- "...I am not, nor do I want to be, a dude."
- Magus speaking of his eavesdropping and limited chances to do so

It 100% made sense to 2002-03 me that temporary transformations wouldn't be a satisfactory long term solution for Ellen, and Magus touches on the issues with temporary transformations in his criticism of how people handled things.

That made perfectly natural sense to me at the time, but that didn't seem to be the case for other people. I felt so awkward about that I wound up not answering the question of "why not just use the TF gun" until... Well, approximately now, I guess.

Those reasons are still there, and could be why Mr. Verres didn't make any such suggestion. All the same, someone really should've asked her about it.

Misinterpreted Feels

Magus definitely had more to go on than just projecting his own feelings onto Ellen, and plenty of reason to feel guilty about it.

He hadn't interpreted those feelings as accurately as he thought he had, and he hadn't seen Elliot and Ellen together for a long time, but the conclusion he jumped to was a shorter jump than some may have thought.

- EGS:NP