Tom, a character from the It Lives In The Woods and It Lives Beneath books, is a student and a basketball player at Westchester High at the time of the first book. As of It Lives Beneath, he has moved to Pine Springs and now works as a mechanic. He is one of your love interests in It Lives Beneath. He is first seen in It Lives In The Woods, Chapter 4.
Appearance
Tom has neck-length black hair, brown eyes, and fair skin. He wears a pair of glasses and a cream hoodie over a plaid button-up shirt.
His Westchester Wolves basketball jersey (navy blue and white with black outlines) has the number 17 on the front. He wears a pair of sports glasses when playing basketball.
When possessed by Mr. Red, his skin color becomes gray and his eyes are yellow surrounded by black vein-like markings.
In It Lives Beneath, he wears a gray hoodie over a red t-shirt. He also appears to be wearing a smaller pair of glasses and has a man-bun.
Personality
Like Andy, Tom is frustrated at the basketball team’s exclusion of minorities like them. In contrast to Andy, who just joined the team and has a seemingly naive view of it, Tom has been on the team since junior high and has endured discrimination from them, which contributed to his pessimism. Nevertheless, he still has high hopes that Andy will contribute his best to the team. Throughout Andy's transition, Tom was open minded and supportive.
He is shown to be a friendly person, even to students he doesn't know that well. He continues to be a friendly person in It Lives Beneath. Tom is very protective of the people he cares about, as shown by his reaction when others bully Andy. This protectiveness causes him to feel very guilty about "failing" others during the events of It Lives In The Woods. Guilt ultimately becomes a powerful motivator for Tom, causing him to move to Pine Springs from Westchester and strongly impacting his mental health. In a premium scene in It Lives Beneath, Chapter 5, Tom mentions that he suffered from depression in college, which caused him to skip classes and eventually drop out.
Even though he is aware of the supernatural, he is still shown to be uncomfortable around it. He gains confidence in dealing with the supernatural if you purchase the premium spell book, therefore allowing him to learn a variety of useful spells to help him protect himself and others.
Tom has a variety of "nerdy" interests, including video games and science fiction, and is horrified when Imogen at one point confuses Star Trek and Star Wars. He is also interested in robotics and originally attended college to study Computer Science.
Chapters
It Lives
It Lives In The Woods
- Chapter 4: What's Coming to You
- Chapter 5: Buckle Up
- Chapter 7: Party Favors
- Chapter 9: Ungrateful
- Chapter 10: I'm Not Scared (Mentioned)
- Chapter 13: Fight or Flight
- Chapter 14: In the Dark
- Chapter 15: Everyone Plays Together (Mentioned)
- Chapter 16: In Memoriam
It Lives Beneath
- Chapter 1: Dead in the Water
- Chapter 3: Off the Deep End
- Chapter 5: Gone Fishing
- Chapter 6: All Hands on Deck
- Chapter 7: Hidden Depths
- Chapter 8: The Floodgates
- Chapter 9: Any Port in a Storm
- Chapter 10: Still Waters
- Chapter 11: Sinking Feeling
- Chapter 12: Riptide
- Chapter 13: Hell or High Water
- Chapter 14: Under Pressure
- Chapter 15: Sink or Swim
- Chapter 17: Fishsticks (Determinant)
Relationships
Andy Kang
Tom and Andy have been friends since they were toddlers. It started when their respective parents were friends in college and often met together as a result. Their friendship has continued to high school, where they are excluded from various exercises during basketball practice because they are the only Asians on the team. If you choose to have Andy free Tom from Mr. Red's mind control, it's revealed that Andy contemplated suicide when he was younger and it was Tom's friendship that helped him through it. Andy gives as an example the first day he cut his hair short in sixth grade and while the other kids and the adults reacted negatively, Tom ran to him, ruffled his hair, and called him his twin.
A year after the events of Chapter 15, if Andy survived the final game of "Are You Scared?", they are still together on the basketball team and best friends. Tom is also protective of him. It's revealed that Andy and the rest of the protagonists trusted Tom enough to tell him the truth behind Redfield and the supernatural events in Westchester, though he remains skeptic. They are still shown to be good friends with each other in It Lives Beneath.
Your Character (It Lives Beneath)
He's a love interest of your character. Throughout his time in Pine Springs, you have the options of spending alone time with him as friends or as more. Depending on how much you romance him, you can tell him that you love him and if romanced enough, he will tell you he loves you too. If he survives, in Chapter 17, he tells you that he has re-enrolled at Hartfeld and plans to finish his degree in robotics.
You first meet Tom during your arrival at Pine Springs, at your grandfathers house were you get the chance to flirt with him. Afterwards he offers to take you on a boat ride around Pine Springs and you once again have the option to flirt with him. After Kyle's death at the hands of a mysterious lake ghost during Imogen's party, Tom is the first one you confine in, telling him about what you saw. He offers to help with your investigation into the lake ghost and saves you from being attacked by a monster, which leads to him telling you and your friends about his own experience with the supernatural. Later on, he takes you Westchester and you have the option of going to the barcade with him where you verse each other on one of the video game consoles. If you win, you get the chance to kiss him on the cheek. After, he confides in you about his experience being Jane's puppet and his guilt about hurting the people he loved while you comfort him. As the two of you leave the barcade, you can either kiss him for the first time or hold hands.
He has shown on multiple occasions to be very protective of the player, going to great lengths to keep them safe, even if it puts himself at risk. You can spend time with him at the Lake Day were you play games together and be intimate with him in the photo booth. Later on the Wescott's yacht, he comes by to check on you and you can allow him to help you with your wounds from the monster attack and share a heated moment. As your group prepares to face Josephine and the The Cult, and if you have romanced him enough, he will admit to wanting a relationship with you, reciprocating your romantic feelings. Two months after the battle, you meet up with Tom and the others for a picnic by the cliffs were you get the option to go for a walk together through the woods before returning back to your cabin were the two of you have the chance to have sex for the first time and Tom tells you he loves you.
Tom has shown to care deeply for you, weather you romance him or not, as he worry's about losing you and still wishes to have a relationship with you once he leaves for Hartfeld.
Gallery
Other Looks
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Misc
Trivia
- In It Lives In The Woods, Chapter 7, Tom mentions that so far, he always wins when playing Never have I ever because his life was "pretty boring".
- On May 2, 2018, the It Lives writers hinted that an old friend from It Lives in the Woods just got a 🔥 makeover for It Lives Beneath and asked players to see if they could guess who it is.[1]
- It was later confirmed on October 10, 2018, to be Tom in Chapter 1.[2]
- At the end of It Lives In the Woods, if Ava survives and you pick the option "Cora would've wanted me to have it" when Tom and Ava talk in the library, he tells her that he met Cora once at the bus stop after he almost ran her over with his skateboard.
- After Imogen's horse, Diavolos, is killed by the lake creatures, Tom tells her the story of his dog Jester. He reveals that Jester died at some point prior to the events of It Lives Beneath.
- The name Tomoichi is of Japanese origin and means "smart".
- The surname Sato is of Japanese origin and means: Village, township, sacred, clever, management, capital, color, vividness, ladle, create, human, help someone, bloom, gauze, benevolence. It's the most common surname in Japan.
- If you go to the barcade with him in It Lives Beneath, he mentions that he started studying robotics to pursue his childhood dream of building the first real Transformer.
- He likes Dungeons & Dragons.
Memorable Quotes
(Thank you to the PLL Wikia for letting us use their template for this memorable quotes section!)
Tom [to Andy]: You don't have to prove anything to those guys. If they can't see you're the best captain this team's ever had, that's their loss. Honestly, a big part of me wants to kick every guy that ever looked at you funny off the team. Possibly set them on fire. [If Andy survived] |
Tom [to MC (ILB)]: All aboard Tom's Totally Awesome Tour Boat, where our motto is 'hey, look over there!' |
Tom [to Imogen]: Well... unfortunately, it looks like the primary core matrix has fallen out of alignment. [...] That means all the flux crystals are gonna need to be individually re-calibrated. And don't even get me started on the tuning webs. How long has it been since you strung those? |
Tom: People come up with all kinds of crap when the alternative means admitting they don't understand something. |
Tom [to MC (ILB)], high-nerve route: I couldn't let what happened to Andy happen to you. I'm done being helpless while the people that matter most to me get hurt. |
Tom [if he survived, to other survivors (ILB)]: I don't know of any torture worse than staring at a bag of Korean barbecue chips and not being able to eat them. |