With an exacerbated sigh I'm happy to inform the void that I finally got it to work. God, that was a painful week. Posting the solution if anyone is facing the same problem:
Follow the instructions here, word for word. I have 16 gigs of RAM, and put 20 gb for the file size.
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=284100
But first make sure you remove the swap partition if you messed around with that; I dont know if there's an easier way but I booted a live USB (any linux distro with Disks will work, including Zorin - I had Mint laying around), open Disks, there should be a partition called swap (if there isn't then this isn't necessary, just follow the link above), remove it, then click on the partitions immediately touching it, then the gears & expand it to "swallow" the formerly-known-as swap partition.
Then do sudo nano /etc/default/grub and delete whatever additions you made, then the same for sudo nano /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume.
Finally do sudo update-grub then sudo update-initramfs -c -k all. Now you're good to go to follow the instructions in the above link. Again this is only necessary (maybe it isn't, but do it anyway) if you messed around with this hibernation stuff like I did. Good luck.