LogFAQs > #924148383

Dels posted...

i don't think i ever posted about this but back when i started theorizing about shannon as the mastermind, i had some thoughts about, like

if shannon is the culprit, then it's just "the maid did it"

which, you'd think most murder mysteries would try to avoid

but i think umineko did a really good job at sort of... setting up its web of a characters in a way where you really didn't know if the culprit would be a servant or a family member. and it gave shannon and kanon very strong arcs (mostly romance plots, but also all the stuff with beatrice in ep 2) and very strong links with the cousins, so that shannon isn't really "just the maid", she's a clearly defined character like all the rest

so ultimately, this doesn't feel like "the maid did it", even though that's basically what it is. because she's so much more than that.

Well, let's talk about "the maid did it" a bit. This really calls back to Van Dine here, with his rule #11, which can be summarized as "a servant cannot be the culprit". Now, this isn't trying to avoid writing tropes, it's because Van Dine is not a very nice person. It can't be a servant, because "The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person--one that wouldn't ordinarily come under suspicion; for if the crime was the sordid work of a menial, the author would have had no business to embalm it in book-form."

Basically, servants are worthless and commit crimes normally, and a culprit must be someone of actual value who wouldn't do that.