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# Comedy Doctor — Chapter 15: Keys Elsewhere

Stance: skeptical pass against this book's committed register (warm, precise, lightly comic; O'Leary warmth, Emily Henry at ~60% banter, Morisaki quiet) and this chapter's specific constraint: the feeling is adult temptation, and no joke may make the offer unserious or turn Nia/Asha into devices. Tracker state consulted: Ch14 spent families (paired echoes, prepared Theo persuasion, public-document rationalization), Ch13 order that logistics-joke density not be inherited as default texture, Ch08 fiscal-register and object-personification caps, Ch05 measured-duration cap, Ch01 straightening cap-watch.

`INVENTORY:`

1 — "The tote strap quit on the third-floor landing… popping with a sound like a knuckle… chin clamped on the top spine to keep the stack from fanning" (¶1) — mechanism: physical-procedural deadpan — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the nine-catalog loan is Ch14's armed object) — dramatic work: offer pressure enters as practical failure, exactly as the card orders; the loan becomes literal weight — workshopped: no
2 — "This took four minutes to establish and involved every flat surface she owned" + the eight-inch/ten-and-a-half/thirty-by-forty survey (¶2) — mechanism: specificity overload / measured futility — source: character (June's optical-exact dial, card-sanctioned) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the apartment cannot hold the loan; neither can the life, unstated — workshopped: no. Checked against the Ch05 measured-duration cap ("length of time it takes to lose an argument"): different syntax, ten chapters later, single instance — within tolerance, do not add a second duration-verdict in Ch16
3 — "In the ledger, they were a deposit against her own behavior." (¶2) — mechanism: reframe/wit caption — source: **narrator-overlay** — funniness: **1** — portable: no — dramatic work: NONE that the prior sentence ("the returned column blank") hasn't already done — workshopped: **yes** (a caption re-explaining an object that just carried the beat; also re-imports the Ch08 fiscal/debt narration register the tracker says must not become default narration). **BLOCKING**
4 — slipped volume "on the bottom… about weight distribution," then the stack turned "ninety degrees so it faced the wall" (¶3) — mechanism: transparent rationalization — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (paper-slipped catalog, Ch17 thread protected) — dramatic work: dramatizes avoidance and keeps S-CATALOG-01 unopened without coyness — workshopped: no
5 — call station: "Pen that worked, established by scribble"; Asha's scrap "set to the left like a reference swatch" (¶4) — mechanism: deadpan over-procedure — source: character (her tension tell: three useful smaller things around one avoided object) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (swatch is painter vocabulary; the station is the card's required beat) — dramatic work: preparation-as-fear made visible — workshopped: no
6 — jacket cuff "not because she was hiding it but because that was how the jacket landed, and if she moved it now she'd be admitting she'd noticed" (¶4) — mechanism: denial logic-knot — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (umber mark thread) — dramatic work: desire tell maintained without naming — workshopped: no ("not X but Y" shape examined; here the bad faith is itself the content)
7 — "It had been unopened for twenty-six hours." (¶5) — mechanism: deadpan duration — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps the jar/mark standoff live — workshopped: no
8 — "*what happens if no*. Then she put one heavy line through the last one." (¶5) — mechanism: self-censorship made visible — source: character — funniness: 2 (dark-dry, lands) — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter's real question struck out, paid at the close — workshopped: no
9 — "both of which were real, neither of which had taken until eight-forty" (¶6) — mechanism: deadpan self-indictment via parallel clause — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: two days of stalling quantified — workshopped: no (symmetry examined; it's accounting syntax in an accounting mind, and she's the defendant)
10 — "I had a thing with panels." / "For two days." / "They were complicated panels." (call open) — mechanism: escalating bad excuse — source: character + situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no (panels are Ch14's pickup) — dramatic work: guilt visible as deflection; Nia's candor set immediately — workshopped: no
11 — "Marco's been opening it with a screwdriver." + "the other names on my list" — mechanism: situation comedy aimed at the competent reader June is — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Vandercook gripper) — dramatic work: baits the press-trap; Nia's respect shown materially, not flattery — workshopped: no
12 — "Either way it's an afternoon." June heard herself and stopped. "Hypothetically." — mechanism: self-betrayal caught live — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter's revelation (the press pulls harder than the wall) demonstrated before it's named — workshopped: no
13 — "Pay's not glamorous. That's one of its virtues." — mechanism: paradox epigram — source: character (Nia's registered anchor line, card-verbatim) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (card-licensed signature; Dialogue Doctor round 2 already flattened her surplus zingers to this density) — dramatic work: defines Nia's anti-romantic offer ethics — workshopped: no
14 — "I can do math," June agreed. + "She had already done it in the margin anyway" — mechanism: dry deflection undercut by narration — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the numbers landing proves the temptation real — workshopped: no
15 — "Noon. Eat lunch after." — mechanism: deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: refuses the doom-clock; deadline kept adult-sized, per the card — workshopped: no. Examined for Odile register bleed ("Eat. Then decide to be tragic"): cleared — Nia's imperative is deadline pragmatism, not feeding-as-care, but no second curt food-imperative should go to a non-Odile mouth this act
16 — "You in or do I give your slot to Dario" / "Don't give it to Dario. He overtightens everything." / "He does. So that's a yes?" / "That's a hold." — mechanism: deflection-via-shop-judgment, immediately called — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (installer world, Kessler load-in) — dramatic work: June keeps the New York path warm without committing; Asha refuses the dodge, which is her whole card — workshopped: no. Sitcom-cadence check: every message carries information; no topper chain
17 — "you'd love it, it's terrible." + June's "send pics of the terrible room" — mechanism: paradox shorthand + adoption — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no, narrowly — the capper alone could port, but it's pinned by $340/no-heat-after-10 and by June adopting the epithet, which converts it into peer idiolect — dramatic work: Asha knows June's taste for unglamorous rooms; NY scaffolding confirmed live — workshopped: no
18 — Asha would have "the gripper bar apologizing by Friday and a wet canvas in the back room by the Friday after" (¶ Asha memory) — mechanism: hyperbole — source: character (June's envious-accurate read) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: arms the Ch22 referral and the self-comparison that wounds — workshopped: no. Personification adjacency noted; single instance, not the Ch08 secret-object family
19 — "June, who had sworn off looking at it, looked at it." + "not surprised. That was the trouble with it. Surprised she could have explained." (flyer) — mechanism: self-betrayal + reversal — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (forty copies, 80lb matte) — dramatic work: kiss-thread pressure held without Theo on page — workshopped: examined — "Surprised she could have explained" is the chapter's most composed syntax, but the inversion *is* the perceived datum (surprise would acquit her), so it survives
20 — "one occupied by a coat that I ruled counts" / "The coat counts. Coats are people who left their position marked." / "That's going in the label notes." — mechanism: mock-adjudication in a shared project idiolect — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (After Class chair-count protocol from Ch14) — dramatic work: the most work in the chapter — romance through the joint piece, Theo kept off the offer, and the coat-as-marked-position silently mirrors June's own leaving question without a wink — workshopped: no. "ruled" is one clerical token against the spent Ch07/Ch08 register; tolerated at one, add none
21 — "she needed a task with a beginning and an end… She handled it. She washed the two dishes." — mechanism: deflation of scale — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: handler identity enacted at its true size — workshopped: no
22 — "facing them at the wall had been melodramatic and the slip was just paper" — mechanism: repetition-with-variation reversing item 4 — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: self-correction that only half-works (she still doesn't open it) — workshopped: no
23 — jar set on the receipt "so it couldn't slide off, fold shut, or otherwise excuse itself" — mechanism: triadic swerve, object personification as self-accusation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: closing image rigs the room against her own evasion; pays item 8 — workshopped: examined — the three-part cadence is punchline-shaped, but the swerve term is the chapter's argument made physical and self-aimed, not quotation-bait. Cleared; do not let object-self-excuse personification recur in Ch16

**Distribution checks.**
- *Density:* ~23 items across a solo reflective chapter — at register for the book's lightly-comic floor, and correctly distributed: comedy clusters on June's avoidance machinery and the text threads, and thins to zero through Nia's hard paragraphs (renewal odds, the December 4 terms). The offer itself is never the butt of a single joke. The temptation stays serious.
- *Mechanism variety:* deadpan precision/measurement ×6, transparent rationalization/self-betrayal ×5, deflation ×3, paradox ×2, plus escalation, mock-adjudication, hyperbole, repetition-with-variation, specificity overload. Measurement-deadpan is the modal mechanism but is the card's explicit prose dial ("June economic specificity"); below MONOTONOUS threshold. Ch16 should not inherit duration-counting ("twenty-six hours," "four minutes," "fifteen days") as a default move.
- *Sweetness:* the struck-through *what happens if no*, "a woman at the press who would not turn around," and "It wasn't hers to spend yet" are all left unjoked. Not OVERSWEETENED.
- *Cringe:* none; no sitcom winks at the target reader.
- *Device check:* Nia carries the chapter's plainest speech and exactly two licensed epigrams (13, 15) — not a device. Asha's thread refuses June's dodge — not a device.
- *Ch14 inheritance:* no paired echo confirmations, no public-document family, no prepared Theo persuasion speech, no *Winter Kitchen*. Logistics comedy not inherited as texture; the coat-count is plot-required After Class work, two messages, closed.
- *Running gags vs tracker:* straightening/squaring ×2 (stack, squared-off letters) — functional, within the card's tension tell. Pen-that-worked: new 3-beat in-chapter gag (setup → reuse → "in case the rest of the answer came from the same pen"), closed; do not carry forward. "The terrible room": new, 2 beats; one varied callback maximum (Ch22 is the natural slot), then retire. No "alleged," no "I'm cargo," no retired sample-line families reused.

**Verdict: CLEAR** — majority funniness-2, overwhelmingly character/situation-sourced (22 of 23; one overlay item), non-portable, mechanisms varied. Strongest item: #20, the coat-count exchange ("Coats are people who left their position marked") — character-built, thread-bearing, and doing covert thematic work. Weakest surviving item: #17 ("you'd love it, it's terrible"), whose capper shape is generic until the rent specifics and June's adoption pin it.

`REVISION ORDERS:`

1. **Item 3 (blocking — funniness 1, narrator-overlay, workshopped):** "In the ledger, they were a deposit against her own behavior." Cut the sentence. The preceding fact — "signed out under her name in Theo's ledger, the returned column blank" — already carries the tether, and the caption is portable narrator wit re-explaining a finished object while re-importing the Ch08 fiscal-narration register the tracker bars from default narration. If the beat needs a replacement, use a June action from this book's inventory instead of a figure: she checks which volume the slip is in by feel through the stack and stops herself — perception, not caption. Do not soften the line into a politer version of the same banking metaphor; deletion is the fix.

CLEAR
