Second attempt at shooting with a strobe... Finally got some things worth keeping.
In my first attempt I constantly had my strobe power too low, exposure too bright, thinking I was emulating the natural light look. Ofc the results were ass. I also had my (single) strobe too low, which resulted in an unpleasant direct light look. I changed that this time by basically always having my strobe as high as possible. I was also willing to use more power and underexpose the background more, fully embracing the fact that it was probably impossible the photos turned out looking like natural light. But I still need to work on minimizing backscatter :(
I think I was able to make the photos a lot more natural looking in postprocessing. I used some masks to even out the lighting so the photos wouldn't look super strobed. Lowering brightness, saturation and detail also helped to make the photos not look like crazy color/detail bombs.