Character Base

• Character Name: Jessica Ushiromiya
• Age: 18
• Canon (Date/Year Released)/Canon Point: Umineko no Naku Koro Ni, 2007. Taken from October 3rd, just before the story begins.
• Items Coming Along: Guitar, with picks
Outfit with the One-Winged Eagle design
Brass knuckles

• Content Warnings for Character: murder, misogyny, incest, child abuse (mentioned in app), abuse of labor (peripheral to character)

Character Background

• History: https://07th-expansion.fandom.com/wiki/Jessica_Ushiromiya
• Core Relationships: Natsuhi Ushiromiya: Jessica’s mother. A strict, very traditional woman, she raised Jessica to be a refined, ladylike young woman suitable for being an heiress to noble Ushiromiya pedigree. This proved to be a source of difficulty for both of them, as Jessica turned out instead to be a spirited tomboy who doesn’t care for the obligations put on her by class, and who feels trapped and isolated by that life. Jessica constantly feels like she can’t measure up to her mother’s standards, struggling especially with etiquette and academics. She’d much rather live a more “normal” life, where she’s free to be with friends and choose her own future. In reaction to this strict upbringing, she speaks roughly and dislikes any kind of pretension or snobbiness.

Despite this, there is a powerful bond of love between mother and daughter. Jessica was an only child, conceived after years of struggling with infertility, in a conservative environment that placed shame on Natsuhi for her “feminine defect.” She is extremely protective of Jessica, and loves her more than anything else in the world. Jessica craves her mother’s approval, and becomes quite happy in those moments where Natsuhi shows a softer demeanor towards her. She displays concern whenever her mother seems stressed or burdened by her duty managing family affairs. During one such time during Episode 1, she gives Natsuhi a good luck amulet that she received from Maria as a gift to offer her some comfort.

Krauss Ushiromiya: Jessica’s father, the acting head of the wealthy Ushiromiya family. Outwardly arrogant and imperious, he is actually somewhat more lenient than his wife in raising Jessica, though still quite strict. Like Natsuhi, he is fiercely protective of Jessica, but also tries to pressure her into the role of an elegant, proper young woman. She definitely takes after her father in personality. They’re both headstrong, extroverted, and prone to being impulsive, often making unwise decisions based on personal feelings.

When his father Kinzo; the head of the family— died, he hid his death to conceal the fact that he was embezzling his finances. This set off suspicion among the family, leading to increasing conflict within the family over finances. However Krauss did everything he could to shelter Jessica from the brutal realities of family politics. On those occasions where she caught glimpses of those conflicts, she reacted with shock and disgust that her family could be full of such venom. This ties relates to her tendency to blind herself to things that make her uncomfortable.

Sayo Yasuda: Servant to the family. Sayo was actually a secret child of Jessica’s grandfather, Kinzo, who through complex circumstances, and without knowledge of her origins, was sent to the Ushiromiya mansion to work as a servant at age 9, under the work alias “Shannon.” Jessica, despite her mother’s harsh disapproval towards fraternizing with servants, soon considered Sayo to be her closest friend, becoming quickly attached to the only child close in age to her.

However Sayo, didn't have the option of fully opening up to Jessica because of their disparity in social status. In turn, Jessica, despite caring deeply for her friend, did not look too deeply into just how deeply troubled Sayo was and the causes of that, turning away from observing things that could potentially upend the world she knew. She wanted to keep the reliable supportive friend who she found it easy to be around, and acknowledging her problems would make that difficult.

Their relationship grew far more complicated when Sayo, wrestling with an identity crisis when she began to suspect that she was assigned male at birth and raised as a girl after a botched surgery, assumed a second identity as the male servant Kanon. Jessica fell deeply in love with Kanon, but was too afraid to pay attention to the obvious signs about who “he” really is. Sayo’s emotional state deteriorated severely after she learned horrible truths about her origins, and secretly succeeded to the headship of the family. She hid her emotions as much as she could behind rehearsed facades and began talking about herself with the dehumanizing term “furniture,” and still Jessica was too scared to pay much attention to this. At Jessica’s canon point, a thoroughly broken Sayo is on the eve of implementing a plot to commit an elaborate murder-suicide of the entire Ushiromiya family.

Jessica cares deeply about Sayo, who is simultaneously her best friend and unrequited love. Their relationship allowed her to feel that she could be more than just who her parents wanted her to be, and the close presence of somebody who was kind and understanding made her relatively well adjusted for her circumstances. But their relationship is also a large part of why Jessica lives life ignoring certain things.

Maria Ushiromiya: Jessica’s cousin. An eccentric little girl obsessed with the occult, Maria is heavily implied to be on the autistic spectrum. She’s particularly obsessed with Beatrice, a witch that is said to haunt the family mansion in stories told by the parents and servants. Jessica, who doesn’t like the implications that her family and home is even more messed up than it already seems on the surface, often finds her creepy and annoying when she talks about this, even though she acknowledges that those feelings are unfair. Most the time their relationship isn't bad. She happily plays with Maria on the beach at the beginning of each loop, and usually cheerfully indulges her cousin's fascination with witches and magic.

Jessica's tendency to ignore things that make her uncomfortable, is clear in many of her interactions with Maria. Maria is abused by her mother, and Jessica, despite being a kind person overall, turns away from it in discomfort. In Episode 1 she saw Rosa slap and scream at Maria, but she and her other cousins ended up awkwardly leaving, reasoning that Maria wouldn’t want them to see her being punished. She acknowledged that Maria behaves the way she does as escapism from that harsh upbringing, but actually thinking too much about it would require her to acknowledge some very unpleasant things about her family, and speaking up would start a lot more trouble that she would be willing to face.

Character Personality Through Key Moments

(2+) Positive Experiences:

Jessica is Spirited. Despite the restrictions placed on her, she lives life with all her strength. She has many friends at school, just ordinary teen friendships where she goofs around and talks about boyfriends and stuff, despite how her parents want her to surround herself with more dignified influences, and even sings and plays guitar in a band with some of them. That defiance manifested in creating another life for herself outside her home as popular, carefree “Jessie.” She expresses love with this same power. In Episode 4 she expressed this indomitable spirit when she fought one of Beatrice’s demons, declaring that she wants to live as a shining beacon to Kanon so that he can be proud to love her, and that she’ll never stop trying to break past his barriers to see the person behind them. The way she fought in that scene was an apt mirror of her personality, all overwhelming headstrong strength to crack the devil’s magical barriers, shouting out her determination. For her part, Sayo as Kanon described her as shining as bright as the sun, somebody who is almost blinding to look at.

Jessica is perceptive. Despite the flaws described below, she’s surprisingly good at noticing things. In Episode 3, she quickly puts together that Eva didn’t have an alibi when her parents were killed, and even quickly identifies the misdirection she used to make it look like they were killed somewhere else, even in the midst of her grief-ridden fury. She aggressively confronts Eva about it, despite Eva having a gun. In Episode 7, when Kyrie came up with a story to lure Jessica alone into the dining room to kill her, she displays immediate suspicion and skepticism, but ultimately followed her. When Kyrie put a gun to her head, Jessica was alert enough to knock it away. When Jessica's intuitions seem to be confirmed, she's ready to react immediately.

(2+) Negative Experiences:

Jessica is driven by emotion. She is a person who feels things with all her heart and generally acts based on those emotions, often quite recklessly. She pursued her love for Kanon without any regard to how their differences in class would make both of their lives difficult. In several of the loops of the Rokkenjima murders, Jessica entered into a rage when she learned of the murders, sometimes getting killed as she recklessly charged off alone in search of the killer. It’s not as though she isn’t capable of thinking things through, but that usually goes out the window when things get intense, unless somebody does a very good job of calming her down.

Jessica’s willful ignorance is based on a fear that looking too closely at certain things in her life will cause that life to be irrevocably upended. This is well illustrated in the VIP Room Incident. One ghost story in the mansion regarding the witch Beatrice is that she resides in the VIP Room that Kinzo forbade anybody from entering. Wanting to disprove “Beatrice,” Jessica entered the room one night, only to see a creepy looking doll, which vanished with an evil sounding laugh as the power cut out.

Jessica still didn’t believe in Beatrice after that incident, instead concluding that it must be an elaborate prank. But she then realized that for that to be the case, it must have been committed by several people, probably the servants that she trusted and considered to be friends. Horrified by what that could mean about her home if it was true, she instead convinced herself that it was a strange dream. This scene narratively serves as a proxy to explain how she apparently failed to notice several things that are seemingly right in her face, like that Kanon was actually her close friend in disguise, or that her parents have been hiding her grandfather’s death for the last two years.

Deer Country Attributes

• Canon Powers: No supernatural abilities. Can sing and play guitar, good reflexes. Amateur boxer.
• Blood Type: Coldblood
• Omen: A golden eagle. It has a more elegant, preening personality than Jessica.
• Blessed Day: 8/25
• Patron Pthumerian: Mariana
• Blood Power Manifestation: Jessica can manifest flames on her body. They won’t burn her possessions, or anybody that she decides not to harm. She can throw these flames short distances. They can burn extremely bright, like a small flashbang device, though this requires significant energy expenditure.