This comment fixed me. The problem i had was i double-installed SKSE and nexus had defaulted to using the new installation, which was inside a folder inside a folder inside skyrims Special edition, and not actually in the same directory as the SkyrimSE.exe. moving the files vortex was using as default into the main folder, and changing where vortex looked for the program within the dashboard tool edit fixed me right up.. took longer to find out what my issue was than to actually fix it