Cherry Strange (D7) (finished)

Name: Cherry Strange
Age: 16
Gender: Male/Genderfluid
District/Area: District Seven
Appearance:

Cherry is a boy who often presents himself in feminine ways. He has short, dark brown hair that sometimes plays into dark red, depending on the light, and grey-green eyes. He is short for his age, and has softer features than other teenage boys in their growing spurt, but he balances the size and muscle disadvantage with momentum and energy. He is pale-skinned, and tends to have freckles whenever he gets a sunburn (which is fairly often).

Cherry tends to wear comfortable clothing, mostly in colors that hide the significant amount of dirt that he picks up in his daily activities (that is, eventually all his clothing takes on hues of green and brown with patches of berry red). When he is in a feminine mood, he usually wears more accessories (bracelets and necklaces made of string, leather, odd bits of carved wood, and things found in the forest such as nuts or bones). He also likes to comb his hair in different ways, pull it back with a ribbon, and experiment with make-up that highlights his eyes and cheeks. He never really dressed "like a girl," but he is also not particularly bothered by wearing "girly" things. 

Personality:

Cherry is very comfortable in his skin, and very keen to interact with the world. He is naturally curious, and likes to experiment with things, all things, around him - his own expression as much as physics, nature, or creative endeavors. He is not content with knowing something until he has tried it for himself - even if he has seen something curious happen with his own eyes, more likely than not he will try to replicate it. He has never really been trained in science, but he has the basic idea of reproduced results down. 

Cherry is sometimes oblivious to his own uniqueness. Since he was raised by a very open-minded father, he only began to notice that people looked at him weird when he started going to school. He still sees nothing out of the ordinary with how he presents himself, and he is much too curious about how the world works to pay too much attention to people's opinions about him. Until he is directly confronted (which he sometimes is), he is not usually concerned about being liked by everyone.

Cherry is a born prankster. He uses his knowledge of nature, physics, and other fun things to set up "experiments" and see how people react to them. He is cautious not to hurt anyone - physical harm ruins a good prank - but he enjoys getting reactions to his creativity. Sometimes he channels it towards his work in his father's workshop, but not all innovations are equally well received. He does have an eye for color, form, and scent, especially for the natural kind, which is his element in District Eight, and often received as "quaint" in the Capitol. 
(Cherry doesn't like "quaint")

History:

Cherry Strange was born to Harald and Ivy Strange. He was destined at birth to be an only child. Ivy married Harald at the young age of 18, after her family (one of the poorest families in their district) died of an illness. Harald took the girl in, and despite the 10 years of age difference, they grew to love each other. While Ivy survived the illness that took her family, her health was fragile at best, and at first Harald did not even want to talk about having children, afraid that it would make her constitution worse. And yet Ivy wanted to have a large family, and convinced her husband to give their happiness a chance. She was already pregnant with Cherry when her health started failing; the doctors they could afford all said that she would not survive long after the birth. And yet, Ivy was strangely happy, and content with her destiny. She made her husband promise to raise the baby with love, and give him or her the happiest name that she could think of. Cherry was barely a week old when she died.

Harald raised Cherry according to his promise, and it was not hard for him to do so. The bright-eyed boy was eager to please, and a fast learner. Harald has a workshop where he made unique, hand-crafted notebooks and other paper goods, and he taught his son how to help out with the process. Cherry was not allowed to do the more delicate parts of the work (the ones that Harald, despite his bulky form and large hands, did with surprisingly fine detail), but he also had an innate talent for getting into things that had been locked away from him. 

Cherry had a way of expressing himself from an early age, and Harald allowed him to experiment with that too. People rarely ever confronted the large and quiet man about his parenting skills - he was generally well liked in the district, and even the most mean-spirited gossips felt bad for his short-lived marriage. Cherry grew up a happy child, and only encountered problems with acceptance when he went to school. He generally made friends with girls easier than with boys (he still does), but his knowledge of pranks and nifty, crafty things made him popular with many kids his age. When he finished school, he plans on working in his father's shop, and has secret plans for expanding it to include some of his own inventions. When not in school, Cherry spends a lot of time in the forest, exploring and discovering. 

Other:
            Cherry's sexuality is still in flux, but currently pansexual would be the most fitting description.