Hey, video game villains need emotional support too, y'know.
Tepish: Hi, everyone. I am Vlad Tepish. You know, Vlad the Impaler.
Sanguines Anonymous Group Members: Hi, Vlad Tepish.
Tepish: I have abstained from the fluids of homo sapiens for 362 years ... You youngsters have to learn how to substitute what you can't do with things that are less harmful. Personally, I like knitting.
Sanguines Anonymous Group Members: Hi, Vlad Tepish.
Tepish: I have abstained from the fluids of homo sapiens for 362 years ... You youngsters have to learn how to substitute what you can't do with things that are less harmful. Personally, I like knitting.
— Vamps
So you have a setting where non-human beings exist, and their nature makes living among humans difficult. Maybe they suffer from a Horror Hunger, live forever (and it sucks), have customs that don't endear them to locals (such as rampant kleptomania and throwing around Curses like it's going out of style) and/or the stress of keeping up the Masquerade is just brutal. Well, there's a support group of reformed/reforming monsters that is out to help those among them who want to live closer to humanity. Possibly even to regain some of that humanity if they were human once. They may even help convince a newly turned member he isn't human at all.
The status of this group in monster society can vary. They may be a bunch of Defectors from Decadence and Pro Human Transhumans who are actively hated by their society at large, a fairly neutrally viewed group, or they may even be top dogs and are enforcing the Masquerade via these groups as a form of positive self-policing (with another group in charge of chasing down those who "relapse"). You often get groups of Friendly Neighborhood Vampires forming these kinds of groups, though a group of Fully Embraced Fiends may form such a group to help fledgling Vampire Refugees adjust without going all Hunter of His Own Kind.
They'll typically help each other deal with mundane and magical matters, like how to ensure their Undead Tax Exemption, keep their Horror Hunger at bay, mask the smell of brimstone/rotting flesh, how to fool human social customs, etc. That said, it's also possible for these groups to focus on blending in not for humane reasons (no pun intended), but to better prey on humans, in which case "disposing of bodies" is usually also on the list of things they help each other do.
This trope is usually at the "acceptance" phase in the Stages of Monster Grief.
A Sub-Trope of Tropaholics Anonymous. Contrast Fully-Embraced Fiend. Compare Supporting the Monster Loved One.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- In Rosario + Vampire, Yokai Academy teaches monster children to hide themselves from humans, and helps them live alongside muggles by remaining in human form and attending a school designed to resemble a human Boarding School.
- Interviews with Monster Girls is set in a post-Fantastic Racism society, so that supports for Demi-humans is considered social welfare, and any crime performed by them are handled in the human justice system. To begin with, the government rations blood to vampires.
- In Tokyo Ghoul, ghouls are hunted mercilessly by the CCG, so a particularly powerful and charismatic one who also has sympathies for humans set up Anteiku Cafe. It's a coffee place where ghouls can congregate, study humans to blend in better, exchange information, and even receive human meat scavenged from suicides if they're unable or unwilling to hunt. Series protagonist Kaneki winds up there after getting changed into a half-ghoul to slowly learn they're not all vicious monsters, and it's staffed by several formerly violent ghouls who've changed their ways. It helps that besides human flesh and water, for some reason coffee is the only thing that ghouls can enjoy and digest safely.
Comic Books
- The living fairy tales in the comic Fables establish a regimented and regulated community to prevent their discovery while living in New York city.
- The real movie monsters of Screamland are a twisted version of this.
- Angel (IDW), spun off from Angel, has Mosaic Wellness Center, a mental hospital/rehabilitation center for supernatural creatures to get help.
- In Spike: Asylum, it's subverted in that it's actually a prison to keep supernatural beings locked up. Spike, who is taken there against his will, meets Beck who is there because she had trouble controlling her powers; with the help of other inmates, they overthrow and change the system so that Mosaic becomes what it was masquerading as.
- In the 2010 Spike miniseries, Drusilla (after breaking out of a regular mental hospital) agrees to let Willow admit her to Mosaic in hopes that it will actually help her.
- The Superior Foes of Spider-Man features Villains Anonymous, where various metahuman crooks (and the occasional Badass Normal) gather to talk about the problems in their lives and disillusionment they feel with villainy (although many go on being villains after the meetings).
Films — Animation
- Finding Nemo features a support group for sharks struggling to swear off eating other fish. "Fish are friends, not food!"
- Wreck-It Ralph features a support group for video game Punch Clock Villains, basically to affirm that they're all good people despite the fact that their games need villains for players to fight.
Films — Live Action
- The Cured: The main characters are zombies who were captured and cured, and form an underground group of other cured individuals to deal with their being shunned by society and worrying about what will happen to the zombies whose bodies are resistant to the cure and risk being euthanized. However, by the final act, their Bitch in Sheep's Clothing leader has corrupted the usual dynamic of the trope and gotten many of them to embrace their lingering predatory instincts, commit terrorist bombings, and eventually release the uncured zombies onto the streets to cause chaos.
- IF (2024) has Memory Lane Retirement Home, a retirement home for IFs who's kids have outgrown them. One of the services they provide is group therapy for helping IFs to cope with their kids growing up.
- Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat: The vampire living in Monster Town Purgatory live on artificial blood to atone for their dark pasts. The rare instances someone wants to drink real blood or kills a human for non-feeding purposes lead to a quick intervention where the culprit gets a You Are Better Than You Think You Are appeal or is kindly but firmly locked up for a while.
- Vamps: "Sanguines Anonymous" is a support group for vampires who pledge not to feed from humans. They also organize for overall protection against the government finding out they exist.
Literature
- Discworld:
- In Reaper Man, Windle Poons (a zombie) attends a group on Elm Street of reformed undead who are trying to lead a normal existence. This includes another zombie (Reg Shoe), a vampire, a sort of inverse-werewolf (an intelligent wolf who turns into a wolfman at full moon), and an agoraphobic boogeyman.
- The Uberwald Temperance League are a strong example of the Friendly Neighborhood Vampire type. The "Black Ribboners" are vampires who have sworn off human blood and try to find an outlet for their urge to indulge in vampire tropes such as constantly wearing formal-wear, waxing philosophical about "the children of the night", and menacing young women who wear underwired night-gowns.
- Earth's Scariest Monsters!: In addition to being a Supernatural Team that protects humans from evil paranormal/supernatural creatures, the Scaredron also functions as a support group for reformed/reforming monsters.
- During the centuries after his and Morgana's plan to Take Over the World fails, the vampire Vorigan decides that he wants to atone for all of his past transgressions and forgive himself. Part of that includes no longer attacking humans and getting blood by hunting animals. He ends up becoming one of the team's five founding members.
- The fish monster Pelleas joined the team as a way to atone for his kidnapping ways after the Scaredron rescued Sylvia (his most recent victim) from him. Both he and his new teammates admitted that he had a long way to go to earn their trust.
- The Friendly Zombie Lauren joined the team after helping them deal with a Zombie Apocalypse caused by the evil female Necromancer Lavinia, who was also the one responsible for magically reanimating Lauren into her current undead state after Lauren's death in a car accident. Although Lauren managed to retain her original intelligence, memories, and personality, becoming an undead creature caused her much confusion and frustration. The team's undead members (Cute Ghost Girl Nicholette, Frankenstein's Monster Frankenstorm, Mummy Adofo, and the above-mentioned Vorigan) quickly took Lauren under their wing to help guide her through her undeath. Near the end of "Mournful Music," Jermaine tells Lauren he's glad she's part of the Scaredron now because they can understand her better than anyone else. He also reminds her that their werewolf friend David sometimes has trouble keeping his more animalistic instincts in check and that the aforementioned Vorigan had to put in a lot of work to curb his bloodsucking after she tries to bite Jermaine's arm, admits that she can't always control her craving for living human flesh, and says being a monster is hard.
- In "Lunar Lures," David loses control while in his Samhain Form and viciously attacks both Vorigan and their witch friend/teammate Diana (both of whom are also in their Samhain Forms) during a nighttime training exercise. After David returns to his senses and apologizes for his actions, Vorigan reiterates that it took him centuries to rein in his desire for human blood, and Diana says she has to meditate every day to keep her magic in check. Once the three monsters continue training, David worries about losing control again. Diana and Vorigan assure David everything will be alright and promise they will all work on mastering their Samhain Forms together.
- In Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin, there's a vampire who's found a way of surviving without drinking blood, and he's travelling around gathering up other vampires and persuading them to make the same lifestyle change.
- The eponymous characters in the Harry Turtledove story "The Gentleman of the Shade" are the vampires of Victorian London, who only drink nonfatal amounts of blood, hang around their gentleman's club, engaging in harmless hobbies like card games, and, on the rare occasions a new vampire shows up in town),talk about how to recruit them.
- The Hypnotists: The Sandman's Guild is made up of people with mind control powers who have sworn off using their psychic abilities for selfish gain and offer each other understanding and support in that regard.
- An Incident at the Dancing Badger: Survivors of Transformation is a support group of people who, through the malicious whiles of witches and warlocks, were transformed into animals and are now trying to regain a sense of normalcy after they pass.
- In The Twilight Saga, Carlisle develops one of these over the years with his "family". He never tries to convince anyone outside the family to avoid feeding on humans, but everyone who is brought into the family is strongly encouraged to go "vegetarian" like the rest of them.
- Used for a quick joke in Podatek by Milena Wójtowicz, where a newly-turned vampire goes to "Bloodsuckers Anonymous" support group but finds it really weird, because it turns out every other member is a lawyer.
Live-Action TV
- Mitchell in Being Human very explicitly uses the Support Group strategy to convince all the vampires in the city to stop drinking human blood (and killing to keep it quiet) and go clean. (In this setting, vampires don't need to drink blood, but abstaining causes incredible hunger pains akin to drug withdrawal until they can psychologically adjust). Amazingly, it works! Of course, some Vampire Hunters decide it's a good time to bomb their celebratory party.
- The NBC show Grimm:
- Monroe, Nick's monster friend, has gone through a "program" so as not to be a Big Bad Wolf anymore. He had at least one friend we've met who went through the program with him.
- There's also a council of Wesen (as the non-human creatures such as Monroe are generally known) that acts as a governing body to enforce the Masquerade, to keep Wesen from being wiped out. The Salem Witch Trials are cited as one event resulting from the Masquerade being breached.
- In The Middleman, Roxy Wasserman is a reformed succubus who runs a halfway house for not-quite-reformed succubi, disguised as a fashion boutique.
- Mighty Med : In one episode, Wallace has a Good Feels Good moment and stages an intervention with a bunch of reformed supervillains to convince Clyde that being a normal civilian is a good thing. Things go poorly when Cloudcuckoolander Gus co-hosts a nearby birthday party and taunts group leader the Exterminator into such a rage that he decides to return to villainy.
Tabletop Games
- The RPG Nightlife has the Commune, a multi-species alliance of monstrous creatures that work to live in relative peace with humanity.
- Although every The World of Darkness series gameline has shades of this, it's most notable in Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Promethean: The Created and Changeling: The Lost.
- Hunter: The Vigil: Yuri's Group, a Hunter Compact from the Tooth and Nail supplement, does this literally, being an organization of support groups and counselors. While they primarily focus on helping the human survivors of monster attacks, especially Beasts, they also have members that try to help rehabilitate monsters; they even have a Tactic specializing in it, called Go To Groups, that offers a support structure to Reluctant Monsters and gives tangible, mechanical benefits towards helping them resist their Horror Hunger.
- The d20 Modern Urban Arcana setting has a number of such organizations for the Shadowkind (the setting's term for beings and creatures brought to our world from a Dungeons & Dragons type realm):
- The Church of Pelor: offers more than just religious services, as they are involved with various charitable efforts (soup kitchens, shelters, healing spells), and generally helping bridge some of the cultural divides between Shadowkind and mundanes.
- Department-7: the default employer of the Player Characters, D-7 works for the common good of both Shadow and mundane. Or so they claim.
- The Displaced: offers various services primarily geared at helping new "immigrants" from the Shadow get acclimated to the 21st century world. They offer rehab programs, help with obtaining ID, clinics that know how to treat monster physiology, job placement assistance, and even help direct Shadowkind to places that cater to their unique culture, like info about restaurants that serve "old world" recipes.
- International Guild of Laborers: basically a big trade union to help Shadowkind not get taken advantage of in the workforce.
- St. Cuthbert's House: A charitable Shadowkind organization that runs shelters, food banks, clinics, and vigilante neighborhood patrols in poverty-stricken areas, and has become quite popular even with the mundane communities.
Video Games
- The Family in Fallout 3 look and act like a clan of blooddrinkers. They're a cannibal support group who drink blood to keep under control their urge to kill and eat people. If offered a cooperative alternative to raiding for blood, they will accept peacefully.
- In the sapphic werewolf interactive novel Moonrise, the player must choose between two factions: the Masquerade or the Rogues. Though they have opposing goals, both groups provide a support network for their members. The Masquerade describes itself as a "neighborhood association" and will pay off the player's student loan debts. The Rogues offer true friendship and a sense of family.
Web Original
- The web sitcom Monsters Anonymous is pretty much the embodiment of this trope.
Western Animation
- The Department of Integration on Ugly Americans, a government agency that prepares monsters (and human immigrants) for life in New York City. The main character, Mark Lilly, is a human social worker employed by the Department, his co-worker Leonard is a wizard, and his superiors are demons.
