>>/6586/
> when Gralo said that ponies are meant to be fearful.

As an owner of IRL horses, I can help explain that they're prey species, and their first reaction to anything odd, new, or the slightest bit sketchy is to head for the hills at warp speed.
They can be desensitized, as you point out with their eventual acclimatization to the Everfree, but they're still prey species.
Gralo is a parrot. There aren't any predators that focus on parrots, so far as I know. But birds in general tend to be *flighty* because they're so doggone delicate; hollow bones and everything mean they need to have their share of caution.
So in this wise Gralo is demonstrating no small measure of haughty arrogance. Which on the whole of it, is in keeping with sociopathic genocidal (ego)maniacs.

 >>/6587/
>  for the time this was written
I'm actually really impressed how close to the lore / feeling of the show, even after it was done, this stayed. If Arofa Nahmat had utterly replaced Discord as the author suggests, it needn't actually run a different course.

> really weird
> like Fluttershy swearing.
Well, she did swear in the show. Swore so loud and objectively some parents covered up their foals' ears, as I recall.

> enourmous epic intensity [..] beating Gralo
I think that's more just in keeping with the comic book medium. Another FiM piece, by Metal Kitty (who changed through three hosting sites because fans kept following him! The nerve of his fans!) had quite a bit more epic mountain-splitting laser-blasting-horns for quite a few pages; enough that a few fans called shennanigans for how off the rails over-9000 it all was.
(that one I dont have any archives of)