comments that the literal Info Dump (of multiple gigabytes) he got dropped into his implanted systems got past without so much as alerting any of his advanced firewalls. The AI's response is unnervingly nonchalant.
    Roger: You— Oh, wow. You dropped a ton on me. My firewalls didn't even notice you.
    AI: Of course not. Why should they?
• Girl Genius: Early on, Baron Wulfenbach decides to go for a walk through a rebellious city he is still in the process of conquering.
  Jäger: I vill assign you two—
  Wulfenbach: I will go by myself. Let the people see that I can.
• 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.
• Grrl Power: Maxima, leader of America's recently-revealed super team, mentions she spent most of her time in the military fighting indigenous supers in Afghanistan.
  Reporter: They have supers in Afghanistan?
  Maxima: Hpmh. Not as many as they used to.
• Gunnerkrigg Court: The Inexplicably Awesome immortal Time Abyss Jones delivers one, completely without emotion, to the Physical God Coyote when the well-being of a Court student is in question:
  Coyote: She's not going anywhere she doesn't want to!
  Jones: You know I can take her if I wish.
• Kill Six Billion Demons:
  • The legendary Master Swordsman Meti tends to describe her awe-inspiring exploits in a brusque, matter-of-fact way, not least because she's come to believe that the whole thing was a fool's errand.
    Maya: The boys say you are the greatest sword fighter ever to have lived. That you once fought naked with a hundred men and won.
    Meti: The first is debatable. The second is undoubtedly false. It was ten thousand men.
  • Maya seems to have picked up on this, as untold centuries later when she properly introduces herself to Allison in Mottom's palace, she says this:
    Maya: I would like to tell you that I am a noodle vendor, but alas! Instead, I am a disciple of the principle art of cutting.
  • God-Emperor Solomon David is the Demiurge of Pride, so naturally he makes his boasts sound as natural and self-evident as possible.
    Solomon David: This world's original sun was destroyed in the Universal War.
    Zaid: ...So why are there two now?
    Solomon: Because I put them there.
• Schlock Mercenary:
  • Schlock usually brags about what he's done, or complaining about being stopped from doing it, or... However, in one case, when faced with a potentially dangerous giant robot:
    Schlock: Bring me a multi-cannon and a hull-cutter. I've got this.
  • LOTA test-firing LOTA's new superweapon:
    LOTA: Do you all see the asteroid out there?
    Kevyn: Yes, we see it.
    [massive flash of light]
    LOTA: Now you don't.
    Pi: I think that's because I'm blind now.
    Ebby: This after-image is so loud I can taste it.
• Sluggy Freelance:
  • "Chaz," the magic talking sword powered by the blood of the innocent, gets this a lot. We have never seen anything survive a direct attack from him, and even one of the most powerful beings in the universe was permanently crippled from a scratch. This gives him a very deadpan arrogance.
    Torg: Chaz, what happens to spirits when you "kill" them?
    Chaz: They have no idea.
  • When fighting lesser demons, Torg pulls out Chaz, who is already glowing.
    Agent Whisper: [amused] You have a magic sword! Is it strong enough to take on demons, boy?
    Torg: I am trying really hard not to giggle.
• In Tales of the Questor, Quentyn's father can be one evil old goat. This is definitely the "mess with someone's head" variety.

Western Animation

• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Long Feng has played his power against the heroes pretty successfully for most of the second season... until Azula arrives on the scene and quickly proves which of them is the bigger threat.
  Long Feng: You've beaten me at my own game.
  Azula: Don't flatter yourself. You were never even a player.
• In The Owl House episode "Reaching Out", Amity's father Alador effortlessly takes out the reigning champion of the Bonesborough Brawl in the process of trying to scold her for skipping out on the Emperor's Coven tryouts she was supposed to go to. When the announcer tries to give him the championship belt, he brushes them off with a dismissive "I already have one", as it had been established earlier in the episode that he was a former champion who had come to see his days fighting as a waste of his talents.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Old Master Yoda is perfectly kindly when he disarms Asajj Ventress without effort, then returns her lightsabers to her, as if to imply that she's no less helpless with them than without.
  Asajj: I don't fear you, Jedi.
  Yoda: Strong you are with The Dark Side, young one. [smiles] But not that strong. Still much to learn, you have. Surrender, you should.
• Steven Universe: In "Reunited", after several hundred years of a Trauma Conga Line, Lapis Lazuli finally meets the gem that made her, essentially her god, and one of the most powerful beings in the universe, Blue Diamond... and she's unimpressed with the Diamond's powerful Emotion Bomb that's brought down everyone else around her.
  Lapis: I've felt worse.

Real Life

• Quite a few advertising campaigns, especially of big companies just list provable facts about the company to make people realise how awesome they are; sometimes overlapping with Mundane Made Awesome. Deutsche Bahn for instance once had one where they list figures like the Horse Powers of a locomotive, the number of switches in their entire network and so on to convince people of a job in railroading.
• Supposedly this exchange between a Nazi Ambassador and his Swiss (Full mustered 500,000 troops) counterpart:
  Ambassador: "But what if you were invaded by an army numbering 1 million troops?"
  Swiss: "We'd shoot twice, then go home."
• The "ribbon display" is a part of military apparel that most civilians are familiar with, also referred to informally as the "salad bar". One wears a ribbon indicating each award or citation received, typically on the left breast. It's common for long-serving veterans to have accumulated a large ribbon display, which can be a Blasé Boast in itself; but the Navy (alone among the U.S. service branches) allows its members to wear only their three highest ribbons at their discretion. If those three happen to be, let's say, Navy Cross, Silver Star with valor device, and Bronze Star with two 5/16" stars, that is an extremely Blasé Boast.
• The US military style of marching can be seen this way. It's simply a synchronized walk with normal steps; arms are swung only 6 inches forward and 3 inches back. Compared to the broad variety of exaggerated and hyper-aggressive marching styles found around the world, this can be seen as subtle flex: "we don't need a fancy march to be intimidating; we're already the most powerful military on the planet".

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