: Re: How to prevent seeming like a Marty Stu-ish villain is cheating? In a story I'm writing, there's a villain who is a genius strategist that can get anything he wants, whatever it is, by developing

@Carla500

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First off, the easiest way to have your bad guy be less invincible and more defeatable is to make him less invincible. He's your creation. Don't give him so many benefits. Take away some of the physical stuff. He doesn't have to be such an amazing fighter (he can just be an average fighter, or not one at all) and he doesn't have to be next in line for the emperor (he can be a distant relative whom the hero/es think could only get there if 17 other people die... who start to die... one by one... as the plot advances).

Second, people like this may work on [TV TROPES WARNING] Batman Gambits, but they are also advance plotters and just-in-casers. They build up favors (and have secrets/blackmail/etc.) from other people on the off chance that somehow, someday, they will need something from that person. They put this piece in place over here and that one over there, so that just in case circumstances put them over by that person, they have an ally ready to go.

Third, Petyr Baelish, Littlefinger on Game of Thrones, gave Sansa Stark some surprisingly good advice which applies here:

Fight every battle everywhere, always, in your mind. Everyone is your enemy, everyone is your friend. Every possible series of events is happening all at once. Live that way and nothing will surprise you. Everything that happens will be something that you’ve seen before.

So your heroes think they can't outmaneuver the bad guy, but it's because he spends his time studying the board and planning for many, many outcomes. When X happens, he already thought about Y and Z and put something in place for that eventuality a year ago. If Q happens, he thought about that too. And if 12 happens, he goes through all his plans to see which one might work to his advantage.

As far as Littlefinger on the show:

He is finally defeated. He knew that Sansa's sister Arya suspected him of something bad, so he allowed her to follow him and "find" evidence which seemed to show that Sansa was disloyal. The one thing he didn't foresee was that the Stark siblings' family loyalty was stronger than whatever he was trying to sow between them. Arya went to Sansa, Sansa called in their brother Bran, the three of them compared notes about Littlefinger and figured out the truth, the two sisters led Littlefinger on, and Sansa eventually called him on his crimes. Arya executed him on Sansa's orders.

So you have the right idea about "a flaw in his logic" and "a detail he didn't think about." You just have to show more of the logic and details and planning so that the reader understands this is how this villain works, so that when the heroes exploit that flaw, the win feels earned.

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