A muscle in her jaw tenses, as if to say, yes, Dr. Jackson, please do lecture me on the tastefulness of the Games, I'm dying to hear it, hah de hah hah. But she doesn't need to be any more antagonistic; she's clearly already hit some sort of nerve, and she wonders if the intellectualism is a wall he puts up against others or simply the origin around which a wall was built.
Besides, in a few days, he'll be in the same position as she was, and she'll have very little standing to say she knows all about the horrors of Panem better than him. Maybe, in fact, he knows it better, with his outsider's perspective and sea of knowledge of other cultures with which to compare how intensely wrong this is. He's hardly numbed to it like she is.
"Poor taste is the lesser of my sins, Dr. Jackson." And she quickly crosses herself. "And I'm not your stylist, so I'm just offering my opinion, which should be entirely negligible next to what your stylist tells you. They may want you to go for a sort of rugged mountain man route, but I, ah..."
She raises an eyebrow and shrugs. "I doubt it. At least, compared to your competition. I was envisioning the 12-month calendar for Maximus Meridius and Steve Rogers as soon as they showed up and I just don't see you having the same immediate appeal."
She does look, at least, a little bit apologetic, like she's not happy being this harsh on him. Then again, he didn't think her jokes were funny, so maybe he deserves it.
"What you'll find here is that the wealthy and the powerful don't necessarily have taste so much as appetite." The hint there is hardly coy. There's a break in her voice, a vulnerability in her eyes, a crack in the veneer that's repaired as soon as she stops speaking. "You might be lucky, being merely 'vulnerable'."
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Besides, in a few days, he'll be in the same position as she was, and she'll have very little standing to say she knows all about the horrors of Panem better than him. Maybe, in fact, he knows it better, with his outsider's perspective and sea of knowledge of other cultures with which to compare how intensely wrong this is. He's hardly numbed to it like she is.
"Poor taste is the lesser of my sins, Dr. Jackson." And she quickly crosses herself. "And I'm not your stylist, so I'm just offering my opinion, which should be entirely negligible next to what your stylist tells you. They may want you to go for a sort of rugged mountain man route, but I, ah..."
She raises an eyebrow and shrugs. "I doubt it. At least, compared to your competition. I was envisioning the 12-month calendar for Maximus Meridius and Steve Rogers as soon as they showed up and I just don't see you having the same immediate appeal."
She does look, at least, a little bit apologetic, like she's not happy being this harsh on him. Then again, he didn't think her jokes were funny, so maybe he deserves it.
"What you'll find here is that the wealthy and the powerful don't necessarily have taste so much as appetite." The hint there is hardly coy. There's a break in her voice, a vulnerability in her eyes, a crack in the veneer that's repaired as soon as she stops speaking. "You might be lucky, being merely 'vulnerable'."