revert r938d1c08d0d1 in favour of putting it in the chat log. I think this addresses main concern about missing text. There've been complaints in past too about conversation in bubbles not being visible in history. If the objection is that r938d1c08d0d1 offers a more æsthetic solution, I think it should augment this, be flagged, and fix the visual issues first.

use a variable that allows negative values instead.