[Sony Xperia X Compact Themes, Apps, and Mods] lb13:
Recently got a clean XC from a guy after my Z5C finally died. I would really like to use this, but I'm honestly at my wits' end trying to install it. I'm probably missing something very minor, and would really appreciate if someone can help me find it. Sorry for the long read, tried to make it as descriptive as possible.

I'm basically stuck in a bootloop where it shows the black xperia logo, and then reboots, gives me the "not secure, will boot in 5 seconds" alert and shows the xperia logo again. And so on and so on.

Got it stock with 118 firmware. Flashed Marshmallow to retrieve my TA keys and got them. Then unlocked the bootloader.

1. Downloaded CE1 ftf from xperifirm and Flashtool 0.9.33.0 created a bundle using 34.fsc. I also created my custom boot image from the serajr rootkernel by saying yes to everything except DRM fix, I instead used my own TA with PoC.

2. When i tried to flash the stock CE1 with Flashtool, I checked Wipe for sin and misc ta, everything on the left column; and touched nothing in the exclude column on the right (pic attached). It also warned me "reset-kernel-cmd-debug" will be skipped because it's not in the FSC, which made me suspect this could be one of the steps where i'm doing something wrong (pic attached). But when i pressed continue, it flashed the ftf without any more apparent problems.

3. After stock CE1 is flashed, I didn't boot in, but immediately switched to fastboot to flash twrp-3.3.1-0-kugo.img

4. Then still, without booting, opened TWRP and flashed the CE1 188 deodex.

5. Immediately after, I flashed by boot.img that i made in the very beginning with TA PoC. Then I booted into the deodexed system. It booted in just fine. I set up my wifi and gmail account. Didn't put my SIM in this step. And finally went to the home screen. Waited a bit but I didn't see any prompts about network optimization reboots like levone1 described in one of his posts.

6. I shut down the phone, open TWRP again and flash existenz 3.2 patch. Did all those Vol up + Vol down stuff to set SElinux permissive. It didn't show any errors when i flashed it.

7. I again flashed my rootkernel TA PoC boot.img without rebooting in TWRP.

8. After done, I rebooted into the system and it showed the existenz bootlogo, powered by android logo, and then an Xperia logo, where it just rebooted itself. Showed me the usual "Your phone is not secure and will boot in 5 seconds". And started to loop between this state and where it shows the Xperia logo. And this is where I'm stuck now.

I see some people talking about installing magisk in one of the steps. And I also tried some variations and trying to restore my boot image with twrp, but they didn't help neither. And as far as I can understand, levone didn't mention anything specific about installing magisk in the steps and I assumed I can just use my own rootkernel boot.img and flash it TWRP and get the same results.

Update: I tried various methods, DRM fix, PoC, some non-DRM bootimg someone posted here saying it works. Tried almost every method here step by step but no dice. Such a shame. The problem could be anything from a new magisk version that doesn't work with this, flashing issues that I mentioned before, i have no idea; but I just can't make it work.

Update 2: I kinda gave up and thought at least i'll install the xposed fix and the dark theme, and even those failed. Flashed stock > Deodexed it > Flashed PoC bootimg and it rebooted no problem. Flashed xposed, magisk, seinux, busybox and safetynet, then initd injector and and initd. It still booted. Then i took levone's patched services.jar and replaced it with mine. It still worked. This means I check both requirements for selnux permissive and signature verification disabled, but still, flashing the dark theme gave me a bootloop. So i don't know. There's something very distinct that i'm missing, but for some reason i can't make anything work for this phone.

I am quite aware that development for this machine is pretty much dead, but i'm curious if it would be too hard for someone to create a single rom that we can flash in our machines in one go that wouldn't be affected from variations during installation?