Face Claim: Xiao De Jun (XiaoJun of WayV)

Thomas finally caught up to his older brother in height right before he left for college, and he is now about 6' (183 cm). He's very slender, but much more muscular than people guess at first glance. He's got the muscles to prove that he was a three sport athlete in high school who kept up with regular exercise after leaving it. He's got relatively short black hair that he keeps in easy to deal with cuts, and other than that doesn't pay much attention to. He's got a kind of angular face, and he's gotten a lot more graceful in the past few years as he's grown into his frame. He hasn't got any tattoos or piercings, and currently doesn't plan on them, though he thinks that earrings are kind of cool.


Before heading off to university, he started getting the hang of dressing better because he knew that there was a chance that he would be seen around Kangwan and the members of Kangwan's group, and that his appearance could reflect on them. As he's gotten more involved in Dreams Ent, he's kind of developed a professional dress code for himself so that he doesn't reflect badly on the Yuseong members when he's seen with them, and he's found that he actually doesn't mind his collared shirts and vest and jackets and sweaters as much as he would have expected in high school.

In general, Thomas is prone to repressing his emotions, but he's gotten a lot better at actually acknowledging what he is feeling in the past few years. Now that he's not as much a mess of conflicting emotion, he's still pretty reserved, but it's over a much calmer interior.

Thomas has a lot of goals, and when he sets his mind to something, he's really good at doing it. It's part of what made him a really good athlete, and also part of what allowed him to do well in school despite a very challenging athletic schedule. It was hugely beneficial in terms of moving to a whole new country and getting comfortable there too.

Thomas is generally extremely protective of those he sees as vulnerable or mistreated. He will speak out against bullying or unfairness, and he will always be that person who steps in between others and danger, be that something literally physically dangerous or something more emotional like having to go talk to an authority figure who seems hard to approach.

Thomas had a really rough time of high school after his parents passed away. He was trying to help his older brother maintain a household and make sure that everyone ate and things at home were clean. In many ways, he was doing more of the work on things at home because Theo was out of the house so much. He was also struggling with coming to terms with his sexuality and emotions about things. This led to him being very volatile at the time, but he's turned that around with some therapy and some coming to terms with himself. He's a very quiet, focused, reserved person, and he is very protective of the people he cares deeply about. He also is one of those people who seems to constantly be trying to do everything, and yet somehow actually doing it. As he's gotten older, he's gotten emotionally steadier, but the extreme multitasking has stayed.

MOTHER
Name: Lin Yue
Birth Year: 1959 (deceased)
Occupation: N/A (deceased)
Feelings Toward: Thomas had a very mixed relationship with his mother, but he also loved her dearly. They often pushed each other's buttons a little bit because even before she passed away, he was rather closed off, but she was also the person who would take the best care of him when he wasn't feeling good. He misses her desperately. She is also the person that he felt the most pressure from to fit a certain mold because he was generally the child that fit the most social expectations, and he was supposed to be the kid who would eventually give her grandkids.

FATHER
Name: Fan Xing
Birth Year: 1959 (deceased)
Occupation: N/A (deceased)
Feelings Toward: Thomas was quietly close to his dad. They would happily do things together, and he probably misses his dad more than his mom. They were the two morning people of their family, so it was common for them to quietly eat breakfast and stuff together before everyone else was awake.

OLDER BROTHER
Name: Theo Fan
Birth Year: 1992
Occupation: Manager at LGBTQ+ Center
Feelings Toward: Thomas cares for his older brother deeply and has no idea how to relate to him. He's always seen Theo being open with his emotions and showing how he feels, and Thomas really struggles with reciprocating that kind of connection. He has gotten a little bit better at expressing that he also cares about his brother over the past few years though. He also used to be very jealous of his older brother for somehow not facing expectations of a relationship path from their parents before they passed away. He kind of resented that after Theo came out, he was given the less than subtle message that he was expected to be the kid who would follow a "normal" path, get married, have kids, make sure his parents had grandkids. This was part of what really caused him to struggle with his own sexuality for a long time, and it's been something the two of them have slowly come to terms with. The fact that Theo ended up dating his favorite teacher ever did kind of help him feel more pleased with his older brother.

YOUNGER BROTHER
Name: Teagan Fan
Birth Year: 2002
Occupation: In a trades program
Feelings Toward: Teagan is one of the few people that Thomas has feelings about that those feelings are uncomplicated. He adores his little brother and is incredibly protective of him. They don't always have much that they bond over, having rather different interests, but Teagan can basically do no wrong in Thomas's eyes, and anyone who threatens his baby brother in any way is in for a world of hurt.

SOON TO BE BROTHER-IN-LAW
Name: Yunjin Lin
Birth Year: 1992
Occupation: High School Music, Chinese, and Korean Teacher
Feelings Toward: Immense respect and fondness. Yunjin was the teacher who really helped Thomas turn around some of the weirdness in his life, and he will jokingly quip to Theo that once he actually marries Yunjin, Yunjin will be Thomas's favorite brother.

BASIICALLY YOUNGER BROTHER
Name: Taijia Lin
Birth Year: 2008
Occupation: High School Student / Dreams Ent Trainee
Feelings Toward: Fond, protective, very close. Thomas and Tai have a lot in common, and Thomas basically sees Tai as like a little brother to him. He was part of Tai's rotating cast of babysitters, and so he was actually already a familiar fixture for Tai when his brothers moved in to the Lin and co household. Now that they're both in Seoul, Thomas is Tai's official adult, and it's made them even closer.

BOYFRIEND
Name: Kim Kangwan
Birth Year: 1999
Occupation: Kpop Idol: Yuseong Member
Feelings Toward: Love, comfort, strong attachment. When they first started dating in high school, honestly, Thomas had no idea how long they'd be able to last, but their commitment to each other has thrived surprisingly well, and Thomas isn't going anywhere. He went to Korea because he wanted to travel and studying abroad seemed like his only chance, but a big part of the draw of working for Dreams Ent is the ease of being close to Kangwan.

Thomas is exactly seven years younger than his older brother and exactly three years older than his younger brother. It kind of baffles him that the three of them share a birthday, but it's something that he's grown used to, though people would ask him about it when he was younger. His parents were loving, but also had a lot of expectations of him as a kid, and he stayed very tangled up in those expectations for a long time. He's slowly started to move past them to figure out what he really wants for himself though. Thomas has always been very different from his much more artistically inclined brothers, and between being very athletically talented and rather academically gifted, he drew a lot of expectations from his parents to be the kid who followed what they viewed as the normal pattern. This got even worse for him after his older brother came out, and suddenly, he was the sibling who was being expected to "carry on the family line" eventually. This of course happened right around the time he was starting to realize that he might be gay.



Thomas loves sports, doing soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter, and track and field in the spring, and he has been on varsity since his sophomore year for the first two and his freshman year for the latter. He used to generally hang out with the other athletes sort of by default, since being a varsity athlete it is sort of a built in friend group, but he was rather isolated, not having anyone he actually particularly cares to get on with and talk to deeply within that group. This only got worse after his parents passed away, and while he threw himself into sports and academics more than ever, he did not necessarily win friends with his added competitive feelings and how touchy his temper got. There were quite a few bullies, especially people on his teams who resented him his achievements, and who started specifically targeting him. He got in a lot of fights for a while, but a series of events involving Yunjin as his teacher, and him getting to know Kangwan, and also making friends with Inkar, sort of got him out of that headspace.



Academically, Thomas really excels in math and sciences, mainly because those are what interest him the most, but he's never gotten lower than a B in any class in high school, and he graduated the valedictorian of his class. He's quite proud of his grades, and they served him well when he decided that he wanted to go to college abroad, specifically applying to and getting into one of the best universities in Korea. He was able to get some scholarships for his studying abroad, but he also saved up from summer jobs and the job he worked his senior year of high school. His homeroom teacher and academic adviser in high school was YunJin, and he really looks up to him because YunJin doesn't let people saying cruel or bigoted things slide ever. And YunJin believed him, and listened to what he says, and he also tried to stand up for him, which is something that Thomas wasn't used to. YunJin has also changed his mental image a little bit of what being gay looked like to the point that he was much more able to come to terms with himself. His interactions with Yunjin made him sort of want to maybe eventually be a teacher.



He has been dating Kangwan since very shortly after he came to terms with his own sexuality, and the two of them are very comfortably close. Their relationship is somewhat secret, but everyone in Thomas's family along with their close friends know. While Kangwan going back to Korea was part of what motivated him to study there, he also just wanted a chance to be away from all the strange history of his family that has hovered over him in Cedar Beach.



Thomas earned his AA at Cedar Beach Community College through Running Start (college in high school) before moving to Korea to attend Seoul National University. This meant that he was entering with a fair amount of college credit, and he'd been able to get through enough Korean that he entered no longer needing to be in Language Learner courses. He double majored in Mathematics Education and Studies in East Asian Humanities (which is an interdisciplinary major) with a focus in languages (Korean and Mandarin) and linguistics and graduated in the class of 2021.



For a while after arriving in Korea, he worked as a math and English tutor at a study cafe near the university, but over the summer of the Dreams Ent training camp, once he'd gotten through all the paper work for the clearance to go to the dorms to visit Kangwan, he was hired to translate and then also as a tutor and longer term translator for the trainees. He's starting to also get occasional manager duties, and he's gotten his Korean drivers license. After graduating, he became a full time employee with his duties spread between tutoring (including acting as an English and Chinese teacher), translating, driving, and acting as an assistant manager (mainly for when Yuseong members have personal schedules).

Hello! My name is Etienne!
I was born in 1989.
My pronouns are he/him.