# Narrator-Publicist Audit — Chapter 16

id: narrator_publicist | owner: claude | tier: risk | trigger matched: sample:every-4th-chapter + flag:protagonist-heavy
chapter: `output/chapters/chapter_16.md` | provenance: `output/drafts/claude/chapter_16.round_01.md` | packet: `output/model_prompts/claude/chapter_draft/chapter_16.md`

## Step 4 — declared narrator stance

`premise/READING_GUIDE.md` §1–2: close third past, Theo POV this chapter; no publicist-by-design narrator is declared anywhere in `premise/`. The guide's interiority discipline ("feelings through action, object, and dialogue first") means free-indirect admiration must be attributable to Theo as a fallible perceiver, and Theo's self-image is the book's named flaw (voice cards: "believes delay is kindness; believes being indispensable is the same as being loved"; "with Odile, filial irritation and awe"). Findings, had there been any, would stand with no stance exemption.

## Characters audited

Theo (protagonist, POV), June (favored love interest), Odile (favored mentor), June's painting and Theo's painting as proxy objects the narration could campaign for. Every narrator description of these was collected and tested against markers 1–5; the borderline cases are itemized below. The mechanical gate (`chapter_16_quality_gate.md`) is open=0 with only WATCH hits; nothing there bears on publicity except the hands-density WATCH (17), which is the sanctioned week-6 foreground per the packet's motif cap.

## Per-line verdicts

- `EARNED — "He worked fast and the values came out clean and the perspective behaved" (line 39) — the on-page action that backs it: "he stepped back and looked at a competent painting of fear. The painting could hang in any hallway. That was the problem." (lines 39–41)` — competence is asserted only to be indicted two sentences later; the narration is prosecuting Theo's facility, not selling it.

- `EARNED — "Theo heard Mara start to say something behind him and not finish it. He heard Priya's clementine stop being peeled halfway through, the skin's small tearing quitting in the middle." (line 57) — the on-page action that backs it: the quoted line IS the action` — this is the marker-2 fix executed: two named characters, two specific interrupted actions, no "the kind of silence that…" generalization. The raw draft's versions ("The room glowed with attention," "unmistakably and to anyone with eyes") were marker-2/3 publicity for June's painting and were cut in revision.

- `EARNED — "as if the evening were about jars" (line 35) — strip test residue: "She went to the back corner and started decanting medium into small jars, eight of them" — attributable perceiver: Theo (close third)` — checked as marker-1 mystique for Odile. The clause is Theo's irony about her staged indifference, not narrator reverence; the action survives whole. Reads innocently forward, pointedly on reread, which is the guide's §8 requirement, without a wink.

- `EARNED — "She tapped the easel's leg once with one finger, not the canvas, never the canvas." (line 79) — strip test residue: the full tap action — attributable perceiver: Theo, her nephew of thirty years, whose filial awe the book frames as his flaw` — checked as marker-4 gesture inflation. The "never the canvas" doubling is the closest thing in the chapter to incantation on Odile's behalf. It clears because the generalization is observable repeated behavior known to this specific perceiver, and the chapter spends its whole length costing out Theo's deference to her. WATCH: one more rhythmic absolute of this shape for Odile in a later chapter ("never X, never the X") tips into campaigning.

- `EARNED — "She came at it from an angle, the way she came at everything" (line 59) — strip test residue: "She came at it from an angle" plus "her chin came down half an inch like she'd been handed something heavier than its size" — attributable perceiver: Theo, six weeks of stated observation` — checked as marker-4. The generalization adds habit, not glamour; the specific chin movement carries the beat and asserts weight, not mystique.

- `EARNED — "It was not cruel. That was the worst part." (line 57) — the on-page action that backs it: "the knuckle scar and the flat nail on his left thumb and the way his wrists went straight when he lifted weight. The label was perfectly squared. The blank ground stayed lit."` — checked as adjective campaigning for June's painting. The evaluation is negative-framed, belongs to the painting's subject (the one person positioned to verify the hands), and is immediately cashed out in three verifiable particulars.

- `EARNED — "it was the look from the painting, the one that had painted his hands accurately and left the blank ground in the light" (line 101) — the on-page action that backs it: the line-57 inventory above — attributable perceiver: Theo` — "accurately" is the chapter's only honesty-adjacent word applied to June's painting, and it is a checkable claim about likeness, not a campaign claim about merit. See focused check 2.

- `EARNED — "That was the rule, and also it was true: the wrong fear was still down there… The real one went over it." (line 49) — the on-page action that backs it: "'You made it mine,' she said… 'In the memory painting it was just a roller. You made it mine.'" (line 67) and "her chin came down half an inch" (line 59) — attributable perceiver: Theo, then ratified by June on the page` — checked as the narrator certifying Theo's insight. The certification is Theo's; the validation is delegated to June's named, specific reaction rather than asserted by narration.

- `EARNED — "It's better than the assignment," Luis said (line 63) — attributable perceiver: Luis, dialogue, in his voice-card register (brief material verdicts)` — the raw draft glossed this twice ("which from Luis was a review," "which from Luis was a paragraph") — both marker-4 gesture inflation crediting Luis's brevity with paragraph-力. Both cut in revision; the revised narration adds no gloss.

- `EARNED — "Ben skipped zone three of the flyer route entirely. Mara folded her scarf twice and carried her painting of Luis out face-in against her coat, careful at the corners. On the way out, nobody said *fear*. Theo counted that too." (line 81) — attributable perceiver: the generalized tally is pinned to Theo's counting tic, which the chapter itself distrusts ("counted fourteen chairs, distrusted the number, and counted again," line 19)` — checked as marker-2 generalized reaction grading the paintings' impact. It clears on two named specifics first and an attributed counter. The raw draft's "the way you carry something out of a hospital" and "his own ledger of it getting longer by the week" — sentimental inflation and self-mythology respectively — were cut.

- Checked and clean with no quotable candidate: marker-3 cosmic flattery (none anywhere; nearest figure is "like she was keeping him from a curb," line 9, which is concrete and unflattering) and marker-5 adjective campaigning (no instance of mysterious/dangerous/effortless/cool or synonyms applied to any character; Theo is rendered miscounting chairs, mixing salmon "too pink twice," and graying it "like a first-year").

## Focused extra checks

1. **Theo's guilt is not over-defended.** The narration's account of the withholding is "he had kept the fact as if correct custody could make it harmless" (line 39) — the "as if" marks the rationalization false in the same clause — and "he had kept the steps and missed the work she lost" (line 41), which is indictment without compensating eloquence. The raw draft's "the specific nausea of a man who keeps very good records" (guilt as résumé) and "all care, every inch of it care" (harm aestheticized as devotion) were both cut in revision. No surviving line pleads for him. PASS.

2. **June's painting is not advertised.** No narrator use of brilliant/brave/honest/healing or synonyms for the canvas. The raw draft's campaign lines — "The room glowed with attention," "Every object in it had been touched by somebody who loved his job," "The painting liked him," "unmistakably and to anyone with eyes" — were all removed; the revision substitutes composition facts (the bulb over the blank ground, the squared label, the twelve-by-sixteen) and two named interrupted reactions. The one residual evaluative word, "accurately" (line 101), is a likeness claim verified by the hands' owner. The object does the work. PASS.

3. **Odile is not ratified by the narrator.** "She had not explained anything" (line 81) is fact, not awe; "Don't touch it again" (line 73) and "Pairs hang together or they lie" (line 79) stand unglossed — no "which was high praise from Odile" translation anywhere. The raw draft's "gave them the rules like a building inspector" was cut. Two reverence-adjacent rhythms survive ("never the canvas"; "as if the evening were about jars") and both are attributed to Theo's fallible filial reading, audited above. PASS, with the stated WATCH on the "never the canvas" construction.

4. **The final delay stays wrong.** The raw draft prettified it twice — "There would be a better Tuesday for it" (delay as patience) and the measured-fuse simile recast as "all care" — and the revision deleted both. What stands is "He recognized the plan making itself useful and kept it anyway" (line 107): the narration names the plan as the same usefulness-instrument that caused the harm, and has him choose it with open eyes, no nobility-through-self-condemnation (one clause, no wallowing — packet prohibition respected). The closing image is him pocketing "Odile's keys" (line 109), not a moral. The delay is left as a fault on the table. PASS.

## Chapter verdict

`CRITICAL-DISTANCE-HELD` — no unattributed publicity. Most admiring surviving line: "Theo. Tonight was the most honest you've ever been in this room. You know that, right?" (line 101) — perceiver: June, in dialogue, and the admiration is earned-then-cut by the same scene: Theo's own "In paint" (line 103) and the three unsaid words ("Odile's my aunt," line 93) standing four feet away from it. The praise indicts him in the act of admiring him, which is the opposite of press-release work.

`REVISION ORDERS:` none — zero PUBLICITY lines. Non-blocking WATCH for the tics tracker: the "not the canvas, never the canvas" doubling (line 79) is at the limit for Odile-reverence; do not let later chapters repeat the construction for her.

CRITICAL-DISTANCE-HELD
