The three tiers of parody.

----- Jokes ------

Joke, Type I:
>A one-liner intended to make the viewer laugh.

Joke, Type II:
>A theme that characterizes a tangential but inextricable aspect of the dialogue.

Joke, Type III:
>An entire world.
This includes characters taken as a whole and the way they all fit together to form the world that forms themselves. Here, an entire character is a joke, entire episodes are jokes, and the events fit together to shape and reveal a bigger joke, what Twilight called the "farcical tragedy" in the original MAS. Jokes of type-I and type-II occur naturally in dialogue and development but are not the focus; they are if anything just the tip of the iceberg.

----- Characters ------

Character, Type I:
>Not a character but a mouthpiece of random, inconsistent type-I jokes.
Most characters in FIW are predominantly type-I with hints of type-II.

Character, Type II:
>A shallow character that has consistent themes but has no evident personhood, motivation, or intrinsic developmental relation to other characters or the world around her.
Examples are Sweetie Bot from FIW, DWK characters, and every negative-MAS character.

Character, Type III:
>A real character in a type III parody.
Type III characters and type III parodies are mutually inextricable; in a type III parody, the characters shape the world that forms the characters. Twilight from the original MAS is a type III character. Greg reflected Twilight and her backstory in the MAS universe with a new backstory that explains her relationship with Celestia, her personality, her situation, and her relationship with other characters. In fact, positive-MAS Twilight and the type III joke entail each other.

------- Parodies -------

Parody, Type I:
>A desultory mishmash of type I jokes and type I characters.
FIW is a type I parody.

Parody, Type II:
>A parody consisting of type II characters and type II jokes.
DWK's parody is a type II parody; the characters are consistent (even if they're almost all the same) and the world is the same as the FIM world but with characters reflected as their type II counterparts. The reflection of characters in a type II parody is a shallow analog of a type III reflection, which reflects the whole world.

Parody, Type III:
>An entire world.
A type III parody is a type III joke. In FIM, the characters shape the world that forms the characters. A type III parody reflects the entire thing.

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MAS went from being a type III parody to bordering on a type I parody.