Incredibly thorough thoughts, thank you! The tip on handling visible_characters is great, the way text moved around did feel 'off' to me, but I didn't really know what to do about it. Turns out you can just do that!
Honestly kicking myself a bit for that one bug, I was aware of it and kept deciding to put it off because it was easy to just avoid and fixing it would've involved untangling some unwise code decisions made in a rush. Turns out several people have run into it, and if I'd fixed it I would've had no major bugs at all as far as I'm aware. (Just dubious behaviors like the visible characters thing, ie 'not a bug but less polished than ideal')
Thank you a lot for your thorough thoughts on the game!