An Excerpt from an interview with Andrew Webber as seen on CSSN.
A colleague and a very good friend of mine, Dr. Alexandra Newton , has started a special support group a few years back. It's a support group for those individuals who have had loved ones who have given into the dark forces and became supervillians, crooks, and menaces to society.
Every week, Wednesdays, the group meets over in the Cosmopolis Community Center, and they sit in a circle and they talk. It's a safe and welcoming environment where nobody should have to feel ashamed that their loved one has become evil, because everyone in the group is in the exact same situation. They show each other encouragement, and tell each other that just because their friend or family member became evil, it bears no reflection to their own personal image.
Dr. Newton heads the sessions herself and conducts the meeting with great sensitivity. She knows what they've all been through. Her father was Sir Ivan Newton, also known as Dr. Letdown. So she knows what it's like, and has come out of the experience with a loadful of experience which she passes onto her patients in the support group. She tells the group that "Even though they're bad guys, it doesn't mean that they're bad people." She tells them that they're loved ones, in their own twisted way, still think themselves as being good, and that as their loved ones, they must constantly be supportive of them, but without crossing over to the dark side themselves. "It's a tricky tightrope walk," she tells them, "But they need you to do this."
The goal of Friends of Fiends is not to try and convert the villians into being good. That would be the Good Triumphs Initiative, an intervention group, though their intentions are good, their methods I do not support. The goal of Friends of Fiends is to give support and encouragement to those good people who have to suffer through the tragedy of seeing good friends and family members making incredibly bad choices.
Dr. Newton recieved the inspiration to start the group after sitting through a session of the After The Mask
support group meeting. She saw how much good being in a group of like-minded individuals helped that group of former superheroes, and figured that that same format of therapy could also help people like her who had been hurting due to the villainous acts of loved ones.
See Also:
This is a DEF entry in the Cosmopolis Lexicon
