I need to actually canon toonpost before Notiker actually just owns this account holy shit /goofy Thinking about Boxten ........ And therefore Astro first it's so hard to talk about any one toon at a time because of how interwoven they are
also normally I care about your dashboard but naw not today I worked hard on these /silly
I think Astro gives Boxten nightmares not on purpose, but because Astro, given how his Twisted description describes him as putting his grief on others, is representative of the "denial" stage of grief and isn't as open-minded and helpfully flexible as he likes to think he is. In order to preserve his relationship with Dandy (in part due to the guilt and despair he feels about the idea of leaving someone who needs him so badly yet did such terrible things, if one's meant to assume what Astro said in Sprout's new lore video is about himself and Dandy) and kinda keep himself sane he's had to essentially delude himself into believing everything is fine and just like it was before, even if he knows deep down that's not true. I don't believe Astro can handle that things have changed, so he tries to carry on in giving everyone their themed dreams they ask for but without actually being flexible enough to be able to internalize that maybe they don't all want the same dreams they used to. That maybe, things are different now.
For example, we know that Shelly wants to dream of dinosaurs, Bobette wants to dream of Christmas, Finn wants to dream of fish all the time — Astro seems to do his best to give everyone what he believes are good dreams, but he's so caught up in his own head that he's imposing his idea of a good dream on his friends rather than what they might actually want. After all, Boxten has begun to change and grow with time. He wants to learn to bake with Cosmo and Sprout, indicative of him shifting from his initial narrative, and that makes him hard for Astro to tend to without really thinking. Boxten even says it directly:
So what might that be? Astro seems to know what to expect of the dreams of most toons because he expects them to align with their original narratives, so given Boxten's themed around music, I think Astro tries to give him dreams of the songs of music boxes at night. Surely he'd like those, right? Just how Finn and Shelly like their respectively themed dreams? Because that's what they're programmed to like!
But... Who else has been associated with a music box, specifically the sound of it echoing through the empty rooms by the name of Moonlight like his best and closest friend he so adores?
Twisted Dandy and his Clair de Lune.
It makes me wonder if Boxten heard that song winding through the halls during the presumed 'incident,' the start of it all, "all Dandy's fault" or at least every time Dandy twisted afterwards — the mess, the trauma, the possible carnage, the end of their world as they knew it, all tied to the gentle tunes of a music box in his mind forever. Every time it's heard, no matter how innocent the intended dream, it distorts into a terrible nightmare.
To Astro it's the sound of a good dream, one he associates with the sounds of his best friend, but to Boxten it's hell on earth. A haunting tune worming into his mind like Astro's thrust his hands into his music box and forced him to play it night after night. After all, isn't it terrifying that Astro has this kind of invasive power? He uses it with nothing but good intentions, but Boxten is proof that, in the event Astro inflicts suffering by accident, such an ability can be unfathomably damaging and haunting. It even makes me wonder if the hands emerging from his music box in his twisted form are meant, in a way, to symbolize Astro's hands rummaging carelessly around in his head and driving him mad with discomfort like a bull in a china shop. Forcing Boxten to relive fear over and over again, utterly blind to the pain he's causing in his own willful ignorance.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions and it seems as though Astro just can't get enough of laying bricks.
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