Connifer Darkmoss | District 9 (and three quarters)

With an oval-shaped face, proud, noble nose, and a subtle but strong jawline, Connifer appears, at first glance, to be headstrong with a hint of pride. However, his soft lips belie his insecurity, and his subtle (though stubborn) chin suggests that the strength his eyes exude might be easily thwarted if his enemies knew where to strike.



Though he looks very much like a female and does not dare to try fixing himself, he is wholly male. He prefers to tie his long hair back into a bun, secretly used to snip off the ends of his eyelashes to make them shorter (which he immediately stopped doing when his father gave him a good smack for it), and refuses to wear the 'pretty' or 'good' clothes his mother sets out for him.



Instead of dressing as a polite, proper lady, which he isn't, he lets his sister Aisley wear the 'good clothes', and prefers to wear the best work clothes he has during the Reapings-- pants and a shirt. It's odd for a girl, but as he rarely insists upon such things, it tends to be overlooked. After all, almost everyone has a secret or quirk, and in places like the districts, few tend to question one's preference for pants.


Trying to keep up with the boys has led him to gain more muscle mass than most girls, but were he to be viewed as a boy, he'd be seen as scrawny. It shows in his inability to handle heavy objects. In fact, he's kind of weak. Still, he can manage to climb and run well, can even jump up onto a horse without a mounting block, and his lean physique aids him in sprinting. As such he's clearly better suited to running than standing his ground.

Conn would, if he had been allowed to grow up a boy, be overconfident and pleasant, outgoing and fearless. Instead he is rife with insecurities... namely, does he look enough like a guy to pass for one, and does he look too masculine to be accepted by his family? Treading the line between tomboy and male is hard, and he tries to be just on the line, one foot on either side. It's more comfortable when he can, in private, be completely male in appearance, but it's so hard to find the time, and he doesn't know that he can trust anyone with that.

His waking moments are full of worry because he was socialized as a girl, and has so much trouble relating to others, jealous that they seem so confident, so right, in their own skins. As a result, despite his ability to gauge others and adjust his behavior to match, he always feels unsure of himself in comparison. He is constantly calculating how to respond and what he looks and seems like, and it takes a toll on him. While, therefore, he is above par in terms of social skills, he is almost always preoccupied with it when engaging in social situations.

Conn is not much of a leader. While he can persuade people to do things due to his social aptitude, he isn't good at outright leading. He is better thought of as a 'power bottom', convincing the person in charge to do what he wants. He's submissive in that sense, and cunning, but that's mostly because of how he was raised to be that way. He knows little else, so he uses what he has.

This is the only way in which his appearance benefits him. Being female in body, with a decent smile, he can sometimes convince others to do things for him. He's learned well the art of batting his shorter eyelashes, parting his lips ever-so-slightly, and breathing a warm thank-you with a slightly dazed expression, as though giving him tiny favors was giving a young, love-sick girl the world, prompting them to be more receptive to bigger favors. This manipulation makes him feel queasy; he dislikes lying, hates having to act the way a girl would. However, when it comes down to it, he'd prefer to act like a girl for a while and get rewarded for it than not. Slightly greedy, Conn wants what he wants, and he's ready to manipulate others to do it. He's accepting of his situation as well: he doesn't think he'll ever be able to have the right parts. So he tries to make the best of it, tries not to flinch when he hears someone call him a 'she'. He was given a reputation among the townsfolk as a sweet, warm girl, and he also knew that behind his back he was called things and spoken about in ways that would make his mother blush in rage and disappointment.

Such is the way of the world. But fortunately, he isn't really a girl. Their insults and bravado-fueled lies about being together, doing things, don't apply to him. Or at least... he made himself think that, because otherwise, they'd have found an opening in his emotional armor. 

Conn was born to a family of three. His mother, Averil, and his father, Ash, were both farmers. His sister Aisley was born two years before he was, and often teased him by calling him Connie, which only she knows bothers him. In fact, despite how he started opening up about preferring the name 'Conn', he rarely stood up for himself in terms of gender. He soon started growing a backbone, however, on his fifteenth birthday, when he started to... develop.

The change wasn't obvious to most people, but he was determined to stop showing his... most recent, despised changes. It was hard enough bathing himself seeing that his body didn't have the right parts without his chest growing those stupid useless bumps. By using strips cut from a discarded sheet, he started to wrap his chest. This did make it harder on him, as it was hard to breathe at first, but he had nothing else with which to do it. Proud of the flat plane he'd created, he put his hair back in a bun and wore a cap over it. He also took care to smudge his face and hands with dirt to keep people from looking at his face too closely.

He never could pluck up the courage to put his name in with the boys. He never wore this outfit around his mother, always went to the reaping separately and came home late so that he could avoid his parents until he had a chance to change in private. Only Aisley knew about how he would dress up in more neutral clothing, and she often told him he should just wear stuff like that all the time around everyone.

One night he snuck out and met a girl, introduced himself as Mark. It had been dark and she'd let him kiss her. They'd gotten drunk, he'd fumbled with her for a while, even touched her, but when she asked why he wasn't getting around to it already, he flushed hot with shame and ran away. It had been a moment that proved to him he was... wrong. Something had gone wrong, somewhere along the line, and he shouldn't be who he was. But he was and it hurt.

That was just his fifteenth year, but there really wasn't much else to say about his past. It was pleasant enough, despite the confusion and mild dysphoria that plagued him wherever he turned. His parents truly loved him, though he knew, or believed he knew, deep down they would never understand that he was a 'he' and not a 'she'. After all, he did have a girl's body, despite how wrong it was, and they were both perfectly heteronormative. He learned how to take care of it willingly, knowing that it was better to keep himself healthy than not. He accepted that he was in the wrong body as a matter of necessity, even though he wasn't capable of being happy that way. He did his best to fix this and keep it quiet, because he didn't know of anyone else being like him, and it was quite possible that he would be hurt or worse for it if it was found out. Because of his worries he has never told anyone about his true gender. He's become quite a loner as a result, with his sister Aisley being his only real friend. He's never said anything to her outright, but he thinks she knows, and he is infinitely grateful for her gentle tact and willingness to hold him when she finds him crying. She says, "There, there, Conn, things will be okay," and sometimes he believes her. He always feels better when they have a conversation; she always manages a gentle nudge to push him in the right direction. Even when he murmured to her that he liked girls and told her about the night he'd gotten drunk on illegal booze and was with one for a while, Aisley didn't even flinch. Just put her hand on his shoulder, squeezed, and smiled.


"It's okay," she said. "Really." On another occasion, "You always try so hard. Just relax, let yourself relax."

It gave him hope for the future, but he would still have trouble following Aisley's advice, now and probably forever.