Presentation QA Mascots 025: Read-First Review of 7 Records

Maintenance ID: 0.1.00195.mascots-025 Date: 2026-10-08 Scope: content/mascots/ — the 7 records assigned by workload issue #752 (257.orphan-symmetry.md, 258.pocket-consensus.md, 259.drift-lapel.md, 260.sidebar-mercy.md, 261.footnote-pallbearer.md, 262.recourse-cushion.md, 263.gentle-rollback.md)

What changed

• Read all seven assigned records in full, frontmatter through final Limerick Log line, including aphorism and verse residue.
• 257.orphan-symmetry.md line 13: bolded "arranged to look aesthetically deliberate" — the compensatory ritual's definitional payload and the record's conceptual pivot. The record carries zero existing emphasis. Asterisks only.
• 259.drift-lapel.md line 14: bolded "misfiling aesthetic prestige as root access" — the definitional mechanism the whole record exists to deliver (decorative garment exercising authority). Zero existing emphasis; the record's structural marks are ### headings. Asterisks only.
• 261.footnote-pallbearer.md lines 21–23: inserted one blank line between the **Distinction:** paragraph and its capstone "Where Footnote Pallbearer appears…" — previously a lazy continuation compiling inside the same <p> (same unglue class as the 294 split in 0.1.00199.mascots-029). Also bolded "lost the room in which the fact could still decide anything" — the capstone's pivot. Blank line and asterisks only.
• 262.recourse-cushion.md line 13: bolded being "heard" without the danger of causing structural change — the definitional payload of the classification paragraph. The record's only prior emphasis was the **Distinction:** label. Asterisks only.
• 263.gentle-rollback.md line 11: bolded "framing policy retreat as an act of maternal care" — the definitional conceit pivot. Asterisks only.

What was deliberately left alone

• All frontmatter, canonical IDs, paths, titles, tags, anchors ({#...}), quoted/documentary material, lists, headings, and every existing emphasis marker.
• 258.pocket-consensus.md: reviewed unchanged. The pivot apparatus is already in place (**Failure Signature:**, **Function:**, **Distinction:** labels plus the Hallway Handshake italic); emphasis budget spent.
• 260.sidebar-mercy.md: reviewed unchanged. Dense existing emphasis (**Doctrinal Shelf:** label, bolded mascot contrasts in the Distinction paragraph, actual material change, four bolded Associated Mascots names) already carries the record's pivots.
• All verse structure: read-only census of every non-blank line confirmed two-space hard breaks present on all non-final haiku and limerick lines in all seven files; section-final lines correctly carry no break. No run-on stanzas, no indented stat-block verse, no missing-break defects in this batch.
• The flat unpunctuated second limerick clusters (258:143–179, 260:228–264, 261:147–151, 262:213–249, 263:156–192, separated from the punctuated first cluster by 4–5 blank lines): dominant collection-wide convention — neighboring 256, 264, 265 show the identical structure with shared stock lines ("the vacuum is perfectly full", "blame it on somebody's cat"). Renders correctly as verse. Preserved.
• Fused soft-break cadence couplets (257:17–18, 259:19–20, 261:25–26, 263:15–16) and the 260:17–19 triplet refrain: stub-era convention left fused, matching the treatment of 295's identical couplet in 0.1.00199.mascots-029.
• 257's plain Distinction: inline label: stub-era pair residue shared with 295.sanctioned-quilt.md; the mascots-029 pass left 295's plain label untouched — preserved for convention consistency.
• Stray single trailing spaces on prose lines (259:14, 259:17, 263:11): invisible in render; trailing-whitespace cleaning is forbidden regardless.
• The empty ### <Mascot> residue headings between ## Haiku Log/## Limerick Log and their ## Haikus subsections: appended-residue structure that compiles and navigates correctly.
• 259's haiku punctuation split (first three stanzas unpunctuated, remaining eight punctuated): register residue, preserved.

Verification performed

• Read-only awk/grep census of every non-blank line missing trailing whitespace across all seven files; each flagged line classified (section-final verse line vs. prose) before any edit — this confirmed the flat limerick clusters do carry two-space breaks and compile as verse.
• Read-only scan for leading-whitespace verse lines (stat-block indentation): none present in this batch.
• Snapshot check: git diff 8997eebee2a4e620c5dd47fcea97abf515c4cac6 HEAD -- <assigned paths> — no changes since the issue snapshot.
• BORIS_BIN=/Users/tbuddy/dev/filed.fyi/bin/boris ./bin/validate_graph.sh — passed post-edit (Boris diagnostics clean; verse residue check passed; HTML ID audit 0 duplicates; Filed certification byte-for-byte; "Filed graph, HTML IDs, and publication checks passed").
• Compiled-article inspection of dist/cantilever/mascots/M-0257.html through M-0263.html: exactly one new <strong> per changed record at the intended pivot; the 261 capstone now compiles as its own <p>; <br /> verse structure intact in all records (e.g., M-0257: 78 <br />, M-0260: 54 <br /> with its seven pre-existing <strong> regions untouched).

Unresolved follow-up

• Whether mascot ## Haiku Log / ## Limerick Log regions should join the fix_verse_hard_breaks.py contract remains a maintainer decision (same open question recorded in 0.1.00065.mascots-001); this batch presents no missing-break defects requiring it.