Audit written to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_14.comedy_doctor.md`. Full text follows.

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# Comedy Doctor — Chapter 14: Catalogs

id: comedy_doctor | owner: claude | tier: risk | round 1
Chapter file: `output/chapters/chapter_14.md`
Register tested: warm, precise, lightly comic; Emily Henry at ~60% banter density; character/situation-sourced wit inside ordinary work. Target reader: adult romance reader who wants romantic pressure carried by work and logistics, not sitcom banter or a stream of quotable one-liners. Chapter brief: dread inside competence — comedy must release awkwardness without blunting the catalog danger.

`INVENTORY:`

1 — "moved the clipboard to the far end of the table so that the next mistake would at least require a walk" (l.3) — mechanism: deadpan error-quarantine (logistics applied to his own distraction) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (pickup sheet, THURSDAY PICKUP header in his own handwriting, triple November 17) — dramatic work: opens the chapter's engine — the kiss entering through failed competence, per the packet's required shape — workshopped: no

2 — "The chicken-thigh ghost was still there if you knew where it lived, eighty-nine cents of it" (l.5) — mechanism: specificity callback (Ch13 panel inventory) — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no (June's airshaft panel) — dramatic work: shows Theo's memorized intimacy with her work without naming it — workshopped: no

3 — torn index card: nine size options cut to two, "the original numerals 8 and 9 scribbled out beside them" (l.9) — mechanism: overpreparation deflation rendered as physical artifact, not as a joke he tells — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (rack fit, wall math, the 11:04 promise) — dramatic work: Theo editing his own care device; packet-mandated beat ("made the panel-size list too useful, then cut it down") — workshopped: no

4 — "She had texted back a thumbs-up at 11:05. He stopped interpreting it after midnight." (l.9) — mechanism: deadpan duration-of-overthinking — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no, narrowly — counter-candidate I weighed hardest for portability: an over-read thumbs-up is stock contemporary-romance material, but the 11:04/11:05 logging and "as promised" are Theo's ledger temperament; the sentence would lose its clock in another book — dramatic work: post-kiss uncertainty delivered without kiss replay — workshopped: no

5 — group thread cluster: Ben "Forty means cardstock. What weight? I am not saying 'normal' to the Queens printer on my lunch break."; Mara "Don't crop them apart this time, P."; Priya "Cropping nothing. This sells the class." (l.11) — mechanism: voice-differentiated micro-logistics + repetition-with-variation (Ch13's crop-into-separate-boxes) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the flyer, the class, the Ch13 crop history) — dramatic work: public proof arrives as ordinary errand traffic, which the packet wants ("the group thread can treat it as ordinary, which makes it worse") — workshopped: no — tracker check: Ben tics demand new shape after Ch05 "not a personality" (retired, Ch11) and Ch06 transit caps; cardstock-weight anxiety is a new domain and new syntax, not a reuse — passes

6 — "He made himself look at it standing up, as if it were a delivery manifest." ... "that was the problem with it as evidence: it was good" (l.13) — mechanism: register collision (romantic proof handled as freight) + paradox — source: character/situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the chapter's trap, the cover being too true — workshopped: no — checked against Ch13's repaired clerical-narration family: "delivery manifest" is Theo's literal job material (shipping/receiving), not a legal/clerical coinage; distinct family, but log it so freight figures don't become the next clerical register

7 — umber cuff: "I'm keeping it." / "It's umber." / "It's a decent brown. Raw umber holds its value." ... "For some other emergency." (l.27–31) — mechanism: deflection-as-flirtation via craft nouns — source: character (June's licensed lexicon: decent, value; compresses when exposed) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the mark is the dropped kiss-brush from Ch13) — dramatic work: she keeps the kiss's physical evidence and says so sideways while taking the solvent anyway — the chapter's best both-things-true beat — workshopped: no

8 — "the alternative conversation had no agenda, no end time, and no chairs" (l.33) — mechanism: register collision, rule of three with concrete kicker — source: character (Theo can only conceive of The Talk as an unrunnable meeting) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — the chairs are literal scene furniture and pay off twice (stacked in fours l.63, six p.m./nine forty chairs l.149) — dramatic work: explains the avoidance without a "what are we" scene — workshopped: no, but the symmetry is the closest this chapter comes; the chair payoffs are what save it from quotation-bait. Feed the three-part-cadence watch in the tic tally.

9 — "Don't tell your panel I said the tape's carrying it." / "The tape knows." (l.43–45) — mechanism: shared mock-personification, two-word deadpan capper — source: character (her precise-praise care move; his deadpan) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (DECORATOR'S WHITE. FLAT. is the book's own object, praised in Ch13) — dramatic work: proves the private channel survived the kiss; also feeds "the tape had become something he noticed too quickly" (l.7) — workshopped: no; exchange is two turns and ends in her single laugh, not a volley — tracker check: this is dialogue-play both characters are in on, NOT the Ch08 secret-object-personification narration family (folder/hidden panel, capped at zero until rupture); log separately so that count does not silently grow

10 — "Show me the dead seven sometime." (l.57) — mechanism: compression callback — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the dead seven are item 3's torn card) — dramatic work: June names his suppressed over-helpfulness with affection instead of exposure; warmth-floor compliant (tease repaired in the same line by genuine interest) — workshopped: no

11 — "Twelve-by-sixteen reads like a room you actually left at nine forty... Nobody gets to sprawl." / "You're right about the sprawl." (l.59–61) — mechanism: craft-argument deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (nine forty is the joint piece's own clock) — dramatic work: arc movement — Theo arrives with an opinion instead of a menu — workshopped: no — tracker check: the June-caps-Theo-optionality volley (2/2 across Ch12/Ch13, ordered to mutate or rest) is NOT reused: Theo caps his own optionality before June speaks; she only confirms. Mutation requirement satisfied; shown because this was the likeliest repeat.

12 — "the label's going to be a refusal with my name under it" (l.69) — mechanism: self-aimed reframe (her refusal made into a wall object) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Odile wrote "The room after class" because June refused, Ch13) — dramatic work: motivates the entire catalog request, i.e., the trap — workshopped: no

13 — Odile cluster: "Labels are not apologies." / "What do I write, you are about to ask. Fewer words than you are planning." / "All of them." / narration: "and that was the entire visit." (l.71–83) — mechanism: preemption + imperative economy + narration deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — "Fewer words than you are planning" alone could travel; welded to the preemption ("you are about to ask") and to her having carried the conversation in with the drop cloths, it is hers — dramatic work: Odile plant #5 disguised as pedagogy; she moves the shelf rather than explaining, per card — workshopped: no — quotability count: two aphorism-grade lines, under the post-Ch03 ceiling; oracle check: preemption is logistics-speed, not mysticism — she overheard the label talk on entry (l.73)

14 — "There was nothing in a public document that wasn't public." (l.91) — mechanism: tautological self-justification — source: character — funniness: 2 (dark) — portable: no in context — dramatic work: the rationalization made visible as comedy; pairs with "He told himself the showcase had made Odile generous, and knew it was the wrong explanation even as he used it" (l.103) — workshopped: no

15 — "She loans nothing. There's a sign about it in her head." (l.99) — mechanism: incongruity (institutional signage relocated to psyche) — source: character (Theo administers her physical plant; signs are his medium) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: flags the loan as unprecedented — arms reader dread while June only says "Huh" — workshopped: no

16 — *Untitled (Stove)* exchange: "She let someone get away with *Untitled*." / "The parenthesis was probably Odile's condition." / "*Untitled (Stove)* is a title wearing a fake mustache." / "The checklist in back still files it under Stove." (l.107–113) — mechanism: incongruity metaphor + deadpan archival literalism — source: character on both sides — funniness: 2 — portable: no — the fake-mustache template would travel naked, but the bit's engine is the four-turn structure: June jokes about a label pretending not to be a label while wearing one herself, and Theo answers with back-matter fluency he should not be displaying — dramatic work: double — rhymes with their own fake category, and exhibits exactly the catalog intimacy that will expose him — workshopped: no — dialogue-diagnosis check (zero tolerance): June rates a 1994 printed title under professional study of label language, the scene's sanctioned subject; no character's speech or delivery is captioned anywhere in the chapter — checked all dialogue, nearest candidate is "That's roughly what I was saying" (l.75), which is position-claiming, not phrasing-rating — passes

17 — "*Winter Kitchen.* It was on a postcard for a while." (l.121) — mechanism: deflationary understatement of fame — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Theo flattening his own intimacy with the painting; concealment audible to the rereader only — workshopped: no — motif check: single invocation, catalog-object only, 2/5 sanctioned by card, no nostalgia lingering (June "opened it straight to the back matter," and his gratitude at l.123 converts the moment to dread) — compliant

18 — "One had a paper slip standing out of it like a tongue" (l.87) — mechanism: zoomorphic simile — source: narrator-overlay (no character generates it; it is paint applied to the object, and Theo's professional eye elsewhere reads objects by condition and function, not by anatomy) — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (a slip like a tongue fits any book containing books) — dramatic work: NONE the simile contributes; the slip's real work — "somebody's marker for a page nobody remembered," and Theo easing it flush at l.135 — survives without it — workshopped: no — **BLOCKING** (funniness-1, portable, overlay)

19 — "You're bagging them like produce." / "I'm bagging them like nine pounds of someone's career." (l.139–141) — mechanism: simile correction / reframing escalation — source: character (her dry observation; his correction in weight-and-handling idiom, set up by the dropped-spine risk calculus at l.135) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the heaviest line in the chapter — care, reverence for Odile, and unwitting irony, since "someone's career" contains his own family — the transfer sharpened, not cushioned — workshopped: no; the echoed syntax is retort, the natural speech pattern of correction, and the line carries plot weight no quotation-bait line carries

20 — "Six p.m. chairs or nine forty chairs?" / "Both. I'll count both before Tuesday." (l.149–151) — mechanism: shared-code callback (the joint piece's two clocks become chair inventory) — source: character/situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the unsolved joint piece kept alive as flirtation inside logistics; closes the chairs thread from item 8 — workshopped: no

21 — closing triple measurement: "got sixteen inches, got sixteen inches again, and measured a third time anyway" (l.157) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation, structural rhyme with the opening triple November 17 — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: competence as compulsion; the comedy curdles into dread on the way out, which is the chapter's assignment — workshopped: no

`DISTRIBUTION CHECKS:`

- **Density:** 21 items across ~2,900 words, front-loaded around the pickup/planning half and deliberately thinned through the stockroom-to-handoff stretch (l.85–105 runs nearly joke-free: rationalization, the shelf found without counting, the wrong explanation used knowingly). That thinning is named and correct — the catalog danger is never played for laughs. Meets "lightly comic" without quip-stream.
- **Mechanism variety:** deadpan understatement (1, 4, 13, 17), callback/repetition-with-variation (2, 5, 10, 20, 21), register collision (6, 8), deflection-flirtation (7), preemption (13), archival literalism (16), incongruity metaphor (15, 16), tautological self-justification (14), artifact-borne deflation (3), simile correction (19). Not MONOTONOUS.
- **Source split:** character 17, situation 3, narrator-overlay 1 (item 18). The overlay item is the chapter's only one and is blocked below.
- **Sweetness:** checked every beat the book wants sharp. First post-kiss exchange is "Dry?" / "Since yesterday afternoon." — plain, no post-kiss zinger, per packet prohibition. The handoff lands on "the weight was hers, all of it, and his hands were empty" (l.143) and the failed inventory (l.155) — both unsweetened. Item 19 sharpens the transfer rather than softening it. Not OVERSWEETENED.
- **Cringe:** no sitcom rhythm (longest comic volley is four short turns, each carrying information); no banter-for-banter; nothing misjudges the adult target reader. Not CRINGE.
- **Ch13 spent-texture check (focused):** Ch13 spent logistics-joke density as chapter spine. Every surviving Ch14 logistics joke shows a new mechanism or new pressure: item 1 (error quarantine — the kiss breaking the competence, not the competence performing), item 3 (the joke is the torn artifact of self-editing, not a list volley), item 8 (meeting-frame for a feelings talk, with literal chair payoffs), item 20 (the joint piece's own clocks as code), item 6 (freight-handling as coping). Panel-size facts appear once and are resolved by Theo committing — arc movement, not refrain. Wet work / top rack never recur as comedy. Passes.

`REVISION ORDERS:`

1. **(Item 18, l.87 — funniness-1, portable, narrator-overlay)** Cut "like a tongue." The sentence should read: "One had a paper slip standing out of it, somebody's marker for a page nobody remembered." The slip keeps all of its dramatic function (it returns at l.135 when Theo eases it flush for transit); the simile is the chapter's only wit no character generates and the only line that could move to another book unchanged. Do not replace it with a different simile — the unornamented slip is more ominous.

`NOTES` (out of comedy jurisdiction — route to the named audits, not optional):

- l.85 "keep the rest where it was" sits inside the packet's banned refusal-to-conclude family ("stayed where it was" equivalents, refused for Ch14). The colon-specification that follows ("in the hand that found the shelf without counting...") arguably converts it from a closure-dodge to a concrete location, but Plain Translation should rule on it; the phrase shape is the banned one.
- l.89 "The hallway outside Odile's office clung to them" — place-as-agent, borderline against the room-personification family Ch13 repaired to zero. Figuration should rule.
- Tic tally: log the three-part comic cadence (item 8) under ruleset-three-part-cadence; log item 9 as dialogue object-play distinct from the Ch08 secret-object narration family; log item 6's freight figure so manifest/shipping language does not harden into Ch15's clerical register.

`CHAPTER VERDICT:`

**CLEAR** — comedy lands in this book's register: 20 of 21 items funniness-2, all but one character/situation-sourced, mechanisms varied, and the comic items are doing plot and dread work rather than decorating. Strongest item: #7 — "It's a decent brown. Raw umber holds its value." ... "For some other emergency." — the kiss kept as pigment, in June's exact lexicon, with the solvent accepted anyway. Weakest surviving item: #2 — "eighty-nine cents of it" — smile-shaped and wholly dependent on the reader's Ch13 memory, but it earns its place as memory-custody evidence rather than a joke trying to land cold.

One blocking finding stands (revision order 1, the l.87 tongue simile); the chapter is committable as soon as that single cut is made.

CLEAR
