I like to think that he is the " street smart " kind of type.
I mean, it's been a while I don't interact with his canon character or with BNHA fandom and show, but I love his character.
His character always seems ( to me ) like Aizawa when he was a teenager, different, of course, but similar on personality's. When someone is more closed, more introvert or someone just wanting to be alone, there's a tendency to observe other people and mirror their actions because in that way you can be leaved alone ( by not getting in fight, and etc ) and I know Shinsou is different, he's more sarcastic and combative and he's not afraid to to start some petty dispute (like provoking Class 1-A at the sports festival) BUT, he's smart. He is, studying his character, more responsible and self-sufficient. At the Sport Festival He reached the finals alongside several students from the hero class, and although his fighting skills were somewhat poor at the time, he still possessed them. And he wasn't trained like the other students. He leaned alone on some way. And then, after that, Eraserhead trained him.
He knows how to observe people, how to provoke them, a quiet person and that mind his own business with a quirk that made him not very pleasant for people. He is smart, intelligent.
And then I think about Aizawa and underground heros and how, even as a teenager, Shinsou show tendencies to follow him and then all I can think is of a person where the type of intelligence comes from the streets. Fight dirty, see where it hurts and go to that point, observe, go into the shadows, avoid people. And I know that's probably more fanon than everything, it's really been a long time I don't see him on canon, but I don't care. He is academic smart, if I remember correct, but outside that. Academic, on 1-C, doesn't count with his skills and abilities because he is not being trained to be a hero.
His quirk. His quirk, how it seemed as something villainous put him in a place on social settings, and it's just a logical leap in the canon. He is seen a someone with a villainous quirk and we see what happens to people when they are viewed in this way (they are transformed into villains). Shinsou wants to be a hero, he made it clear, so if not transformed into someone with a gray morality I like to think that this situation makes him more mature. He knows firsthand how society discriminates, he knows what it's like to be inside it not as a villain but still almost seen as one, he knows what bullying is and he knows, without being trained, how to fight (a little). That's just logical leaps given by a canonical fact (he has already been called a villain and has a closed personality similar to Aizawa's)
And then he grows up. He was in a war, he was trained by a very competent underground hero personally ( and others, if I remember correctly ), he survived and matured, and how come he's not one of the most intelligent characters? Socially speaking. And "street" talking.
I explained like it's shit, my god.
