Ok, spoilers for various fandoms ahead! And I used the wiki page for the seven deadly sins for the definitions and such!
Lust - Luo Bingge (Scum Villain's Self-Saving System)
So, the plot of SVSSS is that the mc (Shen Yuan) reads a webnovel he hates, dies, and ends up as the main villain. He has a huge soft spot for the protagonist though, so he ends up coddling Luo Binghe until he can't anymore.
But wait, I wrote 'Bingge' as my character, not 'Binghe'?
Well, that's because the Binghe from the original novel, called Bingge for simplicity, is a total different charater from Binghe (also known as Bingmei). (And I am not going into the new extras!)
Anyway, Bingge suffers a terrible life. He's abandoned at birth, grows up poor and bullied, his adoptive mother dies, gets into a cultivation sect only to be abused by his master, finds out he is half demon (cultivators kill demons), gets thrown into literal hell for five years. And yeah.
Now, the reason I chose him for lust is simple. By the end of the OG novel he has like. 3000+ wives.
Alright, I don't think we get an actual number, but it's a ridiculous amount either way.
... But that's not my only reason. The wiki page on lust says as follows:
"Lust or lechery is intense longing. It is usually viewed as intense or unbridled sexual desire" "however, lust can also denote other forms of unbridled desire, such as for money or power."
With 3000+ wives, he hits that unbridled sexual desire, but, I'd argue, Bingge doesn't have that many wives just for the fun of it. He also didn't become the demon emperor (and ruler of both human and demon realms) because he felt silly.
Bingge wanted power. He wanted to never be that little abused kid, the one who couldn't stand up for himself, the one who couldn't save his sick mother. He wanted people who cared for him, who showed him even the tiniest amount of warmth, and not the hatred literally everyone else had shown him. That is why I'm picking him for lust.
Gluttony - Kim Dokja (Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint)
Kim Dokja is the protagonist of ORV and, to put it simply, only managed to stay alive due to the stories he read. He was completely reliant on them, the only things in his life that didn't hurt him.
"Gluttony is the overindulgence and overconsumption of anything to the point of excess."
KDJ read the same webnovel for almost ten years, devouring each chapter, each new situation the characters were thrown into.
And when that story becomes real life?
Well, he continues doing what he knew best. He reads the story again and again, he collects as many 'stories' (a system of power in this new world) to make sure he can get his companions to the end of the story.
And... I'm trying not to spoil the end, but KDJ's whole being is comprised of the story he loves. The very act of him reading it, of becoming obsessed and wanting more and more, is a huge factor in ORV.
Hell, he even has a skill called "The Fourth Wall" that eats stories (and other things).
Greed - Jin Guangyao/Meng Yao (The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation)
The plot of MDZS is very complicated, so I'll try and stick to the parts relevant to JGY. His father was leader of the Jin sect, one of the five most powerful sects. However, his mother was a lowly brothel worker, and so JGY was never accepted by his adulterous father.
He tried to make it in the cultivation world, but he got kicked out of the sect he was in (Nie). He then became a doube agent during the way that took place, eventually killing the enemy sect leader, which finally got his father to acknowledge him. (Although, it's worth nothing he was given the "Guang" part of his name to keep him from the line of succession)
JGY wanted to be recognised by his father, wanted to be deem useful and as an actual son to him. And so, on his father's orders, he put many schemes into motion. He killed people, framed others, set up a situation so the MC (Wei Wuxian) could be publicly attacked despite being innocent, he was ruthless.
The wiki page had this to say about greed:
"When Pope Gregory I revised the sins, he defined greed as "treachery, fraud, deceit, perjury, restlessness, violence and hardnesses of heart against compassion."
Now, while JGY might have been doing all that for his father at first, it soon wasn't enough. He knew his father wouldn't ever see him as a real son, and so JGY had to... Take drastic measures.
He saw to the death of his father, intentionally 'poisoned' the man he was sworn brothers with just so he wouldn't realise what was happening, knowingly married his half sister, had a son with her, killed said son so any birth defects wouldn't become known, tricked his other sworn brother for years and years.
Sloth - Yue Qingyuan (Scum Villain's Self-Saving System)
Now, I have chosen YQY for a very specific reason. He's the sect leader of Cang Qiong sect, where SVSSS takes place for the most part. In most aspects he's a good leader, but there is an area where he falls down.
Or, more accurately, a person.
The original villain of the story, Shen Jiu, was his childhood friend. They grew up together, suffered through the hardships of being forced into slavery.
YQY managed to escape, he promised to come back for SJ.
And he tried. He pushed himself to the extreme to get strong enough to save SJ, but he went too far. He ended up breaking the bones in his body, ended up being trapped in a cave for like a year as punishment.
By the time he went to find SJ, the manor was gone. SJ burnt it down and killed most of the people inside.
But, see, SJ then went on to join the same sect and end up in a position of power. He used this power to abuse the protagonist LBH, to encourage his other disciples to target him both physically and verbally.
"The other deadly sins are sins of committing immorality; by contrast, sloth is a sin of avoiding responsibilities."
And YQY, out of guilt, never said anything about it. As sect leader, he should have put a stop to it, but he'd rather intentionally look away because of his past with SJ.
Wraith - Uchiha Sasuke (Naruto)
This was the easiest pick of them all honestly.
In Naruto, when Sasuke is only seven years old, his whole clan is massacred, even worse, it was done by his beloved older brother.
After this, Sasuke becomes someone obsessed with getting justice for his clan. His top priority, above all else, is to hunt down his brother and kill him for what he did.
"Wrath can be defined as uncontrolled feelings of anger, rage, and even hatred. Wrath often reveals itself in the wish to seek vengeance."
The thing is, though, after killing Itachi Sasuke learns some distressing news. You see, his clan was planning a coup against the village they lived in. Itachi didn't want this to happen, he knew it would lead to so much more danger for the people in the village, and so he was pushed into killing his family by the ones leading the village. Itachi killed his family, but couldn't bring himself to kill Sasuke because he loved him so much.
When Sasuke finds this out, he once again becomes consumed with anger and the need for justice and revenge. He wants the man who had Itachi kill the clan dead, he wants the whole damn village whipped off the map.
"the neutral act of anger becomes the sin of wrath when it is directed against an innocent person; when it is unduly strong or long-lasting; or when it desires excessive punishment." "Hatred is the sin of desiring that someone else may suffer misfortune or evil, and it is a mortal sin when one desires grave harm."
He intentionally targets Naruto, not because he had anything to do with the massacre, but because he believes that killing Naruto will make him stronger. He does all this because his clan, his family, his own brother, was targeted and treated so unfairly.
"People feel angry when they sense that they or someone they care about has been offended; when they are certain about the nature and cause of the angering event; when they are certain someone else is responsible; and when they feel that they can still influence the situation or cope with it."
Envy - Azula (Avatar: The Last Airbender)
(This is maybe my worst link, but I really wanted to include Azula)
Now, in ATLA Azula is the youngest child of Fire Lord Ozai, the main antagonist.
It's important to note that Ozai is a terrible father. Like. Would kill his own children. Has tried a few times.
On the other hand, Azula's mother, Ursa, was quite the opposite. She was kind and loving... The only problem is, she wasn't like that to Azula.
You see, Azula is a prodigy of firebending, she's a genius too. In contrast, her older brother Zuko found it harder to firebend. He's a skilled firebender, don't get me wrong, but not on the level of Azula. He's smart, but not quite like Azula is. And, critically, he's too soft.
Ozai began to favour Azula, which pushed her further into being as perfect as possible. Ursa saw this and showed Zuko more attention, perhaps in an attempt to even things out, except she ended up acting just like Ozai.
Now, maybe my thoughts on Azula are a little off here, but I imagine that she did, at least to a degree, want to get attention from her mother too.
When Ursa disappears, Zuko becomes the target of this. He's the dumb, slower, older brother who got the attention she wanted.
"According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the struggle aroused by envy has three stages:
- During the first stage, the envious person attempts to lower another person's reputation
- In the middle stage, the envious person receives either "joy at another's misfortune" (if he succeeds in defaming the other person) or "grief at another's prosperity" (if he fails)
- the third stage is hatred because "sorrow causes hatred""
- While Azula doesn't directly do this to my knowledge, she certainly doesn't speak well about Zuko. She's constantly calling him names, pointing out how weak he is.
2. When Zuko is burned and banished Azula smiles at him. She takes a degree of joy in hunting him down, in knowing that that she is superior to him in every way.
3. Azula absolutely hates Zuko. She also has sorrow, I think. By the end of the show, Azula has become unstable from it all, unable to keep up the perfect image any longer. And the one who had a hand in taking her down? The one who 'won' in the end? Zuko.
Pride - Todoroki Enji/Endeavor (My Hero Academia)
It pains me to centre this on him of all people, but it works so I will!
Enji has always dreamed of becoming the number one ranked hero in all of Japan. But, even after years of being a hero, of being rank two, he's never able to dethrone All Might from his position at the top.
But he's strong, and his quirk is even better.
If he can't be number one, then he'll have a child that will be.
And so, he finds a woman with a strong ice quirk (Rei </3) and literally buys her from her family. He has four children with her, with the middle two being tossed aside when they only had Rei's ice quirk.
Touya, his oldest, had fire stronger even than Endeavor's. He got his mother's ice resistance, though, so his own quirk would burn him.
At first it wasn't so bad, but then Touya started to burn himself, and with the two other children being worthless, Enji started to get desperate. He was so convinced that his dream would be met like this, that a child of his would be strong enough.
Shouto, his youngest, was his perfect creation. His powerful fire quirk, Rei's powerful ice quirk.
But Enji was past the point of saving.
"The "pride that blinds" causes foolish actions against common sense."
Blinded by his own pride, by his single minded desire, Enji quite literally makes Shouto and Rei's lives living hells. (Oh, and directly leads to the 'death' of Touya)
Annnnd yeah. Maybe some of these don't fit or just aren't that good, but here are my answers!