Ughhhh. Serves me right for not betatesting my game really quick. This bug apparently crashed the game a few lines INTO THE BEGINNING! Now I just loaded a new game, and played it for a few lines past where it crashed previously after fixing a bug - for some reason parts of the screen.rpy script was commented out - namely part of the coding involving the character's dialogue output/textbox. 

I'm stumped on why it *even* happened. *shrugs* But it's definitely fixed for sure. 

Please, let me know if there's any other bugs moving forward from this!