On the off chance anyone encounters the same issue I described before (as far as the load button not working, the infinite load times, and even if you press new game you can't save and are stuck in place etc) know that I found the issue.
Now I don't know exactly what prompted the issue in the first place, but apparently it had something to do with my save file. I started from scratch, installed just the game, ran it, it worked, then the sideloader modpack, still worked, then added all the character cards, still worked, the mods for said cards, still worked, but upon adding the save files it ceased working. Then I deleted the save files and launched it again to see if that fixes it or if I would have to reunpack everything, but it just fixed it. I don't know how a corrupt savefile would prevent the load button from even functioning, but frankly it doesn't matter. If you have had/ have this problem in the future, then just know you'll probably be fine if you delete the saves, or at least the more recent ones that may have been corrupted because that worked for me. Although I will admit, I am not a fan of starting from scratch and if I encounter this issue again my slightly older than the most recent saves better work because otherwise I can't see my self starting from nothing again.
As a sideeffect of all this reinstalling though it finally fixed a lot of unrelated issues with shiny clothing like latex not loading properly and skin being shiny like metal instead of like skin so that was a great added bonus to fixing my conundrum.
