Thank you, I appreciate the response. Still bricked!
I downloaded the 3.5.4 upx from boox, decrypted it, then flashed the boot partition with edl--no luck--then all of the other partitions in the update (except for system, vendor, and product, for which I'd need to rebuild a super partition to flash, from my limited understanding?). Still no luck. `fastboot reboot recovery` seems to do something, but it just again hangs on the onyx logo. Blue or purple led, onyx logo--that's all I can produce right now.
Come to think of it, I wonder if restoring my backup is what truly bricked things. I was having issues before that, caused by my own messing around, but I still had adb until I flashed the backup partitions...lesson learned, hopefully: always make a full, verified backup before tinkering...
Any unbricking tips?