With this is mind, I would say it takes what you call “aesthetic persona” to ‘like’ a character, because what I like about Fluttershy requires absolutely no character development, she started out as manipulative to me. However, Twilight required character development into her flaws for me to resonate with her.

For anyone who will say “but Wolfy! Isn’t making Fluttershy manipulative already character development?” Well… yes… in a way. However I had based that on SOLELY from aesthetic persona and previous favorite characters in anime. It wasn’t until later when I could actually make an argument that Fluttershy being manipulative is cannon. Where as for Twilight, I absolutely hated her, and it took episodes like Lesson Zero before I started to resonate with her.

Thus I would find it hard to say which one is better. I personally think undeveloped characters are better for the fandom (gives everyone a chance to develop them in fanfics), however having a show with undeveloped characters would be literally boring. And developed characters offer a baseline for fanfics without the necessary need to develop the characters from ground-zero. Gun pointed to me head, I would have to pick aesthetic persona because I’m going to be frank, if a show doesn’t look good, I won’t watch it. I watch anime because I enjoy the music, the voice acting, and the character (and world) design. If it doesn’t have it, I won’t watch it (thus there are very few anime I’ve enjoyed or even tried watching, even though I love them). Character development seems more important to me in a story, where the only thing you can relate to is the character itself. So it depends on the medium.

Agree? Disagree?

And I too shall avoid trying to think about how the economy of Equestria works. Gems are snack foods for crying out loud! Though I guess if they were really flawed gems they might be cheap enough. Or Spike has been getting cubic zirconium XD.

Cutie mark stories always have a bit of o rly bullshit to them. It’s very…dunno…“magicky.” It’s like…you know who you are, and everything just aligns. Unless there a cosmic cutie-mark bank or designer. Not worth hurting my brain over.

I don’t have a headcanon for the Apples: either it’s genetic or sociological. I tend to think it’s because the Apples have to figure out what makes them different from other Apples. It’s harder, I would guess, to do that than it would be to figure out what makes you different from your classmates, who seem more obviously dissimilar. And then the two sides, family and society, have to be reconciled, negotiated. Ties to big families can seem so central and important, and big families can seem deceptively homogeneous.

‘Cept for Oranges. Fuck those guys.

I personally love them to death, even though that not mean much to you, and I feel you would probably enjoy it, even if Im not an analytical beast like you, I feel it does bring some pretty interesting things to the table. Such as it’s posthumous look at the Mane6 and other important characters as a sort of alternate event horizon and alternate character developments that lead to marginally different interpretation of the characters that allows for an experience that is equally enjoyable in staying true to the characters, while giving them all its own spin (as all great fics should do.)

As well as its tendency to exploit the potential density of statements from the actual show to the fullest extent, and gives every one of them a fulfilling and beautiful purpose, most of which lead to an obscene (in a good way) extension of the lore and history of the the MLP:FiM universe. And what spaces it does leave, are filled in by Project Horizons, which does as much for the Fo:E universe as Fo:e does for MLP.

And just a warning, it is a little bit dark at points, (and pretty damn long to) its fairly easy to look past those things if you dont enjoy them, to get to the real gem underneath it all. And the writing may appear amateurish in the beginning, it gets better through the series, and you get to watch Kkat grow as a writer along side their characters, which is also a plus. Speaking of plusses, theres a little appearance by a certain showboat I know you like.

So you may not like it for any number of reasons, but you should give it a try. I, more than anything, just want to get an opinion from my favorite critic of my favorite fic.