I think I've said it before (although maybe not on P2, specifically?), but my general aesthetic is bombastic, with lots of bright colors, high constrast, moving parts, things to grab my attention from every-which direction. I don't dislike minimalism, by any means! But the more tastefully 'cluttered' a design is, the more my heart goes doki-doki. High density design might be a good phrase for it? Hmmmm.

- Icons! Images of any sort, but I usually have icons pre-cropped, and don't like to have to make multiple strangely dimension'd images for, say, posting templates. For one and done deals like plotters or trackers, though, any size will do! Just something to give a visual representation.
- Any color splashes, but since it's very difficult for me to multi-accent, particularly in a small space like a template as opposed to a skin, this usually ends up just being one, MAYBE two accents. X'D
- Big templates for big posts! I have a large monitor, so I can spare the extra room. I tend to ramble, too, so the larger the text area, the better.
- The only absolute turn-off in post templates for me are those where you have to hover to see the text area. :c They look neat visually! But it makes it difficult to keep the post up when I'm trying to reference when writing replies. TuT
- Animations *claps* are *claps* LIFE. Gimme hovers, gimme infinitely moving parts. Heck yeah.
- Lots of padding. It's funny looking at my old templates, since I've gone from, like, five pixels of padding in a text area to twelve thousand, it's kinda ridiculous.
- Tabbed multi-plotters are my favorite, okay? My favorite. That's what that's all I do for plotters, RIP, sdfkljshfjdh.
- Gradients. Maybe not rainbow ones, though -
- Templates with layouts that look like graphic design... if that makes sense? Neat usage of typography and color. These tend to be for personal use more than premade just because of how specific they end up being, though...

-- readable
-- no hover over the important things like the actual information text
-- high contrast of text vs background (accomplish this with text-shadow bullshit or actual colouring, I don't care)
-- simplicity
-- honestly these days, half the time if the site has a UBBC code that I can shove around my text and call it done, I'm happy.

like spiral said. readable on mobile because i hate myself and write all my replies on mobile -_-

but uh also:

+ lazy, cobbled minimalism
+ fuck ass small fonts
+ goddamn montserrat, roboto, open sans
+ i l i v e and breath playfair display for some reason rip
+ crank up padding to at least 45px please
+ easy to swap colors—which usually means one main color, and the b&w spectrum. sometimes a secondary color if ur lucky
+ flexible fucking icons. yo, i want to be able to use my 1:1 ration, my 2:1 ratio, and my 1:5.22 ratio without having to adjust anything kay thnx
+ fuck scroll bars, i don't wanna code them.
+ font stroke except it's usually text shadow because compatibility reasons rip
+ i'm all about dem dark templates yo
+ can i code it within an hour

also i literally just re read the question and realized i answered it wrong but y'know w/e i'm too lazy to go back rip