# Chapter 21 Counter-Strip Audit

Header: pre/post word counts, delta %, sample size, applicable author-direction notes.

- pre-repair snapshot: `revision_snapshots/chapter_21/chapter_21.0005.20260704T043428Z.before_claude_tic_round1_repairs.md` — 3,069 words.
- post-repair chapter: `output/chapters/chapter_21.md` — 2,473 words.
- delta: -596 words (-19.4%).
- sample size: multi-round changed/cut spans from Claude-tic, dialogue, comedy, positive-prose, narrator-publicist, plain-translation, thought-development, and characters-wrong repairs.
- applicable author-direction notes: no reduced-protection notes beyond the chapter card's anti-portrait-as-apology and no thesis-caption instructions.

- `JUSTIFIED — cut: "got the joke at his own expense in full" — evidence: Claude-tic and Narrator-Publicist audits flagged narrator-as-philosopher/theme-explanation risk; replacement keeps the object evidence: "a small clean rectangle of nothing that the hands in the foreground were too busy to walk toward."`

- `JUSTIFIED — cut: "It was, he thought, the only honest object he had produced in two months." — evidence: Claude-tic audit flagged default-elegant abstraction and thesis captions in the portrait section; replacement uses literal door/cheek state.`

- `JUSTIFIED — cut: "That was the whole design, and it had taken him thirty-nine years to arrive at a design that simple." — evidence: Performance/Plain-Translation risk: pull-quote-shaped summation after the consent beat; replacement "He did not put it in a crate" preserves the non-delivery action.`

- `JUSTIFIED — cut: "That mattered to him for no reason he could defend." — evidence: Claude-tic list explicitly names "mattered" as a recurring sentence-mood verb; replacement makes the hand/screen action physical.`

- `JUSTIFIED — cut: "pre-carpeting the floor so that whichever direction she stepped, his footprint would already be under hers" — evidence: Positive Prose risk around figurative-over-literal drift; replacement "setting out a refusal for her before she had chosen one" keeps the consent logic plainer.`

- `JUSTIFIED — cut: "like standing in a room he had not arranged" — evidence: Claude-tic audit flagged elegant abstractions; replacement "He wanted to move something and had nothing in reach worth moving" stays in Theo's object/motion register.`

- `JUSTIFIED — cut: June's same-chapter reply and Theo's "Okay" — evidence: Characters-Wrong found the old ending too competent/clean and the compression map gives Ch22 the private reply/diner conversation. Replacement "The phone stayed dark" keeps the ask live without awarding repair.`

Chapter verdict: `NONE OVER-CUT`.

Mis-fire log entries: none.
