The main distinction that I tried to convey in the story was one of experience vs. knowledge and how those two things differ.
That led to the moral weirdness(?) that you identified: despite him being an adult, Wesley's slowed transformation makes him act childish. I tried to pace it so that by the time the romance got going Wesley was already emotionally mature. Unfortunately, like the ending, it sounds like I missed the mark on that. I had wanted to make his maturity more explicit to really emphasize that point, but the word count was nipping at my heels. Ideally, I think this story should have had another 10k words at least to let all the elements breath.
Regarding the feet sizes, idk man. I based them off of my own feet in my hands so maybe mine are just on the small side XD.
I never saw the movies thing as a framing device. It was a quirk to give the characters something to build off of in a few of the scenes. Maybe I could have made it into something more, but then I run would run into the word count problem again.
As for the other character stuff, I don't really have an answer other than that's how they came out so that's what they did. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thanks for the review! That was a fun read and a cool deep dive that made me look at the story in a different light. +1