So I've read things like "no way jose" and other things which are more believable like "you can work around it if you don't have horizontal dropouts".

I'd ideally like to make this bike a FG/SS flipflop but if I can even just go SS I'll be happy.

Have any of you gone around the issue of vertical dropouts for a SS/FG conversion and if so how did ya do it?

I saw one guy using a "half link" which I'm not sure how I'd install or even get my hands on one of those.

Also how viable is just playing around with gear ratios to make it fit?

I'm not crazy about the idea of a chain tensioner, either. Going for simple.