#oliver banks headcanons

[silly-tma-headcanons]

Oliver doesn't realise how much of his life was actually incredibly traumatic. he describes childhood trauma as "not that deep" and is shocked to his very core when he discovers that it was, in fact, that deep.

[ezrazzle]

After slowly chipping away at this for a while, I'm finally done drawing the cast of The Magnus Archives!

[one-of-many-mothmen]

Avatar headcanons bc they dont get enough love :

Jude LOVES jazz music and listened to blues a lot when Agnes died

Oliver is interested in symbolic meanings behind everything, after becoming an avatar he is mostly interested in the death symbols in different cultures

Micheal recalls "being" Micheal Shelley but the memories are entirely distorted, it cant trust if what it is remembering is something Real or a lie or something inbetween, it hates remembering Micheal Shelley

Mike Crew wears very dull clothes because he doesn't want to look anything like the Spiral

Agnes used to try to find different ways to read books without touching them because she adored stories where she could imagine herself as the characters but didnt want to be brought back to reality when the book burned in her hands

Micheal leaves people with imposter symdrome and identity issues alone because it can relate to not truly knowing who or what you are

Space avatars dont get mentioned very often in TMA bc they are all chilling in space and Eating from aliens who fear the Vast

Gerry hated books when he got older and only was interested in them when they were Lietners(and thought abt how that exactly how his mother acted)

[lafresnaya]

so... who was going to tell me that my estimates of the tma characters' ages was WAYYY off??

and i know jonny probably meant it to be that way so that there'd be leeway for creative interpretation of the characters and all, but my brain wants them pinned down. so. here's a mini-list/research rant of my favs. presently the list consists of:

Jonathan Sims

Martin Blackwood

Sasha James

Timothy Stoker

Mike Crew !

Oliver Banks

Michael Shelley

Gerard Keay

Three disclaimers – (i) The TMA timeline is a trainwreck. Many assumptions have been made. At least half of them are probably wrong (especially where University is used as an age marker) and also my maths ability sucks because I haven’t done maths in two years, so where there are glaring issues, so feel free to correct me and I will edit accordingly :’) (ii) This is by no means definite. See above. Honestly, attempting to decipher them feels like trying to understand the Spiral. But I’m doing it anyway, because as both a fanfic writer and an academic, I want to at least try. (iii) SPOILER WARNING!! SO MANY SPOILERS! I think the only seaosn that isn't spoiled is maybeeee S5 ???

With that, let's go! [Ages are approximate & as-of 2016 / S1]

Jonathan Sims Age: 28 Birth year: 1987-1988 There seems to be a general consensus on this one. MAG81 appears to be one of the key clues here – ‘Jon says that he was about 8 during the events of the statement and that it happened a year or two after Leitner's library ended, which was in 1994. So he's born around 1987-88.’ [source: reddit]Of note is the fact that he lied about his age and pretended to be older, which is hilarious, and leads me to believe that he’s the youngest of the Archives crew – or at least, near there.

Martin Blackwood Age: 28-ish Birth year: 1988 Has worked for the Institute since at least 2009. He’s lied about having a Master’s in parapsychology, so is likely old enough to feasibly be able to have one. As all institute staff have to at least have a Master’s in something archive-related (iirc), all of them must hence be at least 22/23, assuming the Master’s courses are 1 year long. Jonny has, however, stated that Martin is either a bit older or a bit younger than Jon, and I’m tempted to believe it’s the former (see above).

Sasha James Age: 28-34, 30-ish? Birth year: 1981-1987 There’s like, nothing on Sasha. I’m assuming she’s at least older than Jon, because that might be why he began faking his age. The only possible marker would be that Sasha’s worked in Artefact Storage (for 3 months), Research (for longer, I assume) and long enough in Archives to be considered as Gertrude’s likely successor. So, definitely more qualified, and also older than Jon.

Timothy Stoker Age: 30-ish Birth year: 1986? Tim has a degree in Anthropology from Trinity College (I assume this to be Oxbridge, rather than Ireland or something, since he resides in London), and spent 5 years working at a publishing firm. This puts him at 26 (18+3+5) in 2013 when Danny was taken. As he says he began working for the Institute shortly after, I would assume that this is when he stopped working for the firm. I’ve added a bit of buffer because nobody’s birthdays are given, ever, and also there might have been a bit of time between leaving university and joining the firm and/or leaving the firm and finding the Institute. So – 30.

Okay that’s the core staff, onto my other favs.

Michael 'Mike' Crew Age: 37-ish Birth year: ~1979 My #1 avatar! I did a double-take after I worked out his entire timeline, but here’s the highlights: He was a uni student during late 1997-early 1998 when he went looking for Ex Altiora in Lion Books. I’m assuming he was a first year, because generally uni students stay in the sameish area for the whole course and I don’t see him missing out on an opportunity to Leitner-hunt just because the store was in a slightly out-of-the-way part of town. So! This puts his birthdate at around 1979-1980.

Oliver Banks Age: 28-ish Birth year: ~1987 Oliver Banks’ timeline during & post-Uni makes NO SENSE. Fortunately, we do know that he moved to London around 2005 to do his undergraduate degree at the London School of Economics. Which puts him at around 18 in 2005, and his birth year can be worked out from there. Quick rant about Oliver’s timeline: Oliver is working at Barclays by 2007, and he was recruited after graduating. Which means he both began and subsequently completed his undergraduate degree between 2005 and 2007. That’s literally impossible for a standard 3 year course. Plus, by around 2007, he’s been working for nearly a year at Barclays, so he started in 2006… so apparently he began his degree and completed it in under a year, since the academic year starts in September??

Michael Shelley / Michael the Distortion Age: 31 / 49 / early 50s (but canonically 92 at all points in the timeline) Birth year: ??? I didn’t do the research on this one, so here’s my source because I don’t think there’s any more I can add.This mess is truly Spiral-worthy, which could have been intended, but also may just be the TMA timeline wonkiness at work. There’s also been some speculation that he was hired at even younger than 18, but equally it’s possible that he was hired older, which puts his age squarely into the [I don’t have a fucking clue] range.

Gerard Keay Age: technically 32 Birth year: ~1984 Gerry was born in the 80s, and given that the above source states he was in his ‘late teens’ in 2002, this tracks. Making the assumption that he’s 18 in 2002, I’m going to place his birth year at around 1984. However, he died in 2014 (I’m assuming late-2014, given that he had time to encounter Leitner in London & travel a bit with Gertrude before his death) in the USA, putting him at around 30 at the age of his death. Since he’s dead, he doesn’t really age, but he is ‘aware’ enough to be in existential pain so I’m going to go with Descartes on this one and say he’s ‘alive’ enough to continue counting his years of existence. Poor guy. Doesn’t even get to actually die til August 2017 either.

Part 2 ft. the 4 Grandpas of the Apocalypse here

[fox-guardian]

[ID: Digital drawings featuring Mori, who is a cat, and Oliver Banks drawn on a red background. Mori is a slim black cat with gigantic yellow eyes and small fangs poking out of his mouth. Oliver is a thin black man with dark skin, dimples, and piercings, and he is wearing a gray sweater. The drawing on the left is of Mori sitting with his tail out beside him, smiling, and on the right is a drawing of Oliver from the chest up with the upper half of his face out of frame, with Mori sprawled over his shoulder with his front legs sticking out. Mori is smiling and squinting, wall-eyed, with his cheek mushed against Oliver's face, and Oliver is smiling as well. end ID]

~~~~

using @tmaappreciationweek's "what if" and "original character" prompts for today as an excuse to draw Mori. oliver's black cat that i gave him when i thought "what if oliver had a kitty cat"

he's a silly little rescue and the light of oliver's life through all the death prophet junk. the more i draw him the more cartoony he becomes.

[hypnogogyc]

hi i was wondering if you had any terminal velocity hcs (also I **love** your art, the way you colour is just [unintelligible noise] /vpos)

Blam triple threat TY FOR THE KIND COMPLIMENT!!! I really love the coloring part the best so im so glad you took to that alot!!

I have a couple scattered around my terminal velocity tag. Here’s some more!

- Oliver doesn’t sleep sometimes (his sleeping schedule is less a schedule and more some online wheel spinner) and likes to lay his hand on Mike’’s chest as he falls asleep so Oliver can watch and feel his pulse get ever slower and slower and he revels in both the undeniable pulse and the thin line he equates sleep to.

- Mike likes to travel. In fact he will actually go ballistic if in one place too long. Sometimes he says he just doesn’t know how to sit still. Oliver is content to follow 5am travel whims. Mike senses coming storms and chases them. His nighttime melts to his patron too, and when a storm approaches, the rumbles enter the background of his dreams. His eyes snap open in the middle of the night and shakes Oliver awake, who nods as they both dress quickly and pack for a drive.

- Mike fucking loves his car. Its kind of embarrassing how much money has gone into the old vintage machine but it’s a nice clean design minus the rainbow led lights under the rims. He didnt name the car but he commonly calls it “her” and “my baby”

- Oliver is veeerrrry very patient which leads to Mike naturally losing alot of their bits that dont end and become about endurance. Mike has switchups between instant gratification and the ability to pursue one thing uninterrupted.

- Mike has poor circulation which is a shame since Oliver is very much not making body heat. They sleep with several blankets and sometimes a heating pad.

- Oliver is on friendly terms with Simon, who knows Oliver as “my basically-kid’s VERY polite and vast aligned boyfriend” and Oliver picks up some painting from him, much to Mike’s chagrin.

- Mikes favorite music genres are rock, house, and sappy songs. Oliver likes psychedelic, edm, and anything that sounds like a halloween song.

- Mike likes any competitive or open-world game and dislikes games that time cap you daily in progression or get too grind-y. Oliver likes all things horror (he can still spook easy) and dislikes games that have over complicated lore and bad lighting

- Mike got a place with a balcony for easy smoke access, which ends up also being where he leaves and comes back often. He only ever caught Oliver there a handful of times smoking, was scandalized to know Oliver had smoked when he was younger. Then realized his lungs don’t work anymore so free immunity. His Balcony was different in all the places he stayed. Sometimes a backyard. Sometimes a front yard. Often a car. Having someone else there was one of the large invisible steps into intimacy he’d have to wrestle with.

- Oliver is an avid spender of Fairchild money. He was incredibly reluctant to at first but eventually the silks and threadcounts got to him

[the-butterbun]

Hello. I’m glad you like my descriptions for your TMA Tarot.

They are very basic for cards. Mostly just enough to get a message.

But given each Tarot deck is personal to the images they use, I might eventually have time to really go into depth of cards meaning. I have 5 decks myself, and though messages can be the same, the way they are presented are different depending on the cards images.

(Example being my Arcana Deck’s star is very big into hope and courage. As the person who represents it is these things. But my Vampire Deck’s Star is more about the determination and desire of hope than the feeling of it.)

So for your deck I’d be going into more about how the Star and The Dark go hand in hand. Your deck would talk more about the facing of darkness rather than the hope the Star invokes. And would give more messages to the reader that, say reversed, means they are in despair.

So say they got Strength and The Star reversed, the reading would indicate they are in despair and fear, the darkness is about to consume them, and Strength would tell them to face the Dark with calmness and resolve. Invoking in a way two beings, to face the fear of The Dark you must embrace the strength of The Hunt.

I hope this gives you an idea of why I adore Tarot Deck’s that are stylized to certain fandoms. Because though the meaning of the cards are roughly the same, the way they are presented and told to the reader is very different depending on the art and/or fandom they are based in.

Sorry for this info dump, I wish you well with your exams and your project. Dont feel any pressure to continue it, doing 72 cards with 22 of them being heavy stylized as Major Arcane is not easy. (Not to mention the 16 Court Cards.)

((Dude!! The Court Cards could easily be the 14 fears with the Magnus Institute and its Underground being the last two))

Ah, sorry getting carried away with this ‘ask’. Again good luck and hope everything goes well!

I absolutely love your descriptions for the tma tarot cards I drew!

I don't have a lot of practice with more flowery/metaphorical language. Seeing your proposals for the card meanings really sparked up my drive for this project once again. I can go in depth about my reasonings and analysis but poetic prose is a whole other ball park.

The fact that I don't actually have a lot of experience with tarot is also certainly a factor. at the beginning I had trouble matching characters with their cards since all decks are different but that is also the beaty of tarot I learned!

Here's the whole list of the Major Arcana matches so far (keep in mind these might still change, some of theses matches I am more attached to than others)! I paired up all these cards a few months ago so atm am a bit fuzzy on my exact thought process but I made it a point to give each fear AT LEAST one card of the Major Arcana (including the extinction). I have not done the Courts as of yet and probably won't for a while.

0 - the fool - Micheal Shelly

1 - the magician - Anabelle Cain

2 - the high priestess - Melanie King/Helen Richardson (I'm still split on this one)

3 - the empress - Gertrude Robinson

4 - the emperor - Jonah Magnus/Elias Bouchard

5 - the hierophant - Raymond Fielding

6 - the lovers - Agnes Montague and Jack Barnabas

7 - the chariot - Julia Montauk and Trevor Herbert

8 - strength - Daisy Tonner and Badura Hussain

9 - the hermit - Martin Blackwood

10 - wheel of fortune - Georgie Barker and Oliver Banks

11 - Justice - Peter Lukas

12 - the hanged man - Jonathan Sims

13 - death - Gerry Keay

14 - temperance - Jared Hopworth

15 - the devil - Nikola Orsinov

16 - the tower - Micheal Crew

17 - the star - Manuela Dominguez

18 - the moon - Gary Boylen

19 - the sun - Jane Prentis

20 - judgement - Hazekiah Wakely

21 - the world - Simon fairchild

I have my in depth notes on these somewhere in my journal so if anyone's interested I can go in depth on each card, why I chose who I chose as well as alternative candidates :)

PS.: Actually I should probably check out the Courts before I finalize these matches. who knows maybe I'll find better ones and push off some of the Eye servants over there I mean I love them dearly but also this deck is VERY heavily Eye stacked. the 'one card per fear minimum rule' definitely stays regardless

PSS.: (god I can't even even fit them all in the tags, my pookies...)

[thermodynamic-comedian]

wait I didn't send any tma gender headcanons I completely forgot lmao. anyways transfem Oliver Banks who uses She/it thank you for your time

YEAH. YEAHHH HELL YEAH adding this into my own belief system immediately

[almaprincess66]

Back with Re-listenings of S1 of TMA

Today's episode is MAG 11 Dreamer

Antonio (Oliver Banks) mentions his breakup with his boyfriend Graham.

By timeline this was supposed to happen around 2006. The same time MAG 3 happened. Is this the same Graham?

Oliver did your relationship ended because of the Stranger??? Am I getting this correctly?

To clarify this is a headcanon, it is not supported by anything other than same names and dates. It is a fun idea tho.

[eye-catching-tma-headcanons]

oliver dresses like a victorian widow in mourning

I have nothing to add, this is perfect and canon

[silly-tma-headcanons]

ALSO QPR TERMINAL VELOCITY (listen. i'm aroace. ofc i'm going to hc every character in existence to be aspec)

theyre both aroacespec but they act like those "straight" blokes that are very clearly gay for each other but wont admit it. they find themselves very funny

[ezrazzle]

After slowly chipping away at this for a while, I'm finally done drawing the cast of The Magnus Archives!

[cranberrybogmummy]

“Elias do not accept any invitation from Annabelle Cane to get some Christmas drinks in. I will divorce you if I have to sit through another year of your gin soaked version of Santa baby, it has never gotten you anything from me” -Peter Lukas

New Headcanon: Annabelle Cane invites a bunch of her fellow Avatars for a Holiday piss up and no one knows why they accept. They think they had a good time...

And Annabelle has the worst prank: “ how many large spiders can be piled on a drunken avatar’s head before they notice?” The answer is so many more then you’d think also none of their fellows will tell them

cuz they think it's funny.

Jared has won that title a few times, he, Oliver Banks and Mike Crew are best sports about head spiders

Jared kinda digs on the little fellows Mike crew is to high to care and Oliver well they get quiet and mopey when intoxicated.

Elias and Simon both toasted barely holding it together as a tenth wolf spider gently crawls across Jared’s head.

[archivegoblin]

My attempt to be spoiler free - top 2 from each poll will advance to round 2 unless ties happen

[itsclydebitches]

Trying my hand at TMA fic again. Take a snippet because idk when this will be done

There was something cosmically silly in trying to give a god of surveillance the veneer of privacy, but Oliver had been raised polite by his mother and not even the End could take that from him. So he puttered around Jon’s flat, poking at the odds-and-ends while Jon struggled to rise behind him. It was a remarkably normal looking space, all things considered, but then, Jon had never been drawn to eerie opulence like Elias had. He’d still choose a bowl of microwaved ramen over the meals a couple lifetimes of savings - plus the Lukas’ seemingly endless finances - could buy him now and his wardrobe had never quite left its ‘hobo chic’ stage from his time on the run. Oliver admired the cheap mug smushed between a never-used candle and a dented collection of DVDs - “Bad Eye Puns are How Eye Roll” - and wondered how much of this was the Archivist stubbornly holding onto his humanity in the face of Elias’ coaxing, and how much of it was just... Jon.

Then again, Oliver had once seen Elias grievously work his way through a whole packet of macrons after Melanie had interfered with some plan or another, so maybe it was just a Beholding thing.

A snort came from behind him. “You’re one to talk. You obsessively tend to a flat full of live plants, Oliver.”

Oliver pursed his lips and considered chastising Jon for reading his mind, but he likely couldn’t help it in his condition. Plus, he’d probably already felt his annoyance at the invasion. Instead he said, “Have you ever read Good Omens?”

A pause. “...You think you’re Crowley?”

Oliver shrugged. “Plants are easier than people.”

“Oh good lord.”

[multifandombullshitbabes]

I dont talk abt it enough but. I just keep thinking abt gerrymartin.... Truly my tma otp idk what to tell u, they're perfect n amazing n they've never interacted in canon <3<3<3

No but seriously. I love them. Their dynamic is very much that one tumblr post abt finding a witch n then there's two houses or smth n theres a sweater autumn sweet looking person n then a goth one n u go "oh r u the witch goth person?" N they go "no it's my neighbour actually everyone always gets confused" except its gerrymartin n theyre living together n are in love.

Also oliver is there. Cuz i love him n i think he deserves a threesome with gerrymartin. I want good things only for my canon handsome death boy