...oh no I think I know why the gamepad won't connect with the rpi...

...because it keeps trying to bluetooth connect with my Surface.

because I have to use it in Xinput mode or else the Home and Star buttons don't work at all in the Rpi, despite Retropie natively supporting the 8bitdo sf30 pro, so you would think it would go "OH I know, it has these two extra buttons you can use!" but NOOOPE.