Boy it's been a long couple of days, intersession classes starting up again and all that, so I really only got a chance to get back to working on this, like, an hour ago, but in that time I changed the functionality of my print text script to allow for back and forth with dialogue:
It's weird, I think the way I implemented this was a lot like how I'd work in C++, my native tongue, my lingua mater, which meant that I was able to get it done pretty quick, even though I was probably jumping through more hoops than I needed to (gosh I miss infinitely compounding data structures).
It doesn't look like anything right now, but the player object is dropping into a separate dialogue state here, which means that I can set the dialogue sprite as soon as I actually make one. I'm pretty sure that it'll look like Shelby sitting on her haunches, but I'm not sure if she'll be facing the background or to the side.