Anghraine

I definitely think the PT indicates that the Order is stagnant, and with the same person in charge for hundreds of years (I'm pretty sure Yoda mentions how long he's been training Jedi in ESB and it was centuries) that's a large part of it. So I prefer to imagine that the NJO is very different, structurally. Obviously the Skywalkers would be important simply because of their history (and power levels), but not directing it for their entire lives.

Oh, thanks about the story! I didn't know if you'd read it, so yeah. I too love those kinds of stories (you can probably guess that I think the ghost thing is waaaay under-used from Revenge, ha) -- and really, there is no way someone like Anakin is going to be distant and uninvolved when even Obi-Wan hung around and meddled. And I sort of imagine that he feels the need for ... penance, of a sort, that dying didn't wipe the slate clean. So he's constantly trying to make up for what he did as Vader (ghost!Leia: Father, it's fine now, we're over it. THAT HAPPENED TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO.)

will in fact admit cheerfully that the OT are better movies, it's just that I like the PT more for the most part. :)

Then clearly we can get along. :) Even I like bits of the PT that I think are objectively bad, just for the shiny!!! element. (And the shiny makes it fun to dislike them, too; there's stuff you hate, and then there's stuff that's actively fun to hate. IDK.)

Splinter = Splinter of the Mind's Eye, first EU book ever. It's got ridiculous purple prose, lolarious Luke/Leia subtext (and possibly Vader/Leia if you squint), is generally awful, with the occasional good line and some interesting character stuff.

Revenge forced me to think about the retcons a lot obviously, but yeah, it's a bit odd to try and balance the meta-understanding of what happened with the in-story reasoning.