The audit is written to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_14.comedy_doctor.md`. Full text:

# Comedy Doctor — Chapter 14 ("Catalogs")

Stance: skeptical professional edit. Register tested: warm, precise, lightly comic; character/situation-sourced; target reader wants adult romantic pressure with wit inside ordinary work (reading guide §2: Emily Henry at ~60% banter density, characters allowed to answer sincerely; no sitcom rhythm, no quip stream). Chapter function tested against: dread inside competence — comedy may release awkwardness but must not blunt 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" (line 3) — mechanism: self-administered logistics penance, deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (pickup sheet, the November 17/19 error is the kiss breaking his competence) — dramatic work: establishes dread through failed competence on page one, exactly the chapter's engine — workshopped: no

2 — "eighty-nine cents of it, faint as a watermark" (line 5) — mechanism: specificity callback, repetition-with-variation on the Ch13 chicken-thigh ghost — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: memory custody kept alive without re-summarizing Ch13 — workshopped: no

3 — "the tape had become something he noticed too quickly" (line 7) — mechanism: deadpan understatement of displaced desire — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (DECORATOR'S WHITE. FLAT. is Ch13 inventory) — dramatic work: desire tracked through a work object, not named — workshopped: no

4 — "He stopped interpreting it after midnight." (line 9, with the nine-option card torn in half) — mechanism: escalation (nine options, rack fit, wall math) deflated by self-discipline deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the 11:04/11:05 texts and rack math pin it) — dramatic work: post-kiss overthinking; sets up the arrive-with-an-opinion beat — workshopped: no

5 — "What weight cardstock. Don't say 'normal.'" (line 11) — mechanism: anticipatory correction, precision tic — source: character (Ben) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the thread treating the photo as a production problem IS the threat ("Nobody in the thread asked whether it had been real"); new domain (print specs), not the retired transit/contingency shape — workshopped: no

6 — "an umber casualty on the floorboards" (line 13) — mechanism: mock-heroic elevation — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (the move, not the pigment) — dramatic work: NONE that the literal dropped-brush fact doesn't already do — workshopped: leaning yes — **BLOCKING**

7 — "his own face doing a thing he had not signed off on" (line 13) — mechanism: clerical register collision — source: character-idiom, but a spent family — funniness: 1 (predictable for this reader: Ch07 ran legal-clerical to cap ~10–11; Ch13 repaired the family to zero) — portable: no — dramatic work: his face escaping his management — workshopped: no — **BLOCKING** (spent-texture inheritance)

8 — "where it sat radiating ordinariness" (line 15) — mechanism: paradox/object-personification quip — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (any contemporary novel with a phone) — dramatic work: duplicates what "That was the point of the thread" already does better one line up — workshopped: yes — **BLOCKING**

9 — "It's a decent brown. Raw umber holds its value." / "For some other emergency." (lines 27–31) — mechanism: deadpan appraisal plus pigment value/market value pun — source: character ("decent," "value" are June's card words) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June keeps the kiss's physical evidence while refusing the kiss conversation; inverts Ch13's solvent logistics (he offers removal, she declines) instead of repeating them — workshopped: no

10 — "the alternative conversation had no agenda, no end time, and no chairs" (line 33) — mechanism: register collision (meeting logistics on intimacy), concrete deflation on "chairs" — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (chairs feed the After Class subject and the closing exchange) — dramatic work: names avoidance-as-logistics, the chapter engine — workshopped: no (triplet syntax checked; the chair payoff at lines 149–151 earns it)

11 — "Don't tell your panel I said the tape's carrying it." / "The tape knows." (lines 43–45) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation on Tuesday's praise plus deadpan object-attribution — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: lets them re-touch the kiss-adjacent Tuesday without touching the kiss; releases awkwardness while keeping the omission visible (checked against Ch08's personification cap: that cap governs secret-object narration, not a two-word dialogue deadpan) — workshopped: no

12 — "Show me the dead seven sometime." (line 57) — mechanism: deadpan macabre compression — source: character (June) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the torn card is on the table) — dramatic work: affection for his overpreparation, future-tense intimacy — workshopped: no

13 — "an opinion instead of a menu" + "Nobody gets to sprawl." (line 59) — mechanism: self-deflation, then canvas anthropomorphism — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (twelve-by-sixteen, "a room you actually left at nine forty") — dramatic work: Theo commits to a judgment, arc movement; the composed feel is diegetically defused — he rehearsed it Wednesday at midnight — workshopped: no

14 — "She was staying past the minimum; he noted it and declined to interpret." (line 65) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation on item 4's interpretation ban — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: desire management made visible without naming desire — workshopped: no

15 — "the label's going to be a refusal with my name under it" (line 69) — mechanism: self-aimed precision — source: character (June) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Ch13's title refusal) — dramatic work: motivates the catalog request — i.e., the joke arms the trap — workshopped: no

16 — "Labels are not apologies." (line 71, Odile's delayed-attribution entrance) — mechanism: definitional correction, insult-as-diagnosis — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no in context; sanctioned verbatim by the chapter packet ("She can say that labels are not apologies"), which supersedes the Ch07 apology-noun retirement; checked and cleared on that citation — dramatic work: redirects June from apology to chosen fact; reread-pointed — workshopped: no

17 — "Then you were roughly right." (line 77) — mechanism: withheld-credit precision echo — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Odile grants partial credit in exactly her economy — workshopped: no

18 — "with the expression of a woman taking attendance" (line 77) — mechanism: recognitional simile — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 1 — portable: yes — dramatic work: Odile's surveillance, already carried by her looking at "the two of them, at the small ground, at the half-card" — workshopped: no — **BLOCKING** (recognitional-simile family: Ch13 logged 1/1 cap, "zero in Ch14"; syntax variant does not reset the cap)

19 — "What do I write, you are about to ask. Fewer words than you are planning." (line 77) — mechanism: preemption plus insult-as-diagnosis — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (pivots directly into "Stockroom. Third shelf, left side.") — dramatic work: Odile plant #5 conducted through a writing joke; she arranges, never explains — workshopped: no

20 — "and that was the entire visit." (line 83) — mechanism: understatement — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: borderline-no — dramatic work: marks the anomaly of Odile arranging and leaving; reread material — workshopped: no

21 — "a man who knew another woman's storage by feel" (line 85) — mechanism: register collision (affair idiom applied to shelving) — source: character/situation — funniness: 2 (dark, correctly so) — portable: no — dramatic work: the secret made spatial; dread inside competence at full strength — workshopped: no

22 — "an essay each by whichever critic owed her dinner that year" (line 91) — mechanism: cynical specificity, deflation — source: character knowledge (he runs the archive) — funniness: 2 — portable: **YES** — would survive unchanged in any gallery novel; the one quip in the rationalization run that isn't built from this book — dramatic work: part of the public-document rationalization — workshopped: no — **BLOCKING**

23 — "because running math was what he did instead of feeling things in real time" (line 91) — mechanism: trait epigram, self-diagnosis — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 1 — portable: yes — dramatic work: NONE; the math that follows shows it — workshopped: yes — **BLOCKING** (voice card: Theo never produces polished aphorisms about his own care; packet: "Theo must not explain his care device")

24 — "knew it was the wrong explanation even as he filed it" (line 103) — mechanism: clerical register collision — source: character-idiom, spent family — funniness: 1 — portable: no — dramatic work: self-deception named — workshopped: no — **BLOCKING** (same family as item 7)

25 — "like a woman learning a language off a menu" (line 105) — mechanism: recognitional simile — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 1 — portable: yes — dramatic work: June's hunger for label language, already shown by her skipping the essays dead-stop — workshopped: no — **BLOCKING** (second instance of the capped family in one chapter)

26 — "*Untitled (Stove)* is a title wearing a fake mustache." / "The parenthesis was probably Odile's condition." / "The checklist in back still files it under Stove." (lines 107–113) — mechanism: visual-disguise metaphor answered twice by archival literalism — source: character (June's visual idiom; Theo's filing facts) — funniness: 2 — portable: the mustache line alone would port; the exchange pins it — Odile's conditions, and records that file the truth under the disguise, aimed straight at the acknowledgment mechanism without winking — dramatic work: the book's thesis in miniature (a disguise the paperwork sees through); Theo declining to top the joke keeps it off sitcom rhythm — workshopped: no, on that evidence: the volley ends on a fact, not a topper

27 — "It was on a postcard for a while." (line 121) — mechanism: deflation of the famous object — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: sanctioned *Winter Kitchen* invocation 2/5 delivered without nostalgia; June's two-second respect keeps the ceremony short, per card — workshopped: no

28 — "he was incapable of letting a preventable thing go unprevented" (line 135) — mechanism: mirrored-tautology epigram — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 1 — portable: yes — dramatic work: states the irony the bagging actions already perform (squaring the stack, easing the paper slip flush, completing the run with the volume she'd set aside — his completeness instinct hands her the danger; that is the dread beat) — workshopped: yes — **BLOCKING**

29 — "You're bagging them like produce." / "I'm bagging them like nine pounds of someone's career." (lines 139–141) — mechanism: deflation answered by sincere re-weighting — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (nine counted catalogs; produce echoes the Key Food circular world June painted) — dramatic work: the chapter's dread spoken aloud inside a joke; the handoff's true weight named without breaking cover — the strongest item in the chapter — workshopped: no (asymmetric pair: June teases, Theo answers sincerely instead of topping — exactly the register the guide protects)

30 — "Plural, so you can watch me kill the weak ones." (line 145) — mechanism: craft brutality as intimacy promise — source: character (June) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Tuesday secured; editing violence as affection — workshopped: no

31 — "Six p.m. chairs or nine forty chairs?" / "Both. I'll count both before Tuesday." (lines 149–151) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation, coded but followable as text (plain-speech floor holds: a cold reader knows she's asking which version of the room, and he commits to both) — source: character/situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps the joint subject unsolved while promising continuation; pays item 10's "no chairs" — workshopped: no

DISTRIBUTION CHECKS:

- **Density:** 31 items across ~3,100 words fits the lightly-comic commitment, and the thinning is correctly placed — the stockroom-to-handoff danger stretch (lines 85–103) runs almost joke-free except the dark register collisions (items 21, 22), and the chapter's final movement (the gap on the shelf, the failed inventory, the blank *returned* column) is left entirely unjoked. The catalog danger is not blunted; it is sharpened by item 29.
- **Mechanism variety:** deadpan ×6, register collision ×4, repetition-with-variation ×4, deflation ×4, specificity ×2, preemption, understatement, mock-heroic, paradox, epigram ×2 (both failing). Not MONOTONOUS.
- **Source tally:** character/situation 24, narrator-overlay 7. The dialogue layer is clean; every blocking finding but one (item 22) lives in the narration layer, where the overlay habit concentrates.
- **Sweetness:** checked the two candidates. "The tape knows" (item 11) releases post-kiss awkwardness but preserves the displacement — both are still talking about tape instead of Tuesday, and the narration gives June one breath of a laugh, not a thaw. Item 29 converts a tease into the true weight of the handoff. Not OVERSWEETENED.
- **Cringe:** no sitcom volleys, no quip-for-quip escalation anywhere (longest run is item 26, three turns, ending on a fact). Nothing misjudges the target reader.
- **Ch13 spent-texture inheritance (focused check):** the chapter mostly earns its logistics comedy with new mechanism or new pressure — the solvent jar is inverted (June keeps the stain), the panel-size material is converted into the opinion-vs-menu arc, the pickup sheet is converted into a dread instrument (date error opening, blank returned-column close). The exceptions are the clerical narration figures (items 7, 24), which inherit a family Ch13 explicitly repaired to zero.
- **Odile quotability:** two aphorism-grade lines ("Labels are not apologies," "Fewer words than you are planning"); "Then you were roughly right" is reactive, not aphoristic. At the packet's one-or-two cap, compliant — no cluster.

REVISION ORDERS:

1. **Items 7 + 24 (clerical family):** "his own face doing a thing he had not signed off on" (line 13) and "even as he filed it" (line 103). Failure: spent-family inheritance — Ch07 ran the legal-clerical register to its cap and Ch13's Comedy Doctor verified it repaired to zero; Ch14 may not restock it. Fix: at line 13, replace the approvals idiom with what the face is literally doing in the photo (Theo's own optical fact — he is looking at evidence, give him the evidence); at line 103, replace "filed it" with a plain verb ("kept it," "used it"). Counter-candidate checked and cleared: "as if it were a delivery manifest" (line 13) stays — it is literal work-world for a man who runs shipping, per the packet's metaphor plan.
2. **Items 18 + 25 (recognitional similes, capped at zero for Ch14):** "with the expression of a woman taking attendance" (line 77) and "like a woman learning a language off a menu" (line 105). Failure: the Ch13 tracker caps this family at zero for Ch14; swapping "the way a person" for "of a woman X-ing" is a syntax variant, not a new figure. Fix: cut both. At line 77 the sentence already shows Odile taking attendance ("looked at the two of them, at the small ground, at the half-card"); at line 105 "started reading them under her breath" carries the image alone.
3. **Item 8:** "where it sat radiating ordinariness" (line 15). Failure: portable narrator-overlay quip, workshopped paradox; the preceding line ("Nobody in the thread asked whether it had been real. That was the point of the thread.") already does this work better. Fix: cut the clause; end on the phone face-down next to the clipboard — the corrected pickup sheet beside it is the chapter's own image of ordinariness under error.
4. **Item 22:** "an essay each by whichever critic owed her dinner that year" (line 91). Failure: portable — interchangeable art-world cynicism that would survive unchanged in any gallery novel. Fix: re-source it into this book's inventory — anchor the quip to the nine physical catalogs in his hands (e.g., the same essayist recurring across three of the gray spines, or the orphaned paper slip marking somebody's essay nobody remembers), or cut it and let the rationalization run on plain plate-list facts, which is more frightening anyway.
5. **Item 23:** "because running math was what he did instead of feeling things in real time" (line 91). Failure: workshopped self-diagnosis; Theo's voice card bans polished aphorisms about his own care, and the packet bars him from explaining his care device. Fix: cut everything after "He ran the math on the way back out." The math that follows is the demonstration.
6. **Item 28:** "and he was incapable of letting a preventable thing go unprevented" (line 135). Failure: workshopped mirrored epigram captioning what the scene performs. Fix: cut the clause; keep the dropped-spine reasoning and the bagging actions. The completeness instinct adding June's set-aside volume "so the run stayed complete" is the chapter's cruelest beat and must not share a sentence with a quip.
7. **Item 6:** "an umber casualty on the floorboards" (line 13). Failure: mock-heroic narrator decoration scoring 1; does no work the literal fact omits. Fix: cut the appositive — "The dropped brush was just visible at the bottom edge" is complete.
8. **"That's it. That's the whole label"** (line 125). Failure: reuses the "That's the whole ___" template the Ch11 audits retired (Ben's instance repaired, Sam's ruled singular), and the doubled "That's it. That's the whole X" cadence carries meme rhythm the register bans. Fix: reword in June's compression — e.g., "That's the entire label." or "Title, medium, year. Nothing else." — keeping her chosen-facts analysis intact.

VERDICT:

Majority funniness-2 (24 of 31), character/situation-sourced (24 of 31), mechanisms varied, and the comedy does the chapter's dramatic work: it releases post-kiss awkwardness through objects (tape, umber, chairs) while the catalog handoff stays sharp and the close stays unjoked. Strongest item: "I'm bagging them like nine pounds of someone's career." (line 141). Weakest surviving item: "and that was the entire visit." (line 83) — a thin understatement that survives on its reread duty. The eight blocking findings above are confined to the narration layer plus one portable quip; the chapter is not committable until those orders are executed, but the comic register itself is sound.

CLEAR
