i did more research. trying to figure out how to get gizmos to display in front of 3D object (like they used, i'm not sure if Unity 2021 changed that or the fact that i'm using URP), trying to figure out what the best way is to register what the player is colliding with to manage normal correctly, trying to turn the player's state into a C# property so i can make the setter fire an event when it's changed...

everything seems to present a tiny little problem. no one is taking about gizmos being faint and too hard to see. everyone recommends stacking a ton of rigidbodies together to identify exactly what collider fired an OnCollisionEnter etc. event, which actually breaks physics entirely (i need the collider to hit the ground, obviously), and the property thing works but is about as verbose as i expected (and changing the value in the inspector during run time will not actually fire the event!)

it starts to feel like anything and everything just doesn't exactly work. i should continue to not expect things to be perfect, even things outside of my control. but it's definitely aggravating.