and fuck if you think about it, the writers do to Julian the character exactly what Jules' parents did to their "disappointing" child. they didn't like the way he was unfolding — so they reached in and reconstructed him.
The writers took the naive, fantasy-enamored lover boy developed over several seasons and retroactively remade that character into a facade. A mask. A shell into which the new, "true" Julian takes root.
And like Jules' parents, who eradicated the child they couldn't see any potential in, the writers don't seem to have thought through all the repercussions of their meddling.
Julian was never actually the naive young dreamer that is the foundation of how other characters + we the audience understand him; he fabricated the starry-eyed doctor (insensitively) enamored with "Frontier Medicine" to conceal the Truth, which is lies and shame; he got as far from earth as possible not for the thrill of it, but out of the terror of being Found Out.
He doesn't enjoy conversing with the station's resident Exiled Spy because Garak's his foil, someone exciting because of how unalike they are; he loves Garak because here is someone who knows what it is to be built of lies. When Julian is with Garak, he's not the only one constantly deceiving everyone, not allowing anyone to get too close. In mutual acceptance that they will never know the full truth about one another, each paradoxically ends up knowing the other better than anybody else ever will.
Nor does Julian play secret agent in the Holosuites so he can fantasize himself completely different — he's tapping into what he sees as his true self, escaping to a reality where dealing in secret identities makes you a hero, not a liar. He gets to be who he is — a genius of deception — where that's a good thing. Where he doesn't have to be afraid that friends who find out will be disgusted, betrayed.
Both Julian's parents and Julian's writers doom him to ceaseless stress and stigma. Even when his deepest fears come true, even when Everyone Knows — and it is, miraculously, okay — they've opened him to exploitation by those who'd use his powers for further subterfuge.
Does Julian ever get to just Be Himself? Or has he been rewritten, reshaped by forces beyond his control, too many times?