In the shower this morning, I suddenly realized what the problem was... I had the master curve actually a parent of all the other controls, as well as parent constraints on them.... doubly parented? I did the constraints first, then realized I wanted it as an actual hierarchy. Guess I forgot to delete the constraints.

Haha, do you get roped into filming everything too? "Hey, can you film this event and edit it, and make a bunch of copies? Cool thanks!"

Yeah, animating is fun, when everything's working