Since the PCManFM developer I'm talking to seems unwilling to consider this, I might as well post it here so at least *someone* can get some insight out of it.
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Turns out that it was at least partially a "we were both feeling frustration at past experiences with other people" situation, so this is now more a description of what I intend to aim for when PCManFM for GTK+ 2.x goes away and I need to write a small patchset to fix the purely aesthetic disagreements.
(eg. I want my places sidebar to have a white background. They don't want to clutter up the preferences window for something that minor.)
...plus, this is definitely a "that could have gone much worse" situation.
I really need to scale back my online participation while I'm in the middle of my efforts to fix my sleep issues once and for all.
Impulsiveness and inability to recognize that I'm irritable until someone points it out are the biggest side-effects of me being tired.