Hal vs. Stice, Steeply and deLint in the crowd — "Wayne’s your ideal food-group…"

The predation metaphor comes to rest on a single dismissive phrase: the most gifted player is the profiler's "ideal food-group," which is why the Academy will keep her off him as long as he's there. The whole exchange has been about protecting a body from being eaten by attention, and deLint finally just calls the crowd's want by its digestive name — the étoile is food, spectation is feeding, and journalism is the mouth. It's the supply-side counterpart to every passive viewer in the theme: the same hunger, only here the eater is the audience and the meal is the performer.