Lol, that’s a giant fucking wall of text for a grilled cheese discussion, but I get it, you’re passionate! All I have to contribute is that I butter the bread if the butter is room temp, otherwise I melt it in the pan and then grill. But they’re the same process, imo. The bread still soaks up the butter and gets grilled, it’s not just “a medium of transfer”. If I was half-submerging it in cooking oil, then yeah, that’s a different process. Maybe it comes down more to amount of oil.