All inputs read and the diff from the round-2-verified text reconstructed. The Positive Prose and Characters-Wrong repairs touched five comic-adjacent passages after Comedy Doctor round 2 cleared the chapter; one of the replacements (Mara's new wall-assignment pretext) fails. Here is the completed audit.

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# Audit: Comedy Doctor — Chapter 06 ("Sightlines"), Round 3 (post-Positive-Prose re-audit)

Verifier stance: skeptical re-audit of the current text after the Positive Prose repair (rounds 1–2 orders, verified in `positive_prose_round3.md`) and the Characters-Wrong repair altered comic-adjacent lines that round 2 had certified. No credit carried forward for items whose wording changed; every changed passage re-inventoried from the chapter on disk. Round-2 rulings on untouched items are re-checked, not re-litigated.

## CHANGES SINCE ROUND 2 — COMIC-ITEM IMPACT

Five passages that round 2 inventoried or cleared have changed:

**1. Mara's wall-assignment pretext (line 25): REGRESSION — new blocking finding.** Round 2 verified the clip-lights pretext ("I can't tell whether I'm having an opinion or enjoying the clip lights.") at funniness-2. Positive Prose round 1, order 7 replaced it with a hosting-register pretext: "You two take this wall for me, please. I keep losing the middle one when I stand over here, and Luis won't let me blame the lights." The replacement is card-correct in register (over-explaining, practical, default-contract after the round-2 sweep) but fails as comedy on two counts the prose audit had no brief to check. First, the tail clause is the **same mechanism as line 13** — Mara citing Luis's correction of her own excess ("which Luis says is two forecasts past useful") — twelve lines apart, and her line 81 ("Luis checked it from two places before anyone asked, so now we all benefit") makes a third Mara-ventriloquizes-Luis instance in one chapter, against round 2's watch note that already flagged the family at two. Second, "I keep losing the middle one" pre-spends the Vestibule beat: at line 75 Mara again has perceptual trouble with a middle artwork ("Is the middle one crooked, or is it me?") and again the lights/level question routes to Luis ("It's the wall. The floor slopes. The painting's level."). Two Mara middle-artwork-trouble beats with the same Luis adjudication shape, unflagged and unvaried, read as authorial accident, and the accident taxes the structurally necessary instance — the Vestibule one, where Luis's sanctioned verdict strands Theo mid-fix. Scored funniness-1 below (item 10). Blocking.

**2. Priya's diagnosis line (line 45): comic item removed, correctly.** Round 2's item 17 ("if the numbers get clean enough, the rest becomes automatic") is gone, replaced per the Characters-Wrong memo with the self-implicating "He understands the rule. I just don't trust a cheap room when I'm tired." Verified on the page. The replacement is not a joke and is not trying to be; it converts Priya from clean diagnostician to a woman with her own visible doubt, which the Characters-Wrong audit ordered. Net comic density −1, absorbed without strain. Not a finding.

**3. The overlap beat (lines 51–59): item survives, sharpened.** Round 2's item 19 stands in altered form: Theo now audibly runs the alibi ("We met at the opening, and then the class made it easy to--") and June's "I can answer that. We don't live together." lands as an interruption of a man mid-cover-story rather than into a vacated space. "Oh." Ben blinked. "That's also data." / "It's the only data" survive intact; the added cost beat ("The open table-look left his face before he recovered") is observation, not a joke, and keeps the deflation from being free. Funniness-2 confirmed (item 21).

**4. The CORTADO sign (line 137): placement holds.** Round 1's order 4 relocation survived both prose rounds: Ruth's warning (lines 117–133) runs joke-free from the week-five question through "It should be one she can use," with only the bare bodega stop inside it; the espresso machine, the lotto-terminal/cat-food wedge, CORTADO YES, and Ben reading the sign "as if terms might be hidden in it" all sit together in the interior paragraph, one breath before the counterman triggers the repair beat. The rebuilt forms line ("The form I saw had your email on it... Maybe there's another page.") contains nothing joke-shaped. Setup, payoff, and the coffee-order reversal remain one continuous warm beat. Verified, no finding.

**5. The dispersal (line 155): comic item cut, correctly.** Round 2's item 35 ("which landed worse than being singled out") is gone; "Ruth said good night to everyone equally. Sam's cup paused halfway and then finished the salute." carries the cost physically. The cut removes a funniness-2 item, but what it removes is wit cushioning the chapter's coldest social beat — the dispersal is sharper without it, and Sam's paused cup is cost, not comedy. The book's interests outrank the inventory count. Not a finding.

**Narrator-overlay sweep of new phrasing (specifically tasked).** Hunted, not excused. "Of course they had. The evening had arranged them that way a dozen times, and Theo had let it, gladly." (line 137) — passes as character: "arranged" and "let it" are Theo's logistics idiom in free indirect, and the clause is a confession that costs him, not wit painted over him; inventoried as item 34. "She paid from her own coat pocket, in singles, before Theo's wallet cleared his jacket." (line 147) — the holster-syntax clause was pressed for portability; the singles, the coat pocket the clementine already lives in, and June out-drawing the chapter's designated pre-empter anchor it to this book; inventoried as item 36. "Sonia's was a diner, not a channel." (line 165) — deadpan category correction, but "channel" is literal currency minted at line 119; Theo's register, not overlay; inventoried as item 40. "Nobody stayed to watch them." (line 27) — flat staging, not a joke; also retires round 2's "supervision-language" watch (the "no supervision needed" cousin is gone). No surviving narrator-overlay comic items.

## INVENTORY

1 — "You asked at one," / "Confirming," (lines 3–7) — mechanism: deadpan repetition exposed by a flat witness — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: establishes over-management before the cohort arrives — workshopped: no
2 — "decided public sidewalk safety was not the same as management" (line 7) — mechanism: self-serving taxonomy — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the rationalization engine Ruth later interrogates — workshopped: no
3 — "He had not laminated it. He was prepared to call that restraint." (line 9) — mechanism: bar-lowering deflation in free indirect — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: arms the route card as through-object — workshopped: no
4 — "I checked three forecasts, which Luis says is two forecasts past useful" (line 13) — mechanism: specificity overload + ventriloquized spousal correction — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: scarf custody continuity; Mara/Luis dynamic — workshopped: no — first of three Mara-cites-Luis instances; see item 10
5 — "We have an arrangement," (line 15) — mechanism: deadpan contract-language for warmth — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June accepts care on her terms — workshopped: no
6 — "without saying the word *handrail* out loud" (line 17) — mechanism: suppressed-impulse — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: first link in the suppression chain — workshopped: no
7 — "The kid nodded at Theo like a colleague. Theo did not hate it fast enough." (line 17) — mechanism: timing reversal — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: enjoys being believed, hates enjoying it — workshopped: no
8 — "Etchings are in the back" / "I was going to start at the front," she said, and started at the front (lines 19–21) — mechanism: deflation of anticipation — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter's whole argument in two lines — workshopped: no
9 — "apologized to a box of glassine sleeves" (line 23) — mechanism: misdirected politeness, physical — source: situation + character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: room scale set up for the Vestibule bit — workshopped: no
10 — "You two take this wall for me, please. I keep losing the middle one when I stand over here, and Luis won't let me blame the lights." (line 25) — mechanism: hosting pretext + ventriloquized spousal correction (mechanism repeat of item 4; shape repeat of the line-75 Vestibule beat) — source: character — funniness: **1** — portable: no — dramatic work: covers the pairing maneuver, the chapter engine — workshopped: no — **BLOCKING (funniness-1)**
11 — "Is that plate tone, or did they just not wipe it?" / "Then I get to keep both theories." (lines 29–33) — mechanism: craft deadpan + epistemic greed — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June forgets the outing — workshopped: no
12 — "He stood next to her with his hands in his pockets and nothing to fix, and he liked it more than he had planned to." (line 33) — mechanism: planning-register deadpan tail — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names what the chapter is teaching him, in his own budget vocabulary — workshopped: no
13 — "Fourth floor, no elevator. I know that's bad. The rent is less bad, which is how they get you." (line 35) — mechanism: anxious self-aware rationalization, bad/less-bad ladder — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: opens the rent-math thread as pressure — workshopped: no (the added "I know that's bad" is Ben pre-empting objections, his card's over-reporting under nerves, not punchline symmetry)
14 — "Read the actual text before you plan our furniture," (line 37) — mechanism: deflation by literalism — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: he plans, she brakes — workshopped: no
15 — "I made a note, not a floor plan. Important distinction." (line 39) — mechanism: distinction-without-difference — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Ben's planning-as-love wound — workshopped: no
16 — "The listing says *study* about a closet." (line 39) — mechanism: euphemism exposure — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the SUFFOLK? note ecosystem) — dramatic work: arms Ben's Vestibule square-footage math at line 71 — workshopped: no
17 — "He has a note, and a spreadsheet, and the note has a rule at the top." (line 41) — mechanism: escalating exposure — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: arms item 18 — workshopped: no
18 — "Rent math is not a proposal... I made the font bigger, because the font needed help." (line 43) — mechanism: displaced anxiety (typography as commitment proxy) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the couple's arc question in an object — workshopped: no
19 — "Sort of," / "That means no," + the clementine pocketed unpeeled, "Priya saw that and let it stay there." (lines 45–49) — mechanism: deadpan translation + care partly refused — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: cohort care reaching June only as far as she allows; sharpened by the Characters-Wrong repair — workshopped: no
20 — Ben's "the open face of a man asking the experienced table" / "How did you two decide? Not the lease. The overlap." (line 51) — mechanism: earnest category error (consulting the fake couple as the senior couple) — source: character/situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: detonates the overlap beat — workshopped: no
21 — "the class made it easy to--" / "I can answer that. We don't live together." / "Oh." Ben blinked. "That's also data." / "It's the only data," (lines 53–59) — mechanism: deflation by interruption — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June patrols the border over Theo's live alibi; costs Ben visible warmth; route card returns to Theo's chest — workshopped: no
22 — "called Vestibule. Theo respected the name for admitting the problem." (line 61) — mechanism: deadpan literalism — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: stages the square-footage bit — workshopped: no
23 — "On the seventh head, he stopped counting." (line 61) — mechanism: suppressed-impulse, mid-act — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: suppression chain advances — workshopped: no
24 — "I'm fine." / "I know. Your left knee keeps looking for a wall. Stool." (lines 63–67) — mechanism: evidence-override + imperative repetition — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: care as observation vs. Theo's care as pre-emption — workshopped: no
25 — "Stand here. Not symbolically. You can actually see all three from here." (line 69) — mechanism: deflation of expected symbolism — source: character (Sam's owned move) — funniness: 2 — portable: no within this voice system — dramatic work: re-seats June at the center — workshopped: no
26 — heel-to-toe survey + "We are considering paying twenty-nine hundred dollars a month to live in this gallery minus the ceiling." / "Put the phone down for one room," (lines 71–73) — mechanism: specificity overload → reframe, then deflation — source: character + situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: fuses the gallery walk to the rent thread, cashing item 16's closet — workshopped: no
27 — "It's the wall. The floor slopes. The painting's level." (line 79) — mechanism: deadpan expert verdict — source: character (Luis, 1 of his 2-cap) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: strands Theo mid-step toward a fix that isn't his, post-repair the chapter's best physical beat — workshopped: no — **but see item 10: the "middle one" pretext upstream now pre-spends this beat's shape**
28 — "Luis checked it from two places before anyone asked, so now we all benefit." (line 81) — mechanism: affectionate translation — source: character — funniness: 2, modest — portable: no — dramatic work: Mara/Luis texture — workshopped: no — third Mara-cites-Luis instance; concentration resolved by the item-10 order
29 — "Sublet," Mara read aloud / "Don't," Ben said. (lines 89–91) — mechanism: compressed call-and-refusal — source: character/situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: rent thread kept alive at zero cost — workshopped: no
30 — "The gold one isn't gold. It's confident, though." (line 93) — mechanism: painter's-eye deadpan personification — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June's eye working for pleasure — workshopped: no
31 — "I want your eyes on those etchings, and Ruth's already told me I'm wrong." (line 95) — mechanism: self-deprecating pretext — source: character — funniness: 2, modest — portable: no — dramatic work: engineers the Ruth/Theo walk in-voice — workshopped: no
32 — "It had a shortcut on it." / "I'm sure it did." (lines 113–115) — mechanism: weak-excuse deadpan turned into evidence — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the only comic beat inside the warning, and it incriminates Theo — workshopped: no
33 — espresso machine "wedged between the lotto terminal and the cat food. A handwritten sign over it said CORTADO YES." + Ben reading the sign "as if terms might be hidden in it" (line 137) — mechanism: found-object incongruity with character-true payoff — source: situation/character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: stages the counterman for item 35 — workshopped: no — placement re-verified post-Positive-Prose, holds
34 — "Of course they had. The evening had arranged them that way a dozen times, and Theo had let it, gladly." (line 137) — mechanism: deadpan inevitability, self-implicating free indirect — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: confession that arms the coffee-order reversal — workshopped: no (pressed as overlay; "arranged"/"let it" is Theo's idiom and the wit costs him)
35 — "Two," he said. "Ask her first." / "Coffee. Black. Separate." / "ordered a coffee he had a standing rule against drinking after six, paid for only his own, and drank it" (lines 143–147) — mechanism: behavior-reversal + self-punishing deadpan tail — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter's repair beat — workshopped: no
36 — "She paid from her own coat pocket, in singles, before Theo's wallet cleared his jacket." (line 147) — mechanism: physical timing reversal (the pre-empter out-drawn) — source: character/situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the singles, the clementine pocket, the chapter's pre-emption argument) — dramatic work: June enforces "Separate" in behavior before Theo can perform generosity — workshopped: no
37 — "There's track work. There's always track work. I have three theories." (line 149) — mechanism: anxious escalation, rule of three — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: borderline-no — dramatic work: bait for the handoff — workshopped: no — watch note stands
38 — "received it with both hands. 'There's a fallback coffee place *ranked*,'" + "Theo's evening no longer had a card in it." (lines 151–153) — mechanism: reverence-for-the-mundane incongruity paying a chapter-long suppression chain — source: character × character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the relinquishment and the laugh are the same event — workshopped: no
39 — "kept the shortcut to himself" / "Her pace was quicker than the route card would have budgeted for." (line 163) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation callback — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: closes the Sonia's-map evidence with changed behavior — workshopped: no
40 — "Sonia's was a diner, not a channel." (line 165) — mechanism: deadpan category correction — source: character — funniness: 2, modest — portable: no ("channel" minted literally at line 119) — dramatic work: keeps the names-test inside Theo's inventory register instead of turning earnest — workshopped: no

## CHAPTER VERDICT: **CLEAR** — with one blocking finding (item 10)

39 of 40 items score funniness-2; zero portable, zero workshopped; sources remain character/situation throughout with no surviving narrator-overlay comic items (the three new free-indirect candidates were pressed and pass as Theo's own idiom at his own expense). Mechanisms stay varied — deflation, specificity overload, suppressed-impulse, evidence-override, found-object, timing reversal, reverence-incongruity, callback. Density: the post-round-2 repairs removed two funniness-2 items (Priya's diagnosis, Ruth's equal-goodnight tail) and both cuts serve the book — the first buys Priya a visible doubt, the second leaves the dispersal cold where it should be cold; with 40 inventoried items the chapter remains comfortably inside the register's commitment for an off-Tuesday ensemble chapter. Sweetness: Ruth's warning runs unbroken and joke-free except item 32, which incriminates; no softening found. Cringe: none. The single failure is concentrated and local: the Positive Prose replacement at line 25 solved an epigram problem by creating a repetition problem.

**Strongest surviving item:** #38, the route-card handoff — "Ben received it with both hands. 'There's a fallback coffee place *ranked*.'" Still the chapter's peak: two characters' wounds meet in one object and the laugh is the relinquishment.

**Weakest surviving item:** #28 — "Luis checked it from two places before anyone asked, so now we all benefit." It lands as texture only; it also becomes the chapter's *second* Mara-cites-Luis beat once the item-10 order executes, which is exactly the density round 2 already certified.

## REVISION ORDERS

1. **Item 10 (blocking, funniness-1) — replace the pretext clause; keep the assignment.** "You two take this wall for me, please. I keep losing the middle one when I stand over here, and Luis won't let me blame the lights." Failure: the tail clause repeats item 4's mechanism (Mara reporting Luis's correction of her excess) twelve lines after item 4, raising the chapter's Mara-cites-Luis count to three; and "I keep losing the middle one" duplicates the line-75 Vestibule shape (Mara + middle artwork + lights/level adjudicated by Luis), so the chapter runs the same gag twice with the payoff-bearing instance second — the unvaried first instance reads as accident and dulls Luis's "It's the wall. The floor slopes. The painting's level." Order: retain "You two take this wall for me, please." (the assignment is the chapter engine and works) and rebuild the pretext from Mara's voice card *without* citing Luis and *without* middle-artwork perceptual trouble. Her card offers two in-scene sources: social memory/inclusion (she is walking off to find Priya — let the pretext be needing a verdict to carry, e.g. she promised Priya a report on that wall and hasn't honestly looked) or hosting logistics (she hasn't covered that stretch and the show closes at eight — a fact Theo planted at line 3 that no one else has used). **Constraint for the rewriter:** Positive Prose round 1, order 7 bans restoring a clip-lights-style epigram here — the replacement must stay in over-explaining hosting register, default-contract. Do not touch line 75; the Vestibule instance is the one doing structural work.

No other orders. No verdict-level problems.

## WATCH NOTES (carry to tics.md and downstream chapters)

- **Mara-cites-Luis cap.** After the item-10 order executes, the chapter holds two instances (items 4, 28) — round 2's certified level. Log the family explicitly: no third "Luis says/won't let me" in any single chapter before her arc breaks the tic.
- **Supervision-language family: resolved.** "No supervision needed" is gone ("Nobody stayed to watch them" is flat staging). Watch retired for this chapter; keep the no-regeneration instruction for later ensemble chapters.
- **Suppression chain spent with the card; coffee-counter comedy spent (items 35–36).** Both round-2 notes stand. The new singles/wallet beat (item 36) counts as part of the spent coffee-counter stage — no further wallet-race or counter beats.
- **Comic density debt is not a debt.** Three funniness-2 items from round 2 are gone (clip lights, Priya's diagnosis, Ruth's goodnight tail) and only the first needs replacing — by the item-10 order, in register, not in epigram. Do not compensate elsewhere; the dispersal and the Priya beat are sharper sincere.
- **Ben's transit-timing shape, "Oh." rationing, "set it down again," symmetrical spouse-translation:** all round-2 notes re-verified against current text and carried unchanged. Ben's "Oh." (line 57) still continues into a sentence — legal, logged so Ch 24's standalone allowance isn't diluted.

The chapter is not committable until the item-10 order is executed and verified in a round-4 check; everything else stands clear.
