`output/critiques/claude/chapter_07.comedy_doctor.md` — Comedy Doctor, Chapter 07 ("From Memory")

Calibration note: the reading guide names no single target-reader figure; calibration is against its comp triangle — Beth O'Leary warmth, Emily Henry at 60% banter density, Morisaki Bookshop quiet — with the binding rules of §2 (no sitcom rhythm, deflection visible as deflection, Odile never whimsical/oracle). All locations are line numbers in `output/chapters/chapter_07.md`; raw-draft references cite `output/drafts/claude/chapter_07.round_01.md`.

INVENTORY:

1 — "By Thursday it had become a system: bag, pocket, rubber band, the drawing still there." (L12) — mechanism: deadpan bureaucratization of avoidance — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: establishes the carried roll without naming the feeling; replaces the raw draft's refusal-to-conclude ("decided not to examine the new arrangement") with concrete behavior — workshopped: no
2 — "dealt them out like a woman who had done this for forty years and lost patience in year six" (L14) — mechanism: specificity-deflation — source: character (Odile through June's dry eye) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (forty years is Odile's final-class bio) — dramatic work: sets Odile's economy before the critique tour — workshopped: no (this was my strongest workshopped counter-candidate: "year six" has punchline placement, but it is one clause in June's licensed register, not a composed symmetrical setup)
3 — "It dries while you argue with it, so argue early." (L14) — mechanism: personification + imperative compression — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: real material constraint that later produces the mud cheek (gouache lifts when scrubbed) — workshopped: no
4 — "You may talk. You may not describe yourself. That is also looking." (L18) — mechanism: rule-extension deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: closes June's loophole space before she's thought of the loophole — workshopped: no
5 — "A funeral of a palette, and honest for it." (L20) — mechanism: incongruous craft image — source: character (June's painter nouns) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (earth-palette joke requires the five-tube constraint) — dramatic work: palette-as-honesty primes the chapter thesis — workshopped: no, though it is aphorism-shaped; weakest surviving item
6 — "listening to fourteen people discover how loud a brush in a jar could be" (L20) — mechanism: situational specificity — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no (requires the screened-silence assignment) — dramatic work: renders the room's tension as sound — workshopped: no
7 — "the kind of likeness you could show a jury without perjuring yourself" (L22) — mechanism: register collision (legal procedure onto portraiture) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: opens the chapter's deniability register and names the plan's bad faith in June's own vocabulary — workshopped: no
8 — "the face that comes free with the frame. A man generated by the word *man*. He looked recently assembled." (L24) — mechanism: painter's diagnosis as deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the safe man's failure forces the slide into remembered specifics; the comedy is the trap springing — workshopped: no
9 — "How bad is it over there?" / "I've made a man... Beyond that I promise nothing." / "I didn't know ears were like this." / "Leave them out. That's the assignment." (L32–38) — mechanism: mutual deflection + understatement — source: character (both cards) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: "I've made a man" is a true confession wearing a joke; "Leave them out" turns the card into a care move — workshopped: no
10 — "evidence she could legally consult because the card banned models and photos and said nothing about a woman's own prior work" (L42) — mechanism: loophole-lawyering — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: drives the almost-retrieval beat — workshopped: no
11 — "wiped it on a paper towel as if the rubber band had paint on it" (L42) — mechanism: alibi-action — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: physicalizes deniability, then is sharpened, not softened, by "She didn't need it. That was worse." (L44) — workshopped: no
12 — "It was two seconds." / "You looked. Now you know less. Again." (L48–50) — mechanism: diagnosis-insult with logic inversion — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: dramatizes the assignment's cost, plants the eyebrow payoff, and is the chapter's thesis (looking too soon costs knowledge) in Odile's mouth — workshopped: no
13 — "There are clementines by the sink. June. Did you eat?" / "I will," June said, and meant it as much as she ever did on a Tuesday. (L52–54) — mechanism: understatement on a care move — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: arms the chapter's closing action — workshopped: no
14 — "A putty-colored apology sat on an otherwise specific face." (L56) — mechanism: personification of failed repair — source: character — funniness: 1 — portable: no — dramatic work: yes, but it pre-empts Odile's L94 coinage and dulls the chapter's best critique line — workshopped: no. **BLOCKING (partial).**
15 — "They're gray," he said. "For the record." (L84) — mechanism: deadpan gift of the withheld fact — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: answers the left-blank eyes; Theo unknowingly joins June's private legal register — workshopped: no
16 — "spending fifteen seconds per panel like a meter was running" (L88) — mechanism: stock simile — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (taxi-meter wit attaches to any brisk authority figure; nothing in Odile, the class, or June's optical register generates it) — dramatic work: paces the tour, which the audited count already does alone — workshopped: no. **BLOCKING (partial + portable).**
17 — "moved on without a word, which from Odile was a medal" (L88) — mechanism: inversion (silence as praise) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (keyed to her card's withheld-praise economy) — dramatic work: calibrates the scale so her long stop at Theo's panel reads correctly two paragraphs later — workshopped: no
18 — Mara's Luis "enormous and pink"; Luis backing to the taped aisle; "The paint has weight. You used all of it." (L88) — mechanism: physical comedy + deadpan material verdict with delayed punch — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (his owned "paint has weight" line, varied per card) — dramatic work: the Valdez marriage rendered as a material compliment; replaces the raw draft's narrator tone-gloss — workshopped: no
19 — "a wash and one eyebrow." / "That's my eyebrow. I saw it. We can move on." (L88–90) — mechanism: escalation payoff + triage deadpan — source: character/situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: repairs Ben's embarrassment inside the scene (warmth floor); Priya claims the eyebrow rather than rating the loss — workshopped: no
20 — "The mouth is observed. The cheek is an apology. Scrape it." (L94) — mechanism: diagnosis-insult compression — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: "observed" publicly certifies that June looked at Theo; the chapter's verdict in three sentences — workshopped: no (currently dulled by item 14; see orders)
21 — "scarf radar fully operational" (L100) — mechanism: narrator tag — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 1 — portable: yes ("X radar, fully operational" is a stock construction; only its object is book-specific) — dramatic work: NONE (Mara's arrival and dialogue do the work) — workshopped: no. **BLOCKING (partial + portable + overlay).**
22 — "June, you're keeping it through November, I've decided." + Priya's clementine toss "before she could extend the ruling" (L100) — mechanism: meddling-escalation cut off by physical interruption — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: extends scarf custody (knot motif) and shows Priya managing Mara without a word; also the repaired site of the raw draft's banned "it's load—" near-miss — workshopped: no
23 — "Gouache dries lighter... Your darks will be fine by nine." / "The cheek won't." / "No," he agreed, and kept walking, and June liked him enormously. (L102–106) — mechanism: consolation refused, deadpan agreement — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: honest looking as care, the book's thesis in miniature; "enormously" echoes "enormous and pink" as repetition-with-variation — workshopped: no
24 — "The rack is communal and so is blame." (L110) — mechanism: zeugma/register collision — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: makes the rack a public record, raising the stakes of June writing the name — workshopped: no
25 — Ben "verifying Priya's surname like it might have changed since the wedding" (L110) — mechanism: hyperbolic precision — source: character (his card's double-checking, in a new shape — the tracker marks his transit/self-deprecation shapes spent, and this is neither) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: precise foil — Ben checks a name he knows; June then writes a name she shouldn't know that well with "no pause at either" N — workshopped: no
26 — "carried it level through the cleanup traffic the way you carry soup" (L112) — mechanism: homely simile deflating tenderness — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (generated by the physical problem of a wet panel) — dramatic work: Theo keeping the painting, the Ch23 seed, rendered without sentiment — workshopped: no (watch note: the domestic channel is Theo's per the blind-POV rule; passable once in June's POV, not twice)
27 — "*Rack's communal.* *Is it dry?* *Are you keeping that?*" (L114) — mechanism: escalating unasked questions — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: deflection visible as deflection, with the real question last — workshopped: no
28 — "Mara narrating the spellings to the room" (L116) — mechanism: character-logic texture — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: cover noise for June bypassing the class list — workshopped: no
29 — "heard the marker squeak through the second N like it was countersigning" (L118) — mechanism: personification; the legal-register capstone — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: converts the signature into commitment without a feeling named — workshopped: no
30 — "She went and ate the clementine." (L120) — mechanism: callback deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: answers Priya's L52 care move and externalizes June's small acceptance; cleared by the tic audit as action, not profundity stamp — workshopped: no

DISTRIBUTION CHECKS:

- **Density:** high, and correctly placed for an emotional-peak chapter. The joke-free zones land exactly where the register demands them: the collar/mouth memory passage (L40), the rubber-band aftermath ("She didn't need it. That was worse.", L44), the knot/stance recognition (L66–72), and the sweater exchange (L78–86, except Theo's "For the record," which cuts rather than cushions). The "safe man" and painting-failure humor stops before the remembering gets specific — the vulnerability is not flattened.
- **Mechanism variety:** deadpan, diagnosis-insult, inversion, zeugma, physical comedy, escalation payoff, alibi-action, callback, understatement — varied. One saturation finding: the **legal-clerical register collision** runs ~10 instances (jury/perjuring L22, "filed under week two" L40, "legally consult" L42, "the file had no entry" L60, "For the record" L84, "every proportion audited" L88, "extend the ruling" L100, "communal... blame" L110, "verifying... surname" L110, "countersigning" L118). This does **not** trip MONOTONOUS: it is an engineered system — June's deniability rendered as procedure — that escalates to the signature payoff, interleaved throughout with other mechanisms, and Theo's unknowing "For the record" is the system doing relationship work. But it is at cap. See orders.
- **Sweetness:** not OVERSWEETENED. Every sharp beat checked stays sharp: the rubber-band retreat ends on "That was worse," not a joke; "It's the one I had" gets no relief line; the covered panel ends with the questions unasked.
- **Cringe:** none for the comp-triangle reader. The two raw-draft cringe risks — "Nobody laughed, which was its own kind of laughing" (raw L58) and Priya's composed "Of everything you know about me, that survived" (raw L96) — were both repaired in integration (see verification below).
- **Odile calibration:** economy intact, no whimsy, no oracle. Aphorism-grade lines ≈ 5 ("argue early," "That is also looking," "Now you know less. Again," "The cheek is an apology. Scrape it," "communal and so is blame") — compliant with the post-Ch03 halving order for a mentor-scene critique chapter, but at ceiling with zero headroom for the next class chapter.

RAW-DRAFT REPAIR VERIFICATION (per focus): confirmed repaired — "Nobody laughed, which was its own kind of laughing" → "The room kept its brushes busy." (L52); Priya's workshopped eyebrow epigram → "That's my eyebrow. I saw it. We can move on." (L90); Luis tone-gloss "pleased with his wife's economy of nothing" → physical step-back to the taped aisle (L88); Mara's banned "it's load—" → clementine-toss interruption (L100); "No model was the model" → "The missing model was the point." (L8); "not a good painting... a true one" reversal → "Quality was not the problem..." (L58); "for once the paint and the man agreed" → "and the blank held" (L60). **Survived unrepaired from the raw draft:** the "apology" pre-emption (raw L62 → L56), the meter simile (raw L96 → L88), and "scarf radar fully operational" (raw L106 → L100) — items 14, 16, and 21 above.

CHAPTER VERDICT: **CLEAR** — majority funniness-2, overwhelmingly character/situation-sourced, mechanisms varied, comedy doing dramatic work at nearly every instance. Strongest item: "You looked. Now you know less. Again." (L50) — diagnosis-insult that is simultaneously the chapter's thesis and a planted payoff. Weakest surviving item: "A funeral of a palette, and honest for it." (L20) — aphorism-shaped, kept only because it is in June's craft register and primes the honesty thesis. Three blocking findings stand; the chapter is not committable until the orders below are executed.

REVISION ORDERS:

1. **Item 14 (L56), partial.** "A putty-colored apology sat on an otherwise specific face" coins "apology" forty lines before Odile's "The cheek is an apology. Scrape it." (L94), spending her line in narration. Cede the coinage to Odile: replace the L56 noun with a different June failure word (the paragraph already owns "mud"; "a putty-colored patch" or folding into the mud sentence both work). Keep L108's "scraped the apology off the cheek" exactly as is — once Odile has coined it, June adopting her word is repetition-with-variation and improves the shape.
2. **Item 16 (L88), partial + portable.** Cut "like a meter was running." The audited count — "spending fifteen seconds per panel" — is already the joke and is in June's optical-exact register; the taxi simile is detachable filler that over-explains it. If a simile is wanted at all, source it from craft (drying time), not meters. Straight deletion is the recommended fix.
3. **Item 21 (L100), partial + portable + narrator-overlay.** Cut "scarf radar fully operational." Re-source the beat to Mara's voice card (she narrates rooms): let her spot the scarf from across the aisle and arrive already talking, or simply "Mara arrived in Odile's wake and went straight to Theo's panel." Her "That's my scarf," delighted, carries the beat alone; the narrator tag is wit about her, not from her.
4. **Saturation order (verdict-level watch).** Log the legal-clerical register at ~10 instances in `output/tics.md` as at-cap and spent as a chapter-spine device. Chapter 08 (Theo POV) must not inherit it; subsequent June chapters ration it to residual single uses ("evidence" framing was already flagged at Ch05 — this chapter cashes that account, it cannot keep drawing on it).

WATCH NOTES (non-blocking, for the tracker):

- Straightening-things instances: June squares paper towels (L30) and smooths tape (L114); Theo squares the newsprint twice (L112). All functional displacement under pressure; continues the Ch01 cap-watch — no decorative instance available next chapter.
- Odile quotability at ceiling (~5); the next class chapter should run her nearer 3.
- Clementines do double duty (offer L52, payoff L120) and it works; do not let fruit become the new coffee-ordering tic.
- "The way you carry soup" (L112) borrows Theo's domestic channel inside June's POV — passable once as her watching his care move, but a second domestic simile in a June chapter would start eroding the blind-POV test.
- Luis material verdicts: one this appearance ("Gouache dries lighter" + "No"), under his two-per-appearance cap.
- Ch05's spatial-displacement drawing-comedy ceiling was respected: this chapter's wrongness jokes are proportion/identity errors ("an average of her actual coats," "past plausible by a knuckle's worth"), not geographic scale. Ben's shape is new (surname verification, not transit). No "Oh." spent. Ruth speaks no line, so her sharp-line cap is untouched.
