Can't apply a dependency rule properly.

[Theetis]

Hello. I've been using Vortex and letting it sort my Skyrim LE mod load order for me, and so far it's been pretty stable, other than getting a CTD sometimes when a loading screen is supposed to appear (it's not much of an issue honeslty)

However, my problem is that I recently installed "Superior Lore-Friendly Hair" for my Skyrim LE, to pair it together with "Inhabitants of Skyrim". Since Inhabitants of Skyrim doesn't change all of the NPCs, I figured I'd at least make give the ones still stuck with vanilla hairstyles some better meshes and textures for their hair. Turns out that Superior Lore-Friendly Hair overrides Inhabitants of Skyrim and a lot of the NPCs were reverted to their default faces and hairstyles, and also suffer from the black/miscolored face issue.

I figured that in that case I can just create a dependency rule to make IoS load after SLFH. However, that is not the case. Whenever I do it through dragging the Dependencies icon and setting the rule for IoS to take priority, the rule isn't actually created. I go to the "Manage Rules" window and it doesn't appear there at all, no matter how many times I do the drag & set dependency process.

I've been looking all over the internet to see if there's some other way to do it, and people only talk about manually managing load order through "groups" and the plugins section. You see, it's all fine and dandy and probably works great, but you can't really manually manage plugins when some mods don't have .esp or .esm files. And that is the case with Superior Lore-Friendly Hair. It doesn't appear in the plugins tab, therefore I can't do anything about the problem if it truly is a load order issue. My only chance of actually being able to alter the load order for it in any way, would be in the MODS tab through a dependency rule. But it just doesn't seem to work whatsoever.

So what am I supposed to do now?

Please take note that I'm not experienced in modding at all, so I haven't tried fixing the issue through the Creation Kit. Honestly, I was hoping I wouldn't have to use it, as a lot of people stated that the black/miscolored face issue is more often than not a load order problem.

I will also mention that I'm also using other mods that alter NPC looks, such as Males of Skyrim, Unique Lydia and Enchanting Aela. None of the NPCs changed by these mods were affected at all; it's exclusively the miscellaneous NPCs changed by Inhabitants of Skyrim that have their faces and hairstyles messed up.

[HadToRegister]

Loose files, with no ESP or ESM, such as texture, meshes etc, will ALWAYS override everything else.
There's nothing you can do about that with ANY mod manager, as there's no ESP or ESM to sort.