# Adversarial Register Audit — Chapter 20

id: adversarial_register | owner: codex | target: `output/chapters/chapter_20.md`

Register target: warm, precise, lightly comic; June plain and less jokey under self-choice pressure; no inspirational refusal.

Checks:
- No inspirational poverty romance: Nia says "That's a worse offer" and June agrees. The text does not turn the cold room into a dream room; "worse than described" and "no real heat" remain.
- No therapy-speak: June's key line stays concrete: "I'd hang the shows well... deadline, a sink issue, a class roster. I'd still be the person with keys."
- No advice register from Ruth/Sam: their help is material, "We have a car" / "hand truck."
- No genre-cliche romance causality: Theo is explicitly excluded as condition by the pre-call test.
- No prose compensating for plainness with faux-poetry: Comedy Doctor cut most overlay wit; remaining figures are craft-specific.

Strongest drift candidate: "She had kept stepping back from paintings as if distance might fix a drawing problem..." It is maxim-shaped. It survives provisionally because it is literal craft process and has been flagged to Plain Translation; if Plain Translation blocks it, repair there.

Chapter verdict: `REGISTER-HOLDS-PENDING-PLAIN-TRANSLATION`.

REVISION ORDERS: none from this audit; keep Plain Translation queued after reset.
