I see your point regarding Markdown having won over plain text, so much so that I'm adopting it
as the plain text version already. The problem is, it still feels a bit cluttered compared to plain for
me, my only issue with plain is just the quotes, it feels too clunky as is now, it adds too much
vertical space and removing > hinders it unusable for emails.

Notice that this has been mentioned some years back:

- https://groups.google.com/d/msg/pandoc-discuss/JKFEQBzKQAo/w2p4PCfqZ4MJ

I know about the extensions and how to manipulate the variables, etc but I don't think removing
from Markdown will work, since my only grip with plain is the blockquote (besides the &nbsp bug).