INVENTORY:
1 — "a room with eight easels and one Odile would go through wing nuts faster than the city could replace them" (l.7) — mechanism: hyperbole-as-procurement-logic ("one Odile" as a unit of wear) — source: character (Theo's "on the theory that" reasoning, four spares, the hardware on Canal) — funniness: 1 — portable: no — dramatic work: installs the maintenance compulsion and the exact wing nut June paints at l.89 — workshopped: yes (the tail "faster than the city could replace them" jumps from Theo's supply chain to narrator-scale punchline syntax; the city does not stock wing nuts, and Theo would not reason in that register)
2 — "Calling it early would have misunderstood the job. He was on time for the part of class that nobody else attended." (l.9) — mechanism: deadpan reframe — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter's thesis (invisible service as identity) stated as self-justification — workshopped: no (first sentence is slightly stiff post-ban repair; the second sentence carries it)
3 — "with her coat already off, which meant she'd been in the building for an hour and had chosen not to be helped" (l.11) — mechanism: deadpan inference — source: character (Odile read through Theo's helper-logic) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Odile's autonomy against Theo's usefulness; reread-consistent with her knowing — workshopped: no
4 — "It is always loose. It is how I learn things about people." (l.17) — mechanism: deadpan surveillance reveal — source: character (Odile) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: converts the opening repair into evidence retroactively; a reread plant — workshopped: no
5 — "Luis carrying a net bag of oranges like a man who had been told to bring his own model" (l.19) — mechanism: simile that turns out to be literally true — source: situation (the assignment makes the orange a model) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: seeds Luis's love and the assignment's logic before the card is read — workshopped: no
6 — "a pen Priya appeared to have opinions about" (l.19) — mechanism: implication — source: character — funniness: 1 — portable: yes ("X had opinions about Y" is a stock contemporary-wit idiom that could gloss any couple in any book) — dramatic work: sets up Priya capping the pen at l.103 — workshopped: yes
7 — "the roll of old drawings rubber-banded at the top like a baguette she'd forgotten to eat" (l.19) — mechanism: domestic simile/incongruity — source: narrator-overlay (Theo's noticing is protective-logistical, not picturesque; the "forgotten to eat" nourishment subtext is an authorial wink over his head) — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (tote-carrying-woman-with-baguette is urban-cozy stock) — dramatic work: NONE beyond charm — the roll itself does the work; the simile sweetens June at an entrance the chapter wants guarded — workshopped: yes
8 — "You filled my jar." / "I filled all the jars." / "Sure," she said. (l.21–25) — mechanism: deadpan call-out of camouflaged care — source: character (June clocking that Theo hides one-to-one attention inside universal service) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the painting's entire thesis, three lines, an hour early — workshopped: no
9 — "Photographs are cheating. Mime is worse." (l.29) — mechanism: escalating dismissal — source: character (Odile) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: rule-setting with teeth; clean repair of the banned negation cluster — workshopped: no
10 — "Only if coffee is the love of his life. If it is, I am sorry for both of you." (l.31–33) — mechanism: conditional deadpan escalating to pity — source: character (Odile, Priya as straight feed) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: defines the love-test and pre-cuts Theo's habit-candidates ("clean brushes," "rewax the runners") before he offers them — workshopped: no
11 — "The room is finished, Brennan. Sit in it." (l.37) — mechanism: imperative deflation, literal and figurative at once — source: character (Odile) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: closes Theo's logistics exit; the chapter's order in four words — workshopped: no
12 — "a skill Mara reported with the pride of a woman who had vetoed his other two options" (l.39) — mechanism: implication (a whole marriage negotiation in one clause) — source: character (Mara/Luis dynamic, per their cards) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: cohort texture; the assignment already lived inside a real marriage — workshopped: no (composed frame, checked; content is couple-specific)
13 — "He's deciding between two," June said. / "Which was generous, since the true number was zero." (l.43–45) — mechanism: cover-story deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June covering for him, the zero named, "They were liked now" raising the lie's cost — workshopped: no
14 — "That's a chore." (l.51) — mechanism: category correction — source: character (June's dry exactness) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: enforces the card's love/good-for distinction on Theo's candidates — workshopped: no
15 — "a roll of masking tape he had no memory of picking up" (l.57) — mechanism: unconscious-compulsion physical comedy — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: displacement embodied; pays off at l.101 — workshopped: no
16 — "which the assignment permitted and his curiosity did not" (l.61) — mechanism: zeugma — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: desire surfacing as rule-parsing, which is exactly how Theo wants — workshopped: no
17 — "he gave the shine ten minutes it possibly didn't deserve. Wet paint, it turned out, was the kind of problem you could fall into." (l.63) — mechanism: understatement with double meaning — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Theo's first true absorption; "fall into" carries the romance without naming it — workshopped: no (checked the aphorism shape; survives because Theo is discovering, not the narrator concluding)
18 — "Theo heard both of them the way you hear traffic." (l.65) — mechanism: deadpan simile of absorption — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (barely; the frame is generic, the New York referent and the flow-state beat earn it) — dramatic work: marks the hour he forgets the jars — workshopped: no
19 — "Ben was solving eleven across with his full upper body" (l.73) — mechanism: physical specificity — source: character (Ben's over-commitment, a new shape after the Ch08 cap on his planning self-deprecation) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: causes the spill that launches Theo's relapse — workshopped: no
20 — "Luis's orange peel had reached a length that deserved infrastructure, so Theo fetched it a paper plate." (l.73) — mechanism: escalation into municipal register — source: character (Theo) + situation (his hour being eaten) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: peak of the relapse spree; the comedy is the failure happening in real time, and it becomes June's painted evidence — workshopped: no
21 — "Sit down. You are standing in her light." (l.79) — mechanism: double-meaning rebuke — source: character (Odile) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: ends the spree sharp; literally and figuratively he is blocking June's view of him — workshopped: no
22 — "Luis had eaten the model and started another." (l.83) — mechanism: deadpan literalism — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("the model" only means orange under this card) — dramatic work: assignment lived, not staged — workshopped: no
23 — "You looked at one thing for an hour," she said. He waited for the rest. "That is the entire comment." (l.85) — mechanism: anticlimax/timing reversal — source: character (Odile) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: highest praise disguised as procedure — workshopped: no
24 — "Third easel," Luis said. "The screw." (l.91) — mechanism: laconic recognition — source: character (Luis; within his 2-per-appearance verdict cap, this is instance one) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the room identifies Theo by his repair before he does — workshopped: no
25 — "It's very him," Mara said, and meant it kindly, and that was the trouble with it. (l.93) — mechanism: kindness-as-indictment — source: character + situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter's discomfort named without naming; comedy doing the pain's work — workshopped: no (checked the "and... and..." composed turn; it is Theo absorbing a real blow, kept lean in revision)
26 — "Did you sit?" / "Mostly not." / "Then you posed all evening. You just didn't know it." (l.95–99) — mechanism: reframe deflation — source: character (Odile) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the verdict on Theo's evening; reread-pointed — workshopped: no
27 — "He found the tape roll in his pocket and put it on the table where it belonged." (l.101) — mechanism: callback/payoff of #15 — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: first small self-correction, wordless — workshopped: no
28 — "Priya capped Ben's pen for him." (l.103) — mechanism: callback care move — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (only with #6's setup; see order on #6) — dramatic work: a real couple enacting the card's thesis in five words — workshopped: no
29 — "The cap on the tube was a smaller, better likeness of him than the Week Three portrait with his name on the back." (l.113) — mechanism: metonymic self-recognition — source: character (Theo reading June's painting in his own inventory idiom) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (requires the Week Three portrait, the capped umber, June's deliberate background) — dramatic work: the recognition the chapter exists for; sets up June's correction at l.135 — workshopped: no (checked the polish of "smaller, better likeness"; it survives because the visual fact is on the canvas and the sentence is Theo pricing it, not the narrator framing a quotable)
30 — "Theo. You don't have to do anything about it." / "I know," he said as he made room. (l.125–129) — mechanism: action undercutting speech — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the compulsion continuing under new knowledge; tenderly uncomfortable, exactly the register the chapter owes — workshopped: no
31 — "It is the one with your name on it," she said. (l.135) — mechanism: correction-as-revelation (the Ch04 correction-punchline shape spent on ache, not a laugh) — source: character (June) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: collapses the portrait/hands distinction; June's exactness as her love language — workshopped: no
32 — "Lock up," she said. "Do not improve anything." (l.137) — mechanism: paradox imperative — source: character (Odile) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the compulsion as the thing to abstain from, and he disobeys it at l.143 (tightens the holding wing nut anyway) — workshopped: no
33 — "it looked like a man checking a watch he wasn't wearing" (l.139) — mechanism: simile of purposelessness — source: character (Theo seeing his own hand fail as a subject) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the image only means anything held up in front of a blank panel under this card) — dramatic work: hands with no love; the wound made visible without naming — workshopped: no
34 — "Sundays produced laundry, the walk, the gallery's intake paperwork, the good coffee place that had closed." (l.139) — mechanism: list deflation (the one pleasure is past tense) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the unexamined life as inventory; the genericness of the items is the finding, not a lapse — workshopped: no
35 — "walked to Sonia's, where somebody would be one chair short, and he could fix that" (l.143) — mechanism: ironic relapse close — source: character + situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no (set up by Mara's "order for whoever came last" at l.103; chairs are this cohort's furniture) — dramatic work: refuses a premature cure; the diagnosis stands and the man keeps walking toward a fix, eyes slightly more open — workshopped: no (checked the closing-bow risk; it is consequence, not aphorism, and the tic audit's action/consequence reading holds)

FOCUSED CHECKS (work shown):
- **Wing nuts (#1):** the body is character comedy — Theo genuinely reasons in spares and suppliers — but the tail is narrator-overlay grafted on: "the city" replacing wing nuts is a scale-jump joke Theo's procurement brain would never produce when the actual supplier (the hardware on Canal) is in the same sentence. Blocking on the tail only.
- **Oranges / crossword / coffee:** oranges pass — one unbroken coil, Mara's veto, the paper plate, "eaten the model": specific, consequential, couple-owned. Crossword passes — "eleven across with his full upper body" is embodied and causes the spill. The pen setup (#6) is the one portable-cute element in the cluster. The coffee bit passes because Odile's answer converts a prop question into the assignment's blade; "the good coffee place that had closed" (#34) was checked as a second coffee bit and passes — its vagueness is diagnostic of Theo's Sundays, and it does not touch the coffee-ordering tic cap.
- **Baguette (#7):** too cute and not Theo's channel. His domestic noticing is functional (he later offers glassine because the tote "will pick up everything in there"); a picturesque-pastry simile is a workshop's noticing. Blocking.
- **"Cap on the tube" (#29) and "one chair short" (#35):** both pass as premise-specific dramatic work. The tube-cap line is the chapter's recognition pivot and is paid off, not quoted into the void — June's l.135 correction makes it literal. The closing clause is the third repetition-with-variation of the relapse (spree → wing nut → chair) and keeps the arc honest; strongest counter-candidate considered was its neat closing syntax, which survives because the chair shortage is planted at l.103 and the clause is an action, not a moral.
- **Oversweetening:** checked the rescue spree (l.73), the capped pen, the baguette, and the ending. The spree stays on the right side because it ends in public correction ("You are standing in her light") and becomes the indictment June paints; the sharp beats stay sharp ("and that was the trouble with it"; "Then you posed all evening"; "It did not say, what can you do correctly"). The two genuine sweeteners are #6 and #7, ordered out below. The paper plate (#20) is the chapter's cuteness ceiling — nothing should be added above it.

DISTRIBUTION:
- Density: high and licensed — Week 4 is the hands motif's sanctioned showcase and a full-ensemble class chapter.
- Mechanism variety: deadpan family ~11 of 35, against physical comedy, callbacks, dramatic irony, literalism, zeugma, escalation, implication. Varied; not MONOTONOUS at chapter level.
- Source: character 29, situation 5, narrator-overlay 1 (#7). Healthy.
- **Tracker breach (verdict-level):** Odile quotable-grade lines number 8 in inventory (#4, 9, 10, 11, 21, 23, 26, 32) plus the uninventoried aphorism "Rest is not a love" (l.29) = 9, against the Ch07 tracker order that the next class chapter "should run nearer 3." She has the best lines; she does not have the fewest. This is the documented over-recurrence and requires a revision order.
- Cringe: none; every item sits inside the comp register (O'Leary warmth, Henry at 60%, Morisaki smallness).

CHAPTER VERDICT: **CLEAR** — comedy lands in register: 32 of 35 items funniness-2, overwhelmingly character/situation-sourced, non-portable, mechanisms varied. Strongest surviving item: «"It's very him," Mara said, and meant it kindly, and that was the trouble with it.» (l.93) — the comedy carrying the chapter's exact pain. Weakest surviving item: «Calling it early would have misunderstood the job.» (l.9) — the post-ban repair left a stiff first clause that the second sentence has to rescue. CLEAR does not waive the four findings below.

REVISION ORDERS:
1. **#1 (l.7), workshopped tail + funniness 1.** Keep "a room with eight easels and one Odile"; replace "faster than the city could replace them" with Theo's actual supply chain, which the sentence already names — e.g., faster than the bin at the Canal hardware restocked them — or end the sentence at the theory and let "four spares, in the pocket with his keys" carry the laugh. The failure is a narrator-scale punchline stapled to character logic.
2. **#6 (l.19), portable + workshopped.** Replace "a pen Priya appeared to have opinions about" — stock idiom — with the concrete opinion, sourced to Priya's condition-management voice (the ink ghosts through newsprint; it is her pen; he loses one a week). The l.103 payoff needs a material setup, not a vibe.
3. **#7 (l.19), portable + narrator-overlay + funniness 1.** Cut the baguette simile, or re-source the noticing into Theo's protective logistics: the roll riding loose in the tote, about to pick up everything in there — which would also seed his glassine offer at l.121 instead of decorating June's entrance. The chapter wants her guarded here, not adorable.
4. **Verdict-level: Odile quotability at 9 against a tracker target near 3–5.** Hold the four that do irreplaceable work: "It is always loose. It is how I learn things about people." (reread plant), "Sit in it" (the chapter's order), "Then you posed all evening" (the verdict), "Do not improve anything" (structural for the ending's disobedience). Demote toward plain speech: "The painted become painters" → "Switch."; trim "Photographs are cheating. Mime is worse." toward plain rule language; consider letting "That is the entire comment" become the act itself — she says the one line and moves on, and the silence performs the anticlimax; shed "Rest is not a love" from the speech, since the card epigraph already owns the love/good-for distinction. "I am sorry for both of you" may stay if the count lands at five or fewer after the demotions. Update `output/tics.md` with the final count on commit.
