Guess Iâm not a good enough writer, my scenes turn out bland if Iâm not really interested in them. 
(Edit: speaking of which, I just wrote 470 words just to get an image out of my head so I can think about something else. Woof.)
Thank you for asking this! I have a simmilar situation in my WIP, and I was also contemplating putting in a warning.
Personally, I would vastly prefer to be surprised by this. It makes the story more enjoyable, and helps me relate to my MC. I just seen a lot of complaints about ROs who turned out to be working for/with the antagonists without proper warning that it makes me nervous to try.
I like this idea which reminds me I need to add content warnings before my update comes out. Iâm so bad at deciding what needs to be them. 
Yeah, thatâs why Iâm thinking of allowing the MC to switch to another RO, so the players who donât like the RO anymore wonât be stuck without romance.
Also here's the thing I wrote. It includes the headphones. It would ALSO include the comfort object, but the MC can't see it from where they are standing.
Youâre already dreading this meetingâ[V] made it perfectly clear he wants nothing to do with you when you met the first timeâbut he is the underwater imaging expert, and thatâs what you need if you want to have any chance to crack this case, so you steel your nerves and knock on the door.
âCome in,â says the voice inside. You donât know him well enough to pick on his mood, but to you he sounds calm enough. Thatâs a good thing, right?
So you open the door and step inside. [V] is sitting behind his desk, wearing gigantic headphonesâno, itâs a headset, microphone turned upâan impressive array of computer screens in front of him. You canât see a keyboard from your position, but the rhytmic clicking of rapid-fire typing is a dead giveaway.
âIâll be with you in a minute,â [V] says, not looking up from his screens, so you close the door behind you and take in the sight.
Chaos is the best word you can describe it with. The desk and the side table are overflowing with folders and papers. There is a sports bag in the corner, and on top of the file cabinets stands a row of trophies, accompanied by a couple of surprisingly healthy plants. A take-out box lies abandoned, its contents half-eaten, next to a couple of coffee cups on top of a pile of top secret folders, next to the table phone next to the computer setup. The white-board back wall is filled with calculations you can barely follow, written in meticulous handwriting that seems to clash with how messy everything else is, although the ridiculously childish magnets that litter the wall holding photos and newspaper clippings and hand-written notes among the writing certainly fit the theme.
After exactly fourty-seven seconds, [V] stops typing. Five seconds and a couple of mouse-clicks after that, he looks at you warily. âAll right, then. What is it?â
âI need your help,â you say.
âMmh. Youâll have to be a bit more specific than that.â
â[Shipwreck],â you say. âI have an idea about how to locate it, but, well, itâs a bit experimental. Okay, a lot experimental. I tried to talk to [R] about it, but he wasnât really interested inââ
â[R] is a buffoon,â [V] says, pulling the headphones (headset) down to his neck. âAll right. Show me what you have.â
Okay, that was a lot easier than expected. âWait, youâll do it? Just like that?â
âLetâs not get ahead of ourselves. Iâll need to see if thereâs anything to what youâre saying, first. Butââ he gives you an incredulous look. âWe have been tasked to try and find [Shipwreck], are we not? Why on Earth would I try to hinder what Iâm being paid to do? That makes absolutely no sense, Iâm not on hourly rate. Iâm not even compensated for overtime, now that I think about it.â
I would solve this problem by having the MC betray the NPC right back, which is why my game has the word âturncoatâ right in the title.
Iâve been considering this as well, but it happens so late in the game for me, I might limit which ROs the player could switch too.
Yeah, thatâll certainly make it more difficult. I havenât planned the timeline much (how could I, when Iâm not even sure of the genre yet?) but itâll certainly happen early enough for the aftermath to be a big enough part of the story that the RO can make a comeback if the player wants them to. (If the player decides they donât want to see that character again, then they wonât.)
Iâve successfully moved out and set up my writing desk! Still learning more about choicescript as I go but I would like to complete some shorter stories and fanfics before endeavoring on my big main project. Best of luck to everyone in September!!
Somehow Iâm consistently surprised that having a separate location to write is beneficial to productivity.
I should really make more time to get to the library (like today!) even when moderately distracted by the internet, I generally get more done.
I just move to another room, working on my laptop in another place stresses me out. (I could go to library and write in a notebook though. I mean, the paper kind.)
An unrelated observation: I seem to have a fascination for creating characters the MC can push to become villains by being a colossal jerk.
Ok. The update to Dragon of Steelthorne is released, and Iâm done with my IFcomp entry (although I finished it way after the deadline so itâs not an IFcomp entry any longer 
). On my todo list, I need to test a full beta which will probably be submitted to HG soon, and Iâm done.
Iâm thinking of taking another break from the forum to finish my next game without any online pressure, but Iâll probably drop by every week or so.
Actually, since we donât have a feedback exchange thread for now, can I use this thread to ask for help if/when Iâm done and ready to beta test? 
On another note, I think we also need a way to advertise WIP threads which have started their one month countdown to submission, so that they can get some final eyeballs before theyâre released.
Iâm game (pun very much intended).
On a semi-related note, Iâm curious if folks here have a preference between copyedit vs proofreading for their Hosted Games (assuming said game goes to Steam).
From the submission info page
I firmly believe style guides to be utter trash (not THIS style guide specifically, just style guides in general) for creative works. Thereâs a lot in a workâs and an authorâs identity in the style of the work, and uniformising it is absolute meh. As long as the style is consistent within the work (exceptions made for cases in which it is deliberate, to showcase, e.g., a characterâs idiosyncrasies), all other uniformisation is a loss in the panorama of creative works.
For that reason, I would suggest you go proofreader.
BUT
that fourth bullet point is actually good value, and if only copyeditors do itâŚ
For me, I think copyediting is better as in addition to technical errors with the text, theyâll point out things like inconsistent/poor word choices, issues with tone and style and so on.
For example, I had a tendency to use the word âneverthelessâ too often. This wasnât technically wrong, but it was repetitive, and something the copyeditor pointed out and corrected.
Another example, I had used âmerchant squareâ and âmarket squareâ interchangably, copyediting picked one consistent term to use.
Granted, these are things I should have noticed on my own, but itâs hard to see your own problems sometimes.
Edit: You can also choose to specify things you donât want changed beforehand, and youâre also entitled to undo a copyeditorâs edits if you feel that they did not understand your intention somewhere.
I mean, I wouldnât mind someone pointing out âthis is technically correct, but sounds awkwardâ phrasings as well, and I donât think proofreading does that⌠I mean, if it is technically correct? I could be wrong though.
I think the copyedit is the way to go, particularly because if youâre concerned about not agreeing with the changes there is this:
Copyediting costs a lot, and getting it done for free is nothing to be sniffed at! If an author feels a point on the style guide goes against something integral to their own style for the game, they can state that anyway (eg âmy game has choice options in the second person because I want it that way, please donât change itâ).
Sidenote, todayâs vocabulary question: what do you call it when a button-up shirt is buttoned wrong, so that one end has an extra button and the other end an extra hole?
Yeah exactly! The thought of having a professional sensitivity reader is amazing. The thought of having an editor, period, is amazing.
I saw that, and it seemed like the perfect middle ground. Since youâve done it before Iâll throw a question your way - do you get a list of the changes theyâve made to your files? My thought was that if a game is several hundred thousand words itâd be so easy for me to not notice something like a paragraph being removed that was important to the sequels. I still lean heavily towards thinking itâd be worth it - I can always download a file comparison tool and go through the changes myself, but Iâd like to be mentally prepared for doing that lol.
Yeah I was pretty blown away seeing it was offered in any context for HG (in a good way!). Tbf, this is all deeply hypothetical since my game hasnât even been submitted to/accepted by HG yet, and I know not everything makes it to steam even after that point - I donât want to put the cart before the horse or come off as arrogant, obvi 
I donât think thereâs a specific word for it, you wouldnât say âthe shirt is mismatchedâ for example. âButtoned up wrongâ is what Iâd probably say.
Ah, how incredibly boring (and disappointing).