As someone who is currently doing these new runs, I will give my opinion on this. Firstly I somewhat agree with your opinions, especially how they relate to the "death clipping" glitch. I've gone over in my head, the exact nature of the glitch and how it was discovered many times, and always find myself doubting the validity of it in speedrunning. Use of these service commands definitely feel like they pervert the nature of speedrunning, and while they are fun, they leave a sour taste in my mouth. So I'm open to discourse about this topic, and can appreciate the developer perspective.

With that being said I feel your opinions are ill-informed when it comes to save hovering. I hate save hovering, but I would never try to claim it as a cheat. Quick saving and quick loading is a feature that many fps games include, and is most certainly an intended feature. And in this game it's been used since the game first released. The 'walk' command being wrapped in qs/ql is considered an oversight, and the fact that 'walk' is a cheat is meaningless, because it is the result of intentional game mechanics. Save hovering is cheap and boring, but the code being executed under the hood has no bearing on its legality. It's a glitch/exploit/oversight whatever you want to call it. But it's not a cheat any more than quicksave and quickload: 2 commands that are keybound the moment you first boot the game.

Also you're point about using 'walk' to simulate SH without the buffering screens sounds like a solution to a problem we've been discussing recently in the discord. I'm not sure if your intention was to discredit Save hovering by showing how it's easily replaced by a cheat, but you've instead suggested something, that I'm kicking myself for not thinking of before. I'll be expressing my support for this later.