in my current re-listen of taz balance i was so struck by magnus telling carey during lunar interlude III when she suggests he not take all the big hits, "but i don't want to lose merle and taako." the boys up to this point have jokingly referred to each other as bffs and have made a few lighthearted comments about loving each other etc, but this, 40 episodes into the arc, is the first time we hear any of them express real fear over losing the other two.
and it hits so hard that it's magnus! magnus who knows what it's like to lose someone you love even before he remembers the stolen century, magnus who almost never shows fear, whose whole thing is being brave and strong. he opens up not to taako and merle- they would never say this shit to each others' faces, not at this point in the show- but to carey, someone who is a friend but also an outsider to their little trio.
this scene for magnus is important in more ways than one- he's realizing he needs to stop being so reckless if he wants to stick around for a long time. after julia, he always rushed into conflict, brave and reckless to the point of being foolish or even suicidal. he's accepted the fact that he'll die in battle someday, is fine with that.
but now, with merle and taako and the rest of his friends at the bureau, he has people again. he has a reason to stay alive again, loved ones to protect and cherish again. so he has to adapt, to change how he fights, to make sure he can be around for them. to keep himself safe so he can keep them safe.
this is the first time we hear magnus express a fear of loss, but also the first time we hear him express a desire to change & a larger degree of self-awareness. him awkwardly fumbling through the conversation with carey in a way he never has before tells us that he was genuinely nervous to ask for help, to be potentially seen as weak, to be witnessed being bad at something at first while he's being trained.
but the fact that he does it anyway, the fact that he trusts himself enough, trusts carey enough, to ask- that says so much about his character and how much he's grown at this point in the show.
just. characters who at first don't care too much if they live or die as long as they die heroically, learning to value their own lives through their relationships and love with other people. magnus burnsides: characters of all time!!!
535 notes
·
View notes
🔒 blupjeans? :)
🔒I broke into your car to impress you when you locked your keys in and now I have to construct an elaborate lie to explain myself
“Huh,” Barry says, after Lup breaks into his fucking car. “Thank you, so much, honestly, I mean, I was going to be fucked, the locksmith quoted me like $300-”
“Yeah, no prob,” Lup says, so forcedly casual that she thinks she hears something important pop in her jaw.
“But uh,” Barry looks at his car, a very, very sad blue Honda Civic belovedly named Crunch, and then at Lup, who is struggling with the knowledge that she is blushing hard enough to burn herself at the stake here. “That’s a pretty impressive skill you’ve got there?”
The how the fuck do you know that, and for why, specifically, is implied.
“Thanks,” Lup says, opening her gumball machine mouth and letting a tasty, shiny lie ricochet through the spirals and tubes of her fucking idiot central and right out into the air, where she will now be responsible for it. “I learned it in the circus.”
“The circus?” Barry is wearing his stupid sexy strap on sunglasses, which are tentatively attached to his regular glasses, and thus make his eyes a little harder to see. He is, however, obviously having some kind of reaction to this information. Lup grimaces.
“Yeeep. The circus. You know, the uh, the giraffes loved to steal keys.”
“Giraffes?” Barry is incredulous. “That’s amazing. What for?”
“Oh, they’re mischievous fuckers,” Lup is just fully in it now. “Never trust a giraffe, I’m telling you. Elephants either, they’ll throw your keys right down a storm drain just to get your attention.”
“Golly,” Barry says. With his human fucking mouth. Lup wants to kill him and keep his soul in a jar. She promises she’ll poke holes in the lid. “I have to imagine you’d hide your keys after that happened once or twice, though?”
“The problem is, you see,” Lup is ascending, to live with the angels. Shame they’ll evict her as soon as possible, for all the lust and gluttony and wrath and so on. She can have another thing lined up. It’s fine. “Circus outfits never have pockets.”
“Really? Never?”
“Total design flaw,” Lup says, nodding, and also sweating so hard she’s afraid it might be audible. “Pockets would pull them down. And when you’re just wearing a leotard, you don’t want it gettin’ pulled down, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Barry agrees, looking dreadfully impressed at all this. “But then what about the keys, did you just hold them?” Him and his goddamn followup questions. Lup could grind him into a paste and study him under a microscope.
“Yeah, or put them on a chain around our necks. But mostly we had a key boy.”
“A keyboy?” Barry’s eyes go way up. “One keyboy, to hold all the keys in the circus?”
“It was an illustrious job,” Lup says, with her lying, lying ass. “Everyone wanted to fuck the key boy.”
“Wow,” Barry says. “Because of his access?”
“Because of the jingles, Barr, keep up!” Lup folds her arms. “Also, he was a pretty good juggler. Not as good as me, though.”
“You can juggle?” Barry grins at her. “I’d love to see that.”
“I’ve been banned from juggling forever,” Lup says solemnly. “Because of the incident.”
“The incident?” Jesus, can he just do this all day? Doesn’t he get tired?
“Yeah,” Lup says, and winks, and smacks him congenially on the back. “It’s a curse. Shame, cause I love juggling.” And before Barry can ask her another fucking question, she heads back in to work.
God. It’s been years since she juggled. She cannot fucking believe she’s backed herself into a corner again about this shit. She should have just admitted to being obsessed with lockpicking youtube.
202 notes
·
View notes