🌻 for your thoughts on Thom Jr (*rubbing my hands together knowingly*)
Oh boy, Thom Jr. is the second greatest sufferer in the "why would you name all the children in your friend group after the ghosts that collectively haunt you" sweepstakes (poor Kalasin), and his suffering is not particularly alleviated by fandom.
Pierce mentions him what, twice, three times when he's old enough to have a personality (i.e. in the Trickster books), so there's not much to build from, but he's a scholar and a mage who opted against knight training and is so focused on his studies that he doesn't pay attention to trends and when his sister tries to get his attention he fobs her off. Wow! Groundbreaking! Totally novel for young red-haired men named Thom in this universe! And he sure does look like his uncle sans the purple eyes from what Pierce has partially-extracanonically said.
And it's really just the least interesting thing she could have possibly done with him? I get he isn't the main character, he doesn't need to be interesting, but any fond memories of her brothers would have been a good thing to make her less abrasive and also to make the choice between Tortall and the Copper Isles harder.
And then I think a lot of fandom (not that he appears in a ton of fics, so I'm extrapolating a lot from a little) just kind of leaned into that instead of complicating him and giving him friction with just being Thom Sr. All Over Again, the heir to a fief who doesn't care about that and only cares about his scholarly work (and who is obviously gay, which, like, I'm torn on that? Because on one hand it is an unqualified good to queer Tortall more and why NOT him, and on the other hand it puts my hackles up a wee bit to have everyone go The One Who Is Named After And Echoes The Subtextually Queer One Is The Queer One. Maybe he is! Many people do it convincingly, yourself included! But if it's the only thing he ever is, it feels like uncritically buying into Pierce's lazy characterization But Diversely).
A selection of possible Thom characterizations that don't directly contradict canon but give us something richer to work with than Non-Doomed Thom Sr.:
He wanted to be a knight and a mage all at once like Alanna, and when he told her this she reacted so weirdly that he immediately pivoted his life plans. He still practices weapons privately, probably more along the lines of knife work like his father than the sword
He wanted to be a knight but the weight of his mother's legacy scared him off of it OR he would have done it but he would have started the same year as Kel and he really didn't want to know which of them Alanna would have favored more
He's a loving and attentive older brother and dismissing Aly's hair was an aberration because he had a lot of tests that month/he'd been crossed in love/he was having a crisis of life path
His intensity about being a mage is because he feels that that, rather than knighthood, is going to be the most important avenue of protection for Tortall in the future
His intensity about academic work is a function of intensity about inheriting Pirate's Swoop. With two parents largely focused on different projects (being Champion and spymaster respectively) he's taken on many fief administrative duties unusually young
He's training his Gift very strictly and taking every course he can about magical ethics because the thought of being anything like his uncle makes him sick
Any of those are compatible with whatever love interest situation, too, it just feels like giving him more to do than Get Swallowed Up Being A Magical Prodigy Who Barely Pays Attention To Anything Outside That.
Anyway, in conclusion, sometime I'm going to figure out who I want him to marry and I am going to write the Thom Jr. fic.
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