Fully-Embraced Fiend

"I'm going to tell you a secret, but I think you already know it. Becoming a vampire doesn't change your personality; that's just a silly lie we tell to the newcomers to help them through their first few kills. "No! What's happening to me?! Munch munch." Ha... It doesn't change the personality: it liberates it. A vampire is the only truly free man. All his darkness, all his excesses, they can run amok. He wants a girl? Take twenty. He wants a boy? Go ahead, just give the place a bit of a hose-down after. The world is his. The only limit is his imagination."

— William Herrick, Being Human (UK)

So your vampire hero or wolfman character is plagued by guilt, crippled by morals, and wants nothing more than to be mortal again. Naturally you need a foil, and that's where the Fully Embraced Fiend comes in. Unlike the hero, this character is happy being a monster — they like the immortality and the power, and has no problem putting the bite on anybody who doesn't like it.

Hey, just Be Yourself, right?

This character isn't necessarily all that evil; in fact, s/he is often a friend of the hero, a source of (im)moral support and often a source of news and information on other fiends. They also won't hesitate to snark the hero on his lack of vampire pride or similar. These fiends usually have their own substantial, dedicated portion of fans among the audience.

However they still will tend to get these fans by the Sociopathic Hero or Magnificent Bastard route with a sort of sociopathy in how they view everybody else, moralistic characters being gutless morons who were afraid to take risks. They probably didn't start out like this, having gone through the Stages of Monster Grief before truly accepting their condition. If we see them turn into this after being treated with prejudice for their nature, it's Then Let Me Be Evil.

Vampires and werewolves, the sort of monster that you can be turned into, are the typical target. If they are slightly evil, they might be a Token Evil Teammate. Contrast with Transhuman Treachery where a character in the fight against such creatures gives in to the process that turns them into the enemy. Also contrast with Pro-Human Transhuman, where a character in the fight against such creatures resists the notion of superiority to humanity. Contrast with Monsters Anonymous, where the emphasis is on blending in with humanity... though the exact purpose to the blending in may vary. Has nothing to do with the Card-Carrying Villain, who embraces being the metaphorical kind of monster, although these tropes can overlap.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• At least in the English Dub of Dragon Ball GT, Baby openly embraces being called a monster:
  Baby: I can't help what I am any more than you can, my little Saiyan friend.
• In Hellsing, the trope gets an interesting exploration - Alucard may be a gleefully sadistic, self-declared monstrous vampire, but he's still fighting for the good guys against his own kind. (Admittedly with rather more collateral damage than necessary, which he will point out to his superiors 'cause it's funny.) He berates other vampires for being weak, petty, boring and no fun to fight, while - in his own warped way - prodding his allies to test their convictions, sometimes to the point of being an Evil Mentor. As a monster who knows he's chosen to be a monster, he feels free to sneer at other monsters for failing to respect humankind, and will only ever concede defeat to someone truly human. And when the Worthy Opponent he genuinely believed could be the one to defeat him gave up humanity for more power, Alucard actually breaks down in utter disappointment and despair. A "Monster of God" is still a monster, after all.
• In Nightwalker, Cain has been a vampire for so long he can't really remember ever being anything else. He's not trying to kill or defeat the protagonists, he's just trying to convince his old lover to come back to him.

Comic Books

• Spider-Man: Cletus Kasady as Carnage is a foil in this way to Eddie Brock and Venom. At least Venom usually remains lucid enough to be an Anti-Hero, or have his own agenda that sometimes sees him on the side of the good guys, even if it's just to preserve himself or the symbiote. Cletus and the Carnage symbiote, meanwhile, are both Ax-Crazy who lean into how much damage, destruction, and death the two of them can cause together. When Venom and Carnage grapple (which has happened more than once, most notably in Maximum Carnage), it's a case of self-serving evil versus pure annihilation.
• José in Crimson. While his friend Alex Elder absolutely refuses to drink blood, being even disgusted with animal and donated blood, Joe is very content with being a vampire and feeds mostly on bad people like criminals and drug dealers. While cops and innocents are off-limits, he makes an exception when he is extremely hungry.
• The Incredible Hulk: The one-shot "Time of Monsters" shows a young man in prehistoric times who is mutated into a Hulk. He initially tries using this new form to help his fellow villagers, but they panic at the sight of the giant green beast and kill him. Down in the Below-Place, he meets the One Below All, which offers him the chance to smash things, and hurt by the apparent betrayal of everyone he knew decides he'd like nothing better than to make them pay. And the One Below All is willing to oblige.
  Tammuz: Break, yes. I think I would like to break things now. I would like that very much.
  One Below All: MY WEAPON IS HATE.
  Tammuz: As is mine.
• Killraven: Killraven's reunion with his older brother goes sour when it turns out his brother has been genetically altered by the Martians into a wolf-man. John assumes he's been brainwashed, but his brother sets him straight. He likes being a wolfman, and he very much wants to kill his little bro.
• Inverted in Preacher - Cassidy (a main character who is a vampire) is (outwardly) Well-Adjusted; one flashback issue features him meeting a vampire who read too much Anne Rice. His monstrous nature comes more from his addiction to heroin and his abuse of women.
• Secret Warps: Weapon Hex's backup story has her meeting with Greer Baptiste, a woman she knows has become the victim of a magical curse that turns her into the were-creature Wentigra. Laura offers her sympathy and a potential cure, until Greer cuts her off, explaining that she likes being Wentigra, rather than the "nobody" she was before, and quite enjoyed eating her friend too. And then she starts Hulking Out.
• This is Wolverine's relationship with Sabretooth, who's embraced his violent and feral instincts, whereas Wolverine tries to Resist the Beast. Both of them get the urge to become The Berserker, but while Wolverine tries to fight it off and control his power, Sabertooth has embraced his feral side.

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): In this Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) fanfiction, Ghidorah is a slight variation on the trope comparative to Monster X. Like Monster X, Ghidorah wasn't born nor part of a species, but was created when three separate beings were forcibly fused together. Whereas Monster X is something of a Reluctant Psycho, with both its personalities wanting to learn control of their biologically-ingrained violent instincts and psychological trauma; Ghidorah is an Omnicidal Maniac that reached the end of its slow slide into evil eons ago.
• Child of the Storm: Dudley Dursley in the sequel, who revels in being a Grey Court vampire (classic Dracula-type). This is justified by the fact that he was already a murderer, a rapist, and a violent thug, to the point where Harry states that all becoming a vampire did was change his diet and make him significantly more powerful (not that this saves him when he jumps up and down on Harry's Berserk Button).

Film

• In the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, Luke Perry's buddy quickly becomes one of these to the still mortal Perry's character. Once best buds, he tries to convince him to turn too after he passes on being FOOD.
• In The Howling (1981), Dr Waggner leads a colony of werewolves trying to suppress their murderous instincts and exist in the modern world. Unfortunately for him, it doesn't work, with many of the werewolves disliking having to control themselves; Eddie Quist flees the Colony and becomes a Serial Killer, triggering the main plot when he attempts to kill anchorwoman Karen White. By the end, this kind of thinking completely takes over; the werewolves turn on Waggner, telling him that he "can't tame what was meant to be wild" and being all to happy to try and kill the human protagonists.
• Jennifer's Body: Jennifer has absolutely zero issues with being a murderous monster right from the start and finds it amusing that she's a Literal Maneater.
• French Canadian comedy Karmina 2 has Linda, whose husband was made a vampire in the original movie; she's extremely enthusiastic about becoming a vampire before being turned, tricks a friend into biting her because her husband thinks she's too unstable, bites him back to turn herself, and once she's turned revels in the whole thing.
• Werewolf Castle: All of the werewolves are this, having chosen to be turned, but it's most prominent with Wolfstan, who refers to the curse as him having been liberated from the "decrepitude" of man.
• The Wolfman (2010): Sir John Talbot is a werewolf. For many years he resisted and fought to contain the curse, locking himself up on full moons to avoid hurting people. But as time dragged on, he has come to increasingly embrace the feral power and violence that comes with the affliction as a mere extension of his life as an Egomaniac Hunter. He believes his affliction makes him superior to normal people, feels exhilaration from the transformation and bloodshed, and weaponizes the curse against those who wrong him. Notably, his werewolf form is significantly more intelligent and directed in behavior than Lawrence's, suggesting that while Lawrence is constantly Fighting from the Inside, John and his wolf are in perfect agreement on what to do.

Literature

• By the end of Blackout, Cal Leandros has (partially) become one of these. Though he accepts his Auphe side and indeed thinks of himself as more Auphe than human, he regards Niko as his Morality Chain and does his best to follow what his brother outlines as moral. Unless Niko is in danger. Then all bets are off.
• Henry Fitzroy from the Blood Books series by Tanya Huff.
• Almost all the vampires in the Den of Shadows series except Christopher and Nissa are completely happy with being vampires.
• Reg Shoe from Discworld would count, as he is a zombie who holds undead pride meetings. Subverted in that he is really just a regular guy who happens to drop bits of himself now and again, and his attempts to fight for undead rights are an outlet for his desire to be a social reformer. He later joins the City Watch.
  • Both Carpe Jugulum (vampires) and The Fifth Elephant (werewolves) feature a similar two variations on this trope; an older Noble Demon patriarch who "plays by the rules" — that is, acts like they do in the traditional stories — and a sadistic, supremacist younger nephew who enjoys flaunting his power over humans (while also perversely believing that he's doing them a favour) and serves as the villain of the story. Both of these are foils to the Friendly Neighborhood Vampires and werewolves we see coexisting more-or-less peacefully with humans in Ankh-Morpork, like Otto von Chriek and Sgt. Angua.
• A Dowry of Blood: Dracula enjoys being a vampire and killing his victims, having embraced being a beast. Notably his harem indicate he could feed off the guilty or not kill his victims, but he chooses not to and preys on innocents because he likes it.
• By the end of The Dresden Files novel Turn Coat, Friendly Neighborhood Vampire Thomas seems to have given up and become one of these. As it turns out, though, this is just an act. And in Summer Knight, Changeling Meryl embraces her Fae half in the final battle, becoming a troll, though she does so to save her friend and dies shortly afterwards.
• Dust Devils: Adam Price and his gang of vampires aren't even beholden to their thirst like the newly turned, but actively enjoy killing and feeding. They have long since given up their humanity in favour of enjoying killing others.
• Harry Potter gives us Fenrir Greyback, a cannibalistic werewolf with a taste for children—even when he's in human form! He is the polar opposite of Remus Lupin, who hates being a werewolf and whose biggest flaw by Word of God is that he just wants to be liked.
• The Immortal Rules:
  • Jackal is a more typical example of this, having cast aside his humanity long ago and fully immersed himself in the cruelty and monstrous acts that vampires are stereotypically known for.
  • Kanin though in the same series is a slightly stranger example; he clearly has few problems with being a vampire and is even more vocal than Jackal about Allison's penchant for "clinging to her humanity". However he does not kill his prey, he stops Allison from ending the life of her first victim, and he leaves gifts for the poor that he feeds on to make up for the harm that he causes with his depredations. In light of that, it seems that he is perfectly at ease with being a vampire and feeding on humans, but also possesses his own code of morality.
• Lestat from Interview with the Vampire, as he teaches the protagonist to embrace being a vampire.
• Johannes Cabal: Zarenyia the succubine devil is a cheerful Blood Knight who loves nothing more than a spot of casual mayhem with plenty of human victims. That said, she goes quiet and distant for a moment when she admits that she used to be a human.
• Principal Lightwood from Nathaniel Keene tries to convince the protagonist to become this by tempting him with human blood. It's implied that he successfully did so with Merry Cross.
• In Shadow of the Conqueror, every Shade was once a human exposed to darkness for too long, and they resemble a monstrous version of their former self for a time after they turn. Lesser Shade are mindless monsters, whereas Greater and Lord Shade are intelligent and totally dedicated to wiping out all humanity, functioning as the leaders of the Shade.

Live-Action TV

• Herrick from Being Human (UK), who is always trying to get Mitchell to give up forsaking blood and get into a vampire world domination bid. Similarly, Tully wanted to convince George to embrace "the wolf" and act animalistically. Particularly disturbing considering the depiction of the werewolf curse was treated on many occasions like an STD being passed on and the turning bite being like a rape. Eventually George got rid of him when he acted violently against his loved ones.
• Like in the Blood Books novels it's based on, Henry in Blood Ties (2007) embraces his vampiric nature. He seduces a girl every night to secretly snack on her while doing other stuff. He does give a speech to Vicki, including "someone has to die" in it. Coincidentally, the victim they are talking about is not dead, as Henry leads her to assume. He turned the girl. At the same time, Henry also has qualities of a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire. Before cancellation, the show only had five vampires on it: Henry, Christina (Henry's lover/maker), Christina's other fledgling (who hates her), the previously-mentioned girl, and a Spanish nun turned by Henry during the Inquisition in return for freeing him (he thought it was a gift).
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel:
  • Becoming a vampire makes you lose your soul, which in this setting seems to be synonymous with one's conscience. As such, they fit this trope as a rule, with a handful of exceptions (namely, vampires who manage to get a soul back somehow). At one point Angel even admits that he misses the "clarity" of being a soulless monster. Spike after having his own soul restored has a better time of it—he feels guilty about his past actions, but actually likes being a vampire otherwise, since being immortal and super-strong is fun.
  • Veruca relishes in her werewolf side, believing it to be her true self and her human face just a disguise. She tries to get Oz to do the same. Monroe and his group from the Season 8 comics share these views.
  • In Season 6, Spike tries to take on this role for Buffy, convinced she Came Back Wrong after her death and resurrection. It turns out Buffy's just severely screwed up, and Spike's efforts to get her to embrace The Dark Side and run off with him only make things worse.
• LaCroix from Forever Knight but not so much Janette, since she eventually becomes mortal through the love of a good man, implying some dissatisfaction with the Vampire life even if she never mentioned it to Nick.
• iZombie has Season 1 Big Bad, Blaine DeBeers. While Liv hates having become a zombie and tries to make the most of her situation in a positive way, Blaine relishes his transformation, as it gives him the power he's always craved.
• Josef Kostan, resident Deadpan Snarker and resulting Ensemble Dark Horse, in Moonlight. Coraline Duvall as well, especially in the flashbacks. Not so much after her return, or so she claims.
• Erica is this to Sarah in My Babysitter's a Vampire.
• Once Upon a Time: A more morally ambiguous version than usual. Red initially has extreme self-hatred about being The Big Bad Wolf, since it caused her to accidentally kill a boyfriend in the past. She learns to accept her wolf side with help from her mother, a Proud Warrior Race Girl, only to discover that she's a Fantastic Racist who kills humans on sight. Eventually she learns to find a middle way between this trope and a lifetime of being The Atoner.
• Although they usually only appear for one episode, many of the informants to the Sanctuary (2007) crew do this, especially Ashley, until her death. While Nikola Tesla embraces being a vampire (until he is turned back), he doesn't go around killing people. That's Druitt's job. Tesla's vices include arrogance, excessive drinking of fine wines, and constantly hitting on Helen, but he is rather reserved otherwise.
• Eric in True Blood who scoffs at Bill's drinking of the eponymous blood substitute and his remaining human tendencies. Most vampires in the series bother little with restraint.
• The Vampire Diaries: Vampires can actually shut off their feelings of guilt. This, along with living it up and making his brother's life a living Hell, is what Damon Salvatore does.
  • It's implied that he doesn't shut them off all the way, probably so he can enjoy it more. Then at the end of season one he's apparently turned them back on.
  • It's implied that this ability fades with age, so older vampires have either become true sociopaths, or they delude themselves into believing that it is permanent so that they can live with the guilt.

Tabletop Games

• Both Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Requiem feature a vampiric society that holds to the idea that you need to keep some measure of your Humanity, lest you fall to the Beast and become a mindless killer. Needless to say, their foils have other ideas. In Masquerade, the Sabbat is a society made up of vampires who believe they are superior to humanity, and have the right to rule over the "kine" as they wish (usually in a bloody and messy fashion). In Requiem, it's the covenant of Belial's Brood, who believe that the Beast is superior to paltry Humanity and perform atrocities to get closer to it.
  • Promethean: The Created has the Centimani. Most Prometheans are on the Pilgrimage, a spiritual journey with the ultimate goal of becoming a human being and shedding the massive Blessed with Suck that comes with their existence. The Refinement of Flux, Centimani, teaches that Prometheans are more than human, that following the Pilgrimage is a foolish idea, and that a Promethean should embrace what they are and become as inhuman as they like. Which would be fine if it didn't involve enslaving Pandorans and hunting down your own kind to feed them to the things. (Interestingly, since Centimanus is a philosophy, not a group, there are actually Centimani who still follow the Pilgrimage. Their view of the path is that since there are monsters in men, one can learn about humanity by studying its antithesis.)
• The Black Spiral Dancers in Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Werewolves are inherently monstrous, but the good ones in the setting strive to be noble monsters, who use their monstrosity to fight for good against evil. Black Spiral Dancers just kind of drop the "noble" part.
  • The sequel, Werewolf: The Forsaken, has the three Pure tribes. The Predator Kings embrace their nature as wild beasts, despising humanity for "upsetting the natural order" with technology and seeking to tear down civilization and reinstate the law of the Jungle. The Fire-Touched make themselves the high priests of the spirit world, claiming that Spirit should rule over Flesh and seeking to merge the two worlds on their terms. And the Ivory Claws see themselves as a Master Race, believing that werewolves should rule over humanity and they should rule over werewolves.

Video Games

• In Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, Vorador serves as one to the newly risen Kain. Later on, Kain acts as this to Raziel.
• Five Nights at Freddy's: It's implied that this is William Afton/Springtrap's attitude towards being undead. While most of the antagonists are some type of Tragic Villain or another, William as an Artificial Zombie is just as sadistic as ever, if not more so. He has several Faux Affably Evil moments, such as his Virtual Ghost in Help Wanted waving and dancing as he plans something bad. This is more explicit in the novella trilogy, which outright confirms that he is an Immortality Seeker. When the games started having more voice acting, many of his lines emphasized his sadism and immortality, up to and including his catchphrase:
  "I ALWAYS come back!"
• The Shadow Hilt sisters Erze and Seria from King's Raid were expected to continue on the family tradition of vampire hunting. Unfortunately, Erze got bitten by a mysterious vampire which lead to the gradual loss of her moral compass. She eventually killed and absorbed the powers of the same high-ranked vampire who transformed her in the first place and killed her own former comrades, then slipped away from her sister. Seria currently seeks to find her and kill her as revenge for the fallen comrades.
• Lady Cassandra Mallory in interactive romance novel Moonrise is happily a vampire, with no qualms about flexing her power and enjoying her immortality.
• This is how Gaichû in Shadowrun Returns: Hong Kong views becoming a ghoul. While he'd prefer to be human, he knows there's no cure and ghoulification has granted him increased strength and stamina and also provided him with a whole new set of challenges to master, such as his new nature. It's implied his early acceptance of his new nature as a challenge to be overcome saved him from devolving into a mindless cannibal like most ghouls.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • One of the possible endings for your player character, the Demi-Fiend, in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. At the very beginning of the game, a little boy (Lucifer) forcibly transforms you, giving you the body of a demon while letting you keep the soul of a human. Handy for creating an interesting narrative and not falling over the Bishōnen Line. At the end of the game, after experiencing everything there is to see After the End, you get to decide if you want to complete the transformation and make your soul that of a demon's, becoming Lucifer's Dragon and taking the fight to God himself.
  • An option for the Player Character in Devil Survivor: Overclocked during Naoya's 8th Day. Having finally awoken his power as the new King Of Bel, the player can now decide to completely abandon their human morality and slaughter everyone opposing them, giving in to their demonic soul and ultimately ending with taking over the world.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei IV, Issachar says something to this effect after reading the Black Samurai's literature: "Now that I have seen the light... I have embraced the demonic." Depending on your dialogue choices during the ensuing battle, he'll quickly regret it... not that it'll change the outcome.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines:
  • Smiling Jack is a relatively well-balanced version. He unapologetically enjoys blood-drinking and raising hell against anyone who tries to control him, but doesn't hurt people without cause, warns new vampires against losing their humanity, and offers mentorship and friendship without asking anything in return. For a four-hundred-year-old undead ex-pirate anarchist, he's surprisingly well-adjusted.
  • "Gorgeous" Gary Golden, a Nosferatu, will express his disgust at a Toreador Player Character this way, suggesting that the Toreador are deluding themselves by trying to cover up their inherent monstrosity with "Paris fashions and pomp" and that, as one of the fallen and the dead, the player character should act like it.
  • Pisha is remarkably sanguine about the fact that she has to not only drink human blood, but eat human flesh, and will happily engage in a debate on the ethics of anthropophagy and the difference between the people she killed for food and and those you Killed to Uphold the Masquerade. The Malkavian player character will dub her "Black Widow", only for her to shake her head and point out that "Mantis" would be far more appropriate. It should be said that Pisha is on her third century of unlife and has had plenty of time to deal with the existential angst, and seems to be operating on a form of Blue-and-Orange Morality, as some vampires do.
  • Being a Tzimisce and a Sabbat, Andrei falls into this almost by default. Like many of his clan, he has even purposefully molded himself into a more monstrous form, to better separate himself from what remains of his humanity and fully embrace his inner Beast.

Webcomics

• Aberrations from El Goonish Shive. To become an aberration, you must be fully willing to kill other sapients to keep yourself alive, and the transformation explicitly destroys any capacity for empathy. The closest thing we ever see to morals or conscience from an aberration is the mention by a body-snatcher that the man who became it justified the transformation by thinking that he could just snatch one person who deserved it for years at a time.
• Finas and Casimiro from Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name. They are quite used to being vampires, they have been for many years. They don't have particular side that they are on, they just do what's in their best interest and can be cordial (Finas keeps Cas in check) at times.
• Owen Wright in Maggot Boy is a sapient zombie and a sadistic serial killer who alternates between offing random folks to sate his Horror Hunger and doing horrible things to people he personally dislikes.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Durkon acting like this moments after being turned into a vampire is so out of character that it convinces Belkar that he's Not Himself, especially since said character went from forgiving Belkar for not being able to save him to eagerly drinking his blood in minutes. Belkar is correct. Durkon isn't only a vampire, he's being possessed by a servant of Hel.
  • Another, unnamed vampire comments on how pleasant this is. While frequently the soul of the person is trapped inside, horrified by what the vampire is doing and irritates them with their protests, in this case the original person was suppressing major evil inclinations in life and is thrilled to be able to express them. The vampire even plans to do some "messed up stuff" her host had always wanted to do for their mutual enjoyment.
• This eventually happened to the protagonist of Zebra Girl. Sandra, after years of fighting against her transformed-into-a-demon nature, finally gives in to the dark side. After causing a great deal of trouble, her friends are forced to banish her to an alternate dimension where she is forced to deal with being suddenly human again. She eventually finds a way out and resumes her demon form, then establishes herself as Overlord of the town's monster population, allowing them to sow the terror she feeds upon but reigning in the worst of their depredations.

Western Animation

• Transformers: Animated: When she first appears, Blackarachnia hates her techno-organic form (brought about by a mix of her Power Copying abilities and some giant spiders) and does what she can to get rid of it. By her final appearance, she's decided she actually quite likes it, and has started work on giving other 'bots upgrades of their own.

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