All checks complete: the six repaired blockers are confirmed absent, the plan runner holds at three instances (lines 11, 17, 111 — the line-91 hit is "plank-floored," a false positive), and I found one new verbal echo to log ("the length of time" formula at lines 63 and 107). The full audit follows; this text is the deliverable for `output/critiques/claude/chapter_05.comedy_doctor_post_voice.md`.

---

# Comedy Doctor — Chapter 05 (Round 3: Post-Voice-Repair Verification)

Stance: skeptical professional editor. Round 2 cleared this chapter; the voice pass (17 orders, all verified executed in `voice_check_05.md`) then changed line-level rhythm and several comic beats. This round verifies the six original blockers stayed dead, then re-runs the full inventory on the chapter **as it now stands** — not merely the changed lines — with extra pressure on the beats the voice pass touched. Per instruction, no objection is manufactured to justify the round; every judgment below is shown with evidence.

## Blocker-reappearance verification (all six round-1 findings)

Verbatim sweep of the current chapter text (`grep -i` for `lawsuit | scar\b | sweatshop | dance school | premoisten | optimism | last good idea | load-bearing`): **zero hits.**

1. **Luis/strap quip** — still repaired: "carried both their totes after one look at her strap and a quiet, 'Weight's wrong.'" (line 13). Untouched by the voice pass.
2. **Gray-wool scar simile** — still repaired: "She tugged a corner of gray wool out of her collar as evidence." (line 15). Untouched.
3. **Studio-history quip** — still repaired: "old screw holes along the long wall and a darker stripe of varnish where something had once been bolted down" (line 23). The voice pass rebuilt the *staging* sentences around it (order 13) but did not reintroduce a portable quip; see item 10 below.
4. **Craft-false tin callback** — still repaired: "I did not pocket any new stubs… The count came to eight… The evidence was mixed." (lines 31–33). Untouched; ch03 antecedent unchanged.
5. **Ugly-drawing optimism tag** — still repaired: "The ear had drifted half an inch outboard of the head." (line 89). Inside the protected calibration sample; untouched.
6. **Rubber-band personification** — still repaired: "it fought the curve… two Tuesdays in one cylinder" (line 109). The voice pass converted the adjacent participle ("boxing" → "as he boxed") without touching the band beat.

None reappeared; none were re-softened or re-jokified by the voice repair.

## Full re-audit — INVENTORY

1 — "with Mara's scarf folded over her forearm like a waiter presenting it and understood, too late, that this was the wrong way to return a scarf" (line 9) — mechanism: self-aware social-staging cringe — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: opens the return-vs-keep argument the chapter closes on — workshopped: no. *Voice-revised (", which" removed): the active "and understood, too late" is tighter than the round-2 form; no comic loss.*
2 — "It could not. She had checked twice anyway." (line 9) — mechanism: deadpan self-exposure — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: attraction as verification ritual, no feeling named — workshopped: no
3 — "The plan had survived the subway and most of the stairs." (line 11) — mechanism: deflation/foreshadow — source: character+situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: first leg of the plan runner; arms the bin decision — workshopped: no
4 — "carried both their totes after one look at her strap and a quiet, 'Weight's wrong.'" (line 13) — mechanism: minimal-verdict deadpan — source: character (Luis's card owns weight/level diagnosis) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Luis's care-through-diagnosis; quiet contrast to Theo's service reflex — workshopped: no
5 — "made the face of a woman watching a guest try to wash dishes at a dinner party" (line 13) — mechanism: precise social analogy — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: predicts exactly how the return will fail — workshopped: no
6 — "It's going down to thirty-nine on Thursday. Luis says I checked twice. Keep it through the cold snap. I brought the gray one." + the tugged gray wool "as evidence" (line 15) — mechanism: proof-presentation deadpan inside confident hosting logic — source: character (Mara; one on-card "Luis says") — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: defeats June's plan with physical evidence — workshopped: no
7 — "Then it's better than when I lent it, and you definitely can't give it back. That's how loans work." (line 19) — mechanism: confident false logic — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: extends the scarf thread in dialogue — workshopped: no
8 — "The question was settled the way Mara settled questions, by carrying them inside with her." (line 19) — mechanism: literalized abstraction — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: scene-closer; Mara's smoothing as motion — workshopped: no (epigram-symmetrical; remains in the watch count)
9 — "It sat better than her own coat collar did. She left that thought where it was." (line 21) — mechanism: aborted-thought deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: attraction-denial without a body tell — workshopped: no. *Voice-revised from "which she chose not to develop as a thought": the flat two-sentence form is closer to the calibration sample's stop pattern and the gag survives the surgery. Pressed because the new form joins the refusal-to-conclude family the voice check holds at exact cap — logged in watch notes, not blocking here.*
10 — "June counted six sightlines and no polite way to look past the person opposite you; every stool had been placed to make attention travel one direction." + "You did not face chairs at each other unless you wanted the people in them to have nowhere else to put their attention." (lines 23–25) — mechanism: deadpan trap-recognition through professional eye — source: character+situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no (installer's sightline arithmetic; Odile's reread clue) — dramatic work: stages the chapter's whole predicament and plants Odile's design — workshopped: no. *This is the voice pass's order-13 rebuild of the round-2 dead staging sentence. Pressed hard as new text: it does more comic work than the inventory line it replaced, and "no polite way to look past" is June's register, not narrator overlay. Counter-candidate considered: "the whole class aimed in one direction like a choir" (line 23) — an image, not an attempted joke; not inventoried.*
11 — "considered the room's geometry, and dragged one stool four inches left with her foot" (line 27) — mechanism: visual precision deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Odile conducting through logistics; reread clue — workshopped: no. *The voice repair of this line's participle ("squaring each card" → "Each card ended square under its bulldog clip") left the comic beat intact.*
12 — "He moved her stool a quarter turn so it faced the window light instead of the door, and stood by it, and that was the wave." (line 29) — mechanism: substitution deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Theo's service-to-looking conversion, per the ch04 order — workshopped: no
13 — "I did not pocket any new stubs. I want that on the record after last week." (line 31) — mechanism: on-the-record denial + sourced callback — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (lives on ch03's tin count) — dramatic work: re-opens the two-person ledger — workshopped: no
14 — "The count came to eight. The evidence was mixed." (line 33) — mechanism: audit-verdict withholding full acquittal — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: truthful tease; the count was eight *and* he kept a stub — workshopped: no
15 — "Ben looked from the wall clock to his phone and back until their disagreement settled." (line 35) — mechanism: object-mediated character tic (his time anxiety rendered as the devices' dispute) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (paid off by his own line at 47; the pair is Ben-specific) — dramatic work: plants the timing tic his dialogue confirms — workshopped: no. *Pressed as part of the revised Ruth/Ben setup. Counter-candidate in the same passage: Ruth's "She sharpened one over the trash can with a blade, unbothered, ordinary: a tool made ready" (line 35, the order-12 participle repair) — judged characterization, not attempted comedy; not inventoried, no demerit.*
16 — "She stood at the front pair of easels until the room ordered itself. It took under a minute and embarrassed everyone slightly." (line 37) — mechanism: authority deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Odile's economy demonstrated — workshopped: no. *Voice-revised (", which" split into two sentences); the joke's weight now sits on "embarrassed everyone slightly" exactly as before.*
17 — "produced, every time, a red emergency smear" (line 41) — mechanism: self-aimed failure specificity — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: teaches the exercise through June's history — workshopped: no
18 — "The fire extinguisher had never minded being stared at." (line 43) — mechanism: delayed-drop understatement — source: situation+character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: lands the seating-trap realization — workshopped: no
19 — "The page can manage without you. Ninety seconds." (line 45) — mechanism: agency-reassignment deadpan — source: character (Odile's card: fewest words, insult as instruction) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (it *is* the assignment) — dramatic work: states the exercise's law in Odile's voice; sets up "the card asked you to let it" — workshopped: no
20 — "Ninety seconds is shorter than it sounds… I timed last week's poses. I'm aware that's not a personality." (line 47) — mechanism: self-aware deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: pays item 15's plant; cohort texture — workshopped: no (voice-card construction now spent; watch note stands)
21 — "He had made himself into a diagram… offering her the most legible torso on the eastern seaboard." (line 49) — mechanism: escalation to absurd superlative — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: sets up Odile's "performing stillness" — workshopped: no (geographic-scale gag at cap; watch)
22 — "On. They're the only dependable edges you've got." / "That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me in this building." (lines 53–55) — mechanism: praise-as-technical-spec + deflating-qualifier gratitude — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: flirtation under cover; plants the glasses-lean payoffs at 81 and 91 — workshopped: no
23 — "a chin like a drawer left open… Closed the drawer… a chin that could appear in a menswear catalog without incident… drawn the concept of a man" (line 59) — mechanism: concrete-metaphor escalation to abstract-category punch — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: enacts correction-as-lie without captioning it — workshopped: no
24 — "She looked at the page for the length of time it deserved." (line 63) — mechanism: measured-duration deadpan (the duration is the verdict) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Odile's withheld-praise economy) — dramatic work: Odile grading by clock, not comment — workshopped: no. *Flagged: shares the "for the length of time + clause" scaffold with item 40 (line 107) — see watch notes.*
25 — "The chin had told on you. The card asked you to let it." (line 69) — mechanism: diagnosis deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Odile teaching the person — workshopped: no
26 — "She moved on before June could choose which joke to hide behind" (line 69) — mechanism: deflection pre-empted by exit timing — source: character (June's card: jokes as smoke screen; Odile's economy supplies the timing) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: shows the smoke-screen habit *failing to deploy*, which is the chapter's subject — workshopped: no
27 — "You are performing stillness. It is not the same as sitting. Sit." (line 69) — mechanism: insult-as-diagnosis — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: releases Theo from diagram to man; enables the good drawing — workshopped: no
28 — "Mine gave your nose two versions. I should tell you before you see it." / "Too late." (lines 73–75) — mechanism: advance-warning logistics tenderness — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: reciprocal exposure — workshopped: no
29 — "Three minutes should have been nothing. June had stood in front of single paintings for forty minutes without noticing the floor. The first thirty seconds still took her apart." (line 77) — mechanism: incongruity of scale, deadpan — source: character (her professional looking stamina vs. this man) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (forty minutes before single paintings is June) — dramatic work: converts the deleted rhetorical triad's job into evidence; hands off into the calibration passage without a register seam — workshopped: no. *This is the voice pass's order-3 replacement, pressed hardest of all the new text: round 2's item here was a rule-of-three swerve scored partly on its structural callback to line 107. The triad is gone; what replaced it is quieter and **funnier in register** — the joke is now that a professional starer cannot survive thirty seconds of sanctioned staring, which is the chapter's engine rather than a detachable figure. No comic ground lost; the callback's loss is accounted at item 40.*
30 — "because hardware was easy and she was a coward" (line 81) — mechanism: self-aimed mid-clause deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: honest entry into the looking — workshopped: no (calibration sample; textually unchanged)
31 — Ugly-drawing catalog (line 89): "doubled at the left temple," "half an inch outboard of the head," collar "in two minds about where the neck was," "stretched like a reflection in a kettle," "assembled in different rooms" — mechanism: specificity-overload escalation — source: character — funniness: 2 across all five — portable: no — dramatic work: the ugliness must be specific for the keep to mean anything — workshopped: no (sample text; unchanged)
32 — "with his own pad pressed against his sweater like a crate with a loose side" (line 93) — mechanism: occupational simile, fragility deadpan — source: character (crate is gallery-world material both leads handle; the loose side carries his nerves about the contents) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (ch01 stockroom crates; the contents are his bad drawing of June) — dramatic work: Theo's exposure made physical before he volunteers it — workshopped: no. *This is the order-9 replacement for the spent door-pose image, pressed as new text: it trades a repeated figure for one from the book's own inventory, exactly what a Comedy Doctor revision order would have specified. Pass.*
33 — "That's my collar… I sat crooked. That's on me." / "Don't apologize for the good part. The collar's the best thing on the page. The ear is in the right borough." (lines 93–95) — mechanism: blame-claiming reversal + geographic-scale deadpan praise — source: character (June's owned care move wearing a joke) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: repairs the embarrassment inside two lines; warmth floor — workshopped: no
34 — "June was on it, allegedly." (line 97) — mechanism: single-word skepticism — source: character (card-owned "alleged") — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: reciprocity of bad drawings — workshopped: no
35 — "Her nose had been drawn twice, in two locations, neither of them correct, like a rumor." (line 97) — mechanism: mapped analogy — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: sets up the knot contrast, which is correctly left unjoked — workshopped: no
36 — "I'm sorry about your nose. The card wouldn't let me fix it." / "The card knows what it's doing." (lines 99–101) — mechanism: rule-as-agent deadpan + dramatic irony — source: character+situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: heaviest line in the chapter; joke forward, Odile's instrument on reread — workshopped: no
37 — "Sixty-second contours, the paired easels filling with mutant cohort." (line 103) — mechanism: compression deadpan (the drawings as mutant versions of the people) — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: montage economy; keeps the room's failures communal — workshopped: no
38 — "Mara announced that Luis had made her recognizable and therefore failed the assignment; Luis said, 'I followed it. Move left, you'll see,' and Mara moved left and looked pleased." (line 103) — mechanism: inverted-standards complaint + sightline reveal — source: character+situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Luis's owned placement care; rhymes with the thesis — workshopped: no
39 — "set a granola bar on June's easel ledge without comment and was gone before it could be declined" (line 103) — mechanism: preemptive-care deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Priya's owned care move — workshopped: no
40 — "Ruth held her last drawing at arm's length, evaluated it like a proof, and filed it in her bag." (line 103) — mechanism: occupational deadpan (page proofs, not pride) — source: character (Ruth's copyeditor card; narration, so her one-sharp-line cap is untouched) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Ruth's exactness kept visible in a chapter where she otherwise recedes — workshopped: no
41 — "June had been in enough crit rooms to recognize the expensive kind of nothing when it passed her." (line 103) — mechanism: priced-silence paradox — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Odile's withheld praise per her card — workshopped: no. *Voice-revised into full-sentence form; "when it passed her" adds motion but the phrase remains the chapter's most quotation-shaped narration. Still the weakest survivor; see verdict.*
42 — "the cohort fed it their evening's failures with the cheer of people who had been promised the drawings did not count" (line 105) — mechanism: communal irony — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: stakes the keep decision against the room's norm — workshopped: no
43 — "Ben dropped four pages in and kept a fifth. He tucked it into his coat with the smugness of a man saving a receipt." (line 105) — mechanism: character-tag deadpan — source: character (receipts are Ben's card: proof, backup, paperwork-as-safety) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: quietly mirrors June's keep one beat before hers — workshopped: no. *Voice-revised (participle → finite verb); the joke now lands on its own sentence, slightly stronger.*
44 — "She got as far as the bin. She stood over it for the length of time it takes to lose an argument." (line 107) — mechanism: self-defeat reframe (the argument is with her own plan) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the keep decision rendered as a lost argument the plan runner (lines 11, 17) set up — workshopped: no. *Pressed hardest among the revised beats: round 2 scored this as a structural callback to line 77's triad, and the voice pass deleted the plant. Re-judged standalone: it survives, and arguably improves — un-doubled, the figure stops reading as a phrase-bank repeat and the "argument" antecedent is supplied by the plan runner, not by a twin phrase. What it loses in architecture it gains in deniability. The residual cost is logged in watch notes (the line is now coin-shaped without a plant, and line 63 shares its duration-measurement scaffold).*
45 — "it fought the curve, and she had to bring the old roll out of her tote and loop the rubber band from Sonia's twice to get them to hold together, two Tuesdays in one cylinder" (line 109) — mechanism: physical-resistance understatement — source: situation+character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the keep made physical; the resistance is the meaning — workshopped: no
46 — "as he boxed the charcoal nobody had asked him to box" (line 109) — mechanism: task-adequacy deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: ch03 hoarder callback; his turned back gives June privacy — workshopped: no
47 — "He had not watched her decide. She was nearly sure he had not watched her decide." (line 109) — mechanism: repetition-with-epistemic-downgrade — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the doubt is June's whole wound: being caught wanting) — dramatic work: undercuts the privacy the previous sentence granted — workshopped: no
48 — "June went down the stairs with both drawings under her arm and Mara's scarf still on. That had not been the plan either." (line 111) — mechanism: runner payoff (plan instances at lines 11, 17, 111, each varied) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: closes scarf and plan threads in action — workshopped: no. *Voice-revised from the ", which" form into a standalone closer. Pressed as the chapter's last word: the standalone sentence is more punchline-shaped than the subordinate-clause version, but it sits at a genuine pressure point (the exact reservation the voice pass's order 17 made for coin-stamps), pays a three-instance runner, and "either" does the work of both threads at once. Not workshopped; committable.*

## Chapter verdict: CLEAR

48 of 48 inventory entries at funniness 2; character/situation-sourced throughout; non-portable throughout; mechanisms varied (deadpan in several distinct species, false logic, escalation, understatement, specificity overload, insult-as-diagnosis, dramatic irony, runner payoff, repetition-with-variation, communal irony). Zero items at funniness 1, zero portable, zero workshopped. **No previous blocker reappeared, and the voice repair introduced no new blocking defect.** The chapter is committable on comedy grounds.

The inventory grew from round 2's 37 entries to 48 not because the voice pass added jokes but because this round inventoried beats round 2 left implicit (items 19, 24, 26, 37, 40, 47) and the order-13/order-3 rebuilds converted two non-comic passages into working comic ones (items 10, 29). Net effect of the voice pass on the comedy: one structural callback dissolved (77→107), one spent image replaced from the book's own inventory (door → crate), several ", which" gags re-cut into flat declaratives that sit closer to the calibration sample — no beat lost its mechanism, and two beats (items 29, 44) improved.

Counter-candidates pressed and cleared, per the Critique stance:
- **Item 44 standing alone after the order-3 deletion** — the closest thing to a new defect; cleared on the reasoning quoted at the item. It became *visible* only after the voice repair because the repair removed its twin; it is not *blocking* because the plan runner still supplies the argument's antecedent.
- **"for the length of time" ×2 (lines 63, 107)** — confirmed by sweep; two instances of one deadpan scaffold 44 lines apart, different content, both landing. A third instance anywhere would convert this to a phrase-bank finding; logged to the tracker, not blocking.
- **"That had not been the plan either." as a standalone final coin** — cleared at item 48; the voice check's own closer-variation order reserved coin-stamps for pressure points and this is one.
- **"She left that thought where it was." (line 21)** — cleared as comedy; its risk is the voice-side refusal-to-conclude cap, which it already occupies. Comedy must not mint another instance to get a laugh in ch06+.
- **"like a choir" (line 23) and Ruth's "a tool made ready" (line 35)** — examined as possible under-committed comic attempts (which would score 1); judged images/characterization, not attempted comedy. No demerit.

**Strongest surviving item:** #36 — "I'm sorry about your nose. The card wouldn't let me fix it." / "The card knows what it's doing." Funny as rule-blaming in the moment; the chapter's best reread plant (Odile wrote SUBJECT, crossed it out, wrote PARTNER). Unchanged by the voice pass, and everything around it got quieter, which sharpened it.

**Weakest surviving item:** #41 — "the expensive kind of nothing." It survives, again, on the crit-room anchor and Odile's withheld-praise card, and the full-sentence recut is marginally better than the ", which" form — but it remains the most quotation-shaped narration in the chapter, and the chapter remains at its epigram ceiling.

**Distribution checks:**
- **Density:** high and continuous; no joke-free stretch needing a named reason. The one near-quiet zone (lines 79–91) is the protected calibration sample, where the register correctly trades comedy for pressure — and even it carries items 30–31.
- **Mechanism variety:** varied; no MONOTONOUS finding. Spatial-displacement family unchanged at ~6 ("eastern seaboard," "outboard," "right borough," "two locations," "assembled in different rooms," the line off the page) — still at ceiling, still reading as one set piece's controlled escalation. New count this round: measured-duration deadpan at 2 (items 24, 44) — at cap.
- **Sweetness:** NOT OVERSWEETENED. The keep decision, the knot beat ("Three minutes, eyes up, and he had gotten the knot"), Theo's turned back, and the conservator's-patch paragraph remain unjoked; the voice pass added no cushioning anywhere the chapter needs to stay sharp.
- **Cringe:** none. Warmth floor holds — every embarrassment is repaired in-scene (collar/"good part," ear/borough, nose/knot, Mara/move-left).
- **Tracker reconciliation:** Odile aphorism-grade lines ≈ 3 ("The page can manage without you," "The chin had told on you," "performing stillness… Sit.") — compliant with the ch03 halving order. Correction-shaped jokes = 2 (items 14, 38) — compliant with the ch04 halving order. Mara's "Luis says" — one instance, on-card. Luis dry verdicts — two, both on-card, at the round-2 cap. Ben timing beats — two (items 15, 20), but they are setup and payoff of one gag, not a repeat.

## REVISION ORDERS

**NONE.** All six round-1 blockers verified still repaired by verbatim sweep; the full re-audit of the post-voice text surfaced no item at funniness 1, none portable, none workshopped. The chapter is committable on comedy grounds.

## WATCH NOTES (non-blocking, for `output/tics.md`)

- **NEW: "for the length of time + clause" deadpan scaffold ×2 in ch05** (line 63 "it deserved"; line 107 "it takes to lose an argument"). Both land; the echo became visible once the voice pass deleted line 77's "lose an argument" twin. Hard cap at two; no instance of the scaffold in ch06–07.
- **NEW: the bin-line figure (line 107) now stands unplanted.** Do not re-plant or echo "lose an argument" elsewhere to restore the old callback; the plan runner carries it.
- **NEW: "settled" does comic duty twice (lines 19, 35) inside a 7-instance transition-verb WATCH cluster.** Neither joke depends on the word; if the editor thins the cluster, item 8 ("settled the way Mara settled questions") is the load it should route around, item 15's "until their disagreement settled" can rephrase freely.
- **NEW: standalone-coin closers.** The voice pass converted two ", which" gags into freestanding stamp sentences ("She left that thought where it was."; "That had not been the plan either."). Both are sanctioned pressure-point uses; do not let de-", which"-ing become a coin-minting machine in ch06+.
- Carried forward from round 2, all still in force: spatial-displacement family at ceiling (~6); geographic-scale gags at cap (two); Ben's "not a personality" construction spent (and his timing gag now a closed setup/payoff pair — cap Ben timing beats there); epigram-shaped narrator clauses at the June-chapter density limit (three: items 8, 23's "concept of a man," 41); "on the record" used its one licensed dialogue instance; "evidence" ×2 (lines 15, 33) must not become a June-chapter verbal default; Luis dry verdicts capped at two per appearance.
- **Comedy/voice shared cap:** "She left that thought where it was." (line 21) is simultaneously inventory item 9 and the fifth-of-five refusal-to-conclude instances at the voice check's span cap. Any new joke in ch06+ built on the left-it-alone gesture breaches the voice cap even if it lands comedically.
