Audit written to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_17.comedy_doctor.md`. Full audit text follows.

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# Comedy Doctor — Chapter 17: The Acknowledgment Page

audit: comedy_doctor | owner: claude | tier: risk | trigger: flag:comic-register (reading-guide-mandated => every-chapter)
chapter file: `output/chapters/chapter_17.md` | raw provenance: `output/drafts/claude/chapter_17.round_01.md`

Stance note: this is a sanctioned low-comedy chapter (Turn 3 rupture; the packet licenses "self-protective dryness, not banter"). The audit therefore tests the surviving comic items harder, not softer: in a rupture, a single workshopped or portable item does more damage than ten in a diner chapter, because here wit that no one is generating under pressure reads as the author protecting the characters from the scene.

Provenance check (work shown): the revision pass from round_01 to the committed text already removed five workshopped survivors — "That's the whole grievance. It fits in one sentence. I've checked." (zinger appended to the grievance), "Strangers know the way out." (exit-line punch), "and she filed it where true useless things went" (overlay caption), "which was the first honest thing his face had done since the door closed... which was its own information" (double dialogue-diagnosis-adjacent caption), and "And then, with everything practical stripped off it:" (narrator rating Theo's delivery). That pass was real. The inventory below audits what it left standing; four residues escaped it.

`INVENTORY:`

1 — "Neither was tonight's problem." (¶1, after the face-down phone) — mechanism: deadpan triage — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Nia's thread / Dec 4 receipt are this book's planted pressure objects) — dramatic work: holds the Tasker clock under the scene without opening it, per packet — workshopped: no

2 — "she read it the way you read anything facing, without deciding to" (¶6) — mechanism: recognitional deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (it exists to keep the discovery accidental-not-snooping, the packet's hardest structural requirement) — dramatic work: makes the reveal blameless and ordinary — workshopped: no. Tracker check: recognitional "the way you/people" capped at 1/chapter since the Ch10 span audit; this is the chapter's only instance ("the way you carried the catalogs" is literal reference, not recognitional simile). 1/1, at cap, compliant.

3 — "She read it once as back matter. She read it again as English." (¶8) — mechanism: deadpan reclassification, escalating rereads — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (back matter, colophon, citation card are this scene's working material) — dramatic work: renders shock as procedure; executes the packet order that she reread "because facts refuse to change, not because the prose becomes mystical" — workshopped: no (the syntax is symmetrical, but the third reread immediately roughens it into the measurement protocol; checked and cleared)

4 — "the way she checked a measurement she didn't like: each word separately, in order, looking for the error" / "There was no error." / "She checked the cover, because that was the next procedure when a measurement held." (¶8–10) — mechanism: incongruity (installer QA applied to betrayal), repetition-with-variation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (June's art-handler hands, established since Ch01) — dramatic work: this IS the chapter engine — betrayal as reclassification — workshopped: no

5 — "two technicians swap out a wall label — *attribution revised* ... Same paint. Not one thing on the canvas had moved." (¶11) — mechanism: deflation via fragment — source: character (her installation years; biography the book owns) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the packet's sanctioned reclassification metaphor, delivered as anecdote instead of decoration — workshopped: no ("Same paint." is fragment-snap syntax, but it is June's documented compression habit and the anecdote is doing thesis work; strongest counter-candidate considered and cleared)

6 — "*She's my boss* was payroll-true, the way the front room of a house is the house." (¶12) — mechanism: precision coinage + clarifying analogy — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: defines the partial-truth asymmetry in one move — workshopped: no. Zero-tolerance check (dialogue diagnosis): "payroll-true" rates the truth-scope of his fact, not his phrasing, rhythm, or delivery; it stands on the legal side of the §2 line, exactly at it. Do not let any later chapter extend the "-true" coinage pattern.

7 — "the one catalog knocking her hip at each step like a parcel she was returning, which it was" (¶15, the walk) — mechanism: simile literalized by snap-back tag — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: yes (the "like X, which it was" pivot is a detachable joke shape; only its cargo is book-specific) — dramatic work: converts the care object into freight — workshopped: yes (", which it was" is punchline syntax composed for the reader's nod, and the evaluative ", which" caption family has been held at cap since the Ch06–10 span audit, with Ch13 ordered to add zero) — **BLOCKING**

8 — "She came up the last three steps so she wouldn't be talking uphill." (¶17) — mechanism: deadpan tactical blocking — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the iron back stair, the door light, the geography the book built in Ch14/16) — dramatic work: June takes physical command of the confrontation before it starts — workshopped: no

9 — "The job is real — she pays me, there's a payroll service, I clock in, all of that is real —" (Theo, on the stair) — mechanism: escalating irrelevant proof; over-competent flailing — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the realer the payroll, the longer the concealment; the bleak laugh deepens the betrayal rather than softening it, and June's "Stop." cuts the spiral before it can charm — workshopped: no

10 — "I didn't hope anything that organized," he said. (Theo) — mechanism: self-deflating precision — source: character (the planner confessing his negligence had no plan) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (it answers her specific catalog accusation) — dramatic work: removes the scheming reading while confirming the worse one — negligence toward her exposure; June's "That was probably true, and it changed nothing" keeps the edge — workshopped: no. Softening check (focused instruction): cleared — the line earns no forgiveness on the page and is immediately devalued.

11 — "telling you would've been a confession instead of a fact. By the fourth it was a problem with a history." (Theo) — mechanism: escalation timeline resolving into epigram — source: character (the week-counting is his inventory mind) — funniness: 1 — portable: yes ("a problem with a history" could sit unchanged in any delayed-secret novel) — dramatic work: the timeline itself is necessary confession content — workshopped: yes (the clause is aphorism syntax; the packet orders "He must not become eloquent," and his voice card bans polished aphorisms; no flailing man generates this epigram mid-confession on a stair) — **BLOCKING**

12 — "You'd have helped her stack the chairs after." (June) — mechanism: bleak concretization; hyperbole-by-specificity — source: character + situation (class chairs, his staff reflex) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the entire asymmetry grievance in one image of his usefulness surviving her expulsion — workshopped: no (pressure speech: it arrives as the period on a stated grievance, built from furniture the reader has watched him stack). Tracker check: Ch16 chair-count comedy is spent, chair FACTS permitted — this is fact-shaped, not count-shaped; compliant.

13 — "I'll tell her tomorrow morning... I'll move the pair into storage tonight... I'll redo the labels myself, you won't have to—" (Theo) — mechanism: escalation of offers; task-generation under catastrophe — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (storage, labels, the pair, all this book's objects) — dramatic work: stages the care-move machinery so June can name it as the harm; does not soften — it is the evidence for her verdict — workshopped: no

14 — "You're trying to get a task. ... you want a list, you want errands, you want to carry it for me the way you carried the catalogs. You're not getting a task." (June) — mechanism: diagnosis-as-refusal, frame-and-return — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the catalog callback is the scene's own engine) — dramatic work: names the book's thesis wound — usefulness offered in place of honesty — at rupture pitch — workshopped: no (checked the triple "you want": escalation under pressure with an interrupted, asymmetric rhythm, not symmetrical setup/punch; cleared)

15 — "Saying *I know* isn't giving it back." (June) — mechanism: literalized figure, extending her own "did my math and kept the answer" — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (it only works downstream of her math line two beats earlier) — dramatic work: refuses absolution-by-acknowledgment — workshopped: no (pressure speech; it answers, it does not perform)

16 — "There's a kettle inside. Or I can stand out here, I don't care which, just — tell me what the next part is." (Theo) — mechanism: care-reflex misfire; hosting under catastrophe — source: character + situation (mirrors June's own undrunk kettle in ¶1 without either text noting it) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: his last move is hospitality and it is refused; bleak, unsoftened — workshopped: no

17 — "Tuesday looks like a room with one less chair in use," she said. "Don't set one for me." (June) — mechanism: deadpan literal answer to his literal question — source: character + situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: delivers the chapter's irreversible change (she stops coming) as a logistics fact, in his own language — workshopped: no (borderline checked: it reuses HIS question's terms, "tell me what Tuesday looks like," which is what pressure speech does; and it is a chair fact, not a count gag; cleared on both)

18 — "Write it in the book — you'll want the record straight, you're staff." (June) — mechanism: register collision (clerical procedure as severance) + returning his chosen label — source: character + situation (the loan log `Catalogs (9) – J. Park – out Thurs 11/19` is on page in Ch14 and reprised here) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: returns the care object as evidence and hands him back the word he hid inside — workshopped: no. Tracker check: clerical/custody FIGURES were capped after Ch16 in June narration; this is dialogue about a literal ledger that exists, not a narration metaphor; compliant.

19 — catalog placed "square to the edge, slip out, spine toward the door, the way stock went back on a shelf" (¶ before exit) — mechanism: deadpan procedure as insult — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (stockroom shelving is the scene's own material, third shelf, left side) — dramatic work: physicalizes severance; the care object goes back as inventory — workshopped: no

20 — "heard the box scrape as he picked it up again because his hands had to hold a job even now" (final ¶s) — mechanism: bleak observation captioned by its own explanation — source: narrator-overlay (the box scrape is scene; the "because..." clause is a wit-layer interpreting it for the reader) — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (the caption, detached from the scrape, fits any competent-flailing man in any book) — dramatic work: redundant — by Ch17 the reader can read Theo's displacement unassisted, and §5 of the reading guide bans captioning care moves — workshopped: leaning yes ("had to hold a job even now" is composed pathos) — **BLOCKING**

21 — "two unvarnished canvases hung as a pair because pairs that don't hang together lie" (penultimate ¶) — mechanism: aphorism callback (Odile's Ch16 "Pairs hang together or they lie" recast as causal narration) — source: narrator-overlay (June's narration borrowing Odile's quotability) — funniness: 1 — portable: no (the line is book-owned) — dramatic work: real — June walks past the pair that now indicts her own — but the maxim syntax does it FOR the reader — workshopped: yes (Ch16 logged Odile quotability at ceiling with the order "Ch17 Odile should be plainer or absent"; she is absent, and this clause smuggles her aphorism back in as a near-closer, against the packet's "no paired echo confirmations as beat-closers" and the spirit of "do not end on a maxim") — **BLOCKING**

**DISTRIBUTION CHECKS:**
- **Density:** 21 items in a rupture chapter, 18 landing — the register's commitment is met under the chapter's sanctioned lower-comedy license (packet: "Comedy can appear as self-protective dryness, not as banter"). The named reason for reduced banter exists; this is not DRY.
- **Mechanism variety:** two deliberate families dominate — June's procedural deadpan (items 1, 3, 4, 5, 17, 18, 19) and Theo's escalation-flailing (items 9, 11, 13, 16) — which is the reading guide's own register split ("June's dryness, Theo's over-competent flailing"), and each instance varies its object (catalog, museum label, ledger, shelf; payroll, errands, kettle). Not MONOTONOUS — but the procedural-deadpan count is high enough that Ch18 (scarf return) must not inherit object-procedure-as-severance as its default move, or the mechanism flattens into a tic.
- **Sweetness:** clean. Every Theo bleak-comic beat is converted into evidence against him on the page (items 9, 10, 13, 16 are each refused or devalued by June within two lines); the revision already cut the caption-lines that risked cushioning the flinch and the exit. The betrayal stays sharp. Not OVERSWEETENED.
- **Cringe:** none found. No item misjudges the O'Leary / Henry-at-60% / Morisaki reader; nothing performs at the scene's expense.
- **Source balance:** 19 of 21 items character- or situation-sourced; both narrator-overlay items (20, 21) are blocking findings. Correct ratio for this book once the orders execute.
- **Focused checks (per instruction):** June's dry lines — items 12, 14, 15, 17, 18 all pass the pressure-speech test (each is built from the other party's words or the scene's own objects, and each refuses or wounds rather than performs); the two workshopped residues near her are in narration (items 7, 21), not her mouth. Theo's flailing — items 9, 10, 11, 13, 16 generate bleak humor without softening; the one that drifts toward eloquence is item 11, ordered below.

**VERDICT: CLEAR**
Comedy lands in this book's rupture register: 18 of 21 items at funniness-2, overwhelmingly character/situation-sourced, non-portable, mechanisms split across the two voices by design. Strongest surviving item: **"You'd have helped her stack the chairs after."** — the asymmetry grievance compressed into one piece of furniture he has actually stacked. Weakest surviving item: **"She came up the last three steps so she wouldn't be talking uphill."** — lands, but only as a flicker; it survives because it stages the scene rather than decorating it.
Four blocking findings stand regardless of verdict (items 7, 11, 20, 21). The chapter is not committable until the orders below execute.

**REVISION ORDERS:**
1. **(item 7 — workshopped, at-cap tic family)** "the one catalog knocking her hip at each step like a parcel she was returning, which it was" — cut the ", which it was" snap-back. The evaluative ", which" caption family has been at cap since the Ch06–10 span audit and this is a new narration instance in punchline syntax. The return is already literal — she places the catalog on the step like restocked inventory five paragraphs later (item 19), which pays the same idea without the wink. Either end the sentence at "returning" or recast the simile as plain freight in June's optical register (her voice card, not this wording). Do not soften it into politeness; just remove the pivot that performs for the reader.
2. **(item 11 — partial, portable, workshopped)** "By the fourth it was a problem with a history." — de-workshop Theo's timeline. Keep the week-counting (it is his inventory mind and the confession needs the dates); kill the epigram clause, which is portable aphorism syntax his voice card bans and the packet forbids ("he must not become eloquent or noble"). Replace with a plain fact in his practical-to-emotional register (voice card: lists facts, then strips down) — what the fourth week concretely made impossible, in unpolished words — or have June's interruption land one beat earlier so the sentence never completes. The adjacent "There wasn't a week where it got smaller. I watched it not get smaller." is the correct register for this speech; match it.
3. **(item 20 — partial, portable, narrator-overlay caption)** "because his hands had to hold a job even now" — cut the entire "because" clause. The box scrape, heard and not watched, is the bleak joke; the clause is a caption on a care move, which §5 of the reading guide bans outright, and it is the chapter's only surviving overlay-wit pathos. End at "heard the box scrape as he picked it up again." Trust the seventeen chapters of Theo the reader already has.
4. **(item 21 — workshopped, narrator-overlay, quotability-ceiling breach)** "because pairs that don't hang together lie" — strip the borrowed maxim. Ch16 logged Odile's quotability at ceiling with the explicit order that Ch17 Odile be plainer or absent; recasting her aphorism as causal narration in the penultimate paragraph re-spends a spent line and closes the chapter on a near-maxim against the packet. Keep the image — it is the right one: the two unvarnished fear canvases hanging as a pair behind dark glass while the pair that made them breaks. Render it as fact, not thesis: the canvases hang together because Odile ordered them kept together (e.g., "...where two unvarnished canvases hung as a pair, the way Odile had ordered them kept."). The reader who remembers Ch16 hears the rest of the line without being handed it; that is what the echo is for.
