OK, wow, thanks for the explanation. It was driving me crazy as well. I was going deeeep into the plumbing and I still couldn’t figure it out, which just led to me doubting myself and double/triple checking things. Glad I stepped away for a day.
I’ll definitely check out your plugin. I glanced at it before and was like “uh, isn’t that the same thing as WP_QUERY?… I can do this myself.” Well now I know.
Cheers