# Chapter 04 — Regression-to-the-Mean / Genericization Audit

Pre-revision: `output/drafts/claude/chapter_04.round_02.md`
Post-revision: `output/chapters/chapter_04.md`
Orders in force: `chapter_04.initial_draft_assessment.md` (paragraph-cap repair, em-dash interruption replacement, preserve napkin/receipt ending), `chapter_04.dialogue_repair_memo.md` (dry-correction monoculture, openings epigram, roster-math continuity, three-words count), `chapter_04.comedy_doctor_round2.md` (corkboard world-binding, displacement-gloss cut, fries-personification cut), plus the current narrow line repair ("That's the gallery voice" -> "You're still at work") executing the reading guide §2/§6 zero-tolerance dialogue-diagnosis ban.

Stance applied: every change site in the word diff was examined for the two-sided failure — less specific, more exaggerated — with extra suspicion on anything not traceable to a written order. Twelve change sites found; all twelve trace to orders. The special-focus inventory (diner, pencil, receipt, napkin, Ruth, scarf, Theo-work-mode) was checked item by item against the post-revision text.

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**1. Concrete details — HELD.**
Riskiest diff examined: the corkboard. Pre: "between a flyer for a lost parakeet and a stack of booster seats." Post: "between a pysanky-workshop flyer, a block-association notice, and a stack of booster seats." A rare, odd specific (lost parakeet) was removed — exactly the train-coupling-device class of detail this audit exists to protect — so I treated it as a prime suspect. It is legitimate under criterion 6: the comedy-doctor round-1 blocking order named this exact world material, binding the corner to Sonia's-as-Ukrainian (premise: "a Ukrainian diner on Second Avenue") instead of generic-diner whimsy. The replacement is not a generality; "pysanky-workshop flyer" is equally non-portable and passes the reading guide's smallness test better than the parakeet did, because it is non-portable to *this* diner, not just to some diner.
Second candidate: Ben's "The list closed in August. We were line three" -> "The list was full in August. Priya still has the email." A number was removed. Legitimate under criterion 6: the dialogue-repair memo names it as continuity repair — with one line per couple and Theo at line eight of a four-couple class, "line three" implies a roster that doesn't exist. The replacement specific (Priya keeping the email) is character-true to both voice cards (Ben's contingency planning, Priya's managed conditions), so a wrong specific was exchanged for a true one, not for a blur.
Inventory check on protected specifics, all present verbatim in post: Dee's tag, the crossword man, the couple "at the stage of pie," the rubber band kept "in a drawer with the birthday candles," the 11:42 and the F, front-left table leg and the straw wrapper folded into eighths, fifty-seven-center hang height, forty-three labels, the 4B with "tooth marks at the end from a decade of him," June's tip "counted to the quarter," the grilled-cheese half boxed home.

**2. Images and figuration — HELD.**
Riskiest diff examined: "The fries arrived and ran interference" -> "Dee set down two baskets of fries. Hands crossed the paper placemats for salt and napkins." A figure was deleted — but it was the stock figure ("ran interference" could appear in any novel; it is the statistically common phrase this audit hunts), and the comedy-doctor round-2 order explicitly required the swap. The replacement is more concrete (two baskets, salt, paper placemats), so this change runs *against* the regression direction. Legitimate under criterion 6.
Second candidate: the cut of "Because it beat sitting still," before the napkin drawing. An interiority gloss removed by explicit round-2 order as redundant displacement-marking; the scene-grown image itself ("doorway, north wall, an X where the label hung") survives untouched, and the displacement reading is still carried by "which is what his hands did at receptions when nothing real could be fixed" earlier. No scene-grown image anywhere in the chapter was replaced by a stock one; the chapter's best figures ("she had lied the way a good hang lies," "a museum piece with its own wall text," "carrying things was his best method of standing still") are intact verbatim.

**3. Character texture — HELD.**
Riskiest diff examined: Sam. Pre: "tipped his head toward Ruth's plate. 'Off the clock, Ruthie.'" Post: "set the sugar caddy between Ruth and her plate. 'Pie first, Ruthie.'" The pre version was the wittier line, so I checked whether a character edge got sanded into pleasantness. It did not: the dialogue-repair memo's blocking finding was that *every* speaker at the table was running dry correction, and Sam's voice card specifies care through physical room-making, not through clipped wit. The post version trades a redundant register for Sam's owned register, and the physical action (sugar caddy interposed between Ruth and her surveillance target) is more specific than a head-tip. Legitimate under criterion 6.
Second candidate: Mara's scarf enforcement, pre "'Tuesday. That was the deal.' / 'I was going to—' / 'Tuesday.'" -> post "'Keep it through Tuesday,' Mara said. 'I lent it in the studio. I want the studio version back.' / 'I was going to return it.' / 'Then give me the version with bad fluorescent light.'" Ordered repair (same monoculture finding). Nothing flattened into likable competence: Mara stays gently coercive ("Mara looked as satisfied as she had over the pencil" survives), the Tuesday obligation and June's "I know the terms" survive verbatim — so the S-SCARF-01 contract language that the ch 18 rupture return pays off is intact — and "bad fluorescent light" adds a studio-specific detail. Ruth's texture is untouched: the exactly-half pie, the three-beat gaze ledger (Thursdays -> him, line eight -> June's mug, pencil -> nothing), "Is it comped?", the quarter-turn of the cup, "I didn't ask what she owed," the pocketed napkin, and the held second question are all verbatim.

**4. Dialogue particularity — HELD.**
This is the category the revision touched hardest; three sub-findings.
(a) Riskiest diff in the chapter: June's exit line. Pre: "'That's the gallery voice,' she said. 'We're not at the gallery.'" Post: "'You're still at work,' she said. 'We're not at the gallery.'" The pre line is more idiosyncratic, and in isolation this swap reads like polishing a voice-marked line into an interchangeable one. It is nonetheless legitimate under criterion 6, and not narrowly: "That's the gallery voice" is a dialogue diagnosis — June characterizing the register of his speech — which the reading guide bans at zero tolerance (§2, restated §6, retrofit order §9), and the comedy-doctor round-2 referral flagged this exact line. The repair follows the guide's prescribed mechanism (target the person, never the sentence): "You're still at work" names his behavior, hooks Priya's earlier "You can stop working. It's after nine" into a chapter-spanning observation, and keeps the diner/gallery opposition intact in the second sentence. The follow-on narration "He didn't argue with the label. It was accurate, and she had a record of catching the wrong ones" survives verbatim and now reads *cleaner*: "the label" points at her assessment of him (rhyming with the forty-third label she caught) rather than at a captioned sentence.
(b) June's openings line. Pre: "Openings are for standing near art so other people can see you doing it." Post: "At openings there are shoulders in front of everything. Wine in the corners. People reading labels with one eye on the door." A quotable epigram was removed by explicit order (dialogue-repair memo: June was over-licensed for aphorism; style_and_voice.md reserves high-density memorable lines for Odile). The replacement is *more* particular — exact visual nouns, June's painter-eye per her voice card — and "people reading labels with one eye on the door" plants the chapter's label motif a beat earlier. Less polished, more hers: the opposite of regression.
(c) The two killed interruptions. "The fall hang—" -> "The fall hang." and "I was going to—" -> "I was going to return it." Both em-dash cuts were explicitly ordered (initial assessment: "replace two interruption em dashes with ASCII punctuation"; the second also rewritten under the Mara order). I checked the residue: June's "I didn't come to the opening" still lands as a correction of a completed sentence, "got corrected at the opening turn" stays true, and the chapter keeps one genuine simultaneous-speech collision verbatim ("'There was a label,' Theo began, at the same time June said, 'He had a label wrong'"), so overlapping-table texture is reduced but not eliminated, by order, with the strongest instance preserved. No fumble was polished anywhere else; "Out of, what, forty?", "Not since one," and "Briefly" survive.

**5. Inflation accompanying the fade — HELD.**
I scanned every post-only string for significance language: "pysanky-workshop flyer, a block-association notice"; "three words"; the shoulders/wine/labels triplet; "was full / Priya still has the email"; "The last blank line, somehow"; two baskets/salt/napkins; the sugar caddy; the three scarf lines; "You're still at work." None restate stakes as bigger, emotion as deeper, or the moment as more pivotal; nearly all are additional concrete nouns. Strongest counter-candidate: "somehow" in "Line eight. The last blank line, somehow." It is a significance flag — but four letters of hedged wonder in Theo's mouth, ordered by the memo, and it does reread work: Theo privately knows whose class reopened that list, so "somehow" is a knowing tell consistent with S-ODILE-01 rereadability, not narrator inflation. No specificity thinned anywhere for it to compensate.

**6. Legitimate edits — HELD (all changes accounted for; no uninstructed smoothing of content found).**
Mapping of all twelve change sites to orders: corkboard (comedy round-1 order via round-2 verification); displacement-gloss cut and fries swap (comedy round-2); Sam, Mara-scarf, openings epigram, Ben roster line, "last blank line, somehow," "three words" (dialogue-repair memo); "hang—" and "going to—" (initial-assessment em-dash order); gallery-voice line (current narrow repair, reading-guide ban); paragraph merges (initial-assessment one-sentence-paragraph cap repair). The ordered preservations held: the napkin/receipt ending is verbatim ("*Thursdays. 43 labels, one flipped. The pencil. Line eight.*", the smudged corner folded in, the pocket where the stub lived), Odile does not appear at Sonia's, and the protected nephew relation stays unresolved.
Riskiest item in this category: the paragraph merges that exceed the strict one-sentence cap. "It was not shorter." and "Mara folded her forearms..." were genuine cap hits; but "'Oh, that's good,' Mara said. 'You can't make that up.' / You couldn't. That was the whole trouble with it." (two paragraphs folded into the pencil paragraph), the exit narration folded into June's door paragraph, and the final two paragraphs merged go beyond the cap's letter. I examined each for value loss: zero words changed at all three sites, no specificity removed, no inflation added — the cost is purely beat-landing rhythm ("You couldn't. That was the whole trouble with it." hit harder as its own paragraph). Rhythm is not this audit's lane and does not constitute loss of value-bearing specificity; noting it here so the line-edit pass can weigh re-breaking those merges that the cap does not actually require. Not a flag.

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REVISION ORDERS

None. No instance of value-bearing specificity lost and no compensating inflation found; every removal of a particular traces to a written order and was replaced at equal or greater specificity.

OVERALL: HELD
