#everyone really

Which like. Go off king. We see him run smooth as glass, a lot, Ulrich's good at stuff, he's a professional...but to my eye...he's never really seemed.

Egotistical.

In the way that most people think about the word. Like. Phineas? Phin's egotistical, she's got enough greed to fuel a star (literally), her whole shtick is that she does have that all-consuming sense of self-importance that lets her walk up to gods of various descriptions and punch them in the face.

Ulrich's a team player, a chessmaster, he's pretty humble and subdued when he wants to be? He downplays his own successes unless he's trying to do something with him being brash and confident.

...so that got me thinking. Why did Aria describe Ulrich as having an ego defying description?

And then it hit me. The description isn't egotistical. It's an ego that defies description.

Now, like everything that comes from Freud originally, I'll look at the ego with a sense of skepticism, but that third description is fascinating: the organized conscious mediator between the person and reality, especially by functioning both in the perception of adaptation to reality.

One of Ulrich's...most consistent perspective tags is the fact that things get. Fucky. There are flower petals that aren't there, he hears voices, and there appears to be an extra person entire just sorta. Hanging out? A construction, maybe -- with one of Ulrich's eyes.

Bel shows up when Ulrich is working. She'll talk to him, walk him through things, but that's not all she can do.

Bel showed up when Ulrich was fighting off Decodenn's spores. This is, first of all, hilarious, iconic, the man turned anxiety into a superpower.

But also...what's he doing here? Ulrich is Silverspeaking himself, consciously maneuvering himself into a position, responding to the world, becoming the person who, well, isn't quite affected by the Spores. He needs his Grip, so he has his grip.

We see it everywhere else, too. People with insight can clock Ulrich as a smooth operator, as a liar and a conniver who has plans of his own. Ulrich's always playing towards a goal which we as readers don't know, always adapting, never really showing everyone how Ulrich is doing, almost always playing a role or a part on purpose.

I think this character card is another great little demonstration of Aria's craft in designing characters and arcs. We draw a conclusion about Ulrich from what it says...and the conclusion is just so subtly off, in a way that he would want us to think.

An ego that defies description, indeed.

Anyway. Read Kidd Commander. It fucking rules.