Cheri backstory for everyone who asked!!!
For context, her old backstory was kinda like. He feels used but it wasnât anything other than âa lot of ppl treated her kinda badâ and it didnât really go anywhere or do anything narratively compelling.
Her new one takes the spoof talkshow pic I drew her in once and actually makes that apart of her backstory! she was from a religious, psychic-hating family, but she had very uncontrollable and reactive powers. They shut her away from people and kept her very sheltered out of fear of her powers. Kind of let to her not knowing how to interact with others and especially not knowing how to handle disagreements. She also struggled with unintentionally constantly reading peopleâs minds. Her parents bordered on religious-doomsday-ish, and being a mind reader she struggled so much with her âmoralâ thoughts and fears.
Eventually she was able to get out of her home life, as an adult she pursued psychology/therapy, as well as self help for psychics. Along with her listed specialties she also specializes in dreams, sleep, and the subconscious, I imagine with psychics these subjects hold a lot more weight in psychiatry than in the real world.
She had a talk show, where she was able to use her strong hypnosis abilities to affect viewers through audio and visual effects alone from the tv. But it was reserved for stuff that real hypnosis is kinda used for, like self reflection, helping people fall asleep, etc. and it would always be disclosed during the show. She probably also did a few research studies and audio tapes here and there.
Her show was called âThe Twilight Hour with Dr. Cheri Bellumâ it was a late night show and the ending segment was made to psychically help viewers sleep better. It bordered between scientific and esoteric, helping psychics (and ambitious non-psychics) improve themselves with their connections to their subconscious mind and powers as that was something Cher struggled with as a child. The show ran during the 70s.
Eventually the producers of the show kept wanting her to include more paid promotions and push homeopathic mlm scheme wack-science stuff that companies were paying the producers to include, even to the extent of trying to hypnotize/mind control viewers with âadvertisementsâ.
I havenât worked out what makes her snap eventually but Iâm thinking something about genuinely hating these bad people (the producers and companies) and being stuck in a situation where you donât know how to put your foot down against these hokey trad-religious-type scams is a bit of a bullseye on feeling exactly like how she did as a child. Wearing away at what sheâs built up to protect her uncontrollable powers.
She might really want to help people, and sheâs a psychiatrist, but sheâs no psychonaut. Sheâs not able to aid her mind as directly at this point as she would after joining the psychonauts, so sheâs a bit of a flimsy dam holding back a cascade of water.
Regardless, she ends up derailing one of her live shows by mind controlling employees, hypnotizing viewers through the tv, threatening the producers, before destroying the film studio and fleeing with her new mind controlled army.
I still have to rework what she does as a villain now, but the psychonauts have to go catch her after like a few weeks of her evading them and doing evil stuff lol. Sheâs def gonna at least try to kill the producers though.
