Plagueis and Palpatine

One thing I've seen is people referring to both Plagueis and Palpatine as chessmaster type villains, which, while understandable, is a position I actually disagree with. 

Palpatine is a chessmaster.

Plagueis is an evil scientist.

Both of them have overlaps in their capabilities and interests, but performing experiments and making discoveries is a very different thing than strategizing how to deal with intelligent opponents.  So they're both very thinky villains, but they're not thinky in the same way. 

To Plagueis, what was important was his science experiments.  It's not that he can't or doesn't strategize against others, but that's not his speciality.  Rule of Two Sith are expected to master all abilities they might need to use, and they generally have a number of skills,  but it's clear that they have areas of particular interest that they focus on.  Plagueis was interested in science.  Sure, he could do politics, though he preferred some entertainment during the process via ridiculously over-the-top parties, but for him it was only a means to an end, like dueling.  Possibly slightly less painful to him (though perhaps if he could have partied during his duels, he would have found that more agreeable as well).  Towards the end of his life he reluctantly re-enters politics in order to enact the Sith Evil Plot to Ruin Everything.  But I mean, his last act is to get super drunk and beg Palpatine to chill out with the political speeches, so I really don't think he was excited about that lol.  Probably told himself he was gonna build the biggest Evil Lab of Evil once the Sith took over everything and just live there while his Apprentice runs the government.

Palpatine, meanwhile, shows every indication of enjoying political machinations.  He loved outsmarting his opponents dead.  In fact, he loved politics all the way up until he won.  Then it began to bore him because a chessmaster without a challenging opponent doesn't enjoy the game anymore.  There's evidence from the Book of Sith that he spent more time in Sith Alchemy after that, which I suppose would be like some sort of Bio-Engineering.  So I guess he kind of merged the biological interests of Plagueis and the engineering interests of Tenebrous in a way.  He also got more into the military side of things after the Rebellion became considered a plausible threat, presumably so he could employ his chessmaster abilities in that venue--but that did not turn out as well for him.

So, basically, I feel Plagueis and Palpatine were very different in this respect.

Star Wars, and Sometimes It's All Bad, Just in Different Ways

Whenever people start going on about how the prequels were great and Lucas was brilliant, I say nothing because I'm a great big coward but what I'm thinking is "Yeah, Lucas was brilliant--with special effects.  His stories--much less so."  This is not only a problem with the prequels, but the original trilogy as well (though those had marginally better dialogue thanks to the efforts of others).  But what captures people's attention about these stories is that they manage to invoke this enormous pareidolia in people, to see things that aren't really there, to be whatever you want them to be.

And when people complain that Kathleen Kennedy is bad or whoever else is doing the new Disney Star Wars is bad, it's just--yeah.  They are.  Because while they make the good aspects (eg. less misogyny, slightly less white main cast) much more explicit, they are similarly as explicit in their bad aspects (eg. the constant Imperial apologism that plagues the new canon), leaving much less room for interpretation.  Lucas isn't better, though.  He's just bad in different ways.  If Lucas produced the sequels, would I have still watched them?  Probably yeah, cause I'm a sucker like that.  But they wouldn't have been better that what we have now.  They'd just be their own, completely different set of disasters.