Hi, thanks for taking the time to respond! I deleted the previous post because I had found a way to work through those specific problems, while discovering this issue at the root of a lot of it. Not simulating movement was exactly the problem, thank you. :)
I'm having another animation issue, might you know why the second of 2 frames of idle has my sprite sinking down 1 pixel? Both frames line up, and compensating by moving the second frame up makes it look like it's stuttering. I think the camera is following the character's arm, as it moves down a pixel in that second frame of the idle animation.