Audit written to `output/critiques/claude/book.anti_default.md` (148 lines). Here's the review.

## Mode B Derivative-Drift Audit — *Eight Tuesdays* (draft0, 24 ch)

**Method:** all 24 chapters read. Sentence layer swept first — the banned-tic set, "load-bearing," NYC-postcard bans, and dialogue-diagnosis phrasings all return **zero hits**, and the 06-10 retrofit targets (ch01:111, ch02:229) are clean. **Consequence: every drift in this book is structural, not sentential.** Don't hunt it in the prose; hunt it in the shape of the moves.

### Verdicts

| # | Element | Verdict |
|---|---------|---------|
| 1 | Fake-dating access + couple/pair/partner rule | **DISTINCT** |
| 2 | Eight-Tuesday assignment spine | **DISTINCT** |
| 3 | Cohort / found-family ensemble | **DISTINCT** |
| 4 | Tasker vs. New York material choice | **DISTINCT** (co-strongest) |
| 5 | Theo's nephew secret + usefulness wound | **DISTINCT** |
| 6 | Odile's knew-from-night-one manipulation | **DISTINCT** — most exposed |
| 7 | `After Class` as artifact-borne disclosure | **DISTINCT** |
| 8 | Faced-to-wall portrait consent thread | **DISTINCT** (co-strongest) |
| 9 | Showcase / first-snow coda | **DISTINCT** |
| 10 | Priya/Ben, Ruth/Sam, **Mara/Luis** | **MIXED → DERIVATIVE (Mara/Luis)** |

### The three findings that matter

**F1 — The one true derivative finding is Mara/Luis (Element 10).** Ruth/Sam (the categories/forms arc — "we do both numbers now," ch11) and Priya/Ben (fear-as-planning; they *pass* on the apartment, ch23) carry original, load-bearing arcs. Mara/Luis carry none: Luis is one repeated trait (sightlines — "You'll see better," ch03:347; "Glare," ch05/19) and Mara is shipper/scarf-provider. "Stable couple with no arc" is the derivative default *and* breaches the Reading Guide's own §7.2 ("one small arc each"). **Fix: one small destabilizing arc, not a mirror of the leads.**

**F2 — The DISTINCT verdict masking the most default gravity is Odile (Element 6).** The *writing* inverts the matchmaker trope: selfish motive ("I wanted to know what you'd make if I made you. I'm retiring, not dead," ch24:3374), June's anger not gratitude ("It wasn't yours to run," ch24:3378), the torn ledger page. But the *plot* vindicates her completely — she is never factually wrong, the scheme fully succeeds, she pays nothing but a two-word non-apology. **The book condemns the manipulation in dialogue while structurally rewarding it — a residual oracle-spine the prose disguises.** Lever: give the scheme one real casualty, or make her wrong about one consequential thing that costs *her*.

**F3 — The book's signature is declining defaults it fully set up.** The fake relationship is almost never performed ("braced to cover for her and found himself with nothing to smooth," ch04:599); no cheap second rupture after the confession; the snow doesn't stick ("Ground's too warm. It'll be wet by morning," ch24:3406). That's the anti-default engine working — and it stalls precisely where the book stopped applying its own method (Mara/Luis; the Odile plot-reward; Ben as comic relief until ch23).

### Revision priorities
1. **Mara/Luis** — the required fix (default + spec breach).
2. **Odile** — stop the plot rewarding the scheme it critiques.
3. **Ben** — seed one non-comic beat before ch23.
4. **Theo** — pull one usefulness-as-control diagnosis earlier than ch16.
5. **Protect, don't rebuild** the four watch-seams (the inciting misunderstanding's twin struts; assignment-card aphorism cap; the facing-page coincidence; snow personification at ch24:3404).

**Bottom line:** DISTINCT on 9/10 by real mechanism, not decoration; clean at the sentence level. One derivative component (Mara/Luis), one structural risk a DISTINCT verdict hides (Odile rewarded). Fix those two and the anti-default posture holds end to end.
