Then there’s the part where I’d still need to explain how franchising works

Hah! I love how palpable you made your exasperation!

Is there a good sort of middle ground distro between the reliability of Debian and the up-to-date packages of arch?

This guy:

(OpenSUSE Tumbleweed).
Or maybe Slowroll.

Is it pronounced like that Super Troopers Porsche song?

Ah yes!
Cleric Maria Rainer of the Tetragrammaton.