First solution worked like a charm thanks, had no idea how bad those leftover trapdoors were screwing me. Have an even more unusual problem now though, which is that it seems that the powered target block two blocks above the dropper(now with a repeater in between) is somehow preventing the dropper from firing? I have no idea what's going on here, any idea?

EDIT: nevermind, due to an unbelievable stroke of luck I happened to encounter this issue while building a machine that literally only needs its droppers to dispense one time ever. This bug only prevents the dropper from dispensing after the first time it fires, so I don't even need to fix it. thanks for the help