Just to clarify. You system is not bricked. Bricked means that it can't boot anything. It sounds like the update is not working correctly (eg the kernel is not fully loading).

You have two options:

1. Try to repair the current broken install (can be difficult depending on skill level)
2. Backup your data and "nuke'n'pave", eg re-install it all.

Both options require a live USB with your distro on it (preferably the new version).

You mention timeshift, did you restore to the working snapshot after selecting it in grub, then reboot AGAIN?

Booting a snapshot, does not restore from it. When booting a snapshot from grub, you need to open timeshift, restore the snapshot, then boot up a second time (this time without selecting it in grub).

Otherwise, you didn't really restore it, you just booted into it, and if you re-attempted the broken update, messed the snapshot up, too (leaving you with no working snapshot to go back to).

I'd say Live-CD/USB and use the recovery mode to fix GRUB. Grub has to appear so thet's the first issue. If you're lucky it's the only one and you can skip the more complicated steps.

If you have backups, reinstall.

If you don't, boot a "live CD" USB stick and make a backup, then reinstall.

Then think about how this happened and how to avoid it in the future:

I tried updating Kubuntu to the newest version, and it got screwed up the first time,

It's been awhile, but I believe the correct process here is to boot with a live USB and repair your distro from there.

I think the tool is called 'boot-repair' for Ubuntu distros.

Keep it up, this is how you become one of those "experts" :P

Can you post some more info on how far you've gotten?