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# Comedy Doctor — Chapter 12 ("The Memory He Chooses")

Stance: skeptical professional editor. Register calibrated to the reading guide: warm, precise, lightly comic; observational and character-true; Emily Henry at ~60% banter density; never sitcom rhythm or banter for banter's sake. Target reader: the cozy contemporary-romance reader who wants craft specificity and dignity of small routines, not quotable zingers.

**INVENTORY:**

1 — "drew two lines through CONEY ISLAND, AGE 12, as if he were voiding a check" (line 3) — mechanism: register collision (clerical procedure applied to a childhood memory) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: establishes the selection problem; Theo voids checks at that exact desk, so the figure is his — workshopped: no

2 — "Charming. Round at every corner. A memory with the pit taken out." (line 3) — mechanism: deflation of his own safe choice — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (strongest portability counter-candidate considered; survives because it is a verdict on a specific voided card, not free-floating wit) — dramatic work: names why the safe memories fail, which is the chapter's engine — workshopped: no

3 — "IF IT WOULD FIT IN A GREETING CARD, CHOOSE AGAIN. - O." (line 7) — mechanism: insult-as-instruction, escalating imperatives — source: character (Odile, the one licensed quotable) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: mandates the handoff, sets the no-ambush rule June later cites, plants PARTNER — workshopped: no (composed in-world; her sanctioned card register; 1 aphorism-grade line, under the post-Ch03 ceiling)

4 — "only the word PARTNER, sitting there in pencil like it had always meant a specific person with a tote bag and opinions about edges" (line 9) — mechanism: incongruity via specificity — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("edges" is June's voice-card noun) — dramatic work: the fake-couple paperwork turning into a person — workshopped: no

5 — "it was a perfectly good story, and it was a story about being handy" (line 11) — mechanism: deadpan self-diagnosis via flat repetition — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the useful-Theo trap; motivates voiding card two — workshopped: no

6 — "don't make it a thing." / "He had, in the intervening twenty-two hours, made it a thing." (lines 15–17) — mechanism: repetition with timing reversal — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: launches the overpreparation sequence — workshopped: no

7 — Overpreparation block: "non-interview angle"; second water "poured after he drank the first without noticing"; three tested pens, "the dead one already exiled to the drawer"; chair shuttle between "transaction" and "deposition" (line 17) — mechanism: escalation + specificity overload — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: anxiety rendered as logistics; stages June's deflation — workshopped: no. **Focused check passed:** every gag is a decision Theo makes, with timestamps; the narrator reports, never winks. "Exiled" is the one cute word and survives as a singleton. The transaction/deposition pair feeds the clerical cluster (see distribution).

8 — "an announcement with a correction attached" (line 23) — mechanism: over-precision comedy — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: bookkeeping of unearned credit (Mara's thanks); keeps the lie's running cost visible — workshopped: no

9 — "Dom's shop is very committed to forms." / "Dom has several forms." (lines 29–31) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation (intended escalation-by-count) — source: character — funniness: 1 — portable: no — dramatic work: cohort continuity; Theo's professional familiarity with Dom — workshopped: no, but this is the chapter's closest approach to quip-trading. The revision broke the mechanism: the raw draft had June say "He has a form." so Theo's "Dom has several forms" was a *correction* (his precision doing the comedy). With June's line now plural-abstract, the topper restates instead of corrects. Ch11 also spent Dom-shop bureaucracy comedy as a chapter spine. **BLOCKING** (funniness 1, family fatigue).

10 — "Theo. It's two index cards. You set a table for two index cards." / "There's also water." / "I see the water." / "She sat, though" (lines 33–37) — mechanism: deflation + commitment-to-bit — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June names the overpreparation as care she will accept; pressure drops enough for the memory to come out — workshopped: no. **Focused check passed:** not fake-sharp — her lines are flat declaratives, his rebuttal is helpless inventory rather than wit, and "She sat, though" converts the bit into acceptance via action, not a topper.

11 — "folded once against regulation card behavior" (line 37) — mechanism: mock-officialese — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (the "against regulation ___ behavior" figure moves to any book unchanged) — dramatic work: NONE that the literal fold does not already do — workshopped: yes. **BLOCKING on all three grounds.**

12 — "You look like you'll lose consciousness otherwise." (line 37) — mechanism: deadpan hyperbole — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: sequences the exchange; names his anxiety without therapy-speak — workshopped: no

13 — "Chicken thighs on the other side. Eighty-nine cents a pound. The drawing has a chicken-thigh ghost in it if you hold it to the light." + June writing *chicken thighs* on his card "before he had offered it" (lines 53–55) — mechanism: specificity incongruity, de-sentimentalizing detail — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Key Food circular, airshaft drawing) — dramatic work: keeps the sacred memory unsentimental and gives June the painting brief; her one low laugh plus the annotation is the custody/intimacy beat — workshopped: no. **Focused check passed:** "ghost" is literal newsprint show-through, not whimsy; first instance of the family, no fatigue.

14 — "Taping around an outlet is how you can always tell a room was done by somebody in a hurry." (line 71) — mechanism: connoisseur's-tell deadpan — source: character — funniness: 1 — portable: no — dramatic work: June's installer authority mid-memory — workshopped: no. The raw draft's culprit was "somebody's cousin" — an actual punch, apparently removed in the family-noun sweep (defensible: "cousin" is hot near the nephew secret). The revision kept the "how you can always tell" joke shape but removed the joke; smile-shaped, under-committed. **BLOCKING** (funniness 1).

15 — "It never fully runs clear; you just decide a point at which it's clear." (line 75) — mechanism: deflation of the completion myth — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (roller, slop sink, paint-back context) — dramatic work: theme freight — deciding when a thing counts as clean; feeds Theo's GREEN FIRST note — workshopped: no. Strongest workshopped counter-candidate considered: aphorism-shaped, and the revision's semicolon is tidier than the draft's self-correcting "which is a lie." Passes because the content is craft-true and sits inside her voice card's "quieter, funnier, more exact" stress mode.

16 — "I billed zero hours because it was my own room, which was my own genius decision." (line 91) — mechanism: self-aimed irony — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the wound stated without nobility — workshopped: no

17 — "No standing figure gazing upon the white wall." (line 91) — mechanism: parody of the bad painting she forbids — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: art-directs the Week 5 piece; guards the beat against sentiment — workshopped: no

18 — "He had four questions and three of them were repairs... was not even a question; it was a closing argument. Each arrived fully formatted, immediate as a frame wanting a shim." (line 79) — mechanism: enumeration / self-audit — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter's growth beat — he swallows the repairs and asks "What white, exactly?" instead — workshopped: no (the balanced triple is deliberate and serves the pressure, per the tic audit; "closing argument" and "fully formatted" count toward the clerical cluster below)

19 — "Mara would ask the table how the handoff went, because Mara would absolutely ask" (line 97) — mechanism: repetition-for-certainty — source: character (Mara's established tic anticipated by Theo) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: sets Tuesday's public-couple pressure — workshopped: no

20 — "the card under his pen feel misfiled by size" (line 97) — mechanism: clerical figure for disproportion — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (the figure travels; the moment doesn't) — dramatic work: duplicates a disproportion the card/memory contrast has already rendered — workshopped: yes. The Claude-tic audit flagged this conditionally; the condition (no Ch07/Ch11 filing register) is not met — see distribution. **BLOCKING on all three grounds.**

21 — "Don't get there early and arrange the easels. Or do. I can't legislate your whole life." / "There's a chance I arrange the easels." / "I know." (lines 99–101) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation on the overpreparation gag + mutual acceptance — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: she licenses the tic, he owns it — couple-shaped intimacy without confession — workshopped: no. **Focused check passed:** "There's a chance" is admission, not performance; "Or do" is her voice-card self-interruption. ("Legislate" is in her mouth and allowed, but it is one more law word — counted in the cluster.)

22 — "Thanks for the water I didn't drink." (line 103) — mechanism: callback/deflation — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: closes the setup gag by accepting the care while naming its uselessness — workshopped: no. **Focused check passed:** gratitude and deflation in one breath; neither sharp nor sweet.

23 — "anything he kept in that drawer he eventually used" (line 107) — mechanism: dry self-knowledge — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: motivates destroying the safe cards; the gag doubles as commitment — workshopped: no

**DISTRIBUTION CHECKS:**

- **Density:** 23 items in ~2,300 words, clustered at frame and setup, thinning correctly through June's wall memory. Meets the register's commitment for an off-Tuesday two-hander.
- **Mechanism variety:** deflation, escalation, specificity overload, hyperbole, self-irony, parody, enumeration, callback, repetition-with-variation all present — varied, with one exception. The clerical/legal register collision recurs in narration six times: "voiding a check" (3), "transaction"/"deposition" (17), "regulation card behavior" (37), "closing argument" + "fully formatted" (79), "misfiled by size" (97), plus "legislate" in June's dialogue (99). The tics tracker declared this register spent as a spine in Ch07 (at cap ~10–11, "not inherited by Ch08") and spent again in Ch08 after thinning. Six narration figures is the register re-rooting as default Theo narration. Orders 2 and 4 below cut the two weakest; the surviving four are the hard cap for this chapter and the family takes a tics.md row.
- **Sweetness:** not oversweetened. The erased-wall memory keeps its bill — "billed zero hours," the dead salmon, "you'd never know" — and the comedy around it is June guarding the beat, not the book softening it. Strongest sweetening candidate checked: June writing *chicken thighs* on his card is intimacy, but the memory itself stays unsentimental (grocery-ad ghost, manila envelope, "I don't know if it still exists" left unresolved).
- **Cringe:** none. No item misjudges the target reader; no quip lands at a character's unrepaired expense; no exchange sustains sitcom rhythm past three beats, and the one three-beat volley (item 10) ends in action rather than a topper.
- **Retired/capped families (grep-verified):** `Not symbolically`, `not a personality`, `cargo`, `principle of the dollar`, `That's the whole ___` — zero hits. Nearest neighbor "That's the part" (line 57) checked against the retired template: different syntax, non-comic, plain confession — cleared. `load-bearing`: zero. Recognitional "the way you/people" simile: zero (line 3's "going the way of the first two" is idiom). Overpreparation/straightening family: sanctioned as this chapter's comic spine (the scene is about making it a thing) and closed by the easel callback — Ch13 gets no decorative straightening beat. "Oh." reservation untouched. No coffee tic; the water gag is new and closes within the chapter.

**CHAPTER VERDICT: CLEAR — WITH FOUR BLOCKING FINDINGS (items 9, 11, 14, 20).** Distribution is healthy — majority funniness-2, overwhelmingly character-sourced (20 of 23; only two narrator-overlay items, both blocked), non-portable, mechanisms varied — but per the blocking rule the chapter is not committable while the orders below stand unresolved. Strongest surviving item: "Thanks for the water I didn't drink." (line 103) — pays the chapter's longest setup, in character, while doing relationship work. Weakest surviving item: "because Mara would absolutely ask" (line 97) — lands, but on the strength of prior chapters' Mara, not this one's.

**REVISION ORDERS:**

1. **Item 9** — "Dom's shop is very committed to forms." / "Dom has several forms." Failure: revision broke the draft's singular-to-several correction mechanism; the topper now restates, and Ch11 already spent Dom-shop bureaucracy comedy. Fix: restore the correction shape — June's line must assert one form or one concrete claim so Theo's "Dom has several forms" corrects with his trademark precision (Theo voice card: practical exactness) — or cut the topper and give Theo a functional reply that moves to the chairs. After this instance, the Dom-forms family is closed; no instance in Ch13+.
2. **Item 11** — "folded once against regulation card behavior." Failure: narrator-overlay, portable, workshopped. Fix: cut the figure; keep the literal action ("already filled in and folded once," set face down on her knee) — the fold itself is the character note and reads funnier flat.
3. **Item 14** — "done by somebody in a hurry." Failure: the "how you can always tell" joke shape stands with its punch removed (draft's "somebody's cousin" was cut, defensibly — family nouns are hot near the nephew secret). Fix: either give June a concrete non-family culprit type in her installer voice, or cut the "how you can always tell" flourish and keep pure procedure ("you unscrew it, you don't tape around it"). Do not leave the tell-shape half-armed.
4. **Item 20** — "misfiled by size." Failure: narrator-overlay, portable, workshopped, and the figure that tips the clerical register from texture into tic. Fix: render the disproportion physically (the card against what is now on it) in non-clerical terms, or end the sentence at the truth of "Now I have it." Companion directive: with orders 2 and 4 executed, narration's clerical figures drop to four ("voiding a check," "transaction," "deposition," "closing argument"/"fully formatted") — that is the cap. Log a tics.md row: book-specific clerical/legal figures, Ch12 count, no new narration instances in Ch13.
