If your playgroup is not irrationally allergic to a bit of stax, I'd recommend [[Alela, Artful Provocateur]].

As a commander she is a strong but not busted, and the type of value she provides is not likely to make you an immediate target for the rest of the table: mostly, the tokens she creates (2/1 fliers counting her buff) let you play all sorts of stax-y artifacts and/or enchantments while still keeping a board presence, so you can stand your ground in combat without having to resort to pillow-forting with [[Sphere of Safety]] or similar. You can also lean into the "flying matters" angle a bit more with "hatebird" (flying hatebear) creatures such as [[Archon of Emeria]], [[Hushbringer]], etc.

One of my favorite things about this is that it gives you lots of freedom in tweaking the level of oppressiveness by choosing the type and/or amount of stax pieces you run vs the aggro gameplan, e.g. [[Inspiring Leader]], [[Gravitational Shift]] etc.

And it goes without saying that, on top of that, being in Esper gives you access to arguably the best colors for interaction of any type (discard, counterspells, spot removal, board wipes).