@ntnsndr @bignose I'm curious what specifically bothers you about the GUI... I'd bet you could get a minimal-looking GUI #Emacs pretty easily. Have you tried any themes besides the default? Prot's modus themes are a nice place to start, they're built-in.
It's really nice to have more fonts and font sizes, and to be able to display images alongside text. I include a lot of images in my personal org notes, I think I'd miss that if I was forced to switch to terminal Emacs.