ooc ♦ application
Name: Jelle
Personal LJ: nagareboshihe
Contact Info: AIM: Lunixhime
Other Characters Played: N/A.
Preferred Housing: N/A.
Character Name: Eva Ushiromiya
Character Series: Umineko no Naku Koro ni
Character Age: Somewhere in her forties.
Background:
- Eva.
- More on the series.
Personality:
The fastest and easiest way to describe Eva would be to use the words Battler himself uses when he as the narrator first introduces Eva in the story: he mentions that she's 'hard to deal with'.
Eva is a fairly intelligent, but also very calculating and sly person. She's said to have had high grades back in school and she's canonically one of the first shown to be able to solve the difficult epitaph riddle Kinzo had set up all by herself. Even in situations where people are killed she's still able to keep a cool head and theorize about who the culprit could be. But Eva mostly uses this intelligence to set up plans; going as far as wedging paper slips into doors just to confirm her suspicions. Sometimes she plans even on a far greater scale, even her marriage with Hideyoshi (particularly him taking on her last name instead of the other way around) and the decision to have a baby (George) at the time they did was all part of her plan to keep her position in the Ushiromiya family hierachy and to try to get George to be chosen as the next family head rather than Jessica. It's said that even when she was younger Eva was often trying to trick her younger siblings constantly.
Something else that's very prominent about Eva is her sharp tongue, which is often mentioned in the narrative as well. Eva is constantly busy with snarking at people and teasing them, to a point where the teasing borders on mocking. She especially loves finding people's weak points (to a point where Natsuhi is overly paranoid about something going wrong during the family conference because she knows Eva will point it out and snark about it) and exactly focusing on those in her teasing. For example she keeps joking at Battler about making him go with her on a trip to Egypt while she knows he is afraid of planes and boats. All this snarking, teasing and mocking seems to give her great joy - almost like a little kid's michievous streak. Most of the time she's still somewhat subtle (or at least attempts to be) about her mocking, saying things in a roundabout way or hiding them between sly smiles. But when it comes down to it she also isn't afraid to just bluntly state things in some situations. Her mocking/teasing tends to get so out of hand that usually her husband has to tell her to quit it for her to finally pipe down again.
Eva is also a very proud person. She's a hard worker and is therefore also proud of everything she has reached so far, for instance how intelligent and well-mannered her son has become, and isn't afraid to gloat about it to others either. Since Eva has a strong desire to become the next head of the family (more on that later) she is very proud of her position as third-ranked in the family since only Krauss (as second-ranked) still stands between her and the head. You could also say Eva is a competitive person; she works hard to become the one at the top and is stuck in a constant rivalry with her older brother. She's also a very confident person, or at the very least tries to be very confident outwardly when she's around people that aren't her direct family (husband and son).
Even though she does have a temper Eva tends to be level-headed, even at times where everything else just becomes one big chaos. While everyone is hysteric over the murders Eva - of course - is slightly hysteric at first too, but then afterwards starts thinking about it rationally rather than emotionally and prevents other people from ruining the murder scenes for example by covering up the corpses since the police will need to investigate later on. Even when Natsuhi starts screaming at her at times she seems pretty much unfazed and just keeps smiling slyly. Even all of Eva's teasing and mocking could be better described as playful than aggressive. Once she does get emotional though she's instantly extremely emotional, to a point where she runs off on her own even though it's a bad idea (since there's a murderer out there) or nearly accidentally shoots people in her frenzy. She doesn't really get that angry or reckless though unless either her pride is insulted or her husband or son are killed.
Eva's relationship with her siblings should probably be noted, especially the rivalry between her and Krauss since it's the cause for a great deal of her personality. Eva never liked him and still doesn't - she finds him arrogant while he has nothing to back it up. Eva wants to snatch the position of successor to the head from him more than anything else, no matter whether it's for herself or her son George. She thinks it isn't fair that he will be the one to succeed their father because he is the lazy and arrogant one while she works hard and gets no recognition (their father - and Krauss as well - still firmly believes in the traditional view of women only exisiting to serve their husband and sees Eva's attempts at succeeding at school and trying to get into college as 'trying to be a man'; leading to her becoming quite the feminist) at all. Even now they've grown up she still harbors a deep dislike for her older brother and tries to critisize and bring him down in all ways possible. Her relationship with her two younger siblings (Rudolf and Rosa) is also rusty at the very best. It's stated that she often tricked and bullied those two when she was younger and even nowadays she's still on tense terms with them; it should say something that she never seems to be really fazed by the deaths of her siblings.
She does, however, care very deeply and genuinely about her husband and son. Their presence near her is what keeps her somewhat more stable and easier to deal with. She's very protective of her son George to a point where it's just being overly protective and smothering. Eva wants him to carry out the dream she was never able to reach - to become the next head of the family - and for that purpose she has always made sure he got education of all sorts to shape him into the well-mannered man he became. But even though he's 23 in the series Eva pretty much still plays the mother hen around him. She also loves her husband and he is the only one who gets to see her weaker side. For all her outwardly confidence, pride and mocking Eva actually has plenty of worries and insecurities, but she keeps them inside her except for the times when she's alone with Hideyoshi. She's actually worried if she is forcing too much on George among other things, mostly centered around her family. Usually Eva even seems a little bit more childish and pouty around her husband.
But even through all this Eva does have morals - if not slightly twisted or hypocritical morals. After she accidentally shoots and kills Natsuhi Eva seems to have no second thoughts about using a time bomb to blow up half the island just for the sake of covering up the evidence of the 'crime', yet when she confronts Rudolf and Kyrie later on for mudering everyone else she condemns them for killing their entire family. She does have strong morals when it comes down to direct family - she'd never even consider leaving Hideyoshi or George or harming them in any way, hence her rage at Kyrie when she proclaims Ange, her daughter, was just a tool to connect herself to Rudolf. Eva also takes care of Ange and raises her when she is the only survivor of the murders, even though her parents were the one who killed Eva's family. She even goes as far as never telling anyone Rudolf and Kyrie were the culprits of the murders to protect Ange from having to live with that fact. Obviously this brings all the suspicion on Eva herself, since she was the only survivor, but she deals with all the accusations and suspicion on her for Ange's sake, showing that she does have a good part to her under all the outward snarking.
Abilities: Eva has quite some experience with martial arts. Canonically she's said to have studied Tai-chi-chuan, Chinese martial arts, karate, tae kwon do, capoeira, Muay Thai and presumably even more styles. Her age definitely hasn't worn out this skill as she's still learning new styles and training in general. A few examples of her fighting style have been shown in the games, most noticably being able to control her kicks so much that she's able to stop her feet just a centimeter in front of an opponent's face; her fighting style seems to focus on kicking and working with her feet most of all. Eva is also shown to at least have some basic skills in using a gun, but it doesn't go much beyond 'basic', as she didn't even know how to reload her gun at first.
Sample Entry: Here!