MX Player seems more stable and less buggy on Android compared to VLC, although I rarely watch videos I download on Android and I haven't updated either app in who knows how long so this might be out of date info by this point.

I use mpv off of F-Droid

Check out next player. Very light weight but has a lot of features

https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/dev.anilbeesetti.nextplayer/

oh shit that happens on all platforms? I use vlc to play shit on my tv (improvised chromecast of sorts) and it always irked me that it did this but I thought it might be the TV/raspberry pi not just VLC.

I've tried finding apps long ago. I saw like just player or next player or nova. Then vlc and mpv. I still have vlc. I use mpv for like watching shows or movies that I got cause I can add settings in the conf. But the app interface not good. You should check these apps see what suits your needs. Next player is simple looking like mpv.

Nova is more like a saikou or dantotsu app but for movies or tv I guess. Nova can be used like movie tracker with metadata retrieval. But that is more library management. So more like kodi. Then look at kodi and use mpv as external player if needed.

There's mpv-android on f-droid which I've used before.

On desktop I use KDE Haruna video player.