#(frankie Always gets credit on uncle cally posts cause he's the one who first proposed it to me n let me run with it)

[anonymouspuzzler]

While I know it isn't fully your AU, how did poor Cali fair the events of Psychonauts 2 in your take on the Uncle Cally AU?

i saved this ask for Ages because I wanted to draw something big and bold for it! i didn't do that but i DID draw this that got the energy across and will say a lot of words in an order under the cut!!

[Image ID: A black-and-white digital ink drawing of Caligosto from Frankie and Puzz's "Uncle Cally" AU. He is wearing large round glasses like his childhood self, has shoulder-length shaggy hair with a kerchief tied in it, an Aquato Circus unitard with baggy shorts over it, knee-high laced boots, a high-collared shawl, fingerless gloves, and an elbow-to-wrist sleeve on his right arm only. He is drawn in a sketchy, inky style, staring directly at the viewer ominously, standing with his arms held at his sides, hands splayed out menacingly. There are numerous telekinetic hands around him. End ID.]

so my interpretation of Uncle Cally changed a lot post-Psychonauts 2, understandably, and as always whenever I talk Uncle Cally I have to give enormous credit to Friend of Frankie for 1) coming up with and selling me on the idea in the first place, and 2) always being so game to bounce ideas off each other in ways that allowed me to cook on pretty much everything I'm about to say. but more or less, I took what was already in this version of Cal (taking on work that was morally ambiguous at best and using his psychic powers in an effort to protect his family from the many unseen-yet-implied Enemies Of The Aquatos) and reinterpreted that with what Psychonauts 2 then elaborated on with regards to the Aquatos' history and particularly Nona, and where I landed was this:

Cal, post-Psychonauts 2, realizes he was being put down a path to become a successor to Maligula.

Not intentionally, mind. It couldn't be - Nona didn't remember that part of her life, not consciously. but Cal always did get flashes of a different Nona when it was just the two of them - a Nona that insisted he had to use his powers to keep Augustus safe, that he had a responsibility to protect the family no matter the cost. a more haunted Nona. and Cal took it all to heart, doing things he knew were wrong for the sake of protecting his family. even by the point of Psychonauts 1 and RoR, when the things he was doing started backfiring and getting his own family involved and endangered, I think he thought it was a terrible fluke, that he still believed he was doing the wrong things for the right reasons.

and then, you know. he finds out about Maligula. how Lucrecia became Maligula in the name of using her powers to protect her country and her family; how what little fragments were left of her had been feeding Cal that same logic and leading him down the same path. I think it made him horrified and angry, at Nona and even moreso at himself, and left him grappling with how he could deal with that hurt and betrayal without just... continuing to worsen the harm that had already been done to everyone involved. much like Augustus, he has to kinda retreat and spend a lot of time mulling things over, and in some ways I think he does take it even harder. (it definitely makes him finally turn his back on any further work as "Dr. Loboto", and I think maybe between that + Raz's involvement + his little kinda sorta crush on Oleander he starts considering work with the Psychonauts in the aftermath of Everything.)