I'm super grateful for the long reply!
I didn't catch your discord but a sound engineer dm-reachable YES PLS! xD
A lot of good points, thanks for all the context!
When I meant doing right or wrong, it's mostly in the context of like you said lack of experience. The setup is all new and I'm new to mixing, so there's definitely a lot of listening like you said that needs to be done to become just better at knowing how to make the right decisions (even though like you said, there will always be subjective choices).
Thanks for the great write up and recommendations, I really appreciate it!