Dustin Henderson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
curiosityvoyage) wrote2018-01-07 02:46 pm
curiosityvoyage) wrote2018-01-07 02:46 pm
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< CHARACTER INFO >
CHARACTER NAME: Dustin Henderson
CHARACTER AGE: 13
SERIES: Stranger Things
CHRONOLOGY: Season 2 Episode 3, "The Pollywog", after finding Dart in his trash
CLASS:bard hero!
HOUSING: De Chima #6, Student and/or Part-Time Intern at the Cold Blood And Warm Hearts Reptile Rehabilitation Sanctuary
BACKGROUND:
Dustin on the Stranger Things wiki.
PERSONALITY:
The first time we see Dustin in the show, in the very first episode ("The Vanishing of Will Byers"), he and his friends are at the end of their D&D campaign, and they're facing off against the Demogorgon, the final boss of this particular campaign. Will Byers, a close friend of Dustin's, has a small crisis over what spell to cast—a defensive spell to keep himself safe, or an offensive spell to fight the Demogorgon. Lucas Sinclair, another close friend, advises for Will to cast a fireball spell, which requires a roll of 13 or higher. Dustin, however, advises Will to cast Protect because the fireball spell is too risky, which establishes Dustin's practical approach to situations: generally speaking, he's not someone for unnecessary risks, and in his group of friends known as the Party, he's often the voice of reason, pointing out the risks involved in a particular course of action, such as when he, Lucas and their friend and leader Mike Wheeler go looking for Will in the rain after Will's disappearance. He's the one to point out that there's a likelihood that Will disappeared because of something very bad, and that sneaking out at night and going to the place where he was last seen with no weapons does not seem like a wise plan, as well as the same person who, in episode six ("The Monster"), tries to dissuade Mike from jumping off a cliff despite being threatened by a switchblade-wielding bully who wants to cut his baby teeth out, pointing out that in the grand scheme of things, his baby teeth are not worth Mike risking his life over. This practicality doesn't mean he's not going to go along with the party's plans, though, because come hell or high water, Dustin's still willing to go along with such life-endangering plans as going out in the rain at night to look for Will, keeping a psychic child named Eleven in Mike's basement a secret, and in season two's ninth episode "The Gate", setting a hub of interdimensional tunnels on fire.
At heart, Dustin values his friends highly, and as an extension he values the Rule of Law, a system of rules that governs their party. He's willing to lay his life down for them, as demonstrated when he stands up to gun-wielding government agents after Eleven (for all the good that does him seeing as he was twelve at the time), and he's willing to get hurt to protect them or simply to keep them happy—the switchblade-wielding bully did threaten to cut his baby teeth out if Mike didn't jump off the cliff, but for Dustin, a little pain is fine so long as Mike's alive and well. He clearly grows infatuated with new girl Max Mayfield in season two, but because she and Lucas grow much closer over the course of the season and because Dustin did kind of keep a baby monster pet against the advice of and unbeknownst to all of his friends, he tells Lucas, in a distinctly dejected tone, that Max can take Dustin's place in the party as he did break the party's rules. In season one he's the person who attempts to mediate the conflict between Mike and Lucas over Eleven, going so far as to yell at Mike for being an asshole (and noting in that same sentence that Lucas and Eleven were also assholes) and forcing him into at least attempting to mend the rift between them. He's willing to go with plans that could most likely endanger his life in order to keep his friends safe, as he also goes looking for Will in season one along with the rest of the party, because Will is their friend and it is their duty to find him. He goes along with setting the interdimensional tunnel hub on fire because doing so will affect the hive mind of the Mind Flayer's army, thus distracting them from Eleven closing the gate until it's too late. Most of the time, Dustin's friends are among his top priorities, right up there with food and science.
And Dustin's surprisingly good at making friends, or at least he doesn't meet with much difficulty when he sets his mind to it. In season two, he picks up a new pet from his trash can and names it D'artagnan, and he quickly wins some measure of affection from it by feeding it nougat—if the creature wasn't from the Upside Down, and inclined to eat cats and then later humans, it's likely Dustin's new pet would've lasted much, much longer than a few days. He also later on recruits Steve Harrington into finding and hopefully taking down Dart once Dart becomes too dangerous to keep as a pet, and he very quickly warms towards Steve, helped along by their extraordinary situation—it's to the point that after Steve loses a fight in the course of keeping Dustin, Lucas, Mike and Max safe, Dustin's the one who reassures Steve that, although his ass got thoroughly kicked, "[he] put up a good fight, it's okay." He also at least attempts to become friends with Max, though these attempts are stymied by the fact that he doesn't go to the same extent of letting her in on the secret of the Upside Down as Lucas does. We can assume here that he regards the idea of letting her in on it as dangerous, both to her and to the Party, as last year they ended up becoming fugitives from the law. (It doesn't stop him from trying to impress her with an interdimensional slug, though.)
Dustin is also a very curious person. Some would say that he's even the most learned of the party, but in truth he's just the one who's likeliest to seek out new information, as well as the one with the most insatiable curiosity. He, along with the rest of the party, pays the most attention in their whole class to Mr. Clarke's lectures, and while he's raising his baby monster pet, he borrows a great deal of books from the library to pinpoint what species it is and picks up a great deal of information along the way. He also displays a knowledge of compasses, lecturing the party on how a compass works in episode 5 ("The Flea and the Acrobat"), which says something about his hunger for knowledge even outside of crisis situations. He's the type of person who's willing not only to do research on something to figure out how best to take care of it, but in the absence of prior research (such as the Demogorgon and the Mind Flayer), to make analogies featuring D&D to relate to the monsters he finds himself up against, as D&D features the monsters that act closest to the ones they're up against. He's good at making connections that others might not see as easily, though sometimes he can get carried away with these connections and take them too far, as demonstrated in season two's 8th episode "The Mind Flayer", where he gets a little too carried away with the analogy of the Dungeons and Dragons Mind Flayer and suggests fighting the Shadow Monster they're up against with an army of the undead.
Of the classes in the Dungeons and Dragons world, Dustin is explicitly referred to as a bard by Mike. One of the bard's responsibilities is keeping morale up amongst the party, and indeed that's something that Dustin performs admirably: in season one, he's the one who grows sick of the conflict between Mike and Lucas over Eleven, and he at least makes the attempt of trying to reconcile the two so they can find Will. He goes to find Eleven some chocolate pudding in the eighth episode of the first season ("The Upside Down"), claiming that she needs to be recharged—this is another example of Dustin prioritizing the needs of his friends and also the morale of the party, as well as how good he is, I guess, at finding food when he's hell-bent on it. He's also more diplomatic and observant than the others, often electing to take the less risky course of action if he believes the risk is not worth it, and often wanting to take the course of action that results in the least amount of danger. He's the one who has a good grasp on how the dynamics of the party works, noting to Mike in season one that Lucas, being his best friend, might be a little jealous of Eleven monopolizing Mike's time and attention, from Lucas's point of view. However, he can also be more likely to lie to others and manipulate their feelings in order to achieve a goal: sometimes this is for the good, as we see in the seventh episode of the first season ("The Bathtub"), where he guilts Mr. Clarke into telling him how to build a sensory deprivation tank by pointing out how Clarke always encourages them to open any curiosity door they find, so "why are you keeping this curiosity door locked?" Other times, however, this action turns out badly, as in the case of his pet demogorgon D'artagnan, who he tries to keep secret from the rest of the party once it's found out that he's from the Upside Down.
In the case of D'artagnan, also known as Dart, we see that Dustin's also willing enough to break the Rule of Law that he values so much, if he deems it necessary. We return here to the loyalty that Dustin gives to the people he cares for, and in this case, Dart falls under this category. Dustin's willing to risk conflict with people that he loves for—well, other people that he loves, because at heart, Dustin's a loyal person, and while he'd regret doing it, he'd absolutely lie to someone he loves if he feels it's necessary to keep someone else that he cares for safe. He can also take it more than a little bit personally should someone that he cares about fight with him as well, no matter how justified it is: while he and Lucas, throughout the whole series, have always had a slightly more vitriolic dynamic than with the others, their arguments take on a real sting of anger after it's discovered that Dustin hid Dart even after he realized Dart was from the Upside Down. Dustin even snaps at Lucas for letting Max in on the truth of things, in an effort to call their offenses even and weasel out of having to mend the rift between them the hard way. He snaps at Mike in season one as well, calling him (and Lucas and Eleven) "a bunch of little assholes" and himself "the only reasonable one", in the aftermath of Mike's fallout with Lucas.
Dustin can also be more than a little insensitive, as well as impulsive, given that he is a thirteen-year-old boy. He never truly means anything by it, but he's been known to make remarks and actions that haven't been completely thought through. His first meeting with Eleven, in the second episode of the series ("The Weirdo on Maple Street"), has him asking if she has cancer or if she's deaf, and once he finds out that she has the ability to move things with her mind, immediately tries to get her to levitate a toy-shaped Millennium Falcon. This shows that some of his insensitivity may be borne out of his curiosity and even enthusiasm over new things, as he's more than a little bit awed of Eleven's powers even after she uses it to essentially throw Lucas into a wall. He also states, after Will's fake funeral midway through season one, that the wafers being served "aren't real Nilla Wafers," which can seem more than a little insensitive considering he makes it right after the funeral of one of his closest friends. He, along with the rest of the Party, ends up stalking Max in the first episode of season two ("Mad Max"), in a bid to learn more about her, and of course he ends up taking Dart home from his trash can and adopting him as a pet, and then keeping him against the advice of all of his friends. He ends up paying dearly for that last bit, losing his cat Mews when Dart grows old enough to decide he's sick of eating nougat.
POWER: Dustin is canonically unpowered, though he does display an affinity for radios and a knowledge of Dungeons & Dragons, as well as an insatiable curiosity.
CHARACTER NAME: Dustin Henderson
CHARACTER AGE: 13
SERIES: Stranger Things
CHRONOLOGY: Season 2 Episode 3, "The Pollywog", after finding Dart in his trash
CLASS:
HOUSING: De Chima #6, Student and/or Part-Time Intern at the Cold Blood And Warm Hearts Reptile Rehabilitation Sanctuary
BACKGROUND:
Dustin on the Stranger Things wiki.
PERSONALITY:
The first time we see Dustin in the show, in the very first episode ("The Vanishing of Will Byers"), he and his friends are at the end of their D&D campaign, and they're facing off against the Demogorgon, the final boss of this particular campaign. Will Byers, a close friend of Dustin's, has a small crisis over what spell to cast—a defensive spell to keep himself safe, or an offensive spell to fight the Demogorgon. Lucas Sinclair, another close friend, advises for Will to cast a fireball spell, which requires a roll of 13 or higher. Dustin, however, advises Will to cast Protect because the fireball spell is too risky, which establishes Dustin's practical approach to situations: generally speaking, he's not someone for unnecessary risks, and in his group of friends known as the Party, he's often the voice of reason, pointing out the risks involved in a particular course of action, such as when he, Lucas and their friend and leader Mike Wheeler go looking for Will in the rain after Will's disappearance. He's the one to point out that there's a likelihood that Will disappeared because of something very bad, and that sneaking out at night and going to the place where he was last seen with no weapons does not seem like a wise plan, as well as the same person who, in episode six ("The Monster"), tries to dissuade Mike from jumping off a cliff despite being threatened by a switchblade-wielding bully who wants to cut his baby teeth out, pointing out that in the grand scheme of things, his baby teeth are not worth Mike risking his life over. This practicality doesn't mean he's not going to go along with the party's plans, though, because come hell or high water, Dustin's still willing to go along with such life-endangering plans as going out in the rain at night to look for Will, keeping a psychic child named Eleven in Mike's basement a secret, and in season two's ninth episode "The Gate", setting a hub of interdimensional tunnels on fire.
At heart, Dustin values his friends highly, and as an extension he values the Rule of Law, a system of rules that governs their party. He's willing to lay his life down for them, as demonstrated when he stands up to gun-wielding government agents after Eleven (for all the good that does him seeing as he was twelve at the time), and he's willing to get hurt to protect them or simply to keep them happy—the switchblade-wielding bully did threaten to cut his baby teeth out if Mike didn't jump off the cliff, but for Dustin, a little pain is fine so long as Mike's alive and well. He clearly grows infatuated with new girl Max Mayfield in season two, but because she and Lucas grow much closer over the course of the season and because Dustin did kind of keep a baby monster pet against the advice of and unbeknownst to all of his friends, he tells Lucas, in a distinctly dejected tone, that Max can take Dustin's place in the party as he did break the party's rules. In season one he's the person who attempts to mediate the conflict between Mike and Lucas over Eleven, going so far as to yell at Mike for being an asshole (and noting in that same sentence that Lucas and Eleven were also assholes) and forcing him into at least attempting to mend the rift between them. He's willing to go with plans that could most likely endanger his life in order to keep his friends safe, as he also goes looking for Will in season one along with the rest of the party, because Will is their friend and it is their duty to find him. He goes along with setting the interdimensional tunnel hub on fire because doing so will affect the hive mind of the Mind Flayer's army, thus distracting them from Eleven closing the gate until it's too late. Most of the time, Dustin's friends are among his top priorities, right up there with food and science.
And Dustin's surprisingly good at making friends, or at least he doesn't meet with much difficulty when he sets his mind to it. In season two, he picks up a new pet from his trash can and names it D'artagnan, and he quickly wins some measure of affection from it by feeding it nougat—if the creature wasn't from the Upside Down, and inclined to eat cats and then later humans, it's likely Dustin's new pet would've lasted much, much longer than a few days. He also later on recruits Steve Harrington into finding and hopefully taking down Dart once Dart becomes too dangerous to keep as a pet, and he very quickly warms towards Steve, helped along by their extraordinary situation—it's to the point that after Steve loses a fight in the course of keeping Dustin, Lucas, Mike and Max safe, Dustin's the one who reassures Steve that, although his ass got thoroughly kicked, "[he] put up a good fight, it's okay." He also at least attempts to become friends with Max, though these attempts are stymied by the fact that he doesn't go to the same extent of letting her in on the secret of the Upside Down as Lucas does. We can assume here that he regards the idea of letting her in on it as dangerous, both to her and to the Party, as last year they ended up becoming fugitives from the law. (It doesn't stop him from trying to impress her with an interdimensional slug, though.)
Dustin is also a very curious person. Some would say that he's even the most learned of the party, but in truth he's just the one who's likeliest to seek out new information, as well as the one with the most insatiable curiosity. He, along with the rest of the party, pays the most attention in their whole class to Mr. Clarke's lectures, and while he's raising his baby monster pet, he borrows a great deal of books from the library to pinpoint what species it is and picks up a great deal of information along the way. He also displays a knowledge of compasses, lecturing the party on how a compass works in episode 5 ("The Flea and the Acrobat"), which says something about his hunger for knowledge even outside of crisis situations. He's the type of person who's willing not only to do research on something to figure out how best to take care of it, but in the absence of prior research (such as the Demogorgon and the Mind Flayer), to make analogies featuring D&D to relate to the monsters he finds himself up against, as D&D features the monsters that act closest to the ones they're up against. He's good at making connections that others might not see as easily, though sometimes he can get carried away with these connections and take them too far, as demonstrated in season two's 8th episode "The Mind Flayer", where he gets a little too carried away with the analogy of the Dungeons and Dragons Mind Flayer and suggests fighting the Shadow Monster they're up against with an army of the undead.
Of the classes in the Dungeons and Dragons world, Dustin is explicitly referred to as a bard by Mike. One of the bard's responsibilities is keeping morale up amongst the party, and indeed that's something that Dustin performs admirably: in season one, he's the one who grows sick of the conflict between Mike and Lucas over Eleven, and he at least makes the attempt of trying to reconcile the two so they can find Will. He goes to find Eleven some chocolate pudding in the eighth episode of the first season ("The Upside Down"), claiming that she needs to be recharged—this is another example of Dustin prioritizing the needs of his friends and also the morale of the party, as well as how good he is, I guess, at finding food when he's hell-bent on it. He's also more diplomatic and observant than the others, often electing to take the less risky course of action if he believes the risk is not worth it, and often wanting to take the course of action that results in the least amount of danger. He's the one who has a good grasp on how the dynamics of the party works, noting to Mike in season one that Lucas, being his best friend, might be a little jealous of Eleven monopolizing Mike's time and attention, from Lucas's point of view. However, he can also be more likely to lie to others and manipulate their feelings in order to achieve a goal: sometimes this is for the good, as we see in the seventh episode of the first season ("The Bathtub"), where he guilts Mr. Clarke into telling him how to build a sensory deprivation tank by pointing out how Clarke always encourages them to open any curiosity door they find, so "why are you keeping this curiosity door locked?" Other times, however, this action turns out badly, as in the case of his pet demogorgon D'artagnan, who he tries to keep secret from the rest of the party once it's found out that he's from the Upside Down.
In the case of D'artagnan, also known as Dart, we see that Dustin's also willing enough to break the Rule of Law that he values so much, if he deems it necessary. We return here to the loyalty that Dustin gives to the people he cares for, and in this case, Dart falls under this category. Dustin's willing to risk conflict with people that he loves for—well, other people that he loves, because at heart, Dustin's a loyal person, and while he'd regret doing it, he'd absolutely lie to someone he loves if he feels it's necessary to keep someone else that he cares for safe. He can also take it more than a little bit personally should someone that he cares about fight with him as well, no matter how justified it is: while he and Lucas, throughout the whole series, have always had a slightly more vitriolic dynamic than with the others, their arguments take on a real sting of anger after it's discovered that Dustin hid Dart even after he realized Dart was from the Upside Down. Dustin even snaps at Lucas for letting Max in on the truth of things, in an effort to call their offenses even and weasel out of having to mend the rift between them the hard way. He snaps at Mike in season one as well, calling him (and Lucas and Eleven) "a bunch of little assholes" and himself "the only reasonable one", in the aftermath of Mike's fallout with Lucas.
Dustin can also be more than a little insensitive, as well as impulsive, given that he is a thirteen-year-old boy. He never truly means anything by it, but he's been known to make remarks and actions that haven't been completely thought through. His first meeting with Eleven, in the second episode of the series ("The Weirdo on Maple Street"), has him asking if she has cancer or if she's deaf, and once he finds out that she has the ability to move things with her mind, immediately tries to get her to levitate a toy-shaped Millennium Falcon. This shows that some of his insensitivity may be borne out of his curiosity and even enthusiasm over new things, as he's more than a little bit awed of Eleven's powers even after she uses it to essentially throw Lucas into a wall. He also states, after Will's fake funeral midway through season one, that the wafers being served "aren't real Nilla Wafers," which can seem more than a little insensitive considering he makes it right after the funeral of one of his closest friends. He, along with the rest of the Party, ends up stalking Max in the first episode of season two ("Mad Max"), in a bid to learn more about her, and of course he ends up taking Dart home from his trash can and adopting him as a pet, and then keeping him against the advice of all of his friends. He ends up paying dearly for that last bit, losing his cat Mews when Dart grows old enough to decide he's sick of eating nougat.
POWER: Dustin is canonically unpowered, though he does display an affinity for radios and a knowledge of Dungeons & Dragons, as well as an insatiable curiosity.
Toddler Demogorgon: Dustin has a pet demogorgon named D'Artagnan or Dart for short. While demogorgons, and their adolescent forms nicknamed demodogs, are dangerous creatures in later stages, Dart is currently a small frog-like creature that's just big enough to fit in Dustin's palm. He hates light and heat and likes nougat and Dustin, and now he also gains an appetite for running around on his new hind legs. He's still the most useless baby monster. In canon, he very rapidly grows from a slug-like baby to a quadrupedal petal-mouthed monster the size of a dog, but in MOM his development will be much, much slower because of the lack of access to the Upside Down, as well as the nanites, so Dustin gets to keep his baby monster pet for a little while longer.
Radio Hijacking: Given a walkie-talkie or a radio, Dustin can hijack an audio broadcast, such as a radio show or a podcast or even an online playlist that someone happens to be listening to on their iPod, to communicate with other people. However, this will only work for one person at a time unless his power gets boosted—he can't interrupt a nationwide radio broadcast to talk to the whole nation, for example, but he can hijack one person's radio in order to talk to them while the nationwide radio broadcast is ongoing. He also needs to use a walkie-talkie or another kind of radio (such as a police radio or a HAM radio) to do it. If he attempts to use this power while using, say, a modern-day smartphone, it won't work.
Magic Learner: Thanks to magic kindergarten with Taako Taaco, Dustin has picked up D&D bard spells! By that, I mean he's picked up three cantrips and a first-level spell:Dancing Lights: the ability to create up to four torch-sized lights that radiate a dim light at a ten-foot radius. Dustin can move the lights around up until 60 feet away from him, and will be able to maintain them for up until one minute.
Minor Illusion: the ability to create an illusory sound effect or image that can last up until one minute, if Dustin does not dismiss it immediately. while sounds can be whatever the hell Dustin chooses, images are more limited, and he'll only be able to make it as big as a five-foot cube at most. he can't add any more details to an illusory image outside of the visual aspects, and if someone took a close enough look at it, it would be obvious that it's definitely an illusion.
Prestidigitation: literally just the ability to do a number of minor magical tricks. to copy/paste shamelessly from this definition, Dustin can:create an instantaneous, harmless sensory effect, such as a shower of sparks, a puff of wind, faint musical notes, or an odd odor. instantaneously light or snuff out a candle, a torch, or a small campfire. instantaneously clean or soil an object no larger than 1 cubic foot. chill, warm, or flavor up to 1 cubic foot of nonliving material for 1 hour. make a color, a small mark, or a Symbol appear on an object or a surface for 1 hour. create a nonmagical trinket or an illusory image that can fit in your hand and that lasts for 10 minutes or until Dustin dismisses it.
note: Dustin can only have up to three effects active at one time. any more will take a lot out of him.
Thunderwave: a first-level spell, unlike the previous three spells which were cantrips, which at Dustin's current level of expertise is going to be hell to cast. a wave of force will be pushed out from Dustin and will push over anyone within a fifteen-foot radiuswho doesn't make a Constitution saving throwwho, let's say, is either in motion or lighter than the average fully-grown man. so Batman could stand his ground with only some difficulty, for example, but your average teenaged bully caught in the blast could be pushed down.
