Ok in true unreal engine fashion, I have no idea whats going on, but its working now. I made an empty actor in blueprints, threw a bog standard AI perception component in it, bound some events and printed it out to the screen. Working. I referenced it from my parent actor, and bound the events there, working. I added the Dynamic Perception component and did the same. Not working at first, then, a second later, working for some reason. So bizarre.
Oh well. I have a working version of the component. I have no idea how i got it, but i’m going to lock it down and save everything so i don’t lose it.