: 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

@LarsenBagley300

Vote Up Vote Down

I would watch any show with Greg Weisman as a creative writer/producer/whatever. The villain having a plan where the goal is achieved even if the hero defeats the threat is a hallmark of Weisman's writing (as is copious allusions to Shakespeare and very mature plots for a kids tv show).

Specifically watch Gargoyles for how the villain David Xanatos behaves (He did this so much, TVTropes named this particular trait the "Xanatos Gambit"). Spectacular Spider-man has a few, with Green Goblin and several of the big crime bosses playing by these rules, and Young Justice's main villains are a team of Supervillains who work with each other to make these plots happen.

These types of villains work for series where there is one villain who is the source of all the problems (or nearly all of them) that the hero will face. The idea here is that the villain will send the Monster of the week to attack the heroes in the park, while the villain takes a minor item that will be important later from a research park with little knowledge to the hero as to it occurring.

Another fun twist is that some of the members of the villain's organization are looking out for themselves and the disloyal elements as well as the loyal elements are so busy fighting each other that all their scheming results in the villain winning long term goals with heroes winning short term goals. This is often seen in shows like "Transformers" where one if not more of Megatron's underlings (Usually Starscream is among the disloyal) are looking to usurp Megatron, but their machinations are still beneficial to Megatron. For this to work, the villain must have a series of "generals" who normally hang out in his lair and who he consults.

Another way to give the villain a series of wins like this is to make them not all identified as his own machinations. Rather than fighting the villain time and time again, have him take a step away from the fight and allow a few other villains to do some of his dirty work. This is why the aformentioned Xanatos was so effective. In a 13 episode season, he was arrested and went to jail at the end of episode 5, serving his time until the beginning of episode 10. Despite this, he's behind the schemes in 3 of the 4 intervening episodes, without the titular heroes aware of his plans. And that's not including him being behind the plot of the 5 part pilot and the last two episodes... and he's a constant threat following that.

(0)

Login to post a comment!