there isn't much that is "arcane" about gamma correction itself (as in, the math itself is really simple).

at the fundamental level, if a surface is illuminated with one lightbulb and we add another light bulb, the difference is exteremely noticeable to the human eye. if we add one more lightbulb to a surface that is already illuminated by a hundred light bulbs, there will be no perceptible difference. the exact response can be modeled with a pretty simple power law (with a modification in the low range, as the article mentions).

that's all there really is to "gamma correction". it's a hack that exploits this quirk of the human visual system in order to more efficiently allocate bits for encoding different "lightness" values.

all of the confusion and bugs stem from one or more of the systems in the chain that forms the final image, making an incorrect assumption about what the others are doing. it's a bit like coordinate spaces in that regard.