# Comedy Doctor — Post-Positive-Prose / Plain-Translation Spot Verification, Chapter 18

Scope: the nine locations edited after round 9, verified against the current `output/chapters/chapter_18.md` for Comedy blocking only (funniness-1 / portable / workshopped, per `checks/audits/comedy_doctor.md`). No fresh full-chapter inventory; round-9 coverage and its order verification stand for everything untouched. Grep confirms zero chapter-wide hits for every ordered-dead string: `required no one`, `part that cost`, `true question`, `competent`, `did nothing`, `Better than I treat`, `has opinions`, `whole plan`, `dish I want back`, `fit in one line`.

## Per-location verdicts

**1. Catalog-return plan paragraph — COMEDY-HOLDS.**
Current close (chapter_18.md:7): "She folded the box flaps shut without taping them and slid it under the table where she wouldn't have to see gray while she ate."
Round-9 item 2 is now resolved by full cut, which goes further than the round-9 repair ("The plan fit in one line, and it required no one." — also gone) — cutting an item entirely is a valid resolution under the audit. The replacement close is optical avoidance, not a comedy attempt; if inventoried anyway: deadpan avoidance-by-object-placement, character-sourced, non-portable (the gray spines she'd been eating around since line 7's opening), not workshopped. No funniness-1/portable/workshopped item introduced.

**2. Mara emoji paragraph — COMEDY-HOLDS.**
Current line (chapter_18.md:13): "Mara sent back a turkey and a heart and asked nothing else."
Round-9 item 7 survives with its caption removed. The comic mechanism (incongruity: the lightest possible reply where pressure was expected) is intact and *stronger* uncaptioned — explained irony was the workshopped-adjacent half. Source character (Mara's unpushy warmth, per card "asked nothing else" is her not-filling-silence inverted), funniness 2, non-portable (the *Luis cooked for eleven and we are four* invite it answers), not workshopped. The cost is collected at chapter_18.md:21 ("ate eggs at noon"), outside the joke.

**3. Nia email paragraph — COMEDY-HOLDS.**
Current lines (chapter_18.md:31): "She added *Also, is there decent ventilation?* under it, selected the second question, and deleted it. She left the first one in drafts and closed the laptop."
The rated `true question / competent one` sentence is absent (grep-confirmed). Round-9 item 10 ("nothing to do with ceiling height") is also gone — full cut, valid. The replacement is action dramatization, not a comedy attempt; the faint comic shape (self-censorship rendered as an edit) is character-sourced, non-portable (ventilation/ceiling height is a painter scoping a fabrication bay), not workshopped. "a real job from a person who rated her work and not her story" still stands but was already cleared in round 9 as earnest assessment, not wit. No new blocker.

**4. Mara pie handoff — COMEDY-HOLDS.**
Current lines (chapter_18.md:71, 75): "Luis made too much. There's pie under the turkey. Don't tilt it." / "The blue dish is mine," Mara said. "Not the foil. The dish under it. Bring it Tuesday. Sit by me. Ruth is bringing a ruler and I need another painter at the table."
The polished "It's a dish I want back." is gone; the replacement runs on Mara's card directly ("a little too explanatory," "explains before asked"): care disguised as over-specified logistics. Funniness 2 — the overexplanation ("Not the foil. The dish under it.") is funnier and more hers than the quip it replaced. Non-portable (blue dish under foil brick, the Tuesday tether). Not workshopped — overexplanation is anti-punchline syntax, and "Sit by me" keeps the plain-speech floor under it. "Ruth is bringing a ruler" is the round-9 order-2 repair, already verified at funniness 2, character-sourced both ends (Ruth's proof-by-instrument literalism paying off the line-9 crooked-flyer dispute; Mara's recruitment register), non-portable, not workshopped; it survives these later edits unchanged. Ruth's one-sharp-line cap untouched (she doesn't speak here).

**5. Fourth/fifth study paragraph — COMEDY-HOLDS.**
Current lines (chapter_18.md:89): "the studio's track lights off, the room lit only from the hall, the far wall gone raw-umber gray, the front edge of the table lost in the dark" / "She kept it dry and exact. It was wood at an angle, viewed from the door."
`The chair did nothing` is gone. Round-9 item 22's deflation survives in the half the audit itself called the material half: the loaded setup (her own chair, just-stood-up angle) cut flat to "wood at an angle, viewed from the door." Mechanism intact (anti-sentimental deflation), character-sourced (painter's discipline; "dry and exact" is her register named as method), funniness 2 — drier without the quotable negated-figure sentence, which is the direction the workshopped test wants. Non-portable (the fifth study, the threshold POV). The raw-umber/front-edge lines are perception, not comedy attempts. No new blocker.

**6. Studies row paragraph — COMEDY-HOLDS.**
Current lines (chapter_18.md:91): "she was not going to pin them up or turn them face out. Left face up, they were studies. Pinned up, they could become another thing in a window."
Borderline comic item at most: dry consequence with a melancholy callback. Tested anyway: mechanism deadpan consequence / callback ("another thing in a window" binds to Sonia's crooked flyer at chapter_18.md:85), source character (June's compression), non-portable — the line is cryptic without the flyer referent, which is exactly what kills it as quotation, so not workshopped despite the balanced shape. If scored, it lands (2) as wry rather than funny; more honestly it is not attempting comedy. Either way, no funniness-1/portable/workshopped item.

**7. Monday Tasker paragraph — COMEDY-HOLDS.**
Current lines (chapter_18.md:95): "She opened the floor-plan draft, put the cursor after *Ceiling height matters to me,* and watched it blink until the screen dimmed. She touched the trackpad, read the sentence again, and closed the draft. Friday noon was four days off. Asha had until the fifteenth to reshuffle Kessler."
No comedy attempted, and none owed: round 9 already named the solo Monday-ledger stretch joke-free with reason (this book's comedy is social; rupture aftermath). The closest candidate, "Asha had until the fifteenth to reshuffle Kessler" (decision deferred as someone else's logistics), would inventory as situation-sourced, non-portable, not workshopped. No new blocker.

**8. Nail-hole ending — COMEDY-HOLDS.**
Current lines (chapter_18.md:97): "She filled the first nail hole. Wet spackle sat white beside the brighter paint."
Not a comedy attempt; a value observation closing on material fact. Checked for the inverse failure too: no joke has been added to soften the ending (no OVERSWEETENED risk), and no profundity-stamp re-entered. No blocker.

**9. Dialogue attribution — COMEDY-HOLDS.**
Current line (chapter_18.md:67): "Mara smoothed the fold once against her forearm and settled it into the tote between two dishes."
Pure action beat; the round-9 order-1 cut ("Better than I treat it.") stays cut (grep-confirmed), and the attribution change from "She" to "Mara" is clarity-only — it adds no comic material and removes none. The adjacent attribution fix at chapter_18.md:81 ('"Thank you for October," June said') was also checked: round-9 item 18's literalist deflation ('"October," Mara said. "It's almost December."') is intact and unaffected.

## NEW-COMEDY-BLOCKERS-FROM-POST-POSITIVE-REPAIR: NONE

## OUT-OF-SCOPE WATCH
- Round-9 item 21 ("She'd told a lie to avoid a dinner so she could paint a room she was also avoiding. Then she rinsed the bowl.") was excised by the Plain Translation pass — the dinner-skip paragraph (chapter_18.md:43) now ends on objects only. That location was not in this verification's scope and the cut is Plain Translation's lane (irony explained is irony spent), but it removes a former funniness-2 item: the chapter's landing-item count drops to roughly 17 (items 2, 10, 14, 21 cut; 17 repaired to a 2; 22 halved but landing). Density still clears "lightly comic" with the comedy concentrated where people are, consistent with round 9's distribution rationale — flagging only so no later pass reads the solo stretches' joke-free run as a defect and re-adds captioned wit.
- "The row was good: the truest drawing she'd done since Week 6." (chapter_18.md:91) — superlative self-assessment, already on Positive Prose's watch; not a comic item, no Comedy action.
- Round-9 tracker note stands: the clerical-figure family was logged at 1/1 with no room for a second; the Plain Translation pass removed that instance ("ratify"), so the family is now at 0 — tracker should be updated before Ch19 inherits a stale cap entry.

## OVERALL: CURRENT-COMEDY-HOLDS
