.desktop launcher of $VISUAL failing

Question

I have built a little launcher editor in a desktop file called "createlauncher.desktop" that opens up a second, read-only desktop launcher file called "SHORTCUT.desktop" in a text editor where a PATH to a file executable and a NAME are filled in and the launcher is saved to a new location. It mostly uses xdg-open and the main target is pdf files or else directories. the xdg-open part is working fine. This is so that I can have windows-style shortcuts (the desktop files) that Dropbox doesn't foul up like it does symbolic links.

I can use the launcher if I specify the full path to the read-only desktop file, but I have to invoke a specific text editor on an absolute path for it to work. I want it to look for the read-only .desktop file in the same directory, wherever that is, so that installation is simple, and I want it to launch the system editor, namely whatever $VISUAL is set to. The launcher provided here works fine when I launch it from the command line using dex -v createshortcut.desktop but when I launch it using from the GUI (Cinnamon/nemo) by clicking it does not load the text editor, but gives no error. When I launch using desktop-file-validate createshortcut.desktop it throws errors that say

createshortcut.desktop: error: value "sh -c "exec $VISUAL $(dirname $0)\/SHORTCUT.desktop" %k" for key "Exec" in group "Desktop Entry" contains a non-escaped character '$' in a quote, but it should be escaped with two backslashes ("\\$")

3 times. I then go through and escape the three instances of $ and then errors go away in desktop-file-validate createshortcut.desktop but dex no longer works to launch the editor correctly, and it will still not launch from the desktop click.

Here is the createlauncher.desktop file that does launch the second .desktop file in the editor properly, but only from the command line using dex:

    #!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
    [Desktop Entry]
    Name=create shortcut
    Exec=bash -c -e "exec $VISUAL $(dirname $0)\/SHORTCUT.desktop" %k
    Icon=text-editor
    Type=Application
    Comment=SAVE AS!!!!!
    Terminal=false

And here is the read-only target, SHORTCUT.desktop that should open in the $VISUAL editor when createlauncher.desktop works right:

    #!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
    [Desktop Entry]
    Type=Application
    Encoding=UTF-8
    Name=NAME
    Exec=xdg-open "PATHTOFILE"
    then Icon=/usr/share/icons/HighContrast/scalable/emblems/emblem-symbolic-link.svg
    Terminal=false
    Comment= (1) make NAME for target (2) enter full absolute PATHTOFILE  of source (3) SAVE AS to the target directory

My guess is that there is some ENV variable that bash has picked up that is not in the interactive bash launched from the createlauncher.desktop file, but I am in over my head at that point.

Is there a ".bashrc" equivalent file read by all shells? seems to point toward my solution, but not sure.